Our societal concept of a badge of honor for having endured suffering can be detrimental and even destructive at times.

As as society, we have an infatuation with suffering. I would like to think that it stems from a healthy, compassionate place. We feel intrinsically drawn to suffering, and our hearts go out to those affected. Obviously, this has been exploited in many different ways. Somewhere along the line, our perspective of the value of suffering has warped.

We now find ourselves in a situation where we glorify and revere people who have suffered. The problem is that, at times, these positive reinforcements create environments that foster and encourage unnecessary suffering. I wrote about one of these environments a few weeks ago: The plague of busyness.

Another environment primed for this warped perspective is the world, or industry, of sports. In nearly every game you watch, you will hear either the coach, the players, or the announcers discuss the adversity someone passed through. It’s almost like we believe that victory is not possible, or perhaps not valuable, unless it comes as a result of suffering and adversity.

I recently finished reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. I was inspired by his ability to endure great suffering, and still maintain a belief and perspective that life is valuable and worth living. Something he said feels particularly relevant:

But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable, however, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.

As I think about my own life, I want to remove the pursuit of these badges of honor. I want to stop trying to suffer in order to legitimize my experiences or achievements. I have value just as I am. I can allow myself to feel joy whether I earned it through suffering or not. There is no “earning it.” The badges are illusory.

There are many situations in life where everything is pleasant and rewarding, but getting started can still be next to impossible.

I went walking in the rec center the other day. I didn’t mean to go walking—I meant to play racquetball. At 7:52am, I sent this to my wife:

I got up this morning and thought I would come play racquetball. For some reason, I thought I would miss most of the people by coming early. Ha ha ha ha. How wrong I was. I guess I will be walking today.

As I went around and around the tiny track, I was struck by how great it felt to be walking. There was a little discomfort if I’m being totally honest, because it was my first day going counterclockwise. But overall, it was an immensely enjoyable experience.

While I was walking, the thought came to me, “This is so nice! What is it that stops me from coming?” I realized that I enjoyed every part of walking except getting started. There is so much inertia to overcome, but once I do, practically everything about the experience is pleasant.

So much of our lives follows this same pattern. Whether it’s connecting with a good friend, any form of exercise or meditation, or creating something meaningful, the struggle is in starting. When we realize and accept that, we are able to take steps to decrease our resistance. It can be as easy as laying out exercise clothes before going to bed. Or perhaps writing the first line of a blog post before stopping for the day. Or scheduling a message to go to a friend at a more opportune time. (Shameless plug—I made an iOS app to help you schedule text messages called Carrier).

Identify the things in your life that you enjoy doing and want to do more. Then consider how you can decrease your resistance to starting. Your future self will thank you.

Our fears and doubts often prevent us from asking for seemingly small changes in our lives that have a disproportionate impact.

I checked in to an Airbnb recently where I would be staying for a couple weeks. One of the first things that I noticed was that the table that was in the room seemed to be a patio table.

The top was something of a stone mosaic. It was beautiful, but had many sharp edges. I wasn’t in danger of being cut, but I certainly wasn’t about to put my iPad on it for any kind of drawing. I often move the iPad around, rotating it to the right angle, and I had visions of huge scratches and gashes on the back.

I called the host and left a message asking if they had a different kind of table I could have. A couple days later, I came home in the afternoon, and found a nice, large plastic table in the room. I moved it into place, and have been enjoying it since. The left chair is for meditation and study, and the right chair is for writing and sketching.

This experience made me think about how often in life I want a small adjustment, but allow fears or doubts to hold me back from making the change. Often I listen to the voices in my mind that say it won’t work, or it’s not possible, or it would be too much of an inconvenience to someone else. The truth is that it is often possible, and rarely hurts to ask. Most people are happy to improve someone else’s life, even at the cost of a small inconvenience.

So to you, reader, and to my future self, I say, have courage. Be willing to make the call and ask for the table. You never know when it might be waiting for you when you get home.

Giving myself permission to get a few nice things has resulted in a desire to clean house and be more minimalistic. Also, spending time researching Patagonia products had a surprisingly uplifting effect on me.

I have always loved small things. And things that collapse. And things that fold in on themselves. And expensive things. It can be a problem at times.

My expensive tastes combined with my OCD have posed challenges for me. When I get into my mind that I want to own something, it becomes a compulsion that can only be satisfied by purchasing the item. Making use of the item is often not required—I just have to own it. Before the iPad came out, I owned a number of digital clipboards that became abandoned in the closet, sometimes directly after being purchased.

I have always felt guilty for this part of my personality. Growing up, my favorite toys were Playmobil, which were pretty expensive for a city parks & rec soccer referee. My paychecks were often viewed in terms of how many sets of Playmo they represented. I felt like I lacked skill and ability to manage money well. And since I spent most of my adolescence looking toward and planning for becoming a father, my inability to control spending impulses was a deep point of shame.

