Gear Every Road Warrior Must Carry

Thule Crossover backpack swallows it all

Gear Every Road Warrior Must Carry

I travel a lot. So much so that I try to not think too much about it and count how many days I spend away from home.  I’m going to download this list of what I consider to be key “must have’s” on any travel.  Whenever you travel away from home for business or pleasure, I guarantee these (or something like them) will make your bag lighter, more efficient and diverse.  This is Gear Every Road Warrior Must Carry. The result is your bag will weigh a lot less and you will be a lot more comfortable.

Thule Crossover backpack 25L

I’ve owned this pack for two years now and won’t ever go back to a traditional laptop bag.  This pack is very functional, easy to stuff full or cinch down when carrying small loads. Personally I like the work, life, play feel of this bag.  It is professional enough for business, but playful enough for personal travel. I also purchased the Macbook Pro sleeve that inserts into the built-in pack pocket.

Thule Gauntlet Macbook Pro Sleeve

Backpack Cost $100

Macbook Pro sleeve Cost $50

iPad with Logitech Bluetooth keyboard

I try to take only my iPad and keyboard for personal trips and business trips that last less than three to four days.  The weight saving is significant compared to dragging a laptop along.  I use Evernote, Dropbox, Skype and Lastpass to help cure the normal challenges you might experience from not having your full computer.  With the Bluetooth keyboard your iPad turns into an email machine during the day and Netflix viewing stand at night.

Price around $80.00

Logitech iPad keyboard

Mophie PowerStation Duo

How many times has your cell phone died and you can’t pull up your travel itinerary, digital boarding pass or use the GPS on the train or subway?  It has happened to me a lot. The Mophie duo gives my iPhone or iPad between two to four charges when starting with a full charge.  I’ve used this magic power pack all across the world.  My son even took it to Disneyland last week so he could stay in contact with us throughout the evening after his phone battery drained.

Price $130.00

Mophie Juicepack for charging your devices

Starbucks Via Italian Roast instant coffee packets

I admit I am a coffee snob. Most hotel coffee tastes like dirty water to me. Starbucks Via packets give me the delight of being at home.  I use them for everything from backpacking to business travel.  More uses for Via packets read this.

Price $10 for a pack of twelve. 

Portable caffeine buzz

Garmin Vivofit

You’ve heard my commercial on this device before, but I find especially for business travel that it’s important to me to track my movement.  A sedentary life leads to a slow death or maybe better said a life I don’t want to live. The Vivofit helps me make sure I am moving enough including walking in airports or during conference calls.

Costs $130.00

Vivofit tracking your daily movement

Advil

I probably don’t need to give you many examples as to how you might use this wonder drug.  I use them for everything from backaches from sitting on the airplane to not being able to sleep.

The cure for any ailment

Express Rocco Slim Fit jeans

My more rugged buddies will make fun of me for adding these to the list. However my wife brought this home for me to try and they have turned out to be perfect.  They are a great combination of casual and dressy.  The important point here is to find a versatile pair of jeans that fit multiple environments.

Price around $80.00

Casual but nice enough for the office

Bluff Works pants

I love these pants.  My friend Stefan Loble started this company from a Kickstarter campaign and now almost two years later, they are killing it. Hear his story on my podcast interview just as he was launching the company. The best part about these pants for me is that the inside pockets are lined with two words: Work & Play.  Although I am wearing them at work with clients I am always aware that both of these realities are available.  I guess it serves as another way I feel I can Stick It to The Man.

Price $93.00

I can easily wear with no iron and throw on a sport coat if needed

GoLite Black Button up

Black is versatile for both nice and chill. You can dress it up or down. This universal GoLite shirt, like Bluffworks, provides the perfect combination of no iron required and I can go out to a business dinner or throw it on with a pair of shorts and flip-flops.

From GoLite’s website, So versatile you won’t know whether you should wear it while doing yard work, or hiking through the rainforests of Costa Rica. 

Price $50.00

Who doesn’t love a man in black?

The North Face Thermoball Remix Vest

A quick zip up vest can cut the wind, shed a few raindrops, used as a pillow or a back support.  I love the versatility of always having this in my backpack. It’s easy to throw on and stuffs down to the size of your fist.  It weighs nothing and eliminates needing to bring a full-sleeved jacket or coat. I still bring it along in the winter as it provides a quick added insulation layer if my outerwear isn’t cutting it alone.

Price $135.00

Easy to stuff and always useful

Bose Noise Canceling headset

I resisted buying these for about ten years.  My wife pushed me over the edge and I wish I had listened to her sooner. Here is what I notice with these.  Yes, they are a bit heavy and even expensive. The benefit is the time spent on an airplane drains your body and mind.  Air travel is noisy.  The frequency and volume of announcements combined with the constant drone of jet engines.  These noise-canceling headphones don’t eliminate the noise all together, but the noise is reduced by upwards of 70%.  Over the course of a full day of air travel, I find that my general mood is significantly improved.  Most importantly that travel fatigue that I thought was just part of the deal is also reduced by 70%.  Feel better, sleep better and be ready to go to work or play once you arrive on the ground.

Price $300.00

Although a bit bulky you’ll sleep like a baby

Other staples in my bag:

  • Running shoes and shorts
  • Garmin 910 GPS watch
  • Spare collar stays
  • Earplugs

I hope you find this list of road warrior gear helpful. I’m sure you have a few in your bag that we need to know about.

