Discipline Without Direction Equals Drudgery

Several years ago I decided I was going to be a morning person. I’d read a ton of articles and blog posts that made me feel like a slouch for not getting up early enough. They had valid reasons why I should and warned of the opportunities I would be leaving on the table if I didn’t. I didn’t want to be one of those nuts that get up at 4 am, but I did want to start getting up earlier. 

I set my alarm for 15 minutes earlier each day throughout the week, trying to train myself to get up at an earlier time. It was successful, at first. I had moved my wake up time back an hour after one week. Things were flying high and going well. No worries, no problems, and no obstacles. The first several weeks were a breeze. 

I slowly crept back towards my previous wake up time as time past. I’d hit the snooze a time or two, or stay up too late the night before and have a good excuse for why I needed extra sleep. After a few months, I was back in my old routine without even noticing it. 

How many times have we endeavored to establish better and more disciplined habits that didn’t take? How many times have we set goals to get up earlier, workout more or eat healthy without following through? 

It’s been an all too regular occurrence in my life. I’ll set a goal, and even come up with a plan on how I’m going to make it happen, but too many of them end up as stories of failure. They haunt me. If I let them they tell me I’m a failure as well, and that I shouldn’t try to make changes to the life I lead. I should accept the status quo. 

I can’t listen to those voices. I can’t listen to the weakness. They’re not telling the whole truth. There may be a kernel of truth in there somewhere, but it’s covered with lies. The truth is that I failed because I was missing the most important piece to the puzzle. Have you put together a puzzle only to realize you’re missing a few important pieces? 

Unless you have kids, it may not happen to you often. But I’d lay down big money it happens all the time in the real world. You decide you’re going to do something, you consider the cost, and come up with a plan to get there. You invest time and work hard to see change occur, but it’s short lived. What happened? What was the missing piece to your puzzle?  

You must know why you’re doing it in the first place if you’re going to have a chance at real lasting change. “Discipline without direction,” Donald Whitney said, “is drudgery.” 

You must have a compelling reason and purpose for change to stick. ‘Want to’ isn’t enough, there must be a real, and powerful reason why you are endeavoring to change. It has to be a reason that forces you forward and pulls you through the hard times. 

The vague promise of productivity wasn’t enough to get me out of bed, but getting up to workout and write has been. I’m actually getting up even earlier than I’d thought possible because I’ve found an irresistible motive. 

Spend some time this week, thinking about the why behind your biggest goals. What would your life look like if you reached them? Move beyond the vague and focus on the specific. I trust that if you find a powerful purpose behind your goal, it’ll become that much easier to hit your target. 

21 Leadership Lessons Learned From Reading Extreme Ownership

“The only meaningful measure for a leader,” Jocko Willink said, “is whether the team succeeds or fails. For all the definitions, descriptions, and characteristics of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not.” 

Leadership and leaders are a hot topic. Talk to anyone on the street and they want to be a better and more effective leader. Not everyone will define good leadership the same, but all want to be effective. All want to win. 

I’m little different. I want to win at work, at home and in every area of life. I’m willing to take extreme steps to avoid losing, and to secure a victory. I want to exude drive, discipline, and focus. In short, I want to be the leader Jocko Willink and Lief Babbin describe in Extreme Ownership. 

Ask my wife and she'll tell you how obsessed I am with this book and Jocko’s podcast. I love their philosophy and take on leadership and am compelled to share a glimpse into why with you here. 

What follows is a list of twenty-one things I'm learning from both sources.