As I have gotten older, I have curbed some of my need to buy new things. It’s not completely gone, but it has become less of a problem. Part of that is because many of the things that I really want are cost-prohibitive to buy on impulse. Another part is that I simply already own most of what I want.

In one of my recent sessions, my therapist told me that at any given time in life, I will have to choose between spending money, health, and time. Prudence is usually required to make wise allocations of relatively equal capacities of those resources. However, there are times in life when we have “excess capacity” in one of those areas. Typically that occurs when there is a serious deficit in one or two of the others. Right now, due to my health being abysmally low, I definitely have more money than health. So I’ve given myself permission to buy some things that I want.

My shopping spree began when I read Ultralight by Leo Babauta a couple weeks ago. I announced to my wife, “Good news! I’m going to be a minimalist. I just need to spend $1000 or so and then I’m ready to get started!” When I told my therapist I wanted to become a minimalist, she replied, “That’s nice. Not now. Your brain is not healthy enough to make those kinds of decisions yet.” She told me that I probably was making a bargain with myself in order to have permission to buy things that I wanted, and I should just buy the things without any strings attached.

So I did.

Over the past couple days, I went to two R.E.I. stores and two Patagonia outlets. I bought a Micro Puff Hoody, some Nine Trails shirts, a Capilene Daily shirt, a swimsuit, a hip pack, and a couple pairs of socks. I also went to a local sporting goods store and bought a pair of prAna Brion pants, and some smashable but versatile Sanuk Pick Pocket shoes. An unexpected bonus was that nearly everything was on sale for the end of the season. However, to be completely honest, I would have bought nearly all of those things at full price anyway.

Before I go any further, I have to pause and acknowledge how blessed and privileged I am. When I think about how few people in the world could decide on a whim to spend a few hundred dollars and essentially replace their entire wardrobe, I am humbled. I feel keenly the sense of responsibility that comes with that privilege. Frankly, my OCD uses that to beat me over the head and tell me how horrible I am for doing something like this. But I know that’s a lie. This is not something that I should do every weekend. But. It. Is. OK. I am not a terrible person for buying a few things that I want and that I know I will use.

I found that as I spent time in these stores, I had a subtle shift in values. It felt so good to say that I don’t need a bag while checking out. I realized that I would throw the bag away, so it was better to just not get one. It felt even better to get a smile and encouraging nod from the salesperson who appreciated the small gesture. The more I read about each item from Patagonia, and all of the care that went into designing, sourcing, and creating it, the more I wanted to make sure that I was doing good with more of my choices. I love reading about the Fair Trade program:

We pay a premium for every Patagonia item that carries the Fair Trade Certified™ label. That extra money goes directly to the workers at the factory, and they decide how to spend it.

As I left the Patagonia outlet in Salt Lake City yesterday, I realized it was time for lunch, and looked around for a local restaurant, and found Twin Suns Cafe right across the street. I had a great meal there in a fun atmosphere. My favorite part was the message on their menu:

Welcome to Twin Suns, we are thrilled that you have joined us for a wonderful meal. It is our mission to serve people a good wholesome meal at a fair price for the quality we serve.

It is our goal to create a place where anybody can come in for nourishment in a casual atmosphere. Hopefully you share our love for food, fantasy, and have a fabulous moment while you join us here.

It was fascinating to me to discover the impact that this shopping trip had on me. I wanted to own fewer, higher-quality items. I was excited to pack my backpack for my upcoming trip with my brother. I wanted to do more and have less. I wanted to be better.

I don’t expect this kind of effect every time I buy things for myself. But I’m certainly glad it came this time.

In my recurring review of how I am using my phone, I have decided to make some drastic changes.

I started reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport the other day, and last night, I came across a reference to an organization that was new to me. Time Well Spent is a movement created by the Center for Humane Technology to help people be more intentional about their use of technology. As I looked through their site, one suggestion they made was to turn your phone grayscale, and make it easy to do so using the Accessibility Shortcut to Filter Colors. A friend had done this before and advised me to do the same, so I had set up the shortcut, but rarely used it. I decided that I wanted this to be my default interaction with my phone. I will leave it on, and switch it off only intentionally, and for a short time.

As I thought more about the way I use my phone, I came to a few more decisions. I have found that as I write and publish more, I have begun caring more about whether people are commenting on my content. My use of Micro.blog has turned into compulsive checking and consumption. Part of the reason is that I value the interactions with real people that I have had, and I want to reply to people quickly. But, I have configured push notifications so that I will know when someone mentions me. There is no real reason for me to keep checking for mentions—it has just become habit.

So I decided to change the apps in my dock again. The last time I did that was at the beginning of the year, when I chose to only have apps without badges in my dock. I have found myself opening my phone and mindlessly consuming content, which is a behavior that I want to discourage. My first goal for this year is to be intentional. So I changed my dock again.

