Philosophy
Be Courageous
When we think about courage, we often think about people overcoming all odds to accomplish something great. It may be an athlete reaching a new human speed record, a member of the Armed Services using their body as a shield against a grenade, or even someone who was told that they’d never walk again getting up and taking independent steps. We play up courage to a heroic level, one that’s divorced from daily life, and certainly from our own life. We’ve got this all wrong.
There’s no doubt that any of the above acts require great courage, but courage isn’t just about amazing feats, it’s about overcoming our own resistance, limitations, and doubts to achieve something. It takes courage for artists to share their work with the world, for salespeople to make a cold call, and for Catholics to live their faith during their daily lives. The truth is, we all have courage within us, we just have to be bold enough to use it.
In order to let loose the power of our courage, we have to be humble. Pride inhibits courage. Take, for example, our interior life. It takes courage to root out our principal sin. It takes humility to first acknowledge that we’ve let a particular sin exist in our lives and that we may have to give up something in order to get rid of it. The humility of recognizing our situation leads to the courage to make changes in our lives that will eventually get rid of that sin.
In the workplace, we’re faced with the need to have the courage to maintain our integrity. St. Thomas More was willing to give Henry VIII everything, except for his integrity. In the face of certain death, Thomas had the courage to maintain his integrity and lost his life for it. While we likely won’t be faced with a situation of the same gravity, at one time or another we’re pressured to violate our integrity at work. It takes courage to stand up and do the right thing. We all have it within us, but the question is, will we act on it.
In our marriage, courage is an absolute necessity. The temptation to turn marriage into a transactional relationship is a daily confrontation. We’re tempted to balance each gain that our wife makes with a gain for ourselves. We’re tempted to demand that our wife meet all of our emotional needs regardless of the state of her health or energy levels. We need to have the courage to put ourselves all on the line. We need to have the courage to serve selflessly all day, every day. We need to have the courage to look to our wife first, our family second, and to ourselves last. We need to have the courage to be emotionally present. It’s not easy, and many who have tried have failed. Therein lies the beauty of marriage. It’s a difficult vocation, but in the trials, much fruit is borne.
I challenge you today to live courageously. It’ll take work, and we won’t always be successful, but we do have it within us. We are programmed to live courageously, let’s not let ourselves stand in the way.
Break Your Phone Addiction
Alison and I are both up for phone upgrades this month. It was with great glee that I watched the Apple September media event, knowing that I’d soon integrate this new technology into my workflow. Technology drives my work here at Catholic Husband and my work designing websites; its purpose is to make my life easier, better. There are apps to measure fitness, track chronic conditions, share news, connect with the world, check the weather, manage my business, and more. Yet, lately I’ve been feeling that my phone is starting to be more of a hinderance than a help.
How we interact with technology is largely in our control. Our technology submits to our commands. My phone won’t ring an alarm at 5am unless I tell it to. My phone won’t send me text notifications unless I tell it to. With the unpredictability of Benedict doing something cute or amusing, I feel compelled to keep my phone on me at all times so that I can be ready to capture the moment and preserve it for later in life. The question then becomes, despite this urge to capture all of these moments, do I really need my phone on me at all times?
The answer, of course, is no. In order to break this addiction, I’m going to intentionally change some habits. I’m not going to look at my phone right when I get up (except to turn off my alarm) or right before I go to bed. When Benedict is awake, I’m also not going to look at it, unless we’re FaceTiming or I need to quickly text someone or capture an idea. I’ll accomplish this by leaving my phone on a table in the family room instead of keeping it in my pocket. Lastly, I’m going to evaluate my apps and keep only those that bring value to my life.
I’m going to get back to a proper balance with technology in my life. It’s not going to be the center of my digital life, but rather a tool to help me go further, faster, when I decide the timing is appropriate.
The Value of Sharing
The world is an incredibly noisy place, even more so now that the Internet gives a bullhorn to anyone who wants one. There’s a great richness in this open flow of communication. We now get to hear the stories, voices, and viewpoints of a whole range of people that we wouldn’t get to hear otherwise. A quick glance at your Facebook news feed and you’ll find a plethora of stories liked or commented on by your friends. In this noisy world, we’re foragers for each other.