1. Discipline equals freedom. This starts each day when the alarm clock goes off. In many ways, it’s the first test of the day, it sets the tone. If you get up, you win. If you don’t, you fail. Discipline starts with the little things and is the difference between good and exceptional.
2. Check your ego. The most difficult ego to deal with is your own. 
3. Own everything around you. Take responsibility. Look at yourself first whenever trouble arises. Your team not performing well? It's your fault, own it. Rather than blame others, figure out a way to better communicate so they understand. Instead of complaining about your boss, take ownership of problems and lead. Support your boss. Take responsibility for communicating in the right way.
4. Be humble. Admit shortcomings and failures. Be willing to admit when you’re wrong or at least that the potential for being wrong exists. "Winning in daily battles," Jocko said, "gives you the opportunity to deflect credit, show your humbleness in victory and show your ability to lead. Which all help you in the long-term fight to achieve your goals. Losing a battle gives you the opportunity to generously cede your position, admit your wrong, which both display humbleness, and display your ability to follow. Winning or losing isn’t as important as how you react to winning or losing." 
5. Believe what you say. If you don’t, ask questions until you understand and find belief in what must be done. You can't expect others to buy-in to an idea you yourself don't believe in.
6. Explain the why behind things. Help people understand not just what you want them to do, but the goals and reasons why. Help them understand the intention. 
7. What you tolerate is more important than what you say. "If substandard performance is accepted," Jocko said, "and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard."
8. Never be satisfied. Always strive to improve and build that mindset into those you lead. There are no finished products this side of the grave. 
9. Go on offense. It is always better to go on offense than to sit back and play defense. Be proactive rather than reactive.
10. Cover and move. "Work well with others," Jocko said, "Support them and help them win. Make them part of your team. Stay close enough, physically and relationally that you can move to support and help one another."
11. Simplify as much as possible. Complexity compounds issues when things spiral out of control, which they will.
12. Detach from the situation. "Detach yourself," Jocko said, "when you start getting worked up and ask yourself, 'why?' then regain control of yourself." Detachment is a common theme on the podcast, one that sounds both difficult, and rewarding. 
13. Prioritize your problems and take care of them one at a time, focusing on the highest priority first.
14. Empower other leaders to go get it done. Give simple, clear, concise orders that are easily understood by everyone. Allow people to take initiative and make decisions. "They must know you have their back," Jocko said, "even if they make a bad call, as long as the call was made in an effort to achieve the objective."
15. Develop standard operating procedures. 
16. Have a system for planning. Have a repeatable checklist of all the important things they need to think about.
17. Make decisions. Be decisive. Be aggressive.
18. Don’t burn bridges. "Nothing is gained by this." Jocko said, "The future is unknown, and you should always do what you can to maintain lines of communication, bridges intact and reinforced if possible. Do not pursue a course of action that can not be undone, reversed or manipulated in the future."
19. Don’t be emotional. Don’t lose control of them. If you can’t control your emotions what can you control? Take control of your emotions. "They don’t get a vote," Jocko said. Impose your will upon them; discipline, mind control, and drive. Don’t let them control you, control them.
20. Be the best at everything you do. Put in the time, energy and effort required. Hustle hard, and outwork everyone.
21. Listen and seek to understand what other people tell you. 

This is the man I want to be. These are the principles I want to fuse to the very core of my being. I want them to ooze out of me like sweat during a workout. 

Why am I drawn to these principles? Why do they suck me in like a moth to a flame?

The simple answer is that they reflect the biblical worldview and scriptural principles. God’s word calls His people to behave and respond to the world around them in the same way. They are an ideal worthy of our pursuit and one I want to run after. 

Four Things I Learned Reading The Way of the Writer by Charles Johnson

My wife and I were at Barnes and Noble to return a book we’d received three or four copies of as gifts. I meandered through the aisles on the hunt for a new addition to my ever-growing collection of books. What should catch my eye, but Charles Johnson’s The Way of the Writer. It drew me in as I fanned its pages for the first time, landing on a spreadsheet in its middle, but more on that in a moment.

I tossed the book onto the stack of dozens like it when we got home. I figured I’d get to it months down the road, but my curiosity got the best of me. Within a few hours I found myself kicking back with it in one hand a pen in the other.