I wanted to only have apps in my dock that encourage the behavior I want to be doing most on my phone. I won’t always be meditating, podcasting, writing, or journaling when I open my phone, but having these apps in my face will be a subtle reminder. I want to use my phone more for creation than I do for consumption. When I am not creating, I want to make sure that I am being more intentional. I want to start using Spotlight to specifically search for the app I am going to use, and not just browse around on my phone looking for distraction.

I will see if this approach ends up being helpful or not for me. I know that what I have had in 2019 was better than 2018, but there was still room for improvement. Since that will always be the case, I expect to continue to make adjustments. This quote was from my daily meditation a few days ago, and while I might substitute “phone” for “thoughts,” this is exactly the attitude I want to cultivate.

A trip to the local rec center can bring more real-life inspiration than watching the Olympic Games.

A couple days ago, I recorded a podcast episode about my experience at the rec center called At Your Own Pace. Yesterday, I took another walk around the rec center track, and wanted to share some additional thoughts.

People watching

I noticed more about the people around me this time. Not just the people on the track, but the people played pickleball and basketball down below. The people lifting weights. The people on the stairmasters. The people on the treadmills. As I discussed in my podcast, there is huge variety in the people at the rec center. The track is pretty small, so I saw a number of these people over and over as I walked around.

Treadmill guy

My walk lasted 45 minutes, and early on, I noticed a guy running on a treadmill. I didn’t pay much attention to him at the time, but as I got close to the end of my walk I realized that he was still there. Still running. He was not particularly athletic. He was younger than I, around the same height, and a bit heavier. And he just kept running. I started to pay more attention as I made my rounds. His shirt was completely soaked with sweat—wet shoulders, wet chest, wet back. Just before I ended my walk, I saw him get off. I walked over to him, apologized for interrupting his solitude, and told him that he inspired me more than anyone else there. He was taken aback, and responded, “Me?” I confirmed and wished him a good day.

I shared that story because of how much it affected me. I felt some anxiety as I considered approaching him, but I felt strongly that he deserved to know what an impact he had on me. After talking to him, I felt a surge of positive emotion, and hope that he did as well. It is something I would like to feel more often.

Olympics

Growing up, the Olympics were a huge deal in my family. I remember gathering around the TV and watching all sorts of events together. Whichever events and whichever athletes my dad cheered for became critically important to my young mind. I loved the experience of watching people who had trained so diligently perform otherworldly feats that I could only dream of. I was touched by the camaraderie I saw between people of all nationalities. The Olympics inspired me.

As I have grown up, I see more nuance with the Olympics. They still inspire me. But now I recognize more of what’s involved. As I watch TV specials about the athletes’ childhoods, I realize how much they and their families had to sacrifice in the service of my entertainment. Obviously there is much more at play than the few seconds of entertainment that is provided. But the utter absorption into their sports required by the athletes feels like a higher and higher cost.

Relatable inspiration

As I walked around the rec center track, I realized that I was feeling inspiration similar to what I get watching the Olympics. But there was a huge difference. I was inspired by the people at the rec center, not to dream of accomplishing the impossible, but to make small and meaningful changes. I saw myself in the treadmill guy, with just a little bit of chunk hanging out over his shorts. I saw him doing something to improve his health and his life. I saw middle-aged women on the exercise bike who were never going to be Olympic athletes, but they are going to be healthier today than they were yesterday. I saw old men with canes out on the track getting passed by everyone and continuing to walk around.

I saw greatness in the rec center that day. And I wanted to be better myself.

One of the fastest ways to grow is to put ourselves in situations where we are inexperienced or even incompetent.

I took the opportunity the other day to join in an open Pickleball night at the local rec center. This was my second time ever playing in my life, and while I had a great time, I commented to a friend the next day,

You can only be the worst at something for so long, and then you have to leave 😉

This feeling was most pronounced in my final game. I was paired with a fairly experienced player, against two other experienced players. I was clearly the weak link. My shots were inconsistent and my partner was not able to carry us. We ended up losing 2-11.

After leaving, a few lessons stuck out to me. First, recognizing that I was an inferior player made me extremely humble. I was ready and eager to accept any instruction, hint, or encouragement from other players. While I am a fairly competitive person, it is hard to get too worked up when I know from the beginning that I am likely to lose. So being the worst changed my attitude and approach.

You often hear the virtues of a “beginner’s mind” extolled as a way to stay open to new ideas and to be able to learn from anywhere. Having this mindset allows you to be more pliable and teachable as you recognize how much you stand to learn. When you are not only a beginner, but the only beginner amongst non-beginners, this experience is heightened considerably.

Finally, being the worst removes you from the dangerous grip of imposter syndrome. This often creeps in when you start to fear that others view you as more capable than you feel, and worry that you will be discovered. When you are clearly the worst, that fear is washed away. No one thinks you are better than you are, although the reality is that you are almost certainly better than you think you are.