We all experience a bit of content overload. The sheer number of news sites, web sites, blogs, and social networks far exceeds any one person’s ability to experience it all. So when we see or experience something great, silly, or refreshing, we share it. By sharing the best of what we find, we elevate the web experience of those with whom we’re connected.
Sharing builds people. The more readers there are of a blog, the more people are helped. The more positive reinforcement the content creator receives, the better the content becomes. This universal principle of positive reinforcement is as effective in online relationships as it is in real world relationships. The more we build one another up, the better we all become.
We’re a global community of people, all connected digitally. That digital connection does more than just bind us together, it encourages us to share those things which can bring joy and help to our network’s life. You’re a digital forager; never be afraid to share something great.
The Speed of A Year
The speed of time never ceases to amaze me. It seems like every time I blink a day, week, month, season, or year is over. Perhaps no season travels faster than Summer. When it comes to big units of time (months, years), I seem to be intentional in how I spend my time, but in the days and hours, I tend to be more carefree. If I want to make those months and years mean something, I need to keep focused and live each day with purpose.
There’s truth in the mantra, “Seize the day!” Since days are the building blocks of weeks, months, and years, how we spend our days is vitally important. There should be time for work, play, rest, and recreation. A balanced day ensures that I move forward as a whole person, not just as parts of a person. A balanced day also ensures peace as I lay down at night, knowing that all that could be accomplished has been accomplished.
Although we’re past the halfway mark for this year, 2015 is far from over. In a singular year, we all go through many changes and transformations. There are new experiences, new ideas, and new challenges that we encounter. Declare now, starting today, a year of growth. Identify those areas where you want to improve, go out, and get it done! Don’t wait for a calendar or January 1st. Start now!
Enjoy your time with your kids today. Relish in spending time alone with your wife. Move beyond laziness, get out there, and do something amazing today!
Believe in Yourself
There’s a direct correlation between how successful you are and how diligently you work. The hardest workers get promoted the fastest, get the biggest raises, and are given the most freedom. You can be the top performer in your company if you show up every day and bring your A game.
The path to becoming the best starts with a belief that you can do anything that you apply yourself to. Far too many people have a terrible work ethic. They didn’t set out to be poor employees, but they find themselves overwhelmed by the stresses in their lives. This creates a golden opportunity for you to shine when you show up every day with a serious work ethic that gets stuff done. If you’re going to win, you’re going to need to start believing that you’re smart enough and good enough to be the best.
Be a serious team player and seek advice on how to improve your own performance. Do nice things for your coworkers, lend a hand whenever possible, and always keep an eye on the team’s goals while you’re pushing on your own.
If you bring it every day, your annual review is going to be very different at the end of this year. Start believing that you can be the best, deliver a strong performance daily, and don’t let anything get in your way.
Do the Essentials
Daily schedules fluctuate a lot. Between work, appointments, shopping, and after-school activities, every day looks a little different. In fact, this fluctuation isn’t restricted to day by day comparison. In the evening, you may find that your day ended up looking remarkably different than it did when it started. These fluctuations mean that things that you planned on doing may not have gotten done. When I’m pressed for time, I often cut my essentials - reading, prayer, and exercise. This approach is all wrong. Instead of seeking to save a few minutes from the things that you consider to be essential each day, look instead at your to-do list and defer a few tasks for another time.
The essentials are those things that you need to do each day in order to feel that a particular day was a success. As I previously mentioned, my essentials are getting some recreational reading done, praying, and exercising, typically in the form of walking. Whatever your essentials may be, these are the things that should be assigned the highest priority when time is tight, not cut the moment things get difficult. In fact, when you look at the activities that you consider to be essential, you might notice that they’re the things that keep you balanced, motivated, and calm.
No matter what your day brings, do your essentials. They may not happen at the time or in the order that you planned, but they need to get done. When you look back on your weeks, months, and years, these essentials will be the things that move you forward as a human person, something that your to-do list won’t be able to do. You may have to sacrifice some sleep, some project, or some chore in order to do them, but do the essentials no matter what.
The idea that a to-do list should get completely finished defeats the idea of a to-do list. The to-do list should be a compilation of every single task that you need to get done so that your list is in charge of maintaining that running list instead of your brain. You’ll always have something that will need to get done. With that in mind, be comfortable deferring tasks for another day or skipping a few to-dos in order to make sure that you’ve got the essentials covered.
