Weight Loss

Just in time for resolution season, Zac Brown Band has released a new song, "Homegrown", that has inspired me to go on a weight loss plan.  Not a diet, mind you; I’m talking about reducing what the Band calls “the weight that you carry of the things you think you want."

Want to feel lighter this year?  Don’t count calories; count your blessings.  I’m going to reduce my wish list, not my weight.  In the song, Zac names some of his blessings:  his “good friends, living down the street,” his attractive wife, his pleasant small town (where, presumably, everyone knows his name), and realizes: “I’ve got everything I need, and nothing that I don’t.”

It would be tempting to dismiss Zac Brown’s contentment:  of course he is content!  Zac is a country music mega-star who could surely afford anything he wants or needs.  I can hear someone asking, "What if he was burdened with my underwater mortgage, dead-end job, tapped-out credit card, and surly spouse?”  Surely then he’d be writing about being “home flown”, not “Homegrown".

Perhaps.  But I appreciate the reminder that threads through many of Zac’s songs—“Homegrown" is only the latest example—to appreciate the simple good things in life, many of which are free or cheap and available to us all, regardless of our employment status or bank account balance.  Consider:

I like my chicken fried, cold beer on a Friday night, a pair of jeans that fit just right…there is no dollar sign on peace of mind....  

That’s from the band’s breakout hit single, “Chicken Fried,” in 2008.  Now nearly seven years later, Zac and band are still extolling the virtues of home, family, and simple living.  “Homegrown” reminds us of this again, and adds to it the realization that much of our angst, emotional baggage, and simple unhappiness comes from wanting what we don’t have rather than what we do have.  “It’s the weight that you carry of the things you think you want” that slows us down.

So while I am not normally a new year’s resolution person, this year I’m taking Zac Brown’s advice to pay more attention to the good things I’ve already got.  And I’m going to focus on reducing the length of my wish list—too much wanting will only weigh me down.

More to Life than Work

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Emily Esfahani Smith tells about how her mom's advice to collect a boyfriend as well as a degree while at college proved to be the right advice.  While the assertion that meeting a partner while in college is easier than in the post-college yearsbis interesting to discuss, I thought Ms. Smith's more important point came somewhat later in the essay:

There is far more to happiness than career success.

Ms. Smith is blessed to have learned at a young age what many of us discover more slowly over a much longer time, often after it is too late to save a marriage, or participate in a child's milestones:  there is more to life than work.  A successful career can certainly be one important component of a happy life, but it is never the only component, and often not the most important one.

For women especially, Ms. Smith points out, a lifetime of being told you can achieve anything often translates into pressure that you should achieve "everything", whatever that means.  But in truth, says Ms. Smith:

Career success and relationships are both undoubtedly important to women's happiness, but many young and ambitious women value their personal lives more than their career aspirations. And that feeling intensifies over time.

I'm hardly qualified to explore the various feminist arguments for or against her point, but I'm glad she made it because I think it offers a worthy reminder for all of us, men and women, to not get stuck with a one-track life that never leaves the career track.  By all means be proud of your professional accomplishments, but never forget that a "personal life" is much more than just achievement--it is the people you choose to spend time with, and the relationships you develop with those people.

The Day That I Die

I'm a big fan of the Zac Brown Band, and hours of listening has seared the bands' songs into my mind. Along with the catchy melodies, soothing harmonies, and impressive musicianship, I've come to appreciate the philosophy that runs like a thread through their work.  Much like this blog tries to do, many of the band's lyrics reflect a blend of Stoic acceptance of life as it is; an Epicurean appreciation of the pleasures of everyday living; a Christian acknowledgement of God as supreme over all of life; and a growing recognition that time is a precious resource that should not be taken for granted.

Take Day That I Die, from the band's latest album Uncaged, written by Zac Brown, Wyatt Durrette, and Nic Cowan.  After acknowledging the sometimes tough life of a musician on the road, the singer recognizes that the songs come from inside him; he has to sing:


'Cause I believe that I

Was born with a song inside of me.

Never question why, 

I just kept on chasing that melody.

And as time goes by, 

It's funny how time can make you realize, 

We're running out of it.

