Wordy Paper #4

Statistics: the theory of a lot of a lot and a little of a little. I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately.

To start this train of thought, I've always considered myself to be pretty average. Height wise, style wise, intelligence wise. I don't really see myself outlying in any statistical analysis. Me: average-ish.

A persistent thought has come alive in my brain though about this whole being average and becoming an outlyer. It really has to do with daily effort.

Let's say you have a job, and every day you go in an do your job. Great, after two, five, ten years, I imagine you will have gotten pretty good at that job. Right? Well, maybe.

Let's say you learn how to play the guitar and you learn some of your favorite songs and you are able to play those songs again and again for five, ten, 15 years. After 15 years, you're bound to be really good at the guitar, right? Well, I imagine you'll be pretty good at playing those songs.

If you look at the effort applied to learn that job, learn those songs, and the inertia required to finally build the momentum to feel comfortable with those at first very difficult challenges, you'll realize that it took a lot of energy out of you. Once we begin feeling comfortable with those things that at first seemed very difficult, there is this sense of accomplishment, and the drive to keep going begins to fade a little bit. At first, we were motivated to reach our big goals and get great at what we are trying to accomplish, and if enough effort is put forth, we may eventually crash into our goal. We did it! Phew.

This, I feel is the great parabola we see in statistical analysis. Almost everyone seeks to be better at something, sets their sights on a goal and puts forward some work to reach it. There are outliers who don't even have a goal. Some set a goal but do nothing. Most of us will set a goal and put forward work to try and accomplish that goal, and many of us will actually hit our goals! Oh yes, it's true. I know it's true because I am average, and I've reached many goals in my life. That means that almost everyone has accomplished that same thing.

So who is the outlier here? These are the people who keep up their intensity. They may have small goals, but those small goals are to push them toward bigger goals. They stay on fire.

Using the guitar example, they may have a goal to learn their favorite song, but their bigger goal is to be able to perform a show in front of an audience. So they learn some songs, they learn theory, they practice new things, and continue to challenge themselves until they completely transform their habits around the guitar. While the one person can play their favorite songs frontwards and backwards, the more intense person can play ANYONE'S favorite songs frontwards and backwards. These are the people you think were born with a natural gift for music because they create magic when they pick up the guitar. No, they weren't born with natural talent. They were just hungry to be great, and had focused intensity over a long period of time.

I'll admit, that is pretty much totally ripped off from Dave Ramsey: Focused Intensity over Time multiplied by God. I believe this. I've given myself challenges where I had to focus on something longer than a day, a week, a month. By the end of the month of two, I've changed myself. I've changed my abilities. Napoleon Dynamite would finally get some skills.

I feel like I'm on the cusp of another big opportunity where it comes to my current job. As a part-time, lowly staff member, I'm not particularly seen as a key team member, but I feel like I can change that. All it will take from me is focused intensity over time. I honestly feel that with an applied daily effort to improve our business, we will see drastic changes within the year. That is a pretty short timeline.

The areas I will need help with are 1) Finding accountability, 2) Guidance from leadership, and 3) Stepping out of my comfort bubble to make changes that need to be made. Currently, my job has the key players who make all the decisions, and I'm just the lowly drone who does the bidding. My goal is simply to make myself know in the organization. To force myself into the key conversations about the company's future, and to act when given the opportunity to.

So there you go, the challenge for today is to focus my intensity on becoming a key player and taking on more responsibility. Starting today. Today is the day I move up the stat curve, closer and closer to an outlier.

Wordy Paper #3

Sometimes it takes a moment to come up with a topic. What will I do to be better today? What did I do yesterday to better my tomorrow? Who can I help? What am I trying to accomplish?

My answer at the moment, I don't know. I've got a cup of coffee in my hand, I have a chest cold and a headache, debating when I should go try to wake my daughter up for school, and in all honesty, don't have a driving desire to take over the world today. 

But wordy paper is wordy paper. It symbolizes that despite my daily obstacles, there's still a little bit I can do to make today better. To make myself better, and the world around me brighter. Gosh, look at my optimistic outlook on this particular day.

Maybe today is the day I bring up getting a raise at work? Maybe today is the day I meet someone who will change the trajectory of my career. Maybe I will have a very tasty lunch. The possibilities are endless, and sometimes all you can hope to do is step into the day with purpose and your eyes open. 

That is my plan today. And I'm confident it will turn out to be a pretty good day. Unless it doesn't. 

Wordy paper #2

I confess that I listen to Dave Ramsey regularly. Even though I'm married to a bleeding heart liberal, and we have student loan debt, I find daily motivation through many things he says. Even though it is not his original idea, I have to give him credit for introducing the "Wheel of Life" concept to me. This struck home for me because I've been trying to set personal goals and find areas to improve my life, and this wheel helps me identify specific areas I should be focused on.

To quickly summarize, the wheel of life is comprised of 7+ categories: Physical, Intellectual, Spiritual, Financial, Social, Family, and Career. At least that is the wheel I heard about. In looking it up, everyone seems to have their own categories mixed in, which is fine.