Johnson approaches the art of writing in much the same style as Stephen King in On Writing. The Way of the Writer serves as part memoir and part instruction manual on the craft of writing. Instead of coming from the perspective of a famous novelist, it flows from the pen of an academic. Johnson has much to share even in the early pages of this work. I’d like to share four of my biggest takeaways with you here.

1. Writer’s Notebook - When someone mentions something two or three times it's important. Johnson refers to his writer’s notebook at least a dozen times throughout the book. On its third appearance, he explains that it is a “collection of images, ideas, scraps of language, character sketches, overheard conversation, and so forth.”

I find this to be such a plain and excellent idea, that I’m ashamed to admit I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Of course, a writer should be writing down what pops into their mind at all points of the day. Relying on memory alone isn't enough. I’ve carried a notebook with me for some time now but writing down bits of overheard conversation hadn't crossed my mind. I’ll have to be more diligent in my eavesdropping moving forward. I can't think of a better way to train my ear for true and real uses of language.

2. Quotes Spreadsheet - I landed on page fifty-two while first flipping the book’s pages. It contains a spreadsheet of what the American Book Review once considered the top 100 first lines found in novels. I thought it was a gathering of quotes and lines from various books upon first discovery. It wasn't but that didn't stop me from running with the idea. I created a spreadsheet for collecting everything I’ve underlined, copied and enjoyed in pieces of writing. Below is a smattering of entries so far in my reading of The Way of the Writer:   

• To the degree, then, that I believe the health of a culture can be measured by the performance of those who speak and write its language. If that thesis is credible, then perhaps we should be worried by the coarseness, vulgarity, and at times obscenity that we encounter so often today in American speech.
• The problem, as I see it, with vulgarity is that it is unexpressive, a failure to reveal things in a fresh way. Rather than liberate our perception, vulgarity calcifies it.
• 90 percent of good writing is rewriting.
• Writing well is the same thing as thinking well, and that means we want our final literary product—story, novel, or essay—to exhibit our best thought, best feeling, and best technique.
• I write, first and foremost, in order to discover and clarify things for myself. (And that's why I write a lot; there are countless subjects I want to explore in this vast, mysterious universe we inhabit.) If I couldn't do that, then I wouldn't write.
• Most of the ideas expressed by writers today are not new. Far too many writers are simply unaware that an idea they believe is original was actually thought and expressed—and presented with eloquence and sophistication—more than two thousand years before they were born. Writing well is thinking well. That necessarily involves knowing—and caring about—the best thoughts of others.

3. Interviewing Idea - “At the end of 2010,” Johnson said, “the poet E. Ethelbert Miller, who was recently inducted into the Washington, DC, Hall of Fame for his contributions to literature and public life, presented me with a proposal that at first glance might have seemed preposterous. He asked if he could interview me for an entire year.” What an incredible idea! Think of all you could learn about an individual, their work, and view of the world. It is a project boiling over with possibilities to take a deep dive into another’s world. I’m not 100% sure how I’m going to use this spark of inspiration, but it will at the very least involve an interview or two.

4. New Words - “A literary work is first and foremost,” Johnson said, “a performance of language” Fewer words from his pen have rung truer halfway through The Way of the Writer, than these. Johnson’s love for ornate language is on full display throughout his writing. On at least three different occasions, I’ve had to pause and research terms he’s used. Words like oeuvre are opportunities to learn and play with parcels of language I haven’t encountered.

Review: On Writing Well by William Zinsser

Few things are worse than reading a boring book. Your eyes begin to droop, your head nods and frustration builds. Each time you set it down, it becomes harder to pick up again. These are the books you either sludge through, or stop reading altogether.

“Writing,” Zinsser said, “is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.” Writers who fail to hold your attention, fail to come along for the ride. They remain distant, cold and impersonal. Ornate language and generalities hide them from view and you pay the price.

When I first picked up On Writing Well, I had low expectations. It was lauded as a must read for any aspiring writer, so I ordered it on Amazon. Books on writing however, sounded as though they would be unimaginative and dull. I pictured every English teacher or professor I’d ever had and assumed they would catalog the rules of grammar and syntax, consisting of half-hearted advice from half-hearted authors looking to make a buck. I never in my wildest imaginings, thought a book on writing would become one of my favorite reads.

