Tag: Personal productivity

Appreciation for Practical Skills and Keeping Your Word

August 25, 2024 / / 0 Comments

My parents gave me a sport coat earlier this year. The sleeves were too long, so I looked for an experienced tailor near my home. Multiple calls later, I found a helping hand at the local Men’s Wearhouse, where the staff didn’t require me to have bought the coat in their store. I immediately drove over, where they took measurements and pinned the sleeves. A week later, I picked up my coat, tailored to fit at a reasonable cost and with professional service. I was a happy customer.

It feels as if we only, truly appreciate the plumber, tailor, electrician, teacher, nurse, or mechanic when we really, really need the plumber, tailor, electrician, teacher, nurse or mechanic. The news is full of stories on AI and cryptocurrency and the barbarians at the gate, and yet our daily lives depend on practical skills and human relationships with those in our own towns. 

My wife and I know and work with Michael Faust, an experienced handyman (if that’s the right word for someone who knows how to do just about everything). Michael runs a successful contracting business with his wife. Among other projects, they helped renovate our new office at Forisk in late 2023, and, like he told me, “I try to stay on schedule.” We work with Michael because he’s responsive, talented, and delivers quality work on time. He listens and takes ownership for the performance of his team. He is highly skilled. He’s a professional and he’s a friend.

I get tired of people saying one thing and doing another, even if it’s accidental or unintentional. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t get as frustrated as I used to, but I do move on and then do my best to work with and take care of those who do what they say they are going to do when they say they are going to do it.

My Dad is one of the most honorable people I know. He’s the kind of guy you may sit next to on an airplane and talk about a book and he’ll say, “hey, I’ll mail you a copy.” Then, if you give him your business card, he will.

I am highly appreciative of the people in my life who can “do things,” whether growing food, mending fences, raising goats, speaking Spanish, or hanging drywall. I admire the person with the experience and intuition to look at a situation and figure out a workable approach, regardless the field. And I am thankful for the people in my life who consistently keep their word and live by example. 

Process, Routine, and the Power of Caring Less

July 30, 2024 / / 0 Comments

In college, my friend and mentor Mark Lundstrom taught me that “earning good grades gives you more freedom.” I had struggled as a freshman, and Mark, an actual rocket scientist, talked to me about how getting straight on study habits and academic performance translates into more options later, enhancing sovereignty over your own life. It’s that simple, and that hard. Put the processes in place to get better results, and those results will deliver more opportunities and independence. In my case, following and implementing better study habits led to better grades, postgraduate scholarships, and my first job in forestry.

Years later, after working in forest operations in Aberdeen, Washington and as a procurement forester at a sawmill in Barnesville, Georgia, I sold my Jeep Wrangler for $4,500 and bought a laptop computer for graduate school and a month of Spanish classes in Alajuela, Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, I lived with a family who had never hosted a “Spanish student” before. The family of five spoke no English, while I spoke minimal Spanish. However, the mother of the house had firm routines for her family and for me, which I quickly learned and followed. The family had daily routines for eating breakfast and dinner, for washing hands before meals, and for ironing clothes each morning before leaving the house for school and work. 

During that that first week, while language remained a barrier, we spoke little at the table during meals. However, the clear routines provided structure and comfort as we learned to communicate with body language and the new words I was learning each day. By the second week, the father and younger son had me out on their farm and the mother accepted my help washing dishes. By the third week, the kids were trying to teach me the Spanish phrases I’d never learn in a classroom.

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” His call to process and routine speaks to the power of structure as an enabler of getting things done. Without processes and routines, we expose ourselves to nettlesome and distracting worries. We are human. The mind wanders. Our attention gets lassoed.

A commitment to process is a commitment to controlling what you can. Routines help us control our attention and how we invest our time. This takes effort. It requires caring less about results and what other people think, and more about the planning of our days. Nobody, except perhaps for our parents, will care as much about our own lives and goals as we do. That’s because everyone else is too occupied and ensnared with their own lives and worries.

