Mike Sturm

The thin line of choice we face every day between us and the world

Photo by Katerina Pavlyuchkova on Unsplash

“Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.”

The quote above is from Confucius. I think about it from time to time — whenever my list of things to do seems to have swelled to larger than I can manage.

I also think about it when I catch myself doom-scrolling on Twitter, or falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes, or standing in front of the open pantry, mindlessly eating most of a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. I think about it as I sense things becoming too complicated for me.

I think about whether or not Confucius was right. Am I the problem? Or is life — is the world just really complicated?

Things Bumping Into Each Other

What goes on in the world is just the endless cascade of things bumping into each other in different ways. And then there’s we humans. We are part of the bumping, but we also have these things called desires.

We don’t simply observe the things bumping into each other. We see them, but then we form desires about them. We wish that they bump together in certain ways. We form strategies and make plans to get those things bumping into each other in just the ways we like — but not the ways we don’t.

I think about how complicated life can feel, but how it really is very simple. And even in those instances when — as Confucius reminds us —we make it complicated, the simplicity remains. It’s there for us to discover. It’s like a set of keys that we’ve dropped. They stay where we dropped them — available for us to pick them up again.

The Line of Choice

The way that life is simple is that it proceeds day by day with the same choice available to us in every moment of each and every day. We wake up in the world of things bumping into each other. We see it happen, and we have a choice.

We can choose to make or be made. We can choose appreciation and love or suffering and anger. We can choose to be okay with the ways things end up bumping into each other — come what may. Or we can choose to rail against it, feeding an ever-growing desire that things be other than they are. These choices are simple.

There is a line between us and the world. It’s the line marked by choice. We cannot choose how things play out in the world. Wars, famine, abuse, deceit, hurricanes — these things happen without our choosing them. The pain and destruction they cause is real.

But on the other side of that line is each of us. We can choose who we are — how we are. We can choose how we act. We can choose what we set in motion. When we cross that line that separates us from the world — when we choose — we make an offering.

You’re Entitled to the Labor, Not the Fruit

When we cross that line from our mind and into the world, the most we’re doing is making an offering. We’re offering up our action, our work, to the world — hoping that things turn out. Our mistake comes when we see it as anything other than an offering.

The Bhagavad Gita has a verse that (roughly) says:

Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits

Work all you want. Plan, scheme, and push yourself all you like. But if you believe that doing so makes you entitled to certain results — you have set yourself up for strife. The things bumping into each other out there in the world don’t care how much work you put in. So they won’t simply fall in line with your sense of entitlement. And when they don’t, and you feel entitled, that’s when you suffer.

Hard work is great. It heals, it cleanses, it builds character, and it motivates and serves. When you treat your work and your life as an offering — to the world and others — you free yourself from the bondage of entitlement.

Your work and your effort is you making yourself, and offering yourself up. It’s self-craft — the highest kind of craft. You do it not for the results, but for the sake of the work itself. And you offer it up.

“How Are You?”

When someone asks us “how are you?” — we so often fail to see that for what it really is: An invitation. It’s an invitation to make up your own answer in real time.

We hear “how are you?” and we think we’re being asked to observe and report on the past. We think it’s a simple matter of looking at the events of your day and how they’ve made you feel, then reporting back. But no — “how are you?” — that’s an invitation to answer by acting. I’m great! You can say. And you can mean it. And you can make it so. Because you are great. You may not feel great, but great people don’t always feel great. In fact, greatness comes from being able to consistently deal with feeling not great.

We can choose to make ourselves happy, make ourselves useful, make ourselves at ease. But it doesn’t happen by magic. It takes work. It takes choice — day after day. Choose to make yourself into what you will be, rather than be made into something else.

No matter your environment, practicing humility in speech is a great step toward being a better person

Photo by Adam Nir on Unsplash

In Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, he lays out 12 virtues that would serve as his guideposts for becoming a better person.

1. Temperance
2. Silence
3. Order
4. Resolution
5. Frugality
6. Industry
7. Sincerity
8. Justice
9. Moderation
10. Cleanliness
11. Tranquility
12. Chastity

But Franklin notes that not long after adopting this list, a friend of his politely told him that he seemed much to proud. Specifically, he tended to speak to others in a way that made constructive discussions difficult.

And so, the eager-to-improve young Franklin quickly added a 13th virtue to his list — which by his estimation, became the most useful. That was humility. And though many people pay lip service to that virtue, they tend to have a more abstract notion in mind. But Franklin had a particular set of actions in mind — all pertaining to how he spoke.

I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself…the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix’d opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my opinions procur’d them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

The importance of words cannot be overstated. The words we use — even when we talk in casual conversation — matter in shaping people’s perceptions of us. Franklin noted that when he began to use different phrases than the ones he usually did, his conversations went much better.

Franklin’s advice can be broken down and simplified to a few key principles regarding how to conduct yourself in conversation. Try a few of these in your next conversation, and see if you don’t appreciate the results as much as Ben did himself.

Avoid Absolutes

Statements that feature words like “never” or “always”, “every” or “none” should be avoided. They make for very weak arguments, and they also set both a dismissive and cocky tone for the conversation.

When you make a statement like “He never gets work in on time”, you’re setting up the weakest possible argument. All it takes is a single example of the person in question getting work in on time to disprove you. At that point, you look both pessimistic and sloppy with your judgement. Both of those things make you seem less credible, and make people less likely to want to deal with you.

Instead, use words that point toward tendencies or trends. “He tends to be late in turning in work” will do just fine. Or, you can use a more precise and evidence-based claim, like “the last 3 projects we worked on, he didn’t turn the work in on time.” Either of these allow people to disagree with you without disproving what you say.

Avoid Certainty

It’s tempting to us state your judgments or opinions as fact — especially when you’re intimately familiar with the subject matter. I’ve been in countless meetings where we’re all talking about what a particular customer or colleague is thinking — or what’s at the root of current business conditions. And usually, someone makes a statement that sounds like a definitive statement of fact — a decidedly bold claim.

But it’s rare that someone can be so certain about things like that and be right. So the more you claim to be certain, the less appealing it is for others to engage with you. First of all, people don’t tend to like talking with people who claim to be certain about a bunch of stuff. It can make people feel like they have nothing to contribute to a conversation. After all, you already know everything anyway; what do you need them for?

But beyond that, once someone shows your certainty to have been misplaced, and proves you wrong, you lose your credibility. Not a good look.

So rather than making claims that sound like certainty, save a little wiggle room for yourself. Instead of “she was angry about the invoice” you can say “it seemed like she was angry about the invoice”. Instead of saying “they weren’t paying attention”, say “it appeared like they were preoccupied”.

What’s great about this is that you get to basically say what you want to say — but you also get to say something that’s inarguably true (so long as you’re being sincere). No one can tell you that something didn’t seem the way it seemed to you.

Perhaps you were wrong, perhaps it seemed that way to you, but it actually wasn’t that way. Admitting that doesn’t make you look nearly as bad as if you claimed that you knew for certain how things were, only to be proven wrong.

In short, it’s better to understate what you know, but turn out to be right, than to claim you do know, only to be discredited. So stay conservative in what you say. Stick to talking about how things seem how you perceive them.

Be Charitable

Conflict in conversation is inevitable. No two of us see the world in the same way. We’ve all had different experiences, and our opinions will eventually clash with one another. It’s how we handle the clashes that makes all the difference. Franklin’s advice here is to be charitable — both in how you interpret the statements of others, and in how you respond to them.

Being charitable in your interpretation is something I was reminded of often in graduate school. I studied philosophy, and was taught that when assessing the argument of someone else, you should paint it in the best light possible. If the argument is a little poorly worded, help it out. Make it the strongest version of itself, and get the person’s agreement that yes, that’s what they meant to say. This way, if you are going to criticize the argument, you’re criticizing the strongest version of it — and with the agreement of its author.

When you do criticize or disagree, be charitable in how you do it. Rather than contradicting someone, you can say something like “Hmm, maybe you’ve got it right, but I’ve seen such and such, which I don’t believe is compatible with what you said…” The point is not to be contentious, and allow your opponent to gracefully back down from their statement — or modify it a bit. This helps immensely when you’re negotiating, strategizing, or even brainstorming. You can get to collaboration much sooner.

Remember: It’s Not Easy

Practicing this humility isn’t easy, in large part because it’s not natural. We say the things we do because we believe them. And we believe what we do because we have evidence that seems so strong to us. But we must remember that other people feel that way, too. And the more we can make our interlocutors feel somewhat intellectually safe, the better our conversations will tend to go. Leave your ego at the door, before you walk through and begin speaking.

Franklin was under no illusions about how difficult this all is. Even when you adopt a resolution to be humble, pride can sneak back in.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

Did Ben Franklins foresee the humble-brag? Perhaps…but wherever it came from, it’s just another hurdle on the way to true humility.

Some thoughts about a famous 20 year-old quote and what it means for how to learn and strategize

Photo by Sammy Williams on Unsplash

In 2002, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was conducting a briefing about the possible link between Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. At one point, a member of the press asked about a report that something hadn’t happened. Rumsfeld took the opportunity to turn the event into a masterclass of obscure epistemology (the study of knowledge):

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Just to run through that succinctly, Rumsfeld identifies 3 categories. And each has their own position and usage in our life. And when you can learn to identify each one, and how to appropriately identify them, it can be extremely helpful.

Known Knowns (KK)

Known Knowns are the things we know that we know. It’s also referred to as second-order knowledge, because you not only know these things, but you’re aware that you know them. On some level, you’re conscious of that knowledge.

Basically, this is most of your knowledge base. Things you know to be true, and you’re aware that you know them. An example would be: I know that I know where all the doors in my house are located. Also, I know the multiplication table up to 12.

When we think of learning, we’re mainly thinking about expanding this particular category of knowledge. We read books and collect more known knowns. And the knowing that we know comes from retention of what we’ve learned. This often requires consistent review of the material from which we learned new things, or use of that knowledge — so we can integrate into our other knowledge.

But there is more to learning that expanding our known knowns. In fact, as we’ll see, the journey of learning begins with a different category first. And identifying more of that category is a much better way to getting both smarter and wiser.

Known Unknowns (KU)

Known Unknowns are things we know that we don’t know. You could call it our “ignorance base”. It’s worth emphasizing that this is different from our normal understanding of ignorance. For example: I know that I don’t know how to replace the fan belt on my car. I also know that I don’t know the names of all of the members of congress from my home state.

When we think of being ignorant of something, we often think of not even begin aware of an entire realm of possible knowledge. And that’s usually a result of not caring enough to find out what you don’t know.

Effective learning begins — and lifelong learning continues — by seeking out more and more things to add to the list of your known unknowns. Because the first step to learning about a subject is to find out what it is you don’t know. When you do that, learning about the subject becomes a lot easier, because you’ve got a blank to fill in — so to speak.

In school, we were most often taught that learning involves just showing up and listening to something. But this can only be so effective at teaching us new things. Learning that sticks, and that propels you forward toward more learning, happens most effectively when we identify the gaps in our knowledge. It’s helpful to have a list — whether on paper or in your head — of these known unknowns about various topics. This way, your learning is guided by a need to fill in those gaps, and make those KUs into KKs.