The temptation in time management is when things get tough to cut out the big stuff. Instead of going after your essentials, those things that contribute to a successful day, look at your to-do list and push a few non-essentials off to another time when you can give them the full attention that they deserve.
Cutting Your Schedule
It’s said that the worst boss that you’ll ever work for is yourself. At one time or another, you may take on a side job in addition to the work at your main employer. When you take on additional work, there’s little opportunity for you to take on additional hours in the day. Instead, hours have to be reallocated from activities such as watching TV, surfing the Internet, or sleep. At the same time, a fast paced life is kind of fun. The American Dream compels us to get out of bed at 5am and stay up late into the night toiling so that we can have it all.
We all wish we could spend hours every day with our family. In fact, family time is perhaps the single highest priority that we have in our daily schedules. No matter how hard we have to work or how long our to-do list is, we yearn to have downtime to play in the yard with our kids or at the very least to share a meal together. There’s no doubt that our schedules are pushed to the limit in an attempt to wring out every last moment of productivity. When you do find yourself in a place where you need more time during the day, cut television and internet first, then choose wisely.
Full schedules demand precise scheduling and sincere sacrifice. Sleep can only be trimmed so far before it starts working against you, but when your schedule demands more time, you can be certain that your days of sleeping in are over. That’s why it’s so important for us to be time management surgeons. We need to cut the right things, we need to trim other things back, and we need to act with deadly precision. There are some activities that can be cut out entirely, but there are others that will need to be aggressively curtailed. Take, for example, the time you spend reading daily. Reading is a very good thing and it helps you grow as a person. While reading the right books may be wildly stimulating, if you need more time, you might have to place limits on your reading, perhaps cutting back to 30 minutes a day. An hour or two a day of reading might get you further, faster, but when your schedule is tight, those extra minutes are a luxury that can be traded in for the sake of family time.
When it comes to cutting critical activities, it can be helpful to create a prioritized list. Prayer, work, play, and relaxation are all a part of a healthy lifestyle, but when cuts have to be made, everything is on the table. By prioritizing the importance of each activity in your daily life, you can save the most important while sacrificing the least important. In this way, you maintain the integrity of those things that are most essential to your routine. As always, when trying new systems and time management ideas, it’s best to experiment for a few days and see how things work out. You can always add things back in or make further cuts based on your experience.
Now, let’s briefly put these ideas into action. My web design business has really been taking off and I’ve needed to find more time during the day to work so that I can take on more clients and grow my business. I’ve determined that my maximum number of work hours during the day is around 7 hours. That gives me time in the evening to spend with Alison, time during the day to care for Benedict, and time in the morning for prayer, reading, and exercise. From my leisure time, I’ve had to cut reading the newspaper as it took almost two hours a day for me to get through it. I could have simply pushed newspaper reading into the evening, but that would take away from time with Alison, so the cut had to be made. With those 7 hours for work, I’ve allocated five hours to client web design work and two hours to Catholic Husband and other activities. Of those two hours, one is dedicated to the blog, so that leaves me with 60 short minutes a day to work on other projects, like books and iOS app development.
Would I like to read the newspaper daily? Absolutely. Would I prefer to release new products throughout the year? Definitely. Yet, I’ve come to the conclusion that there simply isn’t enough time. So, I focus on the activities that will generate the most revenue for the business and income for my family. At the same time, I made cuts in order to preserve my family time, and I’ve maintained focus on a project that I really love, the blog.
Time management is truly a skill that we must learn and master, and it demands that we make difficult cuts. Yet, to save the things that we love, we must sacrifice. I encourage you to go through a similar process and ensure that you’re doing the things that you want and cutting what needs to be cut.
How to Read the News
Online news is both a blessing and a curse. You can get up-to-the minute updates, but oftentimes the initial reporting is wrong. You can read stories from across the country and around the world, yet the stories are usually filtered depending on the bias of a particular news organization. Perhaps the worst part about online news sources is that the vast, vast majority of content is simply republished content from another source.