“It’s far easier,” Zinsser said, “to bury Caesar than to praise him—and that goes for Cleopatra, too. But to say why you think a play is good, in words that don’t sound banal, is one of the hardest chores in the business.” That is where I find myself at this junction in our journey together. I find Zinsser’s work to be excellent, exciting and helpful, but grasp for the right words to convey why.

Often, we aren’t sure why we like one movie and not another, or why we enjoyed seeing this play instead of that one—at least that’s where I regularly find myself. In large measure it comes down to taste. I have a taste for Zinsser’s style, and an enjoyment for his use of language. Rather than tell you his book isn’t boring, I’d like to show you Zinsser in his own words. You’ll be in the best position to determine if his way of approaching the task of writing suits your interests far better than I can guess. In short, you'll be the judge if you find it boring.

“A white haired man,” Zinsser describes, “is sitting on a plain wooden bench at a plain wooden table—three boards nailed to four legs—in a small boathouse. The window is open to a view across the water.” This opening scene describes a photograph of E.B. White, that used to hang in Zinsser’s office. Students and writers alike gazed at that image throughout his career. “What gets their attention,” Zinsser said, “is the simplicity of the process. White has everything he needs: a writing implement, a piece of paper, and a receptacle for all the sentences that didn’t come out the way he wanted them to.”

Writing is a simple task. You sit down, and put on paper the ideas and thoughts swirling in your mind. Nothing could be more straightforward, and yet few things are more difficult. You get paralyzed by the size of the task. It is enormous in its appearance. You want to say something valuable, something important, something people will like. You’re so wrapped up in the finished product, you can’t get going.      

“Computers,” Zinsser continues, “have replaced the typewriter, the delete key has replaced the wastebasket, and various other keys insert, move and rearrange whole chunks of text. But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people want to read.” For all the advances time and invention have produced, our world remains writing based.

Your tools are good thinking and the English language. How you use them is largely a matter of personal preference, but you can’t produce quality writing without putting both to work in service of your goal. “There isn’t a ‘right’ way,” Zinsser explains, “to do such personal work. There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.” Some people like to get up early and write, others prefer to stay up late. Some require silence, while others prefer music. Each writer’s approach is unique and personal. “It’s a question,” Zinsser explains, “of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.”  

“The essence of writing,” Zinsser said, “is rewriting.” Clarity and strength are achieved by tinkering with words, sentences and paragraphs until they are just right. The bulk of Zinsser’s book walks you through how to do just that no matter the subject before you. “Good writing is good writing,” Zinsser asserts, “whatever form it takes and whatever we call it.”

10 Favorite Quotes

“Clear thinking becomes clear writing: one can't exist without the other.”

“Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost.”

“Eliminate every such fact that is a known attribute: don't tell us that the sea had waves and the sand was white. Find details that are significant.”

“So when you write about a place, try to draw the best out of it. But if the process should work in reverse, let it draw the best out of you.”

“No wonder you tighten; you are so busy thinking of your awesome responsibility to the finished article that you can't start.”

“My commodity as a writer, whatever I'm writing about, is me. And your commodity is you. Don't alter your voice to fit your subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that's enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and cliches.”

“Find the best writers in the fields that interest you and read their work aloud. Get their voice and their taste into your ear—their attitude toward language. Don't worry that by imitating them you'll lose your own voice and your own identity. Soon enough you will shed those skins and become who you are supposed to become.”

“Moral: any time you can tell a story in the form of a quest or a pilgrimage you'll be ahead of the game. Readers bearing their own associations will do some of your work for you.”

“Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and your readers will jump overboard to get away. Your product is you. The crucial transaction in memoir and personal history is the transaction between you and your remembered experiences and emotions.”