The concept is, you put these categories into a circle, and rate them all from 0 to 10. For example, in my life, my physical and family are both 8's, my intellectual, social and financial are around 6, and my spiritual and career are around a 4. When you put those numbers into the wheel, it sure doesn't look like a wheel. It looks like a nasty bumpy ride down the road.

Here are some of the things I'm planning on doing about this though. 

1) Physical: I've been running nearly every day for the last six months. I've created tangible goals with timelines, found accountability partners, created challenges for myself and others, and overall have been feeling great on a personal health level. Wow, what a perfect model to set for my other categories, right?? 

2) Family: I continue to call myself a stay-at-home dad, even though my daughter has gone off to kindergarten and doesn't play with me anymore. Even so, I continue to play a strong supporting role in keeping my child alive and engaged, keeping my wife fed and relatively happy. Some of the goals I have in this category are to i) date my wife more, ii) spend more time playing with my daughter, and iii) make sure we sit down to family dinner around the table every night. So important.

3) Intellectual: My goal lately has been to be reading motivational books to help point me in the direction my listless brain needs to go. The local library should be a good resource, but I've found it unhelpful so far. This leads me to purchasing the books I hear about, and I can't necessarily afford to buy books all the time. So, it's slow yet steady. I've been reading at least one non-fiction book and at least one fiction book every month. That seems to keep me balanced.

4) Social: I have my core group of friends that I call or contact at regular intervals. That is part of my current goal. The reason this category is a 6 though is because I don't have many social connections in close proximity to me. The list of people I know in my own town is short. My goal in social is to develop relationships with the people around me in my community. To build a network of people I know and can feel comfortable talking to in my own town. There are many avenues to get there, but it requires effort on my part to actually initiate conversations, get out there and make friends. Yikes. That is scary.

5) Financial: This category is so complicated in our lives. My wife and I have been married for a long time, but have always been denied a comfortable lifestyle due to extending into doctor school and internships and now that she has a real career, we have a mess to clean up. The good news is, we have a plan, we've been making progress and the needle seems to move every month we continue our plan. Right now, this category is a 6, but next year, maybe it will be a 7. Or 10. 

6) Spiritual: We do not go to church at this stage of our lives. We've talked about it. There are so many benefits to attending church, getting engaged in the community, giving, etc. We just haven't made an effort to attend a church in a long time. Action requires effort and doing new things is scary. We still have faith, bless our food and thank the Lord for our blessings, but there is no doubt we are lacking in this category. I am, anyway. I shouldn't speak for my wife in this particular category. She has always had a strong faith, so I'll leave her out of my category on this one. 

7) Career: This too is complicated. I long to contribute to the economy. I want to make a difference at the place I work part-time. But I also recognize that my wife has a career category of something like a 10. She is awesome, makes a huge difference, and will one day take over the world. In keeping a balance, I feel like I play a strong supporting role for her, and in order to keep her strong, I need to make sure things are solid at home. This is the balance we've struck as a family and I love it. But it also limits what I am willing to do outside the home myself. But that doesn't mean I can't be an effective team member at my job. It just means I have to maximize my time while I'm working for them. It means that when I come up with an idea, I need to move on it and get it implemented as quickly and efficiently as possible. There are so many areas I can grow this business, but it starts with me taking the initiative and working when it's time to work. In the longer term, I have ambitions of running my own life, owning my own career. Surrounding myself with an unstoppable team. But in the meantime, I will continue to hone my skills to help someone else fulfill their dreams.

That's it. My wheel of life for the world to see. 

Wordy Paper #1

There is an author out in the world today that suggests everyone should write a blog. Enter a new post every day and you will 1) never have writer's block and 2) constantly be improving. Hmm, it's worth a shot.

When I first began my journey of being a stay at home dad, I made a point to tap away at the computer as often as possible. I often repeated "words on paper, dirty paper!" Every day. That's what I wanted to name this blog: Dirty Paper. But I realized that should I ever run for president one day, having spoon's dirty paper all over the internet may not be the best thing. So I'll provide something even more scandalous: Wordy Paper. Far more treacherous since who knows what I'm actually going to say.

Here's the good news about wordy paper; it's not for you. It's for me. I want to write, and I'm going to write, and hopefully by writing my thoughts, my goals, my do's and don'ts, I'll steadily improve my living, hoping, dreaming and possibly even accomplishing. That is the goal.

So, I might as well actually start today. What are the over-arching things in life I'm trying to accomplish and what are my daily goals that will help my overall progress?

I've been putting a lot of thought into my part-time, limited responsibility job. I work for a winery. It makes good wine, no question. I can't help but wonder if there is anything I can do to help make this a successful place. Can I single-handedly, as a part-time limited responsibility person increase the sales, spread the word, build the wine club, create devoted and loyal followers and overall change our position in this saturated wine world? Single-handedly, no. But I feel confident that if given the right team, and stepping up to the plate and taking more responsibility, building the brand through my own personal network and actions, organizing events and frankly, making an effort, a strong following will begin to build.

So, what is something I can do TODAY? I'm actually going in to work today. Also, side note, today is my birthday. Can you believe it?

Today I will network with other tasting rooms in the town. Spread the good word on what we have, find out, more importantly, what they have. A person's name is the sweetest sound in the world to them. Meet, network, and spread the joy. That is what I must do today. On my birthday.