If you have the psychic resilience, regularly putting yourself in situations where you are the worst is a fantastic way to learn and grow. You will have empathy for those who are worse than you in other aspects of your life. Just make sure that in your quest to gain compassion for others, you preserve a healthy dose of compassion for yourself as well. You are going to need it.

The phrase “I’m sorry” has so many potential meanings and applications that it is nearly incomprehensible.

My wife and I have worked on removing it from our conversation with each other in favor of more explicit phrases. There are two main substitutes we use instead:

• “I send you compassion”
• “I apologize”

One of the main reasons that drove us to make this change came from the compassionate style of “sorry” usage. Often, exchanges went something like this:

I’m sorry that happened.

It’s ok. It wasn’t your fault.

I wasn’t actually taking the blame for it.

Oh. Right.

Usually that second speaker was me. 😆

After this had happened enough times, I asked if we could try to make a change so I could more easily understand with clarity.

I have found that a side effect of using this increased precision of language is a greater feeling of intentionality. It can be all too easy when seeing someone suffering to blithely toss an “I’m sorry” their way. Consciously stopping to say the words has helped me feel more actual compassion. I also feel a heightened sense of accountability when I wronged someone and then realize it and deliberately apologize.

If this has resonated with you, I invite you to join me in a practice of greater compassion and accountability through increased precision of language. I hope you find as beneficial as I have.

A multitude of plagues beset us today, and one of the most pernicious is busyness. Somehow, we have allowed this to become a martyr’s badge of glory. We revel in how little time we have to ourselves as if this validates our importance, our inclusion into the elite. The few. The proud. The busy.

Symptoms

Three ramifications of this infatuation have forced their way into my consciousness lately:

1. Sacrificing the important on the altar of the urgent
2. Indulging in an addiction to meetings
3. Denying ourselves and others space for self-care

Sacrificial altars

When busyness infects us, we stop planning and stop thinking. We start reacting, and are constantly overwhelmed. This leads us to prioritizing based on pain, which will always lead us to pay more attention to immediate demands. Unconsciously, every time we do this, we are plucking our important work up and dumping it unceremoniously as a sacrifice to the urgent. The gods of busyness are never appeased, and we end up living our life fighting the fires we have lit on these insatiable altars.

Addiction indulgence

Meetings are the ultimate expression of busyness. Nothing says busy like a calendar full of meetings. We feel more and more important as we dash to and fro without pausing to think or prepare or work—we just congregate with other addicts and talk about working instead. Most meetings could have been a simple asynchronous digital conversation, but instead we crowd our calendar with evidence of our importance. Like so many other addictions, we reason to ourselves that all of these meetings are necessary—this is real work. We are having crucial discussions. And the cycle perpetuates.

Self-care denial

Tragically, one of the first casualties of this plague is the opportunity for self-care. Even contemplating considering time out for renewal feels heretical. We fill our time with “shoulds” and “have-tos” in order to maximize efficiency and continuously realign our paradigms with the highest priorities, and other empty nonsense phrases. Just as with our projects, we unconsciously budget for rework and recovery due to an urgent lack of time to slow down and take a careful approach now. Absent self-care, we become the doppelgänger of our battered calendar—an exhausted husk reminiscent of potential greatness.

Remedy

The rather obvious cure for the plague of busyness is to slow down. We must acclimatize ourselves to inefficiency, and embrace occasional boredom. There must be white space in our lives and in our minds. We must consciously step out of the urgent to consider the important.

One practical approach to facilitate this is to simply schedule time to think. Feign conformance by using the favorite weapon of the busy elite—the calendar—to thwart their designs. When regularly practiced, this thinking time will result in drastic changes to the way in which you spend your days.

There is little chance of exterminating a plague that so many are eager to experience. You cannot remain completely unsoiled as you trudge through the ubiquitous infestation of the workplace and world. But you can escape the clutches of comprehensive infection. Practice constant vigilance while granting yourself permission to take life at a slower pace. Success, while never certain, is imminently attainable.

Note: I started this post last week, and then ignored the news for a few days. I thought that I would need to table this post as being no longer relevant. Sadly, I found out today that it is even more relevant than before.

I heard in the news on the radio that the government shutdown has become the longest ever. It seems that everyone involved is happy to have it drag on as long as they are able to blame someone else for it. This behavior makes me sick and a bit worried about the future.

It hit me that this kind of incompetence has become almost ubiquitous. We see people in positions of authority who appear to be comfortable with sitting back and looking for others to blame for their failures instead of working to create solutions.

One of the problems is that we have come to equate experience, or time in position, with competence. We often promote the wrong people—someone who does well as an individual contributor gets promoted and immediately starts on the management track. These people then stay in management and begin to be considered as competent just because they have management experience.