Unknown Unknowns (UU)

Perhaps the most interesting category of the Rumsfeld Trio is the Unknown Unknowns. These are things we don’t know that we don’t know. In other words, you may have thought about a topic, but these would be the things that you didn’t even consider about that topic. So, like the known unknowns (KU) you don’t know them. But moreover, you’re not even aware of your own ignorance of these things.

That last category is basically impossible to give an example of regarding oneself, because once you give an example of something you weren’t aware you didn’t know — you would no longer be unaware you didn’t know it. But we can give examples of unknown unknowns that became known later on — showing us that we weren’t even aware of the things we didn’t know.

Things in this (UU) category are like Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swan” events, but perhaps even crazier. Taleb’s description of a Black Swan event is basically an event regarded as rare thus unanticipated, but that has significant consequences — due in large part to its being unanticipated.

Taleb gives the example of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. in 2001. Nobody seriously anticipated that 4 commercial planes would be hijacked and run into buildings. And if anyone had, it’s likely that the event wouldn’t have had the massive effect it did. According to the intelligence community at that time, there was a notable lack of terrorist “chatter” before September 11th. There may have been fears or speculations of an attack around that time, but no solid leads. There were a lot of unknowns.

9/11 was a black swan event due precisely to its unknown unknown nature.

But there were people who claim that scenarios like 9/11 had been thought about by strategists before they happened. So while it may have been highly improbable, and highly unanticipated, given the intel we had at the time, they weren’t true unknown unknowns. We knew what we didn’t know: the who, where, and when of a choreographed hijacking.

The Gateway to Strategy

Unknown Unknowns are actually a great gateway drug to creative strategizing. What makes games, negotiations, and (to some people) war campaigns so interesting and engaging is the requirement that you search out the unknown unknowns.

When we do strategy well, we stretch beyond the familiar, beyond the anticipated. We consider things that aren’t on most people’s radars. It is those who can find these unknown unknowns, turn them into known unknowns, and then into known knowns — they can think at a consistently higher level.

A Fourth Category?

There also may be an additional category at work — one which Rumsfeld didn’t mention. But philosopher Slavoj Žižek talks about it in his own analysis of what Rumsfeld said:

If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the “unknown unknowns,” that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the “unknown knowns” — the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values.

Political conclusion aside, I think Žižek is on to something. There clearly is something like this at work in our minds. They’re things that we know, but we’re not aware that we know them. They can be “disavowed beliefs that operate in the background of our consciousness” or they can be intellectual muscle memory. These might be subconscious things you know, but that only come up in certain circumstances.

It could be argued, that when we get to know something well enough, it becomes embedded and unconscious in us. And at that point, we don’t have to consciously call up that knowledge; it’s there operating in our RAM, supporting all the other conscious work we’re doing. Perhaps instinct fits in here, or worldviews, or even (how apropos!) ideology.

Perhaps the journey of effective learning goes like this:

unknown unknowns 🠒 known unknowns 🠒 known knowns 🠒 unknown knowns

After all, the more you can take from total ignorance to basically second nature, the more effectively you’ve learned!

Photo by rayul on Unsplash

The internet is saturated with content about mindfulness. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more widely discussed phenomenon in a wider array of different spaces — from business to technology to mom-blogs to the world of sports. The buzz about mindfulness continues to be loud. There are apps, journals, classes, books, podcasts, and so on. Each with its own method and practice to advocate for.

I’m guilty of having jumped on many of these bandwagons myself. I’ve tried, and still have on my iPhone, many different mindfulness and meditation apps. Despite having gotten into Buddhism and meditation long before the iPhone was even released, I still felt the pull of the new and fresh technological takes on this ancient idea.

But what I’ve lost in all of this buzz about mindfulness — and what I think many of us have lost — is the simplicity of it. And the thing about mindfulness is that the more simple you keep it, the better it tends to work. For one, you’re much more likely to keep mindfulness a habit if it’s simple. Any steps to follow or pre-work you need to do before you become mindful will eventually be a barrier to actually doing it.

Even the use of the word “mindful” can serve as a barrier. After all, most mindfulness guides urge us to pay attention to what’s happening in our head as we sit. Or if we’re physically doing something, they urge us to do it with pure focus on that thing. It can actually be exhausting to do. Or at the very least, it can seem exhausting to someone who’s not doing it, or has never done it.

Surely, there is a better way, right?

The Alternative Notion: Rest

The reasons we get into mindfulness are many. We hear about all sorts of benefits that people in all different kinds of situations get from it. Executives gain the ability to focus better and for longer periods of time. Parents claim to be more patient and attentive to their kids. Athletes claim they can better get into the zone. Nearly everyone reports a reduction in stress and anxiety.

It’s that last benefit — the reduction in stress and anxiety — that I think gets lost when we introduce all this variety and regimentation into mindfulness. And because of that, it becomes a barrier to entry, and re-entry. It’s not unlike what’s happened to diet and exercise over the last few decades. We want to put healthy foods and drinks in our bodies. We want to move our bodies in a way that keeps them healthy. But the variety of products and practices becomes overwhelming. So may people simply don’t bother.

I was feeling this particular brand of overwhelm just a few days ago. I was buried in work. I had tasked myself with doing a new meditation practice for at least 10 minutes, twice a day. Most of the things on my to-do list weren’t close to being done. The hours were ticking away. I felt stressed and anxious.

And in a move I can’t quite understand why I made, I got up from the chair in my home office, went outside on my back deck, and just sat down in a chair. I just sat there and stared at one of the boards of my house. I didn’t light a candle. I didn’t sit in the lotus position. I didn’t set a timer. I didn’t open up an app. I didn’t look at a list. I just sat and stared, until I didn’t feel as stressed or anxious anymore.

I didn’t record my thoughts. I didn’t repeat a mantra. There was no structure, there was no goal. I just sat and let my mind rest.

Rest. That’s the key. My mind decompressed and rested. Thus, so did my body.

Deep vs. Shallow Rest

That’s what we miss when we introduce a lot of structure and pre-work into our mindfulness practices. We miss the part where we let our minds rest — actual rejuvenating rest.

The rest period is different for each person, and for each situation. Sometimes, you need 10 or 15 minutes of rest, and you can be ready to get up and go again. Sometimes, you need more. But whatever the case, we shouldn’t make the mistake of diluting our rest. Rest should be deep to be effective.

In other words, true, rejuvenating rest should be stillness and quiet. Any kind of stimulus or diversion — even if you consider it mindless in nature — doesn’t allow for deep rest. The time we spend curled up with a good book, watching a show, listening to music, or anything like that may be helpful. I too engage in all of that. But it’s not rest in the same way simply sitting in the quiet and stillness is. And so it won’t bring you the same kind of benefits.

And I don’t mean to say that shallow rest isn’t worth engaging in. It is. But that’s mostly because it’s fun and often energizing. But things that are energizing aren’t restful. The energy we feel after doing a recreational activity isn’t the same as the energy we have after deep mental rest.

Only 2 Rules

The great thing about deep rest is there’s no how-to when it comes to doing it. There’s no process, no guide, no practice per se. All there is are 2 rules:

1. You sit alone, with no expectation except to rest your mind and body.
2. As little stimulus as possible (i.e., no companions, no apps, no artificial sound, no reading, etc.)

That’s it. Do it as often as you feel you need to, and as often as you find it helps you. Don’t make it a routine. Don’t build a structure around it. It’s there when you need it.

In the times when I can’t bring myself to follow some sort of meditation practice to get the other benefits — this practice has helped me. And because there are no strings attached or targets to hit, I’ve found it easy to pick up and put down as I need to.

An off-beat guide to better investment — both financial and social

I recently finished the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It’s a great, concise book that does triple duty as an autobiography, confessional of a dying man, and collection of frank and quirky advice.

One of my favorite stories from the book is so short, it’s easy to overlook. But it gives flesh and bone to the vague skeleton of a principle I’ve come to hold to tightly since I first entered the world of business. I’ll let Pausch’s story do its own heavy lifting.

Fragility

Randy Pausch tells the story of how, when he and his sister were pre-teens, the family went to Disney World. Their parents opted to give the kids 90 minutes on their own to roam the park

To show their appreciation for the trip, and the 90 minutes of autonomy, the Pausch children went to the gift shop to pick out something for their parents. They soon found a $10 set of salt and pepper shakers they knew their parents would love. So they made the purchase and quickly left to roam the park.

Minutes later, Randy fumbled the package and dropped it — resulting in a broken set of shakers. An adult guest in the park saw what happened and suggested the kids take it back to the store. Pausch knew it was his fault but he decided to go back to the store, not sure what to expect.

After the kids told the clerk what happened, they were pleasantly surprised when they were told they could get a new set of shakers. The Disney gift shop employee even apologized to them for not wrapping the gift to prevent such breakage, and gave them a replacement.

Of Kids and Capitalists

There are two ways of interpreting this story.

• The Pausch kids — with the help of a clever adult — got one over on the Disney gift shop employees, resulting in a $10 loss for the store.
• The Disney gift shop employee made a wise investment

You may be able to guess which one is right. But let’s finish the story.

After hearing about that instance of customer service, Pausch’s parents were impressed. In fact, they were so impressed, they continued to take both their own family — and the underprivileged children served by the nonprofit they worked with — to Disney World regularly in the ensuing years. As a result, Disney made well over $100,000 from the Pausch family that they otherwise might not have.So, yes, the Disney gift shop employee made an investment, and it paid off — in spades.

I know what you might be saying: that employee got lucky! There’s no way to know that the Pausch’s parents would even hear or care about what the employees did — let alone end up spending a bunch of money there later. And you’re right. On that particular occasion, there was likely some luck at play. But that’s the thing about investments; you don’t always when or exactly how they’ll get a return. They may not yield a return. That’s why venture capitalists invest in multiple different companies. Most of them fail or return very little. But the ones that do, go BIG.

The Forest and the Trees

So often — especially in business — we operate with a mentality in direct opposition to the gift shop employee. It’s like a combination of distrust and a slippery-slope fallacy run amuck. We assume that everyone who comes to us with a request for time or money should be negotiated with. We guard our time and money so greedily that we forget that the only way to grow them is to invest them. And the only way to invest those things is to forfeit some of them — not hoard them. You need to be generous.

In the short term, your generosity may be taken advantage of. And that’s okay. Again, it’s an investment. And many investments don’t work out. But the few that do work out more than make up for the ones that don’t. You never know who’s going to find out about how well you treat others. And one of those people who hear about it will undoubtedly have something to offer you. When they think about who they can spend it on, those word-of-mouth accounts of great service matter.

I’m not saying you should indiscriminately let people walk all over you. You have every right to say “no” and refuse to let people harm your livelihood. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that every little over-reach here and there constitutes a threat. Then you become a modern day Scrooge.

Mind the Social Latticework

In short: Answer your legitimate emails and social media messages when you can. When people (and not email bots) reach out in earnest, get back to them. Put a little thought into it. Make a connection. When people comment on your video, article, image, whatever — comment back. Don’t automate that away. And don’t make the mistake of thinking your deep work is so much more important than the little people reaching out to you.