A few weeks ago, there was an airplane accident in South Carolina in which an Air Force F-16 had a mid-air collision with a Cessna. I read the article on one major network’s website and then went to the local affiliate to get more detailed information. The articles on both sites were the same, verbatim. I went to other major news sites and the exact same thing happened. Each source was hosting the content of this article which was written by a staff AP reporter. What a huge disappointment.
I’ve been subscribing to the Wall Street Journal for the past nine months and I must say, it’s completely changed my views on news. I subscribe for two reasons. First, the quality of the articles improves both my vocabulary and global scope. Instead of reducing language to something commonplace, they elevate the experience by using appropriate and correct words at somewhere around an advanced high school level. It’s refreshing to be reported to as an adult. The range of articles expands my worldview from just where I live to issues and events impacting communities everywhere. Second, I subscribe because they do actual reporting. Generally speaking, the Journal seems to have very high editorial standards and so you don’t find much, if any, conjecture in the articles. It’s nearly impossible to identify the reporter’s thoughts on the issue save in the opinion section. Even better, their reporting is proactive. Instead of waiting for the AP to write the article, they go out and find stories. These stories are ones that no one else is writing. In fact, on the bottom of the front page, every day, is some quirky human interest piece.
Our cultural demand for 24 hour news has put journalists in a very difficult position. It’s an untenable situation that causes them to feel pressured to report something, anything, both to fill time and to beat their competitors. That’s where the newspapers bring redemption. Readers expect updates once per day. That gives journalists time to do research, discover facts and, frankly, to provide content that’s truly compelling. Certainly there are times when I skip articles that were published in the morning because by evening, when I sit down to read the day’s paper, everything has changed. However, for the most part, once per day updates is just right.
Newspapers offer one more key benefit that online news hasn’t quite mastered: a menu of options. News websites are massive and often confusing. A newspaper, even a newspaper’s app, provides a structured, organized menu of articles for you to choose from. They’re grouped by section and organized with some degree of prioritization. It’s through this menu that you find stories that you might not otherwise see and because of that feature, you learn things that you otherwise may not learn. They’re able to do this because instead of filling up screen space with ads, pop-ups, and sleazy clickbait stories, they place other articles in the same category together.
I use my time each day reading the paper as an intellectual exercise in which I expand my mind and my horizons. In all of my years of productivity hacking, I can think of few other habits that have helped me grow faster and resulted in higher rates of satisfaction.
Resolve Conflicts
Far too many of us carry around burdens that we don’t have to endure. Mistakes from the past haunt our daily lives and direct our actions. The guilt remains because, although time has passed since the incident, it remains unresolved. In the spiritual life, we have the Sacrament of Confession. The Sacrament is a time to talk it out, and receive forgiveness for our past mistakes. In our interpersonal lives, we need to make amends. Don’t let your mistakes be enduring.
We’ve all made plenty of mistakes. Some are due to youthfulness, others to stupidity, and others to selfishness and pride. Regardless of the reason, they all point back to us. We’re the cause of the error and that means that it’s up to us to fix it.
The worst possible response to an error is often the one that’s driven by shame: to do nothing. While we may have the capacity, ability, and the contrition to make amends and move on, shame keeps us quiet. It’s just a little too painful, a little too raw for us to breach the topic again. That’s no way to live. We need to summon the courage within, draw from our strength of character, and confront the person. We need to stand up, admit our fault, and sincerely apologize.
You both deserve more. You both deserve the freedom to move on. You both deserve the peace of resolution. Charity demands it and, frankly, mercy is more satisfying than revenge. We tend to get into the worst fights with those whom we are closest with. That means that the ongoing acrimony is preventing both of you from enjoying your friendship. Be bold, be brave, and make amends.
Traveling Parents
Today I want to put out a challenge to travelers everywhere: be kind to parents with young children.
The stresses of travel are only amplified when little ones are in tow. Not only do these poor souls have to wrangle their way through airports, train stations, and travel plazas, they have to keep a close eye on their children, who seek freedom and independence at every possible moment.
Be patient. Let them take their time. Pay them small courtesies. Help where you can. Let them cut you in line or give them your seats.
For those of us who are parents, we’ve been there. For those of us who are not yet parents, you soon will be. Show your humanity and do all you can to ease their traveling burdens.