Philosophy
- Make Catholic Husband the best blog on the Internet. While I’m not there yet, I made substantial progress towards improving the blog in both content and presentation. The website itself is much cleaner and more streamlined. I don’t foresee many changes in the design happening in 2016 (to Alison’s great relief). I was successful in publishing regularly and am very proud, and frankly a bit surprised, that I reached this goal.
- Make Catholic Husband self-sufficient. Goal achieved, in a big way! I started doing freelance web design and was able to completely reimburse our family budget for all Catholic Husband spending, as well as provide an additional revenue stream. This was a big goal for me and I’m so glad that I was able to achieve it.
- I’m going to launch my first iOS app this year. Well, that didn’t happen. When I got into I realized that I simply didn’t have enough time to learn how to code and maintain an app. Additionally, the cost benefit analysis pointed to a low possible return. I think I was wise to quit this goal.
- Reach my weight goal. Another miss. In fact, I’m further from my goal than I was a year ago. This is mainly due to my headaches and the medication that I take for them. It was a hard year to push forward. Look for this goal again for 2016.
- Read for 30 minutes a day. This was a mixed result. I didn’t complete 2 books per month and I was more successful in the beginning of the year than at the end. I attribute this to two causes. First, I spent more time reading the paper than books and second, my work in web design took up more of my free time.
- Double my web design gross revenue. I need to pick up 2-3 new clients each month in order to make this happen. It’s attainable, but I need to get intentional about prospecting and selling.
- Reach my weight goal by August 1st. If I stick to my plan, I only need to lose about 1 pound per week. It’s doable, with diligence. Not only will this help me with my energy and creativity, but it’ll earn lots of healthcare incentive money through our insurance.
- Become a Glider flight instructor this Fall. I have a lot of studying to do, but this is also an attainable goal and something that would be amazing!
- Publish 5 blogs per week. Same as last year, but still important. It’ll end up being 260 unique posts.
- Do something social with Benedict at least once per week. Now that we have wheels, I want to continue to socialize Benedict. I’m going to carve out time for us to do that.
- Pray daily with my family. It has been hit or miss in the past, so I want to make this a non-negotiable part of our routine this year.
- Read 24 books by the end of the year. I can do it, but I need to make the time.
What Great Things Will You Do in 2016
I’ve asked you how you will use the fresh start that the New Year gives you, but today I want to ask you a different question. What great things will you do in 2016?
Achieving greatness requires two things: planning and execution. No project or goal achieves its objectives without a detailed plan. No plan brings results without execution.
A plan is more than just a commitment. A plan shows you how realistic your huge goal is. If you set a goal to lose 40 lbs, you’ll quit. But if you set a goal to lose 40 lbs and then plan on losing 1 lbs per week for 40 weeks, you realize just how possible it is.
Having a plan to lose 40 lbs is great, but if you have your fancy plan and keep eating the way you currently do, you’ll never make it. Execution requires discipline. But there’s a hidden gem in execution. It requires zero decision making. The decisions have already been made in your planning! So you don’t need to decide if you should eat that cake or go for a walk on any particular day. The plan says cake is only on Sunday and walks are every day, so execute!
We get tied up in the belief that we can’t achieve great things, that planning is a bore and execution is a straight jacket. The reality is planning helps us clarify the vision, the execution helps us meet the objective and together, we achieve greatness.
You have the perfect opportunity today to dream big, make a plan, and set it in motion so that in December you’ll have done something truly great with the time that you’ve been given this year. So the question remains, what great things will you do this year?
Cutting Corners is Weak
Personal integrity is a key component to success. In fact, America’s millionaires rated integrity as the number one reason for their success. Laziness is perhaps the greatest human vice. We have so much potential, the power of our minds, the dexterity of our hands, and a multitude of tools that to take all of these assets and not use them for anything is a waste. Our time and our days mean something, though in the moment that may not be entirely clear. Laziness is more than just complete idleness, it’s also cutting corners. It’s acceptable to acknowledge our tendency to find easy ways out. Half of the battle is knowing just who your enemy is. Instead of cutting those corners, and inevitably losing, do the job right.
Consider the corners we all like cutting. We skip exercise, indulge on ice cream, and gain weight. We skip doing the dishes one evening only to find the kitchen overwhelmed the next day. We go easy on our work at the beginning of the month only to have to play catch up and work three times as hard at the end of the month to make our production goals. Cutting corners only hurts us. It may not hurt now, but eventually, it will.
