I saw a great post on Facebook this morning about changing the past, or thinking about what might have been. Three monks were confronted by the devil. The devil tempted them to think about what they would do if God granted them the power to change something in the past. The first two said they’d make some fundamental changes about the Fall or something. The third simply prayed. When asked why he didn’t answer, he reminded his brothers that, One, you should never converse with the devil, and Two, the most unhappy people are those who waste time thinking about what was, but can never be.
I actually hate thinking about the My Truck Buddy (MTB) years now. That time is gone. They linger only as scars I can talk about. And yet, I started this thing in large part to frame it somehow, or maybe squeeze some meaning out of it. The good thing is that in staring the past in the face, it’s boldly highlighted all the good that’s happening right now. I really don’t need to go back there.
Still, I had to share this. It’s from sometime between 2013 and 2016, back when the company was just over the peak of its most successful time. When it came up in my Facebook Memories feed, my first thought was, This is why I failed. It’s one of the many reasons, anyway, but I think somewhere near the core.
I mean, LOOK at it. It looks like the brain dump of a schizophrenic dervish. And this is just one such whiteboard session over more than a decade. In Evernote, I have notebooks bursting with “plans” and ideas. I have actual paper notebooks filled (only halfway, of course) with similar plans, goals, projects, resolutions, and odious “intentions.”
There are actually two issues here: First - my (former, mostly) inability to follow-through with all these brilliant plans. The Second: my inability to turn down an idea with even marginal potential.
Maybe there’s a third: my inability, or perhaps refusal, to delegate. I mean, I tried to delegate to team members, if you could call them that, but nobody knew what they were doing. Maybe I was a control freak after all…
I remember reading this quote from Henry David Thoreau way, waaaaay back in high school:
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.”
It had a ring of truth back then, which is to say, back in the day when parachute pants, acid-washed denim, and Flock of Seagulls hair seemed like sensible things. But like all wisdom I might have tripped over back then, I promptly ignored it and moved on.
Keeping it simple
It took the industrial meat-grinder of life, business and marriage to carve away all the accumulated “common sense” I’d picked up since then. And now I just focus on a few things, and more or less keep them in the order of importance they should be.
God stuff: prayer rule, weekly Divine Liturgy (at least), and all the practice of virtue and discipline derived from it
Family stuff: Loving my wife and children as a husband and father should (definitely a work in progress)
Work stuff: Giving my all to the organization that pays me, or, perhaps eventually, to another business I begin
Writing stuff: This blog, books, and maybe even some copywriting. This is vitally important to my soul and maybe soon my income - but can’t take precedence over the previous three. Although the goal is to have this take the place of my job
Any one of these things could easily overtake the rest. I could write all day - at the expense of family and income. I could work crazy OT hours at the job - and lose writing and family time. I could give everything I have or everything I AM to my family, and subsequently not be able to provide for them. (Actually that’s almost exactly what happened, although giving my “all” to the family was pretty pathetic. Just being honest here…)
The eternal struggle to balance and dominate (bro) all these things led to many, many 4:00 AM whiteboard sessions in the past.
It almost literally killed me.
Here’s what’s different now:
I take a walk in the morning and “pray a rope,” i.e. the Jesus Prayer. I pray for repentance and I pray to forgive. My conscience tells me I should pray the Morning Prayers - all of them, you hypocrite! - but I know that if I can do at least pray a rope, I’ll establish a baseline. I can grow if I have decent soil.
I spend 100% undistracted intentional time with the family on a specific day and time, and more when opportunity presents itself. Everything else goes away. (I’m very bad at this, but progress is being made…)
At work, I’m in Focus Mode for at least eight hours per day. The nature of the work makes that easy, fortunately, but when I begin to wander, I just do the thing in front of me. That’s it.
Writing: I gave myself what I thought was an impossible goal: publishing three times per week. No matter what, I just do that one thing.
Of course, we have actual, practical needs right now, and it feels like I should be more aggressive with these urgent matters. But here’s the thing: I’m doing the smartest, most aggressive thing I possibly can. I’m working with my strengths instead of trying to fix my weaknesses. (Professionally speaking, that is. Spiritually, and familially, I do have weaknesses that need prompt attention…) I’m grinding through the Slog and putting massive faith and trust in the hope that I’m doing the right thing.
That’s it. My Trello board is gathering dust, as is all 150 notebooks in Evernote. I don’t manage projects anymore. I don’t whiteboard. I just do these simple, specific, actionable things, and I’m getting more done than I ever before. Better than that, I’m at peace.
I was thinking about making a new leather briefcase, though. I bet I could get at least $250 for it…
I love this. Sometimes you do need the whiteboard to get it all out, then you can order off that menu to come up with your four areas of focus. But that focus on the top things and top manageable tasks is critical, once you come up with that list. Good stuff.
“Order off that menu.“ I love THAT.