It seems to me that a major cause, if not the root cause, of this failure is that we skew evaluations in favor of measures that are easy to quantify. Competence is hard to measure, but years of experience is easy, so we settle for that. In order to fix the issue of living with incompetence, we need to get better at evaluating intangible behaviors.

As cathartic as venting can be, I want to make sure that this is not just a gripe post for me. My biggest takeaway from my thinking about this is to focus on improving my evaluation skills. As a father, and as a manager, I want to find ways to mentor and help others grow in meaningful ways. I want to make sure that I never contribute to this culture of living with incompetence, but instead work to be part of the solution.

As a father of six, I feel qualified in saying that however many kids you have, that number is hard. Take one away, and life is so much easier.

We were at a friend’s house recently for games, and the topic of kids came up. They said they wanted to learn from us how to handle their four children. Their youngest is a year and a half now, and life feels overwhelming at times. They thought we would have some answers since we have been through the phase of having four children.

This is a situation we have encountered many times over the years. People seem to assume that because we have so many children and are still alive, we must be experts on how to parent perfectly. They seem incredulous when we sympathize with them, as if we are patronizing them with their paltry number of children. The truth is that we have found reality to be exactly what we tell them. No matter how many children you have, that number is hard to the point of being overwhelming. If even one child is removed from the situation, whether at a friend’s house, or staying with relatives, everything feels much easier to manage. Put another way, n number of children is hard; n-1 is easy.

Because we have so many children, this results in us saying things to each other like, “What do people do with only four children? This is so easy!” We try to be careful to only say this between ourselves, so that we don’t offend people who are barely getting by with their four children. In reality, we are not more any more accomplished than they—we are just conditioned to a harsher reality.

The human body, including our mind, has an amazing ability to adapt. We see this when we are working outside on a snowy day and find ourselves sweating despite freezing temperatures. Whatever we routinely do becomes our new normal.

We have to be so careful of comparing our situation to someone else’s. We have a societal obsession with comparison that almost always results in a sense of defeat and despair. We never live up to what we see in someone else, especially when we compare our unedited life with their highlight reel.

The most important lesson I have learned from these n-1 moments is that what is hard for me is always different from what is hard for someone else. I need to exercise compassion, both for other people as well as for myself.

I posted recently an experience that I had with my son:

At church today, my six-year-old handed me a piece of his toy and asked me to fix it. After trying for just a bit, I handed it back to him. He looked at it and asked, “Daddy, did you do your best?” Then he looked up at me intently and asked again, “Did you do your best?”

At the time, I laughed a bit at his intensity, but his two questions have continued to play in my mind. The second question communicates a level of challenge. It forces me to self evaluate and decide whether I really did give my best effort. It pushes me to keep going if I have the nagging suspicion that I could do more.

This question, by itself, is something of a double-edged sword. We all need motivation to keep going when our enthusiasm is flagging. In today’s world however, there never seems to be a lack of this kind of motivation. Everywhere we turn, there is something telling us to give 110% or to dig deep and push through. The problem comes when this starts to resonate with the voice of self-doubt and self-criticism that all of us have inside. If instead of hearing, “You should give your best effort,” we hear, “You are failing to give your best,” we are going to end up in a cycle of self-loathing and despair.

That is why his first question was so important. On the surface, it may seem that they were the same question. They were the same words after all. But the first question conveyed so much trust and hope. It wasn’t just, “Make sure you do your best!” It was also, “I’m sure that you did all you could. It’s ok to not complete the job all the way if you gave it all you had.” The part that was so meaningful to me as I reflected on the situation was that the trust was so automatic. His incredulity kicked in after a brief second, and he wanted to see if I just gave up or if I really did all I could. But his initial reaction felt like one of trust and acceptance.

As I’ve thought about this experience, I’ve wondered what life would be like if we all encountered these questions regularly. What if the first reaction to anything we did was acceptance and trust that we gave it our all, and a quiet assurance that our best is acceptable? That implied confidence makes it so much easier to face up to the second question with a straight back and square shoulders. We can look ourselves in the mirror, or look our questioner in the face, and be honest. If we have given less than our best effort, we are willing to re-engage and do more.

My hope is that I can provide more of those experiences to those around me, particularly those who are closest to me. My children need to feel an immediate acceptance and trust from me. They should know that they are enough. Just as they are. No changes needed. They should also know that I expect them to keep striving; to push themselves to do their absolute best. But all along the way, they are loved and accepted. And so am I.

Watching our new puppy sleep has helped me remember that sometimes people don’t need or want the help we feel compelled to offer.

Our puppy seems to alternate between two modes—unbridled energy or complete lethargy. My daughter has been doing a great job of taking him out regularly and making sure that he gets the exercise that he needs, as well as ample opportunity to do his business outside. I have often come upstairs and found him asleep on the hardwood floor.