Life as an adult out on your own gives you dignity. Certainly we each innately have dignity as human persons, but there’s something special about having the ability to work and support yourself. Many times in my working life I’ve recognized and appreciated the gift of honest work and have prayed a simple prayer of thanksgiving for that grace. All jobs, whether they be mowing your lawn or washing your car, all the way up the line to your most important project, deserve to be done with the same degree of diligence. The projects that you complete are a personal reflection on you. So if you consistently turn out shoddy work on the job, you’re liable to get fired. If, however, you are known for diligently completing high quality work on time, you’re liable to get promoted.
Your name is put on every project that you complete. The question is, are you willing to associate yourself with that finished product? It’s a lesson that we all learned very young. Our parents counseled us about the danger in cutting corners. It’s a violation of our integrity, it’s a lie, and it ends up hurting us and our reputation in the end.
The New Year Slump
It’s about that time of year when people hit their New Year slump. The grand plans, resolutions, and goals have encountered the first wave of resistance and most will return to their old ways. To expect a perfect journey is unreasonable and, frankly, was more crazy than the goal to begin with. Resistance provides the opportunity to reinforce the “why” behind what you’re doing.
There are all sorts of roadblocks to success, but only the diligent win. Instead of viewing the slump as a roadblock, see it as an opportunity. Plans always work out on paper, but translating them into real life can be quite messy. What things do you need to tweek and change in order to get moving again?
Goals are long term and nothing is a bigger threat to success than poor short term decision making. Think long term, make decisions based on the long term, get back out there and win.
Grading Your Performance
It’s a good idea to think about your performance as a man and husband in terms of a grading scale. In days past, while you were still in school, you had some subjects that came easily to you in which you easily achieved an A with little effort. In some other subjects, you had a natural ability, but had to apply yourself more and may have hovered in the B range. Finally, there were (hopefully) a few areas where you truly lacked a natural ability and had to really work hard to achieve a commendable grade. Life really is no different.
Understanding where you’re strong, and focusing attention where you’re weak can elevate your game. No one enters into a marriage with the expectation that they’ll be a failure. No man says “I do” with the full intention of being a deadbeat or a loser. We all aspire to something greater. We want to be that couple that has a 50 or 60 year marriage. The truth is, when you first get married, you’re really quite bad. It’s not you, necessarily, it’s just a whole new reality. Think back to when you were first married, you may have been going through the motions of what you thought a good husband was or what a good husband does, but you were lacking the “why” behind those actions. Now, as time passed and you and your wife matured within your marriage, the dynamic shifted and you both better understand one another. While time is an ally in helping you to both mature, it presents the danger of complacency.
That’s where grading your performance comes in. I try to go through this process on a regular basis, or anytime I feel like Alison and I are getting out of sync. It’s all about overcoming the natural inclination to place blame and instead to accept responsibility. I want to be honest about where I need improvement because I want a 60 year marriage and I know that the joy, happiness, tranquility and strength that a good marriage can bring to a family and a community is only possible when I do everything within my power to live my vocation faithfully. When I’m honest in my evaluation, find resolutions, and then focus on achieving those outcomes, Alison, and our children, are the real winners.
In order to effectively gauge your performance, it’s necessary to be hyper observant in your daily live. Marriage happens in that reality: the daily experience. If you’re not carefully paying attention to your behaviors, attitudes, and reactions to situations, you’re not going to be able to find areas for improvement. Oftentimes these observations lead to brutal truths about yourself, character flaws, and past hurts. We all have to confront the uncomfortable in order to move on to greener pastures. Analyzing your responses, especially in times when you’re stressed, frustrated, or reacting poorly to a given situation can help you to identify trigger points and chain reactions so that you can better contain yourself in the future.
It should be noted that evaluating yourself is as much about celebrating the good things that you’re doing as it is about correcting the things that need to be fixed. The fact remains that you are doing some things very well and exceed not only your peers, but your wife’s expectations. Those good things that you’re doing should be reinforced, and the underlying actions and principles that result in your high marks should be duplicated in areas that could benefit from them.
The unexamined life is truly not worth living, but even more likely is the fact that your wife has zero interest in staying married to the man of her wedding day. She married you because she wants to share a life together and to grow old together, not stand still with a young, wild, and slightly immature man while she and the world keep spinning. Keep doing good, understand where you’re falling down and grow in those areas. Then you’ll both benefit from a rich life together.