Anyone in middle age, musician or not, can relate to those last lines:  as time goes by, we begin to realize that time won't last forever.  Once we realize that time has a limit, its value increases.  And as its value increases, we start to think more deliberately about how to spend it.  And there you have the genesis of many a "mid-life crisis."

As the song continues, Zac reminds us that one answer to the realization that time is precious is to make sure we spend it doing something we love.  In his case, playing guitar:

On the day that I die, 

I wanna say that I 

Was a man who really lived and never compromised.

And when I've lived out my days

Until the very end, 

I hope they find me in my home,

A guitar in my hands.

A man who is driven to be a musician by the melodies that seemingly erupt from within him hopes to be playing music to the very end.

Which poses a question:  how do you want to spend the hypothetical day that you die?   When I look around me, it appears that most people want to be found with an iPhone in their hands.  Seriously?  Maybe they are all composing music on GarageBand.......

Time is precious; we don't have an unlimited supply.  Even more daunting, you can't know exactly how much you do have; people like Mike had much less than they expected.   Once you realize that your time has real value, the next step is to be deliberate about how you spend it.  Don't do things just because everyone else does them; examine yourself, taking into account your talents, motivations, responsibilities, desires, hopes, and prayers.  Then spend your valuable time on the things that matter to you, not on things that society says should matter to you.

For me that means trying to be rich in relationships, experiences, and memories.  Yes, I have to work for a living, but I continue to try to be as efficient as possible to free up time for what really matters to me:  talking to my wife, playing with my kids, reading, writing, eating; actually living.  On the day that I die, I hope they find me in my home, surrounded by my family, a book and a pen in my hand.

On the day that you die, how will we find you?

What is your main complaint?

I traveled to Chicago for meetings last week, and had a couple of hours free before they started.  I walked down the street from my hotel to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and there was introduced to a South African artist named William Kentridge, several of whose works are currently on display.  Kentridge makes animated films by drawing in charcoal and pastel on large sheets of paper; he then makes minor changes to the drawing, photographing each iteration and turning it into a film.  The effect is something like the the flipbooks of animated stick figures that we used to draw as children, except much more elaborate and much longer.

I was particularly struck by one film titled History of the Main Complaint, created in 1996 during the initial hearings of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was formed to publicly air the crimes of apartheid.  In the nearly six minute film, Soho Eckstein, a notorious South African mining magnate, lies ill on a hospital bed as doctors crouch over him to determine his illness.  When they look inside him, they discover scenes of apartheid's atrocities for which he is guilty, both directly and indirectly as a result of his race and class.  Only when Eckstein acknowledges his own role in perpetuating the crimes of apartheid does he regain consciousness.  (You can see a bootleg version of the film here to get an idea of how the drawings turn into film.  If you are in Chicago, I recommend a trip to the museum to see it yourself.)

It is a powerful film just considering the main message of reconciliation after apartheid.  But it was thought-provoking to me on a second level because of the other images that the doctors saw when the examined Eckstein, a prominent businessman:  the office equipment--typewriter, seal press, and other machines that indicate that Eckstein was pursuing profit at the expense of all else.  Part of what allowed the horrors of apartheid to continue as long as they did was that it was profitable for the ruling class to allow them to continue.  The mighty businessman failed to see how his apparently unrelated pursuit of profit was contributing to the horrors of the world around him.

A question popped into my mind, an American businessman in 2012, as I watched it:  what would Kentridge's doctors find in me if they examined me?  Surely an iPad would show up, and the latest iPhone, and a Blackberry, and maybe a computer, and what about a copy machine?  How easy it is to get caught up in the rat race of work, career, money, status, and power and not realize the effect it is having on those around me.  Happily, there is nothing on the scale of apartheid going on in Georgia right now, but what if I were to consider just the family and friends around me each day.  When I stare at one of my screens while they try to talk to me, what message does that send?  When I spend an extra hour at work, who is really losing out?   What are the unintended consequences of my quest for status and achievement?

We have to work for a living, and it is good to try to do our best at what we do.  But beware the effects of pursuing relentlessly the world's definition of success.  You are more than what you do (unlike Eckstein, as Kentridge draws him).  There is more to life than achievement; it is not the edifices of stone that you construct at work that will support you in the end; it is the soft and tender moss of relationships and memories that you form with those around you that will endure, comfort, and strengthen you.