At first, this would bother me somewhat. I would feel some amount of guilt that I was making the dog sleep on something so uncomfortable when I had better options available. However, we got him a bed and put it right in the spot where he usually rests. A wider version of the same picture shows how close he is to the bed, even as he is sleeping on the floor.

I realized that I can’t force him to be more comfortable, and don’t need to take that on. If I have provided the environment, I need to step back and allow him to make his own decision. Not only does he not need the help I want to give, he doesn’t even want it. He has made his choice and I need to respect that.

As a parent or a manager, it is so easy to fall into this same trap. We see someone doing something that seems suboptimal or tedious, and feel like we need to step in and fix the situation. Most of the time, what the person has chosen is either the way that they like to do it, or just a natural step in their required learning progression. We need to care about people enough to give them space to make their own decisions, and then allow them to learn and grow from the natural consequences of those decisions.

This ties into one of my 2019 goals—be curious. Instead of having expectations about how a situation should go, I want to be curious about how it actually is going. Often, there are lessons I need to learn which will come through observing and learning. Here’s to hoping I can let puppies sleep on hardwood floors more regularly.

I have traditionally been big on setting goals, and have enjoyed thinking of plans for the new year. This year, I want to try something totally different.

The past

In the past, I have often set goals in each of the different areas of responsibility in my life. I have preferred to set goals that had a clear achievement moment, and have favored goals that were easier to put in my task manager. This provided a nice sense of accomplishment when I completed a goal and checked off the list, and I felt like they motivated me to be and do better.

2018 has been a year of significant personal discovery for me. One major thing that I have learned is that I am exceedingly hard on myself, and tend to view the world in black and white. Combined with my natural goal-setting, this has had the unforeseen consequence of setting myself up for repeated and measurable failure. It is very easy to get down on myself when I can review my goals and clearly see which ones I have not yet completed. And sadly, I have realized that this is much more common and instinctual for me than celebrating my successes.

The present

So for 2019, I instead want to focus on general principles that I want to incorporate more fully in my life. A key aspect of my plan is to intentionally embrace vague and fuzzy goals. I hope this will have a couple effects. One is to help me get more comfortable with ambiguity and living in the grey. Not everything can or needs to be clearly defined and articulated, and I need to sensitize myself to this reality. Another effect I hope for is to remove the possibility of marking these complete, or of identifying them as unfulfilled. With each goal, there will be a spectrum, and I hope to nudge myself in the direction of identifying what I have done, and looking at where I can still go.

Essentially, I am trying to let go of expectations and approach myself with curiosity.

The goals

1. Be intentional

It is far too easy to allow life to happen to me, and I want to instead be more deliberate in my choices. Eventually, I want this to include deciding what I want to do on my phone before opening it, and then doing just that, and turning it off again. This could look like weekly and daily planning, although it might not. This might include task lists, but it also might not. This could look like deciding I am spend an evening playing Breath of the Wild, or it might not. This will hopefully mean sometimes setting everything of mine aside and just being present with my wife or with my kids.

2. Be present

When I feel overwhelmed, the natural reaction is to withdraw from the moment and numb, typically with something on my phone. This goal doesn’t mean that I will never be on my phone, but in keeping with my first goal, I want to decide that is want I am going to do, and then do it completely. I don’t expect to be perfect at this, especially at first, but I hope to explore ways in which to practice being present. One major area of focus is to be present with my own thoughts and feelings and not run away from them. I need to get to know myself better.

3. Be curious

So much of dissatisfaction is due to a mismatch in expectations and reality. Often, I cannot control reality, but I can start to adjust my expectations. My hope is to develop the skill of letting go of expectations entirely, and just observing what happens. When built upon the first two goals, my hope is that this will allow me to be in any moment and situation and just be. Be authentic. Be genuine. Be me. And by doing this, I will come to know more and more of who I truly am—not who I have projected that I should be.

The future

I have such an amazing support structure in my life. My wife is kind and understanding and supportive, and I couldn’t ask for more in a partner. We will continue to improve our relationship and communication and tackle all of life’s challenges together. My children love me intensely; almost too much at times, bordering on hero worship. I need to remember that they love me as I am right now, and stop worrying about letting them down. We are blessed to live close to loving extended family, and I have a great job. Our church community is a great support and opportunity for selfless service. I am allowing myself to get the help that I need.

All in all, the future is bright. I look forward to a more relaxed and enjoyable year. Stress will come, but as I am intentional, present, and curious, I will respond as best I can.

Training a young puppy and parenting children require the same base set of skills. Getting better at one means that you are immediately better at the other.

We first got a dog after child number three was born. Our oldest was about five, and it seemed like a good time to try this thing out. We went to our local humane society, and fell in love with Popcorn, a poodle-mini mix.