Discipline Trickles Down
Alison’s schedule around Holy Days is always a little tricky. Our parish generally offers sufficient Masses, but they don’t offer evening Masses on Holy Days (or Sunday). That means that we can be legitimately scrambling to get to Mass. This year, her schedule meant that we needed to go to Mass on December 31st, instead of January 1st. While praying before Mass, I decided to ask for a gift for the new year. I thought about plenty of options, but settled on one that I thought would bring about all. I asked for the grace of discipline.
Discipline is something that we all love to hate. It forces us to do things that are good for us when our laziness or fear try to keep us down. It brings about tremendous benefits and, executed over time, takes you to where you want to be. Discipline is the mature version of us making a decision and not letting the immature version of ourselves call the shots.
I thought discipline was the perfect gift because it can’t help but trickle down into other areas of our lives. If I’m disciplined in my daily routine, I’ll be disciplined in my prayer life. If I’m disciplined in my exercise plans, I’ll be disciplined in my eating habits. If I’m disciplined in my financial life, I’ll be disciplined in my spending. The heart of all success is discipline.
I love the saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” We have today to hit our goals, to implement our plans, and to check off our to do list. We can’t fix yesterday, and we can’t work on tomorrow. While January 1st is a huge psychological turning point, truly your alarm clock going off is just as much of a fresh start.
I need to inject discipline back into my life because of the stability, diligence, and productivity that it brings. Laziness and idleness starve my creativity and drain my energy. The best way to fall asleep is when your body is tired and your mind is at peace because you used the day to the fullest. Work on discipline and watch it bear fruit across all areas of your life.
When to Quit
Around this time of year, I’m always excited by the potential of the new year. I have a long list of things I want to try and do, and inevitably I start running at all of them, at the same time. While the new year is a great time to add some things to your life, it’s also the perfect time to pare down activities that aren’t producing results.
Productivity and focus are as much about being diligent with what you take on as they are about quitting. Too often we get lost in our pride, intransigent to our calendar’s pleas that we let go of some things. Whether you’re single or married, the day still only has 24 hours which means that every minute you dedicate to one pursuit, another pursuit sits idle. The finite amount of time in the day is the biggest reason why you need to be willing to cut certain activities or goals from your life.
Choosing what to cut and what to keep is a major decision. It’s made that much harder by the fact that you’ll have to face down a lot of emotions. There will be some projects that you should keep moving forward with but that you’ll feel the urge to cut. Laziness and inaction are always advocating their case. Ignore them. If it’s important, even if you haven’t seen progress recently, keep pushing. Projects that need to be cut are the ones that have little potential for success or that don’t deliver a good return on investment.
Here’s an example. For years now, I’ve wanted to develop mobile apps. I have no programming experience, but assembled the tools and coursework to get me on my way. A few months into learning how to code, I was making steady progress. As a part of my learning, I immersed myself in the world of developers, listening to their conversations and understanding the nature of the market. I came to the realization that I was going to sink a massive amount of time into learning how to code, more time each year learning new coding languages, more time into programming the app, and a significant chunk of my daily workload into customer support and new feature implementation. All of this time was going to be dedicated to what would likely be very small returns, less than $10,000 over the lifetime of the app. So I could sink a ton of time into a project with dim prospects, or I could work really hard to build up my web design business which was waiting and ready to go.
You’re going to face decisions like this all of the time, and January is the perfect time to clean out your to do list. Get rid of the stuff that’s getting in the way of doing work that matters. Add in more things that will propel you and those around you to greatness. Be brave enough to quit.
2016 Goals
2016 is officially here! As is my tradition, I wanted to share with you my goals for the upcoming year. Just as I did last year, my goals are balanced across all areas of my life: financial, spiritual, intellectual, career, social, family, and fun. Sharing them with you is a great way for me to stay accountable to them. I began my goal planning at the end of November and started actually working on my goals in mid-December.
Before sharing my 2016 goals, I want to go over the results of my 2015 goals.
Here’s what’s up for 2016.
What’s going on in 2016 for you?
Preserve Your Energy
Negativity is the biggest drain on our energy. Every day we encounter plenty of rabbit holes to go down; negative news stories, clickbait links, and even entertainment programs. I’ve just decided that it’s not worth it to waste my time and energy on things that I have no control over and that are just going to bum me out.
We need to be conscious of how we spend our time and energy, two of the most precious and finite resources that we have. If we waste them away on things that will create anxiety, we lose more than we could have ever hoped to gain. Prioritizing our time and consciously choosing to spend our energy on positive thoughts and activities are the best things we can do for ourselves.