What would Kentridge's doctors find if they looked into your life?

The Technology Double-Edged Sword

USA Today last week ran an article describing the blessings and the curse of technology-enabled work at home. It turns out that the advantages of working at home are not quite so clear-cut as it first seemed they would be, and that there are clear trade-offs to being always available.

As we have written about before on Present Tense Living, the problem is one of boundaries. Technology blurs the distinction between working and playing, and for most people, who rely on their work for income and fulfillment, work will nearly always win in the conflict between the two.

The article makes clear the distinction between time and attention. Your Blackberry may enable you to be home earlier or more often, but if your attention is on your device instead of your spouse or children, then what is the point? The picture of a houseful of individuals each surfing their own screen, oblivious of the others around them, is a sad one. "Home alone together" we might say, and it seems silly when we describe it, but how often have you been in a room with your loved ones but unaware of them as you tapped away on a screen? We think we can multitask, but we are only fooling ourselves and cheating those around us.

Technology enables us to work anywhere, but it does not relieve us of the responsibility of setting our own boundaries. You still have to determine when you are going to work and when you are going to play. If you need to work a lot, fine, be conscious about it and do it. But don't work from home thinking you are spending quality time with your family when your attention is never fully on them.

Turn off the cell phone; shut down the Blackberry; put the computer to sleep. Focus your attention on your loved ones for at least a few minutes each day. They will thank you for it, and in the long run you will thank yourself.

The Productivity Trap

Personal productivity is a holy grail for many knowledge workers in the contemporary American economy. Just like pilgrims seeking the original Holy Grail, today's knowledge workers pursue an almost single-minded quest for the next new productivity tip or trick. (Examples: using a desk setup with two monitors to work more efficiently; becoming a disciple of David Allen's generally helpful Getting Things Done; multitasking anywhere and everywhere).

All this fascination with efficiency leads quickly to the Productivity Trap: the idea that contentment, or success, or happiness is achieved by getting more done. We become convinced that we are one tool away--a new tabbed notebook, perhaps, or one iPhone app--from working efficiently enough to allow us more evenings off, or to avoid Saturday work, or to earn the higher bonus we crave. "Once I'm efficient enough to handle this workload," we say to ourselves, "I'll be able to get my time back."

Sounds good, but no. Once you get efficient enough to handle it, your boss will be so impressed that she will put you on the even bigger project with even tighter time demands. "Congratulations!" she'll say. "You did so well on the small project that you get to lead the big one!" Or, you'll get to be the boss, and not only have to do your own work but make sure everyone else is doing theirs too. Your time commitment will increase, not decrease, and you'll be off again in search of a few tips to "save time". You are stuck in the Productivity Trap.

The Productivity Trap becomes a self-perpetuating cycle when we spend more time working on our productivity systems--organizing browser bookmarks, shifting folder tags, re-writing to-do lists, optimizing Outlook, etc.--than we do actually working. In trying to be more productive, we get less real work done. We end up with the strange ability to precisely track, file, and retrieve the list of things we didn't get done today.

This is not to say that all productivity is bad or that efficiency is a false goal. To the extent that a work-saving tip allows you to complete a necessary task in less time, then productivity is a blessing; you are being both efficient and effective. Disorganization often results in duplicative or unnecessary work; any form of organization that prevents this is a net gain and should be praised. However, we get stuck in the Productivity Trap when productivity becomes an end in itself, not a tool to be used to achive our real objectives.

The only way to free up extra time for yourself is to do less. Learn to be honest about what is really important. Be ruthless in saying "no" to unimportant obligations. Be disciplined in doing your important tasks first in the day, before interruptions divert your attention. Yes, be efficient (do things well), but only while being effective (doing the right things). Efficiency without effectiveness is waste.

Let Your Boat Be Light!

I recently read Jerome K Jerome's comedy classic, Three Men In A Boat, first published in 1889 and continuously in print ever since. It is the story of the adventures of three friends who decide to take a several-day boat trip up the River Thames, observing life along the way. Filled with amusing situations and spiced with the narrator's (presumably Jerome himself) philosophical musings, the book is a rare mixture: thought-provoking comedy.