He seemed good with kids because he didn’t bite them as they pulled at him, and we thought we had a winner. We tried to learn a bit about having a dog, but never did any formal training. Owning a dog was a lifelong dream of mine, and I was thrilled. However, we quickly found out that he was a yippy dog, and we had a hard time taking him out around other people or dogs. We realized that what he really wanted was to live with someone who would sit in a comfy armchair and cuddle him for most of the day. So in the end, we ended up selling him to a grandma.

Fast forward eight years and three more children, and we started thinking of getting a dog again. Our oldest is a serious animal lover, and we thought that having something for which she could be responsible would be good for her as well as the fulfillment of a Christmas wish. My wife has a friend who had a litter of puppies and we decided to buy one. He is a mix between an Australian Shepherd and a Border Collie.

While it is a little overwhelming to become puppy owners, we wanted to take it seriously and learn all we could about training. From a few friends who are big into dogs, we were recommended to watch training videos from Zak George and I have really enjoyed them. The more I watched, the more I realized that this is the same philosophy that we have tried to follow in parenting our six children. The basic premise is to reward positive behavior and redirect undesired behavior. As Zak stresses in his videos, the biggest mistake that new puppy parents make is to lose patience and become frustrated. This has definitely been true with our children as well.

I found myself wishing that I would have invested more time into training our first dog in order to learn and master these skills. I started to regret all the moments I have lost patience with my children and thought that if I had worked harder, I wouldn’t have had those moments. This is a vicious thought cycle that leads only to self-loathing and self-recrimination. I realized that I have been trying to develop and practice exactly those skills as I have worked to become a better dad. It hit me that part of the reason I am prepared to dive into puppy training is precisely because I have been working on the skills needed. So there is nothing to regret.

The final piece that is hard for me is how much easier it is to be patient and forgiving with a puppy than a child. I have thought a lot about this, because it has been hurtful to my children at times when I lose patience with them and then treat the puppy with kindness and forgiveness. I think that it all comes down to expectations. I expect that the puppy is going to have behaviors that I dislike, and I am prepared to deal with them. As much as I say to myself that I expect my children to also have undesired behaviors, I still find myself disappointed when they do not immediately follow instructions or when they act out. It has been helpful for me, particularly with the thirteen-year-old, to remind myself in the moment, “She is a puppy too.”

In the end, the key for me is an increase in compassion. I need to practice compassion for the puppy who is learning and adapting to a new life and trying to understand the training we do with him. I need to practice compassion for the children who are trying to figure themselves out and how to live and learn in this crazy world. And I need to practice compassion for myself. I am trying my best, just like the puppy.

Lessons in motivation from a six-year-old

I had an interesting experience with my son last night that reminded me of an important lesson.

The context

In our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we have no paid ministry but accept voluntary assignments to serve. As part of that, we all take turns cleaning our church building on a regular basis. Last night was our family’s turn.

The story

I took our oldest four kids to help me clean, while my wife put the younger two to bed. My six-year-old wanted to come help me vacuum the chapel room, but quickly announced how bored he was. I assigned him the job of moving the cord so that I didn’t trip on it and it didn’t get stuck. He continued to complain about the lameness of his task. Surprisingly, my sage advice about how service is not always what we want to do was not particularly helpful in changing his attitude. He announced, “I wanna vacuum!” I tried tell him that he needed to be taller to work the vacuum properly, but with no effect.

Finally, I decided to take a different tack. I realized that we were halfway done, and it had been about ten minutes. “Last time I had this job,” I told him, “I vacuumed by myself and it took a full hour. This time, because of your help, we are going way faster. We make a great team!” It was like a switch had been flipped. He jumped up and ran forward to grab the cord and make sure I had some slack.

We continued through the rest of the room like that, with him jumping at each opportunity to smooth the way. As we neared completion, he asked again, “Dad, could I try to vacuum?” I realized that he mattered more than a perfect vacuuming job.

The lesson

As we drove home, I thought about what I had seen. There was a moment when the task transformed for my son, and it was a moment that I recognized happening in my own life. As soon as he understood how his contribution made a meaningful difference, his boredom changed to excitement. His perspective changed so that instead of being given a menial task with no consequence, he was helping to dramatically increase our capacity to serve.

So often, whether at work or in other areas of life, we can feel that we are plodding along, marking time. We see a role that seems to be more exciting or more prominent, and also cry out, “I wanna vacuum!” As a leader at work, part of my most important job is to help my team see how their contribution makes a meaningful difference. As an individual contributor, we all have the responsibility to seek out that meaning, or sometimes even to create it. Rarely are we truly stuck doing something that doesn’t matter at all. But often we lament that this is the case, instead of searching for meaning and purpose ourselves.

My hope is that I, and we all, can remember this vacuuming lesson from a six-year-old. Our perspective makes all the difference.

As I return back to work after a nice vacation with family, I have to face questions about motivation and whether I am doing what I really love.