Marcus Aurelius wrote, “If the cucumber is bitter, throw it out. If there are brambles in the path, go around.” Care less about the inconveniences, the fear of missing out, the opinions of others. Process and routine help us deal with things as they are, and powerfully support any effort towards being productive, proactive, and goal achieving. 

Ten Observations of Human Behavior and Learning

June 18, 2022 /

As a writer, I read a lot of books and articles, listen closely to how people talk, and take notes to capture ideas, lunch orders, and fun phrases. Here are ten observations and quotes from my scribblings with thoughts on how or why I found each to be helpful (or incomplete).

  1. Often, there is a “better” way to do things. It doesn’t really matter if you put your pants on with the left leg first or the right, but it is easier to put your pants on before your shoes. Early in my forestry career, I attended a “total quality management” workshop and Wayne, the instructor, drove home the point that there is often a “best” or “better” way to do a job, no matter your preference. “That’s called a good process. We’ve figured out better ways to use a chainsaw or drive truck, ways that are safer and more productive, so master those.” 
  2. A former Navy officer turned forest industry manager told me “As long as you have a cup of coffee in your hand or are carrying a clipboard, nobody makes you do anything.” In my experience, this reality holds up remarkably, unfortunately well.
  3. “The only real security we have is the certainty that we’re equipped to handle whatever happens to us.” I noted this quote after reading “Beyond Survival”, a book I’ve discussed before, by former Vietnam POW Gerald Coffee. This speaks to the importance of competence, self-awareness, and resilience. 
  4. Fill your days with activities that excite you. This is simply good advice. While we all have responsibilities and obligations, we can also have hobbies, friends, service, and work that, for at least part of each day, energize us. And if this is not the case, whose fault is that?
  5. “Self-trust is the first secret to success.” So said Ralph Waldo Emerson. The quote speaks to both the power of being comfortable in our own skin and the destructive nature of persistent self-doubt, anxiety, and insecurity, which all differ from humility. Having self-awareness and self-trust means you know how to handle yourself in most situations (see #3 above). 
  6. “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” – Mother Teresa.
  7. Avoid leaving good habits to chance. Since we are what we regularly do, we gain by scheduling and ritualizing productive habits, such as sleep, exercise, and date night to help reduce and crowd out less helpful activities, such as scrolling and stewing on social media.
  8. When we deal in specifics, we rarely fail. On the other hand, we rarely succeed when dealing in generalities. As an analyst, writer, and human, I find unsubstantiated, broad-based assertions to be extremely unhelpful.
  9. Learning is spaced repetition. I hold this belief as ironclad: we can get better at anything we practice regularly. However, since becoming a passable juggler and failing (so far) at piano, I observe that, while accurate, the lesson is incomplete. In addition to regular practice, we learn when (1) truly interested and (2) having sufficient understanding to “self-correct” basic errors. Once you learn enough to self-correct, you can become proficient at just about anything.
  10. Many things are more complicated and nuanced than we think. I find it helpful to acknowledge that (1) most decisions are made without certainty and (2) any increase in knowledge can (ironically) further increase uncertainty as it lays bare potential gaps in our understanding. As such, strong emotions, broad generalizations (see #8), and a failure to embrace proven approaches (see #1) can unnecessarily burden decisions. Embrace the idea that we’re doing the best we can with the information we have. Nothing is certain. As new information comes to light, we can adjust. 

Managing Yourself

January 21, 2021 /

This post introduces an essay with ideas and resources on personal productivity. It is the third in a three-part series on entrepreneurship. 

Like other business owners, I learned along the way and grew into my role as a CEO. Possibly the biggest lesson has been the importance of rigorously, even ruthlessly, managing my time and energy.

In practice, we tend towards self-indulgence and do the things we like to do, or want to do in the moment, rather than those things that help us achieve our goals. Having clear priorities and a sensible approach to managing time has helped me tremendously, and will help you, too.

Click here to read the essay.