As the three friends are preparing their boat for departure, they bring everything they think they will need to the river, only to find they have brought more stuff than they can ever fit in the boat. One of the friends, George, comes up with a different idea, and Jerome's observations about that idea provide excellent advice for life:

George said:

"You know we are on a wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without."

George comes out really quite sensible at times. You'd be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How thy pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation and with--oh, the heaviest, maddest lumber of all! The dread of what will my neighbor think, with luxuries that only cloy with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man--all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, and you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness--no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchids, or the blue forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need--a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life's sunshine--time to listen to the Aeolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heartstrings around us.......

"Let your boat of life be light"--what excellent advice to those of us who live in a society that drives us in the constant pursuit of more, better, faster.

Consider your own life; there are naturally many things you'd like to have on the journey, but what are the things you truly can't do without? What will you do to devote more of your time to those things?

Waste Not, Want Not

It was a sad week for my extended family as we gathered in Charlotte to lay to rest my cousin Amy's husband, Mike. Only 45 years old, he died from malignant melanoma barely three years after it was first diagnosed in one of his toes. He leaves behind my cousin and their three teenage children.

In the funeral sermon, Amy's brother, Steve, recalled a prayer offered by Mike this past January after learning the cancer had spread throughout his body, and having been given 9-12 months to live. "Lord, help me not to waste my cancer." It was a selfless prayer; recognizing that he was going to be unable to escape his fate, Mike sought some useful purpose for his cancer. By all accounts he found one, using the months he had left to spend lots of time with his family, reconnect with friends near and far, and to inspire others with God's love the best he could to all he met. He did not waste his cancer.

I am impressed with Mike's attitude and inspired by the example he set. Too much of my daily life is spent wanting something: a promotion, more pay, a bigger house, a better car, a nicer TV, more time, etc. All that focus on wants makes contentment hard to come by, since I am always noticing what I don't have. Wants create more wants in a never-ending cascade of greed and envy. As Epicurus wrote: "Nothing satisfies the man who is not satisfied with little."

But as Mike demonstrated, the key is to take what you have and do the most you can with it. Sadly, Mike didn't have nearly as many days on this earth as any of us would want; but he made the absolute most of the ones he did have, and the world is a better place for it. He did not waste his days, and in the end he did not need any more days to have had a full life. Waste not, want not.

Don't waste your life. Don't waste your job. Don't waste your spouse, your kids, your friends, your money, your time. Use what you have to live a full life, today, and every day. Be defined by what you do, not by what you want. Wants will never fully go away, but they need not control our lives. Don't take for granted, or waste, the opportunities and blessings you already have, and perhaps the wants will seem less important.

Waste not, want not.

Being Deliberate, Pt. 2

Last post was about being deliberate about what you do, and I presented the "bottom-up" method for being deliberate. Now, I'll present the top-down method, which leads you to the same place: a life spent undertaking the activities that YOU choose, rather than letting yourself get pulled along by the crowd.

The difference in the top-down method is that you start with a blank sheet of paper rather than a list of all your activities. Use the blank sheet of paper as a metaphor for your life: suppose you could clear you schedule of all appointments; relieve yourself of all current obligations; and start fresh deciding what you wanted to do. Your life is now that blank piece of paper.

So, begin filling it. What do you want to do? What do you need to do? (Sorry, no clean sheet of paper can make you independently wealthy so you don't have to work.) For things you need to do, how do you wish you could accomplish them? If you could spend your days any way you wanted, how would you do it?

This may be harder than the bottom-up method. Try not to fall into the trap of listing things you think you should do--we are doing blue-sky, what-if thinking here. You may find that, relieved of the burden of your current obligations and responsibility, you have no idea what you would do with your time. This is not uncommon, and it is strong evidence that you really, really need to give yourself a break, or you are in danger of being defined solely by others.

Your list may have major projects (e.g., "learn to sail") or it may have more mundane items (e.g., eat a sit-down meal with the family at least 4 nights a week), or both. It will still have your responsibilities--family, work, spouse/partner, etc.--but should include your ideal of how those responsibilities should work. The idea is to imagine your ideal life, your ideal way of spending your time. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to be known for? With whom do you want to spend time?