Take the time to be welcoming, because very few people are going to spend money over and over with anyone who doesn’t welcome them. And when it comes to that kind of social latticework of small interactions, people are much smarter and more perceptive than we often give them credit for.

In short, invest some of your time and profitability in generosity. That $10 of loss you take today, tomorrow, and next month, may be what gets you $100,000 more over the next 10 years.

On approaching 40, my pretend rocket ship, and my 7 year-old self-improvement coach

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Watching my kids grow up has been an experience truly unlike any other. And I’m not referring to how fast time flies, and how quickly they grow, and all those old clichés. That all happens, yes, but what’s really gotten me is how much of their growing up is bringing back my own memories of growing up.

And beyond that, I’m being reminded of all sorts of differences between child me and grown-up me. They’re sneaky differences — differences that seemed to have established themselves some time between when I was 8 and 38. I can’t pinpoint exactly when they happened, or how they happened. But somehow, I’m on the other side of some allegorical river. I’m a grown-up — somehow.

Nouns and Verbs

In many ways, I don’t feel different than I did when I was 8 years old. It’s as if the world just got bigger, but I didn’t change much.

But I know that’s not true. I know I’ve changed. I don’t like the toys and TV shows I used to like. I don’t get excited about playing Red Rover and Cops and Robbers with neighborhood kids. I don’t have trouble falling asleep on Christmas Eve — running through all the possible presents Santa might have left me. I don’t pretend I’m about to take off in a rocket going to space when I’m in my bed at night.

What seems to have happened as I’ve grown up is that all the nouns of my life have changed, but the verbs haven’t.

I still have the same feelings I did as a kid. I feel the same sense of wonder and excitement about launching a new website or newsletter now as I did about going into the forest in a tent at dusk when I was 8. I may not imagine that I’m in a rocket going into space when I go to bed at night. But that same faculty of imagination — producing ideas every bit as crazy as a rocket-ship bed — is still at work in a boardroom with a whiteboard.

Again, the nouns have changed, but the verbs haven’t. I’m still all about getting involved with things that energize me and revive and sustain a sense of wonder in me. I’m still all about engaging with my imagination, and asking what if? a lot — a whole lot. I’m about being 38, and a responsible husband, father, and team member, but I’m still all about opening up to things like I’m 3rd grade.

Never go FULL Grown-up

In my estimation, I’m lucky to be in that mindset. I interact regularly with many people who don’t seem to be. When it came time to “grow up”, they fully grew up. They took on all the responsibilities and social norms that adulthood seems to demand. And for some reason, doing that seems to come easier if we also shed all the great quirks and qualities we had as children.

But to riff on a somewhat controversial movie line, you never go full grown-up. When you do, you lose so much more than you gain. You lose the joy in small, simple things. You lose the ability to hang out in the moment, to stop asking what kind of results or progress you can squeeze out of everything, and just sit and wait for a little while. You lose the appetite for wandering and wondering. You lose the the ability to unabashedly pretend for a while, abandoning your sense of self — which I’ve found to be mostly illusory anyway.

I’m happy to have grown up. I’m not sad that I’m almost 40. But I deeply admire 8 year-old me. For all of his mistakes, for all his skinned knees and his lack of worldly intelligence, he had a lot going for him. He was wide open to the world and full of wonder.

Channeling the 8 Year-old Me

On my best days, I try as much as possible to channel 8 year-old me. I try to channel his imagination, his willingness to buy in to anything at least once, his lack of ego and bravado. I don’t always get it right, but when my 7 year-old daughter belly-laughs at me and I see that look in her eyes, it’s a sign that I’m on the right track. God, I love that sound.

The thing is, honing that ability to channel my 8-year old self is about more than just feeling better. I also helps others feel better. And whenever and where ever you can make other people feel better — you’ll be more successful at whatever it is you’re trying to get done.

As unlikely as it seemed to me, kids can teach us an awful lot about self-improvement. But I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, since it’s literally their primary job.

So here’s to channeling your inner 8 year-old, skinned knees and all. May you forever throw yourself into wondering and wandering. Grown-up life — whatever that actually is — can wait.

On sculpting a life you can be proud of

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A few days ago, I turned 38. As I read that sentence to myself, it’s still hard to reconcile with how I see myself.

38. That’s almost 40! That’s the age of my parents — my friends’ parents — Mr. and Mrs. Whatever. But me? I’m not almost 40!

But the truth is I am almost 40. Time just kept on moving forward, despite my not having given it permission to do so.

As I’m wont to do whenever I turn a year older, I reflected a bit. But as I started to do that, I caught myself. I was evaluating my life in terms of what I have, what I want, and what I still need to do. But I was missing a vital element in my self-appraisal.

I thought back to a quote by philosopher Immanuel Kant

“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”

In all of my self-assessments, I had looked at the things I had accumulated: accomplishments, awards, promotions, etc. But I didn’t consider what Kant had tried to teach me so many years ago — when I first encountered his writing as a young undergrad. For all of the things I gained, what did I become okay living without? What had I become strong enough not to depend on? How much had I fortified my character? What austerity had I become able to endure?

Accumulation

We spend a lot of time accumulating things — whether we want to or not. In fact, as I’ve grown older, I’ve found that things seem to just pile up in my life. This applies both to physical objects, as well as expectations of me and commitments of my time and attention.

The thing is, every one of those ‘things’ — be it a physical object or psychological force — carries weight. Too much of that weight impairs your ability to move freely and enjoy life. It can — after going a while unchecked — begin to feel like too much.

Beyond the weight of keeping things up and paying attention to them, we also develop a dependence on things. We come to depend on everything from alcohol to make us feel “loose”, podcasts to distract us, sugar to soothe us, and the praise and recognition of others to validate us. We come to depend on those things to appraise ourselves, and when we don’t get them, we start to panic a little. We become uneasy. We itch and yearn for whatever we think will fill whichever hole isn’t being filled.

But the holes are never filled. In fact, the more we put in those holes, the bigger they get. They stretch to fit whatever we cram into them, and then a little more — which makes us search for just one or two more things to fill up that space. And so on, and so forth. It’s a pathological condition.

But this condition isn’t automatic. We develop it by accumulating. But when we stop accumulating, and when we get rid of the baggage taking up space in our minds, that’s when we begin to sculpt some character.

Shedding & Sculpting

Sculptures may look like something solid that’s been put together. But as we know, sculptors make their art by taking material away from a bigger block. That’s similar to how we mold our own character.

We shed those things that we’ve accumulated and become dependent on along the way. We reveal our true selves as who we are separate from all those things that we had been accumulating. What’s left after all that is gone is us — our essence. And it’s not defined by what we have, but rather by our intentions, our attitude toward others, and the action we take as a result of those things.

That’s why it helps to ask, from time to time, what can I let go of? As you do this more, and actually let go of things more, it can become a helpful habit. It also compounds. You begin to allow less stuff to pile up. You being to move in a way that doesn’t allow undesirable things to stick to you. You become more focused.

I’m almost 40 now. By all measures, that’s about halfway through the length I can expect my life to be. I may have spent the first nearly 40 years of my life striving to accumulate. But at this point, it’s time to switch to a different mode. It’s time to see how many of these things I can shed.

The simple ethical principle that’s stuck with me for over half my life

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I’m always on the hunt for simple principles for better living. So here’s one that I’ve held dear for quite some time. It goes back to my early days in college — right after I failed at being an illustration major, and began studying philosophy. One of my first classes was Classical Ethical Theories, where we studied what the great minds spanning 2,000 years had to say about what constituted good living and right actions.

That class introduced me to Immanuel Kant, who had a unique way of thinking about how to go about living in the world with others:

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.

Kant went on to talk about humanity as a “kingdom of ends” — a realm of beings defined by our unique rationality and autonomy. We can, and do, make plans for ourselves, adopt principles, and reshape who we are throughout our lives.

What he’s talking about is the fact that any way that we treat people can do one of two things. It can either fully respect the other party as an autonomous and valuable being —with their own hopes, dreams, and feelings and valuable in and of themselves. Or, it can treat them as a means to your own ends — a veritable object you’re using for your own purposes.

It helpfully explains why it’s okay to ask someone to help you move, but wrong to manipulate them into it via a guilt-trip.

To me, it seemed like the best way to capture what’s wrong with various wrong actions that some people may justify by appealing to the “greater good” — but that seem wrong to us. It explains why managers who can simply bark orders at employees shouldn’t. It explains what’s wrong with things that aren’t illegal — like adultery, verbal abuse, or emotional manipulation in consensual relationships.

And it doesn’t appeal to a higher metaphysical being. It also doesn’t appeal to complicated socioeconomic facts. It can be deployed anywhere humans are interacting. It’s easy to remember, and easy to recognize in each other.

Even those who have wronged you — even severely wronged you. The punishment they get can be given — even if it’s painful to them — just so long as your reason for punishing them isn’t about using them as means for you to feel better. Respect even those who do really bad things as ends in themselves. Make their punishment about helping them realize the gravity of their wrongs — not about making wronged parties feel better. It can be a thin line to walk, but it’s worth it to try to do so.

This principle has stayed with me for a long time now, and though it’s been quite a while since I’ve read Kant, I still like this way of thinking about morality. In the end, we’re all human beings trying to eke out an existence we can find joy in and be proud of. The more we can act with that fact in mind, the better off we’ll all be.

Of Tempo, Timing, self-knowledge, and listening to feedback

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I love the power of a good question. A good, simple question can refresh stale thinking and change how you view yourself. It can get your mind back on track, and out of a rut.

Here’s a good one, which I lifted from a very tense scene in the movie Whiplash. The fanatical perfectionist teacher, Terence Fletcher, has the band play the jazz song “Whiplash” — giving new drummer Andrew Neiman a shot at showing his stuff.

Initially, Fletcher stops Andrew a few times — letting him know that he didn’t quite have the right tempo. After a few times, he seems satisfied and walks to the other side of the room without stopping the band. But then out of nowhere, he hurls a chair at Andrew — who ducks just in time.

It’s clear that Andrew wasn’t playing right. Fletcher asks him were you rushing or were you dragging?

Andrew doesn’t seem to know the answer. So Fletcher asks him to play again, only to begin slapping his face in the song’s rhythm. He asks (of his slapping) “there — was I rushing or was I dragging?”

Andrew sheepishly answers “rushing.” To which Fletcher angrily yells “So you DO know the difference!”

As we watch Andrew’s abuse and utter humiliation unfold at the hands of the unhinged Fletcher — we’re left to feel increasingly uneasy and sorry for Andrew. But we’re also left to feel increasingly uncertain. Does he really know whether he wash rushing or dragging?

And not to belittle Andrew’s painful situation, but another thing we’re left feeling uneasy about is our own lack of insight into what we’re doing wrong in our lives at any given moment. We recognize, in Andrew, our own strong desire to do things right, but also our crippling fear of doing them wrong — and on top of that, the pain of not knowing what we’re wrong.

That’s left me to ask myself a simple question lately: am I rushing, or am I dragging — and do I even know the difference?

It’s Not Tempo, but Timing

It’s not how fast or slow you’re going that makes for bad playing. You can be playing at the same tempo as everyone else, but simply be off the beat. So it’s not your tempo, but rather your timing. You have to know when to do things, as opposed to how much you should be doing, and how quickly.