I submitted two personal apps over the break, and was reminded how much I love building and creating and delivering. At work, I am now a manager, and have the opportunity to help drive our mobile strategy, but it also means that I get to code and ship much less. I am finding this to be a drain on my soul. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I need to quit or change jobs or anything that drastic. But I need to make sure that I am managing my time effectively so that I can continue to do what I love, even in the context of what I need to do. There are (almost) always opportunities for carving out space to do what feeds your soul amidst the daily pressures of commitments you have made. I am not sure where I see myself a few years from now, but I know that I need to be intentional about it. Here’s to a productive December!

I am lucky enough at work to be able to choose a conference every year to attend for professional development. This year, the five of us iOS developers decided we wanted to find a conference that would give us a slightly different perspective than we usually get, and one that we could all attend together. After hearing Peers mentioned both on Core Intuition and Release Notes, a couple of the only tech podcasts to survive my latest purge, I proposed that we all head to Austin.

To be honest, we did not expect the content to be completely relevant for us. We recognized that Peers is primarily a web and business conference, and we all work as iOS developers at a large enterprise company. But since we are all involved with our company’s efforts to expand our business and start new ventures, we want to keep in touch with the startup and independent developer culture and try to embody some of that inside of our company.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that nearly all of the content was exceptionally helpful and relevant for us. From the beginning of the conference, we knew that it was going to be a different experience. Jess D’Amico greeted us as we came in, and exclaimed, “Are you the group from O.C. Tanner?” We found a very warm welcome in this community and enjoyed ourselves tremendously.

The conference was extremely impactful to me on a personal level. On the first day, we participated in the business workshop, which consisted mainly of introductions and breakout sessions. The conversation of which I was part focused on discovering what is next in our careers. It was deeply personal and refreshingly open and honest. As we talked, someone asked if this was my first Peers. When I confirmed, he told me that this kind of conversation is the essence of Peers, and if I want to, I will find many more similar discussions throughout my time at the conference.

As I flew home, I took some time to write in my journal, and finally came to understand some of the things that I heard on that first day. A career is made up of so many moving pieces, and it can be a real challenge to line them all up properly. I still have a lot to think through and process as a result of Peers, but I am so grateful for the emotions and thoughts it stirred up. This is a kind and generous community that pushed and provoked me to think outside of my previous mental ruts, and I look forward to learning from and participating in it in the years to come.

Since deciding that I wanted to change careers to become a full-time developer, I have started listening to a number of podcasts. Some of my favorites are Under the Radar, the spiritual successor to my previous favorite Developing Perspective, Core Intuition, and Release Notes. There are many others that I have enjoyed off and on, including the Accidental Tech Podcast and The Talk Show, as well as some new ones I am loving, such as Runtime and Canvas. I am not sure how many hours of podcasts I have listened to, but I know that Overcast has saved me an extra 46 hours from Smart Speed alone, if that tells you anything.

One of the interesting things about listening to podcasts is that you spend hours and hours listening to someone share their thoughts and feelings on issues that are important in your life. You start to feel as if you know these people from having spent so much time with them. And since most friendships come from spending time together, you begin to feel as if you are friends.

But there is a problem.

The person on the other end of this relationship does not know you at all. They have no idea that they have spent countless hours with you. From their perspective, there is no relationship.

I had an experience recently where I was on the other end of this phenomenon. In addition to my day job as an iOS developer, I work at DevMountain, a coding bootcamp here in Utah, teaching iOS development. Many of the lessons that I have given were recorded, and current students watch those recordings as part of their curriculum. Over the past few weeks, I have had a few students come up and talk to me. They both said something to the effect of, “I feel like I know you from watching all your videos.” I had to chuckle when I realized that I had an lopsided relationship with these students.

My mind was taken back to WWDC 2015, when I had the chance to meet _David Smith, the man behind Developing Perspective. We got to chat for just a minute, and I told him how much his podcast and his willingness to share what he has learned have helped me in my own development career. It was a highlight of the conference for me.

Caleb Hicks, David Smith, Joshua Howland, and me

From these difference experiences, and from talking with other people, I have some thoughts about how to handle meeting someone with whom you are in one of these lopsided relationships. If you are on the side that believes that you are friends, start with a brief statement explaining how you know the other person. That can go a long way to alleviate an otherwise awkward encounter. If you are on the oblivious side, do your best to make the other person feel comfortable. Recognize that the person who is meeting you feels vulnerable and probably a little intimidated. If you are both introverted developers, chances are neither of you are particularly good at interpersonal interactions, so you will both be awkward together, and that is ok.

However these relationships form, they can turn into real, meaningful relationships with just a little effort. Almost everyone who produces work that you admire is just a normal, friendly person and would appreciate you saying a kind word letting them know what you appreciate about them. Next time you see someone in a lopsided relationship with you, go up and introduce yourself!