Once you have a list, the rest is simple to understand yet difficult to undertake: compare your ideal life with your actual life, and think of one action you can do today to start moving toward your ideal life. Then do that action. Tomorrow think of another, and do it. And the next day. And the next. One step at a time, your real will start to become your ideal.

None of us is ever likely to fulfill 100% our ideal life. But nor will we ever even approach it if all we ever do is dream about it. Dreams without action will always only ever be dreams. With action, they could come true.

Be deliberate about what you want to do, and be a person of action in getting those things done. Therein lies contentment and a life well lived.

Being Deliberate, Pt. 1

One of the fundamentals of Present Tense Living is being deliberate about what you do. Being deliberate means that, to the greatest extent possible, you decide on what and with whom you are going to spend your limited time and attention. You do not let the culture or your peers decide; you decide.

Now it is unavoidable that some of our time has to be spent on activities that we may not choose to do. Most of us have to work for a living, and perhaps we work at something we wouldn't choose to do if we weren't paid to do it. Or, even if you find meaning in your work, all jobs involve some activities that are mundane or downright boring. (I call this administrivia.) This is true not just at work: if you are a parent, there are certain activities (like sitting through sports practices) that no sane person would choose to spend so much time on but which are part of the deal of having kids.

But sometimes we get swept up in what is popular and find that most of our time is spent doing stuff that "everybody" does but that isn't really meaningful to us. Not that these activities aren't fun, but they add up to more than our available time, so we find ourselves being "so busy" yet not accomplishing anything meaningful. Have you ever heard anyone say (or said yourself) "I'm on the go all the time but I never seem to get anything done."? Much of the rat race consists of doing/buying/giving attention to things merely because everyone else in our social or professional circle is doing them. This habit of keeping up with the Joneses with our time is easy to understand--we don't want to seem "different"--and difficult to break.

There are two ways to start being deliberate about your life: bottoms-up or top-down. The bottoms-up way begins with writing down every single thing you do. You could get really detailed and keep a time journal for a week or two, accounting for every hour of your day. But at a minimum, sit down and list on a sheet of paper each activity you do, both at home and outside the home, both for yourself and for others. Be as thorough as you can.

Once your list is complete, check off the things that you must do--work, commute, pick up the kids at school, make dinner for the family, etc. There are probably ways to minimize the time spent on these things, but for now we'll leave them alone and just accept that we have to do them.

Next, look at the unchecked items on your list. Before you do anything else, add to the list things that are missing: the activities you wish you had time for, but somehow never do. Now, thinking carefully about your goals, dreams, talents, and desires, rank the things on your list in order of importance to you. What do you want to spend your time on? To what do you want to direct your attention? Rank them in order of importance/interest to you. You may even want to cross some completely off the list; things you no longer want to do.

You can probably see where this is going. Once you have that list in order of priority, it is just a matter of being deliberate about making time for your important activities. You allot time first to the things you have to do, then make sure your high-priority items get some time in your day or week. After that, if you have time left, you can work in the lower-priority items, or just drop them all together.

In the next post we'll look at the top-down method for accomplishing the same thing. But the point of both methods is the same: to ensure that we are not spending our time on activities that we really don't care about, that are just a form of competition and keeping up that are every bit as prideful as spending our money on things we don't care about just to maintain appearances. In both cases, we are ceding control of our lives--whether money or time--to the culture around us. That's no way to live!

Out of illness, a lesson

Nothing like a good bout with bronchitis to force me to slow down, and to throw into sharp relief what in my life really is a priority. It's amazing how many work projects and meetings turned out to be "optional" after all--no one wanted a coughing sicko there, and now I find I'm not out of the loop at all upon my return--and so it make me wonder how much of my usual workday is just busywork and unnecessary. There were a couple of important deadlines that did need to be kept, and I submitted my work from my quarantined office at home, and the world moved on. The true priorities rise to the top when you have limited time to work.

I listened to Leo Babauta's interview with Merlin Mann last week, and Merlin makes the point that if you have to ask yourself if something is a priority, then it is not. Priorities are obvious and clear. A good point to remember the next time you sit down to devote 30 minutes to re-prioritizing your to-do list instead of actually doing work.