The reason why it’s so difficult to tell whether we’re rushing or dragging is because, like a wayward drumming student, we can easily lose our point of reference. We know we’re supposed to be playing a song. We know the rhythm. But at some point, we begin feeling…off. Or someone else pointed out that we seem off.

In response, we may have either put the pedal to the metal to catch up, or slowed way down and taken everything off of our plate to try to make sense of everything. Either choice is usually an act of overcompensation.

When we shift to either extreme in response to our timing being off, we make the fatal mistake of thinking that we can fix our problems by adjusting our tempo. But the problem isn’t tempo. It’s not that we’re playing too fast or too slow. It’s just that our timing is off. We simply have to match our action to what the song is telling us. To do that, we have to listen and make adjustments. We need feedback.

Listening and Feedback

The reason why it often seems so hard to figure out what we’re doing wrong is that it’s hard to find and process feedback. We become afraid that stopping to listen and taking a beat to adjust will result in being left behind. Or we slow down way too much and don’t even bother to try to listen to where we can hop back in. We let our ego take the wheel — the ego that believes we got this, and we can figure it out on our own.

But if we take a few beats and listen, we can understand where we need to be. We just need to listen to the right part of the band. A great way to do this is to talk to someone you trust or admire. Get their assessment of how things are going. Fill them in on where you’re at. They can help you hear the rhythm. It doesn’t have to be formal, and in many cases, it’s better if it’s not. Just “bouncing something off” someone on a quick call is all you need.

When you do get back in the right tempo, you’ll feel it. You’re able to think, make decisions, and feel more proactive. But you don’t feel like you’re going way too fast and not paying enough attention. You’re in that sweet spot again — between rushing and dragging. But it takes listening to get there. Listen to the song you’re trying to play. Listen to the instruments around you — aside from just what you’re trying to play. Look to others you trust and follow them when you’re lost.

But most of all, don’t be afraid to take a beat, listen, and jump back in when you’re ready — when you hear what’s going on. Don’t play just to play — just to feel like you’re taking action. Find more than the tempo; find the timing as well. And jump back in when it’s time to do so.

On identity crises, the mind, and human potential

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The topic of personal identity is a big deal. People can spend their whole lives just trying to find out who they are. And people’s conceptions of who they are can radically change after certain life events, or certain experiences they go through — be they traumatic or joyful. People even actively work to change their idea of themselves — as well as how others see them — through sustained action.

What we usually end up with after our respective journeys to find out who we are is a series of adjectives and nouns that indicate roles. We’re a parent, a doctor, a refugee, a soldier. We’re Black, APAIC, Latinx, white. We’re bisexual, homosexual, asexual. We’re transgender, cisgender, nonbinary. We’re Hindu, Christian, Jain, atheist. We’re quiet, outspoken, restless, obedient, servile, creative, loyal.

Whatever the noun or adjectives we use, we miss the fact that who we are, at our very root, is actually none of those things. Sure, get us in a room with a bunch of other people — or in a society with millions of them — and we seem to need those nouns and adjectives. We use them to define ourselves in opposition to some people, and in alliance with others. It’s what our animal brains seek to do. We sort ourselves into neat categories — even when those categories start off as a resistance to being categorized.

But those categories — however helpful they can be in the world — they aren’t who each of us is.

I once heard an odd dude — a mystic kind of dude I knew in college — say something I didn’t quite grasp until recently — until I had stumbled through my own type of identity crisis:

Whatever you think you are, you’re proving yourself wrong by thinking that’s you. You’re just the thinker; not what the thinker thinks it is.

As I came to meditate a bit more, I came to realize what he meant. Consider a more well-established quote, by Blaise Pascal:

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Why is it so hard to sit alone in a room, quietly? It’s not just because of all of the buzzing thoughts running through your head. What also makes it hard is what you encounter once you drop down below that level of stuff that’s on your mind. At that level, you’re just you — without the incidental things you happen to be out in the world. In the fleeting moments when you make contact with that simple, indescribable you — it can be unsettling at first.

In Vedic thought, a rough name for that simple sense of you is atman — or the self. It’s what Vedic practitioners aim for in their form of meditation. And they recognized millennia ago that if and when you’re able to reach that naked self — when you’re able to get past all the incidental stuff you’ve attached to your identity in this chaotic world — you can cultivate a sense of peace.

What’s peaceful about it is the realization that you don’t need to travel anywhere to find yourself. You don’t need to buy anything, take any classes, try on certain clothes, or get a new hairstyle to find out who you are. If you can sit silently, still your mind, and sink down below the swirling chaos of your thoughts and emotions brought on by the external world — you, the simple, peaceful you, is down there.

And where you go from there is up to you. But wherever that is, you get to go there with the sense of peace that comes from not having to rely on the categories of the world to tell you who you are. You are you. You know you. And in time, you’ll love you. And that love isn’t because of any category you fit into, or accomplishment of yours. It’s just a love for you — that naked you, deep down under all of the incidentals.

Rethinking the narrative about career and life goals

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When I was a kid, it was clear to me that my father really disliked his job. Aside from the many nights he didn’t see me before I went to bed — and the early mornings when I woke up and he was already gone — he would also explicitly tell me that he hated his job.

His dislike for his job became a sort of rallying cry between the two of us. After all, his father (my grandfather) hated his job as well. I came from generations of men with jobs they hated. As I approached college age, my father would advise me not to repeat these mistakes. He urged me to find what I love to do, and never settle for another line of work.

And to an extent, that made sense. As the old adage goes: do what you love, and you never work a day in your life.

But as I got older, and a few of my dreams slipped away from me, I was forced to look at things from a slightly different angle than the one that my father had shown me.

The Aim of a Life

In Vedic philosophy, there is a concept called Puruṣārtha. It translates as “object of pursuit” — but may people use it to talk about the purpose of life in general. According to this idea, there are four elements that make up a complete life. Those four elements are:

• Dharma — moral values, principles of conduct
• Artha — economic prosperity and professional pursuits
• Kama — pleasure, leisure, personal relationships
• Moksha — spiritual activity and values, the pursuit of liberation from dependence on material things alone for joy

A full life involves integrating all 4 of those things. Notice that I didn’t say balancing those things. In fact, many Vedic thinkers discussed how some of the concepts were reliant upon each other.

Because of how I was raised, and because of my dad’s explicit distaste for his job, I didn’t realize how much I thought everything was reliant upon Artha. To me, it seemed like the right job made everything else easier, but the wrong job would bring everything else crashing down.

While it’s certainly possible that a truly terrible job can derail your life, I’ve found that those are few and far between. For the most part, there are a few really awesome jobs, a few really terrible ones, and in the middle, there are a whole lot of jobs that are just…whatever you make of them.

Flip the Script

When I didn’t get my “dream job”, I begrudgingly took some advice that my wife gave me — though I wasn’t quite ready to hear it yet. I stopped looking for some mythical pre-packaged job that would just make me happy from day one. Instead, I began to look for things about my current job that provided opportunities for me to grow. And not just to grow professionally or monetarily, but to grow in all of the aspects involved in Puruṣārtha.

And once I did that — once I began to look for ways that my current job could enrich my life — I found them pretty easily. I found projects to get involved in, which provided me with skill development. I found people to work with that have become friends. I found ways to express my passions for teaching and writing that I previously only thought I could express in academia (my previous dream job). And I also learned to develop strong personal values, and adopt a more spiritual outlook.

That’s the thing about any kind of situation you’re in — be it a job that wasn’t your dream, a detour from your life’s planned path, or simply a bump in today’s road. There are things to find that can help you grow. Situations don’t enrich us on their own.

Jobs don’t fulfill us on their own. Relationships don’t provide us with joy on their own. It all takes our active involvement. We have to look for the things to appreciate in our situation, and then actively appreciate them. From the pleasurable to the stressful, and everything in between; put in the work of appreciation.

The Thing About Life

So as I look back on the mandate of my forefathers — to find work that I love — I’ve made a slight adjustment that’s made all the difference in my life. Rather than finding the work I love, I learn to love the work I find. Not every kind of work — some work just doesn’t suit me. But nearly all the stuff I get involved with, I can find some way that it can teach me, and help me grow in all life’s important dimensions.

As far as you know, you’ve got one life here. It’s highly unlikely that this life will arrange itself in such a way as to please you. That’s not how things work. Rather, you have to put in the work to appreciate and find joy in the life you have. It’s the work of each one of us, so get as good at it as you can.

A study in reframing and appreciation

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I worked with this guy, call him Josh (not his real name), for a few years. He was a bit younger than me, and after he had been t at the company for about 2 years, I became his manager. In an effort to get to know him better, as I like to do for my team, I took him to lunch.

Josh had served in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, and had been in combat situations on several occasions. He had seen an IUD blow up a truck. He had been part of a firefight with some insurgents who came out of nowhere. He’d been in situations that many of us can only imagine. So I asked him something I’m always curious about.

“Aside from whatever tactical things you had to do in the moment in battle, what else was going through your mind?” I asked him.

He smiled and laughed. “It sounds dumb, but in situations like that, I just wanted to be back at the barracks, complaining about the mattresses and the terrible food. Or back home, swearing at my lawnmower because it won’t start. I appreciated my small problems that had seemed so big at the time.”

Success Means…

I understood exactly what he meant. When we face really big, out-of-control problems — like the kind that bring us face to face with death — we suddenly appreciate the mundane stuff of everyday life.

It’s funny that we use that phrase “everyday life”. We use it like there is some other kind of life. But in fact, all there is is just “everyday life”. Not only that, but the bits and pieces of “everyday life” are actually really great. But sometimes it takes the threat of never again having one of those mundane moments of “everyday life” to make us appreciate just how much we appreciate the life they are a part of.

That conversation with Josh helped me realize something that I still try to remember regularly: You’re only as successful as your ability to appreciate the mundane “everyday” things. When something threatens to take them away from you forever, you suddenly realize how much you should’ve been appreciating them.

Two Notes on Appreciation

Two things to note here. First, by appreciate, I want to make it clear what I mean. I don’t mean you you should be excited that your car won’t start one morning, or that you have to clean up your kid’s unsanctioned “science experiment” from all over the kitchen floor.

Those can be frustrating, and you can’t stop yourself from feeling immediate frustration when those things happen. But those things are part of your life. They come with the rest of it. And if they’re part of a life you wouldn’t want to lose, then step back from the frustration for a second. Remember that though this thing right now is frustrating, it’s yours, and you would long for it if you were about to kiss it all goodbye.

The second thing I want to make clear is that this lesson is more than just Maraṇasati — or the Buddhist meditation on death. You can use it to reframe how you think about various chunks of your life, as well. You can think about whether the tough parts of some aspect of your life are just part of a greater whole this — all things considered — worthy of appreciation.

If a conversation at your job, or an infuriating email have you swearing and fuming — use the same thought process. Would you miss this if you were forced to leave it behind? And if the answer is no, then great! You’ve just realized that this job isn’t worth keeping. So begin looking for a new one. But otherwise, take a breath and allow yourself to appreciate it. Just appreciate the particular heap of craziness that you deal with every day. It’s yours. And if you can’t come to appreciate, begin working to change it.