I keep On Writing Well within arms reach of my desk. Whenever I begin a new project, I pull it down, flip through its pages and in so doing find the help I need to finish my task. It serves as both an inspiration and a resource regardless of the project before me.

"All the pieces of paper," Zinsser said, "that circulate through your office each day are forms of writing. Take them seriously." Much of what I do each day involves writing. As much as we live in a digital world, it remains a world comprised of words. The introduction of newer and newer technology only serves to increase the speed at which I am expected to perform the task of putting thoughts on paper. "Clear thinking," Zinsser said, "becomes clear writing: one can't exist without the other." Zinsser helps me accomplish both. He settles my mind, and gives me direction as I attempt to write.  

Whether you have a blog, and idea for a book or simply desire to improve the quality of the emails you send, On Writing Well has something for you. “Banality,” Zinsser points out, “is the enemy of good writing: the challenge is to not write like everybody else.” Zinsser’s book will help you improve your writing and develop a style all your own.

How To Build Better Habits And Reach Your Goals In Just 30 Days

You no doubt took a few moments as the clock counted down the end of another year to consider what you wanted out of 2017. Maybe you want to lose a few pounds, make a few extra dollars, or learn a new skill. That’s as far as things go for most people. They spend year after year holding on to vague hopes about the things they’d like to change. But you’re not the average bird. You didn’t stop with pleasant sentiments, you created goals, resolving to make this year different.

You got off to a roaring start hitting every target you set. You were excited, energized and hopeful. Things were looking up. You were rockin’ along, the wind in your hair, nothing gonna get in your way. This was going to be your year.

The calendar turned to February or if you were extra diligent, March. Life happened. The shine wore off, excitement faded and stuff got in the way. By now your dreams and hopes for making 2017 different, are all but dashed.

Instead of getting down, throwing a pity party, and giving up, let’s get back in the game. It doesn’t matter how poorly things have gone these first several months. You still have time to reach your goals. Remember Petey from Remember the Titans—the running back with the propensity to fumble the ball? He worked hard, carried a football from class to class and did his best every day, but still dropped the ball in the big moment. What happened to him? Coach Yoast saw something special in him, and did all he could to bring it out.

I see something special in you. You’re not meant to sit around wishing you could do this, or wanting to do that. No, you’re meant to get off the couch and out into the real world and make things happen. “Team work,” they say, “makes the dream work.” And I’m on your team. I want great and glorious things for you this year. That’s why I’m going to let you in on a secret—I struggle with the same things you do.

I fail to reach goals with astonishing regularity. I focus on where the magic happens however, instead of worrying about all the things I desire to happen. Where does the magic happen? It happens in the small everyday routines and habits of your day. Up to 40% of what you do every day isn’t based on any decision you’ve made, it’s purely a result of habits you’ve formed.

I’m working to rig the game, instead of worrying about missing targets. The best route I’ve found to reaching new goals is to decide what daily habits I need to develop to make it happen. I love to write for example. It gives me life, energy and feeds my soul. So what do I do with an already packed schedule? I get up at 5am every day and sit down in front of my computer to face another blank page. The habit I needed to focus on wasn’t directly related to the practice of writing. It was getting up earlier so I had time to write. That was the right habit for me to focus on.

Habits don’t form themselves. They take a lot of hard work and intentionality. Depending on the complexity of the habit, it can take anywhere from 30 or more days to develop a new one. There are thirty days in a month so 30 days is an easy number to latch hold of. Grab it with all you’ve got and wring from it fresh and invigorating habits that carry you down the path to accomplishing new things.

Below you’ll find a 30 day challenge sheet to help you create new habits. I found it tucked neatly inside The Steal Like An Artist Journal, and it’s been such a helpful way for me to focus on developing better habits. Austin did us all a favor by creating it but one 30 day challenge isn’t enough, I need a new one every month. After several moments online I couldn’t find a printable copy anywhere, so I created my own.

Download it. Print it. Share it. But most of all, use it to make 2017 an awesome year.