I like to have a running list of the things that I need to do each day in order to be successful. My list includes reading, eating well, exercising and a certain amount of work. I limit my unscheduled time in order to help me stay on track with things that I know yield positive results. For example, if I had three hours of free time each day, I might waste them binge watching Netflix. Instead, if I take those same three hours and give 1 hour to exercise, 1 hour to work, 30 minutes to reading, and 30 minutes to free time, I can relax knowing that watching Netflix isn’t going to hurt me somewhere else. I’ve never finished a book and said to myself, “I wish I’d spent that time watching TV.”
We only have so much energy each day. Spend it on things worth doing so that tomorrow you’ll wake up a better person for your wife, your family, and yourself.
Setting Your Goals for 2016
I think that the most interesting aspect of goal setting is looking at them in hindsight. As I sit here looking at the goals that I set for myself, I have to laugh at how much things have changed over the past 12 months. Some goals I beat by huge margins, and others I completely abandoned. It’s the nature of the year and the nature of change. The real secret to having goals that get accomplished is to start planning, in detail, right now.
The time to set goals is not January. Goals, given their long-range nature, require lots of contemplation. First, you have to consider where you want to go. What are the projects that you want to complete? What are the passions that you want to pursue? How do they fit into the schedule of your life? You have a finite amount of time to dedicate to pursuits, so what should you spend that time on? If you’re panicked in January because you’re losing time, you’ll make different decisions than if you completed the same exercise in November or December.
There are perennial goals that end up on all of our lists, the most common one being weight loss. We’re likely to pick up a few pounds over the holidays, but [we still struggle to keep momentum moving past January] (https://www.catholichusband.org/files/why-resolutions-fail.php). It can take up to 12 weeks to start seeing the results of your increased physical activity, which means if you quit before April, you did something wrong. If weight loss is on your list, start working towards the goal now, not January 1st. It’s a worthy goal and one that’ll pay dividends in your quality of life. Keep in mind that maintaining a healthy weight is more than reaching a goal and checking off a box, it’s a lifestyle.
In addition to health, financial, and career goals, I like to add in one extra goal for something that I’ve always wanted to do. It may be a skill that you want to learn or a lifelong dream. Have something fun in your goals so that it’s not all boring.
Once you’ve set your goals, spend time planning, in detail, how you’re going to accomplish them. What’s your plan? What does your daily and weekly calendar look like? What are the milestones and how are you going to reach them? How will you track your progress and remain accountable?
Now is the time to think about, write down, and plan your goals. Use the last few days of December and first few days of January to clean out everything in your workspace and get everything set-up. Then, charge!
Drive Safely This Season
As the cool fall air moved into the region, I made a concerted effort to get Benedict outside more. We ran around in the yard, cleaned up our garden, and put away flower pots. He’s a determined little guy who loves his freedom, so we’d also walk the 50 yards or so of sidewalk in front of our house. Since I regularly take him on my walk with me (he rides in the stroller), he’s had plenty of opportunity to see cars drive by. During our walks on the sidewalk, he’d stop for every car, yell “HI!” and wave as they passed by. Many drivers looked and waved back, most did not.
Are we really so distracted that we miss a 3ft child waving at us as we drive by?
Driving is one of the most dangerous things that you and I do on a daily basis. Although we’ve grown complacent in our surroundings and confident in our abilities, the fact remains that driving is an activity that demands total focus. Even a momentary lapse of judgement could result in serious bodily injury or death. The complacency is what’s really getting to us. We’re too comfortable. We’re comfortable enough to text, to talk on the phone, and even to develop tunnel vision.
The result of this complacency and comfort is experienced by each of us every time we drive. Motorcyclists drive near the centerline, changing lanes without signaling, and rapidly accelerating and decelerating. Vans drive slower than expected, drift, and make sudden corrections. Motorists unfamiliar with a particular area drive erratically as they seek to balance finding their destination and not crashing. Drivers text while traveling at speed on highways, or even in dense congestion.
While this is partly a warning about the dangers of complacency while driving, it’s also a warning against tunnel vision. We often only look out the window to glare at someone whose driving habits displease us. We can’t be complacent, we can’t be comfortable, but we also can’t be solely focused on what’s ahead.
Drive safely, drive defensively, but also be aware enough of your surroundings that you can anticipate changing situations and keep your passengers safe. We need to bring safety and courtesy back to the road, and it begins when you and I get behind the wheel.