It’s Just a Reframe, But It Accumulates Into More

I’m no guru. I have no idea what happens after we take our last breath, or what forces (if any) are at work behind the scenes. But I do know that we have a fantastic ability to step back from our feelings and the ongoing narratives in our heads. And when we do step back, we can — if we choose to — reframe how we evaluate it all. My simple suggestion is to reframe as much as you can from the standpoint of appreciation.

However underwhelming, disappointing, frustrating, annoying, or dumb something seems to you right now — remember that one day, the threat of it all going way may be real and present. If that were to happen, would you give anything to just be facing the everyday problem you’re having now?

99%, the answer will be yes. And that should make you feel a bit better. At the very least, it can help you get a lot more out of what would normally be a boring old cup of coffee while you wait for your plane to board.

Do that enough times, and get really good at it, and you might just find your baseline mood is lifted. You might just find that your everyday life seems a whole lot more fulfilling. You might find that you get more done, and feel less stressed, less down on yourself. You may find you’d like to do a bunch of things differently.

But whatever you find, if you find it because you’ve begun to actively appreciate your life — that sounds pretty good to me.

What an encounter with some scared crustaceans taught me about how we pursue the important things in our lives

Image by Clickphoto Switzerland from Pixabay

I had the pleasure this past week of visiting Tampa on a business trip. My home base in Illinois has remained relatively cold as of late, so it was nice to spend time in warmer weather. As a bonus, the hotel I was staying at was located within a mile of the beach. Being a Midwesterner, I don’t get the chance to see the ocean much. So of course, I had to take it.

On my first morning there, I set out for a short run. After only a few minutes, I made it to the beach. I made my to a clear spot surrounded on either side by some plant life. As I approached, I noticed a wave of little movements to my right. Upon closer examination, that movement was a whole group of tiny little crabs-scurrying away into some bushes. I moved to a different part of the beach, to get a different vantage point of the beautiful scenery. After a few minutes, I walked back to my initial spot, and was surprised to see that the crabs had reappeared-but were now scurrying away from me once again. Which was unfortunate, as I wanted to capture some video of them doing their cute, crabby things.

I don’t blame them. When you’re all of one inch or so tall, and you see the size 13 shoe of a 6’5″ human frame lumbering toward you, you’re going to scurry away. I just wish I’d have thought about that before stomping back over there. But alas, I had to finish my run, and get ready for the rest of my day.

As I was running back to the hotel, it occurred to me that my brief encounter with the tiny crabs gave me something to ponder. If I really wanted to get close to the crabs- and perhaps grab one or get a great photo op-it would have been much more effective for me to stand still, or even sit down. Given enough time, they likely would have made their way back, and I could have snapped a photo.

There’s a lesson here that’s more general that creating wildlife photo ops. It’s about chasing things-be they concrete living things, or abstract things like goals and fulfillment.

Think about how often we see something we want, like an opportunity to greet the crabs. And we get so excited and desirous. We want it, so we go running all out toward it. And yet for some reason, when it scurries away from us, we are either surprised, or frustrated.

We all have things we want to catch-so to speak. And it can be tempting to run headlong at them, in an attempt to chase them down. But much like the tiny crabs I encountered, many things can end up scurrying away from us the more aggressively we run toward them. We’re so tempted to spring into action and chase things. But there’s always the danger that all of our movement and energy just pushes everything further away from us.

I’ve found this to be the case with happiness. The more aggressively I pursue it-the more I structure my activities around it, the more preoccupied I am with it-the more it seems to scurry away. But it has been those times when I have stilled myself, when I’m not aggressively chasing happiness-that’s when I’ve gotten a taste of it. Doing work for its own sake, serving others, taking care of my health and wellness. That has brought me happiness-even when it involved sacrifice and seemed uncomfortable at first.

Perhaps we need to learn to resist the urge to chase. Perhaps we need to learn to strategically sit. Perhaps then we may be able to find the perfect place to sit and wait. And if we choose that spot wisely, and we remain still, the natural patterns at work around us should bring everything back to where it was-where we are.

Originally published at https://mikesturm.net.

A story of how we’ve muddied the waters and how a heartfelt letter of resignation reminded me of an important little idea I’ve been overlooking

Photo by Duangphorn Wiriya on Unsplash

Whatever your thing is, whatever passion you have, it has an origin. It’s that place where for you at least, it all started. For me, since my thing is personal productivity, that origin was a site called 43 folders.

In its heyday, it was a place to find everything from wonky tips on how to use apps better to deep and insightful essays about the nature of work and life. But in 2011, that all came to a halt — at least as far as the website was concerned.

Cranking

In April 2011, Mann posted what would prove to be his ultimate post. Entitled “Cranking”, it was a long, emotionally charged essay that read like a combination between a personal history and a break up letter with the editor of the book he was supposed to have been writing for the preceding two years.

It’s a long, winding, heartfelt post. It begins with a vivid memory of the hospital bed that Mann’s father was confined to shortly before his death, when Merlin was still a child. The only way to adjust the top half of the bed up or down was to use an old crank. Thus the title of the post.

Merlin reflects on his journey writing about what he thought was personal productivity, only to find that in many ways, he was just turning a crank — no longer sure if it was actually attached to anything. By the end of the post — after which most readers’ eyes are likely holding back a few tears — Mann admits that the book the internet had been waiting for him to write would not see the light of day. If a book did come out, it would be completely different than what everyone (including his editor) had anticipated. And while at one time, he may have felt like a failure — a supposed productivity guru who couldn’t write a book on productivity — his conclusion was that he was making the right choice.

It’s funny the things we read at certain times in our lives.

It was the right time for me to reread this article. Lately, I’ve been really into the weeds on my own productivity journey. I’m buried in projects, tasks, and long sessions of work. And I’m chugging along, and getting it done. But am I being productive.

So something about this essay — along with various other Merlin rants and raves throughout the years caught me. It’s something about productivity that we forget about as we bury ourselves in systems, apps, tasks and projects.

The key is to not forget who you are.

Know Who You Are

Productivity is what, in my days in academic philosophy I’d call a teleological concept. That means it only has meaning so far as it has a purpose — meaning it is attached to a goal. No one is just productive — full stop. A person is productive with regards to a certain goal. This goal is largely a product of, or may actually define who you are.

So…who are you?

The answer will usually be some combination of your desired profession and your most important personal relationships. I am a salesman, productivity writer, husband, and father. So, I am productive if I do the things that I set out for myself in those realms.

If I serve my customers and get them to want to do more business with my company. If I write about and create things that help people become more productive in their lives. If I support, empower, and encourage my wife, and do the same for my children. If I do those things, I’m productive. And if I keep those things in mind

I am NOT productive when I forget that I am those 4 things. This still happens. I procrastinate. I get distracted. I find myself on all sorts of internet odysseys in which I am learning all sorts of facts that it was not my goal to learn, and in which I have no interest. Then I lose track of where I was when I was on task (if I was on task at all), and I am not productive. And in those moments, I have forgotten who I am. I’ve hidden away in a masquerade ball — disguised as someone else for a spell.

This is not to say that you always have to be doing work that contributes to your life’s work. Well……actually, let me rephrase that. You will probably find that as you start working more — and here I mean that “heads down”, super focused kind of work — you will find that taking breaks and having fun and free time is actually a vital part of your work. But this isn’t something that can be broken down into a formula, system, or series of tips. Only you know when you’re being you, and when you’ve forgotten who you are.

It may sound a bit touchy-feely, but it really comes down to how you feel. If, when you really reflect, you feel productive — you probably are. It’s simple. But as I believe I’ve said before, simple does not mean easy.

The different reasons why we create things, and the possibility of an idyllic place where they all converge

Photo by Tyler Franta on Unsplash

Over my time creating things, I’ve heard three conflicting messages about the reasons why a person should create. Let’s call them the 3 modes. And the longer I continued to create things, the less sure I became about which message was the one to take to heart. They all make sense in their own way. So what to do?

You should create for your own sake.

Create and put in the work because you’re expressing yourself. Don’t concern yourself with market testing, or polling your audience. Do what you feel, and do it to express what you feel. Do what makes you proud, and what you believe in — period.

Do that consistently, and you’ll have no regrets. Whether you cash in or not, whether you achieve notoriety or not — you were true to yourself.

You should create to serve your audience.

Serve people. Provide value. Give to others what they want and need (if the two happen to converge — which they unfortunately often don’t). Do the work because there’s a need out there, and check in consistently to make sure what you’re doing is serving that need. Be there for the people. Create for them.

Do that consistently, and you’ll have a veritable tribe of people there for you — to hold you up and support your work.

You should create for the sake of the art, and for the sake of creating.

Whatever your creative venture, do your work for the sake of that venture as one worth pursuing. Much like the best sports players play for the love and purity of the game, do your thing because it’s worth doing. Let everything you create be a manifestation of what makes that venture great. Be the one that launches the lifelong obsessions of thousands of others — because they saw how much you loved what you were doing.

Do that, and you serve something higher than yourself, or even your audience. And your motivation never falters.

Is There a 4th Mode?

At various points in my life, I’ve operated in each of the modes. They all have a different flavor — different motivational qualities to them. And they each produce their own different kinds of results.

But lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that the real goal of creative work is to get in the 4th mode — which is the one where they all overlap. It’s where you’re doing the work for all 3 sets of reasons at once.

You’re doing what’s in your heart — as a way of expressing you. But you’re also actively serving your audience, and filling a hole in their lives. And then, you’re also serving a higher purpose; you’re doing it for the love of that kind of work.

I think — but it’s hard to be certain — that I’ve been in that 4th mode for a brief moment or two. And from what I remember, it seems like the place we should aim to be. It’s the equivalent of the revered flow state — but it spans across and in between multiple sessions of work.

I suspect that with cultivation, this 4th mode becomes a mindset, a motivation, a way of life. I’m not quite sure how to get there and stay there. I suspect that’s another essay entirely. But you don’t have to know how to get to a particular destination to know that it’s a place worth traveling to.

An essay on the motivational forces that pull us from and push us toward doing our best work, and how I deal with them

Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

I have struggled with procrastination for as long as I can remember. As a kid, being asked to clean my minimally messy room turned into a day long project. I would go through many iterations and variations of avoiding the simple task that I was given. At 9 AM, my mother would ask me to pick things up. When she returned at noon, almost 0 progress would have been made. It was agonizing to both of us.

Fast forward to my time in college, and the situation was much the same. I was aware of deadlines for papers, but paid them no mind until the night before — when the panic would strike. The result was a whole lot of stress and self-flagellation as I forced myself to sit down and do the work. And yet somehow, I would even find ways to procrastinate then, up until the very final minutes.

Once I settled into a career, I was frustrated to find that this still did not change all that much. I would continue to feel a sense of being behind, and letting deadlines pass, or barely meeting them by the skin of my teeth, and with thrown-together work. For the life of me, I just couldn’t overcome this tendency to put off the hard stuff, or even the not-so-hard stuff. And all of that procrastination in order to pursue…what exactly? I put off my work so many times, and for so long, but what did I have to show for it?

As I thought more, that really was the question. What was I giving up doing the important work for? Asking that question forced me to pay more attention in real time when I found myself procrastinating. What I learned, while not an immediate cure, has helped me to stave off more and more temptations to procrastinate.

You Can’t Serve Two Masters

It’s been said that you cannot serve two masters. And nowhere is this more readily apparent than when I try to get motivated to work. It is in those moments when I feel the pull of two different masters.

On the one hand there is pleasure. Pleasure is a demanding, yet fickle master. I feel its pull when I’m trying to work on a project that requires effort. I begin to think about putting forth that effort, but then I’m reminded that it won’t give me pleasure. What will give me pleasure — and immediate pleasure — is going down a Wikipedia wormhole. Begin at SWV, and end at the entry on the Sentry Risk Table of near-earth objects. So to serve this master, I procrastinate. I put off the difficult work. Instead, I go down that wormhole.

Serving pleasure gets me a short-term reward that fades almost as quickly as it came. And because that small dose of pleasure I got by procrastinating has already faded — and it’s giving way to the guilt if still not having started working — I need an even bigger dose of pleasure. The cycle continues like that until I’m exhausted.

But there is another, more benevolent master to serve: Pride.

And I’m not talking here about shallow pride — the pride that is one of the seven deadly sins. I’m talking about feeling good about what you have done, on intellectual level. It’s the feeling that comes with self actualization. It’s using your executive function to commit to putting forth effort, and actually following through.

When pride, rather than pleasure, is my master, I usually end up just doing the work. And when I just do the work, it’s usually not as bad as I feared it would be.

But you really can’t serve both of these masters. Serving pride comes at the cost of pleasure. The immediate pleasure of distraction and avoiding difficult work needs to be sacrificed in order to appease master pride. But as this happens, I realize something funny: Once I stop trying to chase pleasure, the pursuit of pride through the hard work I had been avoiding now gives me pleasure. And that pleasure is much better than the cheap, short-lived stuff I’d been shooting up before.

Making it Happen: Asking the Simple Question

The right mindset can be achieved by asking a simple question. When you’re in the throes of procrastination, or mindless activities that threaten to derail your plans for being productive, stop and ask yourself a question.

If I keep doing what I’m doing now, will I end up being proud of what I did? Am I chasing pleasure or am I pursuing pride?

Pursuing pride works in a way that chasing pleasure simply doesn’t. Unlike chasing pleasure, when you do things you know you will be proud of, it’s not the results that matter. Yes, you can be proud of the results you achieved, but you can be equally proud of the effort you put in — even if the results don’t come.

Pleasure is entirely dependent on results. You either get what you’re after — and you’re pleased for a moment, or you don’t — and to alleviate your disappointment, you go looking for more pleasure somewhere else. And you spiral out of control.

These days, I pay attention to what’s motivating me, and when it’s not the right thing, I make an adjustment. I do find myself chasing pleasure. And I see it ramp up as I chase it at the cost of doing what I know I should. But I just ask myself that question, and bring myself back down to earth. It’s by no means fool-proof, but it’s a start.

No matter our job or circumstances, we all have customers, and serving them is our most important and beneficial work

Photo by fauxels from Pexels

My first job was as a bagger at a grocery store about a mile from my house. Every day, after clocking in, I had to check in at the front desk to receive my day’s assignment. Once I got there, a manager on duty would look at the schedule, see what needed to be done, and assign me my work for the shift.

But that big front desk was also the customer service desk. It was where customers would bring returns, haggle about wrong prices, and generally look for help. Because of this, at any given time when an employee came up to check in, there’d be a customer there, wanting help right away.

There were so many times I punched in and went to the desk, only to be whisked away on a mission to help a customer. I’d go on journeys with them to find an obscure product. I’d find someone from the bakery to help with their cake order. I’d reunite them with their lost grocery-shopping companions. On many occasions, I’d help one customer, only to be intercepted by another on my way back to the front of the store. There were times when it was nearly a half-hour before I could even check in with my manager after clocking in.

The funny thing was, there was a vestibule in the front of the store where the managers tended to be. It was outside of the view of the customers, right next to the machine where we clocked in, and would allow for us to check in without interruption. It seemed like that should be where we started our shift, rather than the customer service desk. This way, we could avoid being sidetracked before checking in and getting our orders for the day.

It seemed awfully inconvenient and inefficient to me. I would soon learn that I was right, but I was also missing the point.

Don’t Miss the Point

As I became more comfortable talking candidly with the managers, I brought up my concern to one of them. His name was Dean. He was in his mid-40s, balding, mustached, and with a wizened and sarcastic way about him. He was pretty cool, as retail managers go.

I complained to him how it seemed awfully inefficient for us to have to go to the front desk after checking in. After all, we could check in at the managers’ vestibule without interruption from customers, and save time.

I’ll never forget his response. “You’re right,” he said “it would be more efficient. But you’re missing the point.”

I must have looked confused or something, because he went on with the explanation. “We have you all go up to the customer service desk to start your day so you can be front and center with the most important part of your job. What you see as an interruption is the main reason you and I are here. The customers.”

It was decades ago, so I’ll never remember all the words Dean used, but the lesson has stuck with me. Dean was making sure our workday begin at the same place customers were most likely to need our help. That way, we would be forced to put aside whatever tasks we might aspire to in order to serve the customers. It wasn’t an oversight; it was intentional.

Whatever tasks I may have been given by a manager at the beginning of my shift, none were likely to be as important as helping a customer.

In every job since then, I took it for granted that a customer would interrupt something else I was doing. I learned not to see them as distractions, but rather opportunities. I learned to embrace whatever challenges they gave me. Most of the professional success I’ve had has come from making customer service the priority. Whatever professional and personal skills I learn and develop feed into better service of my customers — whoever they may be.

This is not unique to my experience. Priority #1 in any kind of work is customer service, and we all have customers to serve.

It Begins and Ends With Customers

My time at the grocery store taught me something important. When you get down to it, all work is customer-centric — whether you realize it or not. The more you prioritize serving your customers, the better your work will be, and the more you will grow.

Even if you’re in the rare position where you work by yourself and create for yourself — this still holds true. In fact, people who work for themselves have some of the most demanding customers of all!

I’m not trying to be coy here. Think of how difficult it can be to meet your own demands — especially in your creative work. How many times have you dragged your feet on finishing or submitting something — jus because you weren’t satisfied?

Think of the genius creatives or excellent artisans you may have worked with. They place higher standards on themselves than almost anyone else does. Talk about a demanding customer! And when this gets taken to the extreme, they might never finish anything, because nothing’s ever good enough.

And like any good customer service interaction, it’s not about simply giving in to unreasonable demands. Serving a customer includes managing expectations, gaining buy-in, building rapport and trust, and providing long-term value.

So even if you break free of any external customers, you’re still stuck with an internal one: yourself. You still have to live up to your own standards. And doing so is no less demanding or complex than serving external customers. Knowing yourself, and truly serving your best interest is difficult. Many of us go our whole lives without really doing it.

And customers are not limited to only those you encounter in business. A customer is anyone who desires or expects something from you, or someone you would like a relationship with. And the more you effectively you serve them, the better your relationship will be.

It’s Almost Never What It Seems

Another valuable lesson I learned about customer service from my grocery store gig is that good customer service is a journey. What a customer asks for at first isn’t usually what they really need. Some ask for too much, some don’t ask for enough. Some just don’t know what they need. Hence the journey. Great customer service — even when the customer is yourself — is about discovery and problem-solving.

This takes time, patience, listening, and re-asking the same question multiple times. And a single interaction won’t do the trick. It is an iterative and often collaborative process. There is back and forth. There can be ups and downs. But if you keep the goal in mind of serving — of providing value — you will get through it.

Good customer service is also a long game. It’s not about just getting the customer to shut up and go away. It’s about getting them to respect you, value what you provide, and to want to come back. And when you’re making up for mistakes or trying to navigate demanding peoples’ emotions — that’s real work. But in our best moments — if we believe enough in what we do and who we are — we can do that work. And it’s in those moments when we do that we grow the most.

Again, this all applies especially to the work we do for ourselves. So often, we are our most unreasonable customers. We beat ourselves up and berate ourselves for things. But how often do we deploy really good customer service to help smooth out our own relationship with ourselves?

So try it. Find out why you’re so angry and upset with yourself. Get to the bottom of what you expect of yourself and why. Then make a commitment to make it better, and see it through. Wash, rinse, and repeat for the various relationships in your life. Because that’s all that customer service work is: relationship work. Build and maintain relationships of various depths and lengths. Keep them all as healthy as you can.

Remember the Feeling

Whether they’re wrong and unreasonable, or legitimately unsatisfied and in need of a fix, whether their needs are well-defined or as yet unclear — customers are the center of our work. This is true whether you have a million customers in your life, or just yourself. We need to be continuously reminded of that, in whatever way we can.

At my grocery store job, the reminder was having to clock in and go directly to a place where customers would go in need of help. That forced me to have to help deal with all kinds of challenges, and to learn how to listen to and identify needs. But in your situation, there may be a different way to force you to do this demanding, but essential work.

Whatever way you choose, just remember how good it feels when you’re the customer and someone goes the extra mile for you. It can make you a loyal customer — whether to a business, a friend, or a partner. Become great at service, and do it often. There are fewer skills in life that will do more for you, while also doing a great deal for others.

A run-down of the most impactful books I’ve read so far this year, and what I took away from them

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

At the beginning of the year, I hopped on the 12-week year wagon. That is, I began setting goals and measuring my activity based on 12-week intervals that I treat like a year. If you’re curious about how this works, check out the book. I highly recommend it.

Right now, I’m in the period where my “year” has ended. I’m reviewing, renewing, and setting the goals and plan for the coming 12-week year.

While doing that, I took a look at the books I read during that period that are worth sharing. Most of them, I’ve shared already in some way, shape, or form. But I figured it might be helpful to compile that list here, with a brief blurb about why I liked the book, and what I think it has to offer.

[note: the links to the books on Amazon are affiliate links, but I’ve chosen the books on their merit alone]

credit: Penguin

The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea

by Bob Burg and John David Mann

What’s interesting about this book is that it’s at once both fiction and nonfiction. It unfolds as a narrative, like one you’d read in a fiction book. And by the authors’ own admission, it’s not a true story. However, the story is based on people the authors have known and worked with, and the principles it outlines in the story are ones that the authors stand by.

It’s a short, but powerful book that illustrates an underlying principle I’ve grown to appreciate as I spend more time in the business world: give more in value than you receive in payment. I first encountered it in another book I read (which is now among my absolute favorites) called The Science of Getting Rich. And since then, it’s continued to pop up here and there.

There are also some more subtle principles in the book that relate to this one. And the story effectively keeps the reader engaged, and explains the principles well via examples. I managed to read this book fairly quickly, over a single weekend, and the time flew by. It’s that quick of a read.

Whether you’re new to the world of business or community involvement, or just looking to up your game, you can benefit from reading this little book.

credit: William Morrow Paperbacks

Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion

by George J. Thompson

Given my love of writing, it’s only natural that I’d be into a book about the power of words. But Verbal Judo was even better than I thought it would be. The book is a veritable Swiss-army knife of how to communicate personally with people in a strategic and effective way. Despite the subtitle, it’s not about some deceptive method of tricking people. It’s more about listening well (i.e., with empathy), building rapport, and honoring the uniqueness and value of individual people. I wouldn’t even call the method it teaches strategic communication, but rather wise and ethical communication.

Thompson’s background is much more interesting than your average author of personal development books. He started as a Ph.D in English literature, then abruptly quit to pursue a career as a beat cop. This book — -or rather, method — -is the result of what he learned through his work as a police officer — -having to verbally spar with hundreds of difficult people each year. Thompson spent the rest of his life teaching the methods of communication & negotiation he developed to police forces and business people around the world.

I’m still processing everything I got from this book, but one of my favorites is this: When someone is getting angry (or already angry), but you don’t think they should be, say something like “I understand that” or “I appreciate that”. And then request that they do what you’re asking them to do. It’s easier said than done, but I’ve tried it, and it works to keep things from escalating in tough discussions.

Another tidbit I loved is this: it’s actually more effective to let people hurl insults or just generally fly off the handle at you — -so long as they’re doing what you want them to. If you just stay even keel and steadily move the discussion toward your intended result, it shouldn’t matter what people are saying, so long as you’re moving along toward your goal. We often miss this, and let our pride, and need for total agreement with us get in the way.

credit: New Harbinger Publications

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

by Michael A. Singer

This book is more on the spiritual side, but not so much so that it won’t also appeal to more practical readers. It’s a good exploration of many of the feelings that hold us back from being okay each day — -like stress, anxiety, frustration, and especially negative self-talk.

One of the most helpful takeaways from the book — -if not the main point of it — is that who you are is not who you normally think you are. By this I mean that all of the feelings and thoughts you have each day, buzzing around your head — -they’re not you. Your memories, emotions, tendencies, and character defects — -those things are just happening in your mind, but they’re not you. And that’s important to realize. Singer does a great job explaining this and diving into what that means for your daily life.

As Singer points out, once you realize that you’re not your feelings, thoughts, or emotions, you can actually settle into who you are — -and learn to be at peace. Again, it kind of sounds out there, but Singer’s explanation of how to back away from the buzzing thoughts and feelings of your mind is quite concrete and actionable. If mindfulness has ever sounded even somewhat appealing to you — -and frankly, even if it hasn’t — -this book is worth checking out.

credit: Choose FI Media, Inc.

Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence

by Chris Mamula, Brad Barrett, and Jonathan Mendonsa

Early this year, I got into the world of FI or FIRE — acronyms for “Financial Independence/Retire Early”. It’s a fairly enthusiastic community of people centered around a simple, but revolutionary idea: If you follow a fairly simple process, you can reach a point in life where work is optional for covering your expenses. Some call it retirement, others call it financial independence. Either way, it’s quite a goal.

The 3 authors of this book do a fantastic job laying out some basic principles which — -if followed — -can allow you to stop having to rely on yearly income from a job in order to support yourself. And if you’re serious enough about it, you can do it well before your 60s.

A very simple summary of their advice: save up about 27x your yearly living expenses and invest that into a total return index fund that yields dividends. You can then live off the increase to your principal and the dividends pretty much indefinitely. After that, it’s all about keeping your yearly income from your investments to a minimum, and avoiding paying taxes that you don’t need to.

The trick to getting there, of course, is to dramatically reduce your living expenses while saving aggressively for a period of time — -while you have a decent income from a job. Easier said than done, I know. But the book is filled with stories about people who did just that, and are now working because they want to, not because they need the money. It’s a place that I hope to be one day, and thanks to this book, I know how to get there.

credit: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

by Brian Tracy

Tracy’s writing style is a perfect fit for his chosen subject matter. It’s a crisp, simple, to-the-point run-down of actionable strategies for getting more done.

My favorite practice of the 21 he offers up is the “A-B-C-D-E method”. It influenced my own productivity system, and is a great way to further embed prioritization into task lists that can often be more distracting than helpful. It goes like this:

Start with a list of everything you have to do in a given period (or at least today). Then place one of the following letters next to each item, based on where it fits on the scale.

• “A” are tasks you must do — -the titular frogs to eat. If you have more than one “A” task, rank them by writing A-1, A-2, A-3, and so on. Your A-1 task, then, is obviously the big, hairy important one.
• “B” are tasks you should do. Tracy calls these “tadpoles”.
• “C” are tasks that would be nice to do, but they’re not mission-critical.
• “D” are tasks you can delegate. If other people can do it, make it so! That frees you up to take care of A-C items.
• “E” are tasks you can cut. They’re either ones that are no longer relevant at all, or that you can wait until things change and they become worth your attention again.

How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day

by Arnold Bennett

Few books on time management can be classified as prosaic, but I would count this as one that can. Perhaps it’s because it was written in the first decade of the 20th century. Perhaps it’s because its author — Arnold Bennett — was a prolific fiction and drama writer.

Either way, this book was not only a joy to read, but also at once practical, philosophical, and elegant. It successfully marries concrete suggestions for better productivity with elegant musings about the meaning of life and the purpose of work.

I loved the book so much, I wrote an entire article about it — -largely because it seems like no one else was giving it its due. Although, to be fair, I did hear about it from none other than Brian Tracy (see the above book) — -who counts it among his absolute favorites.

There are so many useful ideas and re-frames in the book, but to pick one (perhaps to entice you to read the slim but rewarding book), I’ll choose “the 7 1/2 hour miracle”. Bennett suggests you devote 7 1/2 hours each week to your most important work — -whatever that might be. He suggests 3 90-minute sessions during the weekday evenings, and one 3-hour session during the weekend. His retort for those who claim they don’t have that time is priceless:

What I suggest is that at six o’clock [P.M.] you look facts in the face and admit that you are not tired (because you are not, you know), and that you arrange your evening so that it is not cut in the middle by a meal. By so doing you will have a clear expanse of at least three hours. I do not suggest that you should employ three hours every night of your life in using up your mental energy. But I do suggest that you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a half every other evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of the mind. You will still be left with three evenings for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic scenes, odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions.

The guy had a gift, right?

There’s no doubt in my mind that much like Wallace Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich ( which I also wrote an article about), I’ll be re-reading this one quite soon.

credit: AA World Services

The Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book

by AA World Services

Years ago, I ran with some folks in the Recovery Community. I had the privilege to attend some AA meetings in my life, and what those people do there is some of the most noble and difficult work out there. I didn’t quite know what self-help really looked like until I saw that.

THE guidebook of AA is called “The Big Book.” It contains an explanation of the very complicated and difficult phenomenon of addiction, as well as stories of the founders and early members. It’s had enough of an impact on me since I initially read it years ago that I still come back to it now and again — -as I did this very year.

The center of the book is the now-famous 12 steps that the organization uses as its principles for recovery from addiction. I won’t recount them all here, but the 12 steps have a wider application than just overcoming addiction. They’re principles that — -when sufficiently understood — -can help you improve and fortify your character and your life.

I’ve written about it elsewhere, but here’s a pull quote that explains just how I see these principles working for a wider audience:

Step 2: Believe that only something greater than yourself can help you become better than you are.
 Steve Wozniak — co-founder of Apple, and legendary figure in computing — once summed up the motivating factor in his journey by saying:

“I didn’t do any of this for the money, I did it because I wanted to bring good computers to the world.”

If you are self-centered, self-serving, and self-involved, the odds of actually becoming a better person are pretty low. Rather, devoting yourself to service — serving someone or something bigger than just yourself — not only will the rewards be greater, but the motivation will be more persistent.

On my best days, I follow principles like this — -and I have a group of alcoholics from the 1930s to thank for it. Who’d have thought?

Q1 of 2021 was a quarter of good reading for me. I expect the same for Q2. I’m already starting off with some fun reading — -on the history of venture capital as well as bullet journaling. If this helped turn you on to some books worth reading, I’ll try to make it a point to do this again in July.

Originally published at https://mikesturm.net.

When life as we knew it turned upside-down, I was fortunate enough to pick up a few helpful pieces of insight along the way

Photo by Ronaldo Santos on Unsplash

As for most people in the U.S., my life was turned upside-down around March 15th, 2020. We had been hearing about COVID-19 for a few months, and the chatter became progressively louder, but we didn’t expect that it would turn into a lockdown that would keep most of the world away from each other for over a year.

But here we are — a year since being told to stay in our homes and away from each other — and it’s hard to underestimate just how much has changed during that time. When I say “changed,” I’m not talking about the world stage. I’m not talking about the political discourse, the tone of news coverage, the corporate rallying cries, or the socioeconomic structure. All of those things changed radically, of course. And they’re important to understand. But I’m no expert on those.

Rather, what I’m here to talk about is the day-to-day struggles and triumphs of life. The job stuff, the home stuff, the family stuff, the friends stuff, the relationship stuff, the emotional stuff. I’m here to talk about how — despite 2020 throwing a giant monkey-wrench into the well-oiled machine that was my daily routine — I am grateful for it.

Am I crazy to be grateful for the trials and tribulations of a year that nearly everyone is ready to forget about? I don’ think so. And I don’t think you’d be crazy to take a second look at it, either. Because for all the hurdles 2020 threw at each of us, if we were able to jump over them — even if that meant tripping and falling — we stood to learn a great deal from them. Because each of those hurdles were teachable moments.

In fact, as years of teachable moments go, 2020 was pretty high up there. Did it suck out loud? Of course. But that sucking is the sound of a lesson just waiting to be learned by us. Sucking is often the first step toward growth.

So without further ado, here are the 5 lessons that 2020 taught me — ones that continue to help me grow.

Make Plans, But Don’t Rely on Them

2020 was a year of cancelled plans. Trips, projects, reunions, relocations — they nearly all had to be cancelled or postponed. And while many of us were rightfully bummed about this, there is a valuable lesson here: plans are great, but don’t pin all your happiness on them.

As a salesperson, many of the projects I was working on were reliant upon trips and in-person meetings. That came to a screeching halt right after my last trip in March 2020. Since that time, I’ve traveled for a total of 5 days. When I can’t travel, getting deals done becomes a lot more challenging.

So I had to take the plans I had, and change them. I had to get creative. We all did. Some prospective deals just dissolved. I was frustrated. But that’s what happens when things change on you. So I had to let go and move on.

The broader lesson I learned is one of detachment. I need to do the best I can to prepare, but be detached from the outcome of things, as much as I can be. That’s not to say that I shouldn’t look forward for things, or plan for them. Preparation is key. But what I can’t do is make my contentment conditional upon things going as I planned them. There’s always a wrench thrown in the gears — the only questions are when, how big, and by whom?

Work and Life Are Not Separate, Nor Should They Be

I’ve worked in a place separate from my home for my whole life — as have most people. But as of March, my home became my workplace — indefinitely. It did for many of us. And while this was a difficult adjustment to make, it had to be done. Adapt or perish.

But once I adapted, I came to more fully support a position I already held: work and life are not separate things to balance against one another. Work is a part of life. You may start out working in order to live. But if you do it right, you work as a part of a life you love. You make friends in your company, industry, and community — because of the work you do. You do something that serves and brings value to others. The fun really starts when you can convey this to your family and friends. When you can answer the “how’s work?” question with something more than just “fine.”

And this works both ways. Our families and friends can be a part of our work, as well. And why shouldn’t they be? They’re a big reason why we work. But for some reason, before 2020, many of us tried to act like our lives weren’t blended in some way. I’ve been glad to hear yelling kids in the background of calls with customers and coworkers. I’ve enjoyed how we all have to tell each other to “hold on” while we go take care of some household emergency during a call. I’ve come to talk more with people at work about their families, and about mine. It’s helped us all build better rapport. It’s made us all more relaxed and authentic.

Rather than take away from our ability to do business, I suspect everyone juggling home life and work has forced people to be more consistent in their personalities. It’s harder to be a take-no-prisoners, hard-ass when your 4 year-old interrupts you asking for fruit snacks. So we’re being a bit more like ourselves in our work lives. And to me, that’s a big win.

Reach Out And Touch Everyone, More

It’s really easy to go through the motions of your days, your weeks, your months, and your year, and never really be connected to people. There’s this odd thing where we can be in offices, airports, and restaurants filled with people, and it’s just enough to make us feel like we’re connected. But in some ways, it’s still lacking. And it actually keeps many of us from going deeper — from getting connected to other people in meaningful ways. It’s like we assume that because we’re physical present with people, we don’t have to make the effort to be mentally present.

What’s more, there’s a way that we can get swept up in the momentum of social obligations and events. We show up to the place where people will be. We sit at the table, we drink our drinks, and we say this and that. But many times, we’re just going through the motions. We didn’t have to make much effort. We had the thing on our calendar, and we showed up to the place. We were “social”. But did we really connect?

I spent the first month or two of the pandemic lockdown with my head down, doing my work, helping with remote-learning for the kids, and that’s it. I didn’t call people, I didn’t video chat much. I just went about my day in my house with my immediate family.

But then a funny thing happened. My friends and I began texting each other randomly. We worked like hell to coordinate our busy work and family schedules to have Zoom calls. And though we were not physically together, we connected. We laughed, we smiled, we reached out and touched each other. We talk more now than we have in years — even before the pandemic.

I also began reaching out to people I hadn’t talked to in years. I emailed, I scheduled phone calls and Zoom calls. I reshuffled, and rescheduled. But when I hopped on the call, it felt different. It felt more intimate. I felt like I was connecting in a way that I hadn’t been during in-person things.

For some reason, before the pandemic, it felt weird reaching out to people to do video chats. And talking on the phone is just not something we did — for whatever possibly generational reasons (me being a millennial and all). But the sudden enthusiasm for video calls made it possible for everyone to make an excuse to connect more intimately. And it’s been great. So now, I don’t hesitate to set up time with people to have a video call. And I know it’s something that will continue.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

When it comes to building an investment portfolio, the piece of advice almost everyone gives you is: diversify. That advice applies well beyond just what you do with your nest egg. It also applies to the kind of work you do, the people you talk to, and your sources of income.

2020 could have been a year where I just hunkered down and did the same things I’d always done — but more intensely. Luckily, I stumbled into a few different things that allowed me to spread my wings into different airspaces.

During the pandemic lock-down, I didn’t have the luxury of “making the rounds” in an office environment. I had to start reaching out to people more. And I had to make it a habit. The more I did that, the easier it became to do it more often. I reached out to more people, and got in much better conversations.

As a result, I became exposed to things I may not have otherwise considered. It’s made my work much more diverse. I’m not tied to one department or one project. I have insight into more of what’s happening in the company. And my overall competence (and confidence) is growing.

That openness has helped me get into a bunch of different work in my side-hustle, as well. I got hooked up with the founder of a small, scrappy company making travel gear and helped him launch his first products on kickstarter. I joined a slack community of really cool people. I discovered a new platform for my newsletter. I was a guest on podcasts.

I even created a new personal productivity system that’s really helped me get motivated and get things done. And through a great conversation I otherwise never would have had with a new friend — I became brave enough to launch it to a limited audience to help me test it. All super-exciting stuff made possible by this crazy situation.

The point is, I found that there’s more to life than whatever my current major projects are. Branching out can be helpful. It gives you options, makes you more well-rounded, and diversifies your opportunities, network, and income stream.

Taking Care of Your Space Is Excellent For Your Emotional and Financial Health

I’ve never been particularly clean, and I’ve never been particularly good at keeping up with maintenance of my stuff. Be it my car, my coffee maker, my electronics, my bed — you name it. I buy stuff, enjoy it for a while, and then begin to take it for granted.

I think many of us do this to some extent. The stuff we may have been so excited about buying at some point becomes just another thing. And before we know it, there’s a thousand things, and we don’t particularly care too much about any one of them — until, of course, they stop working.

During my time being forced to be in my house constantly, I’ve come to take more pride in the simple cleaning and maintenance of things. It’s something I never thought would happen.

When I was working regularly at an office, traveling for work, and going out to eat or on excursions around town — our home was just a place to throw our stuff until the next day. So we just accumulated a bunch of stuff. And we didn’t care for or organize much of it.

But in August, we rented a dumpster — one of the ones you get for a remodeling job. We went through our house and got rid of a bunch of stuff we didn’t use, didn’t keep up, and was just taking up space. In an era of global pandemic, donating much of it was not an option, and that was unfortunate. But getting rid of all that stuff in one fell swoop was liberating. And then i cleaned. I cleaned like a man possessed.

Since that time, I have done something I never did in any home I previously lived in: kept up with cleaning and organizing. I vacuum, dust, wash floors, clean bathrooms and closets, etc. I’m not perfect, but I enjoy having a home that I’m taking care of. It’s a great feeling to wake up in a home that you have shown love to through cleaning and maintaining it. And that’s the difference for me. Having been forced to be so intimate with my home for so long now, I feel like I owe it that kind of love and care going forward. It will be an honor to provide it.

“When Things Go Back to Normal”

At some point, things will begin to look more like they used to. But things will never be the same. The definition of “normal” has changed — as it does every so often. And that’s great. I hope things will have changed — that we will have changed — in meaningful ways as a result of the craziness of 2020.

While I could have learned any of these lessons without the help of a global stay-at-home order, that’s what it took for me to finally do it. I won’t soon forget this year-at-home; none of us will. But that’s good. It gives me hope that the new mindset I picked up along the way won’t be so hastily abandoned once I can gather at a party or get on a plane without a mask.

I hope that we never have to deal with anything like this again. It was a terrible tragedy for so many people. But I also hope that the things we learned can make us more resilient and adaptable people. We’ll need that when the next monkey wrench is thrown into the gears of our lives — whatever that may be.

Morihei Ueshiba and some overlooked truths about personal growth and happiness

Photo by Marc Rafanell López on Unsplash

In the first pages of The Art of Peace, Morihei Ueshiba lays down a lesson that has stuck with me for the decade or so since I first read it:

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.

The message is as simple as it is powerful. But it’s easy to miss, if you don’t give it much thought. It’s a message not just about happiness, but also about motivation, work, and building a life you can be proud of.

Right Where You’re Standing

Ueshiba is issuing a warning. A warning against the limiting thoughts we hold with us — the constraints we build into our lives that keep us from the growth we desire. When he talks about heaven, it’s of course not the literal heaven.

He’s talking about whatever it is we desire. He’s talking about that place we want to be, or the things we want to obtain, and the person we want to be. But because we’re not there yet, or we don’t have those things, we’re not happy.

And the crazy thing is, half the time, we’re not even quite sure what heaven would be for us. We just know that wherever we are, this isn’t it. Whatever we have, it’s not what we really want. Whoever we are now, it’s not who we want to be. And so we keep ourselves locked out of heaven.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t need more than we have, or a place other than where we are, to be at peace. That doesn’t mean we can’t aim for growth or have a destination in mind. It just means that we can’t let longing for the destination keep us from enjoying the path to it. Surely, you’ve enjoyed the walk to the restaurant even if you were really dying to eat there, right? Enjoy being on the way to the destination.

The Place to Train Is Here, The Time to Train is Now

The other side of Ueshiba’s quote is that not only is heaven right where you’re standing, but it’s also the place to train — rather than a place where you just sit and enjoy your achievement.

But what does he mean by training? Everything is training. It’s the work of daily life. It’s character-building. It’s testing yourself, and pushing a bit further. It’s making it through challenges and deprivation. It’s the work of making it through the furnace of living.

Two points of emphasis, then, regarding ‘training.’

Don’t Wait

First, we often put off doing the work we should be doing because we’re waiting on certain conditions. We wait until we get the new workout clothes to start working on getting fit. We wait until the new year to really work on improving ourselves. We put off planning that difficult project until the kids aren’t running around the house, or we’ve made our coffee and we’re in the right mood. We put off our work — our training, so to speak, until things are just so.

But we shouldn’t. If we wait to train until we’re comfortable, and our desires our met, that’s not really training. It’s recreation. Recreation is valuable, and necessary. But it has a different function than training. Recreation lets you rest, relax, and have fun while exerting yourself. Training challenges you and forces you to grow. It’s not comfortable.

Don’t wait for the perfect time and place to train. The place to train is here. The time to train is now. The less perfect things are, the more you’re actually training — because it’s hard.

When we insist waiting before we get to work, we’re asking for our training to be easy. Which means we’re asking for our training to both be easy and to help us grow. That is asking the impossible. The more we do this, the more we miss valuable opportunities to do real work on ourselves, and real work for others.

The Destination Is Never Guaranteed

Secondly, we often think that the work we need to do in order to grow won’t be fulfilling until we get to the goal we’re after. That assumption often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we don’t believe we can enjoy not having what we want yet, we turn the journey to get it into suffering. The more we want the pleasure of the destination, the more we refuse to see the pleasure available to us on the way there.

But that keeps us from enjoying the work of our lives. Which is a tragedy. You can find enjoyment in any work, as long as you see it as training.

• You’re scrubbing toilets. You’re training yourself to power through repulsive conditions.
• You’re serving angry people burgers and fries at a dive. You’re training yourself to act with grace under pressure, in rough conditions.
• You’re in a prison cell. You’re doing the toughest, most rewarding work of all: spending quality time alone with yourself, and making improvements.

Don’t forget that you may not get what you’re after. You may work your way up, and scratch and save, and kiss all the rings you thought you had to. And you may never get the big house, the salary, the recognition, or the romance. The work doesn’t guarantee those results.

The most you can guarantee yourself is that you did the work to aim and shoot. Hitting the target may not happen. If you can’t do that work and enjoy it, you’ve promised yourself a life of misery for nothing. So why not use the hard work as a way to make yourself a better person — and enjoy that as it happens on a daily basis? Rather than take pride in the awards and the money, take pride in the fortitude, skills, and resilience you’ve built within yourself?

Wherever You Are, That is the Place to Train

Don’t wait for conditions to be right.

Every job is the one to hone your skills at.

Every place you live is the one to fashion into a welcoming home.

Don’t wait. Do something, any little thing, here and now.

We have a terrible habit of keeping ourselves waiting. But we shouldn’t. After all, don’t we get angry when someone else keeps us waiting? But we go right on keeping ourselves waiting.

So stop it now. Refuse to keep yourself waiting any longer. Love yourself enough to realize that heaven is right here, and it’s the same place to begin training: right where you’re standing.