Hook us up!  Tell us what we need to add to our list.

Bagger Vance and finding your one true authentic swing

Junuh finding his one true authentic swing

“Yep… Inside each and every one of us is one true authentic swing… Somethin’ we was born with… Somethin’ that’s ours and ours alone… Somethin’ that can’t be taught to ya or learned… Somethin’ that got to be remembered… Over time the world can rob us of that swing… It get buried inside us under all our wouldas and couldas and shouldas… Some folk even forget what their swing was like…”

The Legend of Bagger Vance
Steven Pressfield

Finding Your Swing Again

Do you know where it went?

How long has it been gone?

What took its place?

Do you even believe that you have it anymore?

In the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, Will Smith’s character Bagger Vance, counsels Rannulph Junuh, played by Matt Damon, that all that is standing in his way of winning history’s greatest golf match is finding his swing.

Author Steven Pressfield must have read our mail when he wrote this scene. Junuh was lost. He was lost beneath a heap of personal debris. Life had crushed him by its relentless and violent persistence. He used to play golf. He used to love the game. He used to smile. He used to be the town hero. Now, after a decade of disappointments, hardships, and consequences from character defects, he lost his swing.

Bagger Vance was right

Inside every one of us there is our one true authentic swing, the swing that only we can make. The swing that was installed into our DNA upon inception. Some might call it our sweet spot. Some might say it’s our gifting.

I think Stephen Pressfield was naming something deeper than gifting.

Our one true authentic swing is that thing we do that only we can do the way we do it.

I’ve watched surfers, singers, pianists, speakers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, carpenters, artists, writers, athletes, and chefs, each swing in a way that can only be explained as authentic – somethin’ we was born with.

I’ve tried to explain this phenomenon before. I called it The Illusion of Ease. Pressfield’s explanation through Bagger Vance is better.

Read it again

Somethin’ that’s ours and ours alone… Somethin’ that can’t be taught to ya or learned… Somethin’ that got to be remembered…

Don’t the chill bumps on your arm provide you all the proof you need?  Something that is ours alone, that can’t be taught or learned, but has to be remembered.

What would it take for you to remember your swing?

How long would you have to search through the archives of your soul’s memory to find it again?

Do you realize how the world needs your swing?

No one else has what you have. No one else swings like you swing. No one else can replicate it.  You couldn’t teach someone to swing like you if you tried.  You have to remember.

You have to pull it out of the bag, the closet, down off the shelf and try and find it again. We are waiting for you.  How long must we wait?  How long will you deny the world your swing?  Please reconsider.

I know that your second grade teacher, your mother, your father, your Boy Scout leader, your coach, your boss, or your ex-wife made you believe that your swing was not special.

They were wrong-dead wrong.

As Bagger Vance instructs us of the pending tragedy,

Over time the world can, rob us of that swing.  

Tragic the idea remains if:

  • Michelangelo had not painted the Sistine Chapel
  • Steven Pressfield never penned a book
  • Wes Anderson never stared through the lens of a camera
  • Kelly Slater never got in the ocean
  • Bill Gates never wrote a line of code

I’d love for you to reconsider.

Stop denying it.

Stop burying it.

Stop pretending it isn’t that great.

Find your swing.

Offer it to the world.

Gift us with your one true authentic swing.

What You Should Know Before You Sell Out

I loved Pixar when John Lasseter was directing every film.

I loved Jack Johnson’s music when he was a poor surfer.

The First is often the best

The first version, the first album, the first move, the first season is usually the best.  The quality and soul of version one is often unmatched by the “post success” subsequent versions.

After companies, bands, athletes, writer, entrepreneurs and artist score big they seem to regularly loose their original identity that underpinned their break-out success.

It reminds me of Rocky Balboa from the original 1976 movie. Do you remember when he lived in a cellar, owned two greasy wife beater t-shirts, drank raw eggs in a plastic cup and slept on a cot?  He didn’t have fame, but he had heart.  

Heart drove his training.  

Contrast that image of Rocky to the Lamborghini driving, mega-wealthy, soft champion distracted by what he would be wearing in his next television commercial.

Rocky after he made it big

Count the costs before you cash the check

Before we sell out we should really give some strong consideration to the fact that we might loose The Eye of the Tiger.

A few questions to ponder:

  • Are you ok with that trade?
  • Has the money and the prestige been the goal all along?
  • How much of your present success is because you’ve been the hungry, idealist, dead-set on doing it better than the other guys?
  • How much of your shoe-string budget has forced you to be more innovative?

I have a few friends who are on the verge of this status change.  They have pursued their dream to the point of earning a well-deserved chance to stop punching meat in the freezer.

Will they keep doing version one work even after they make it big?

Real world examples

Were they better before they made it big? 

  • Bon Iver From a Log Cabin to the Grammy’s
    Can he still infuse his music with the melancholy angst that he found in his secluded Wisconsin cabin?  Now he has Grammy albums, fame, distraction and likely not a lot of solitude.  Now that he records in a fancy studio, how will it sound?
  • M. Night Shyamalan Film Maker
“I see dead people”.
    Do you remember his 1999 breakout film The Sixth Sense?  This Indian-American screenwriter’s early work is studied by film students as great works of art.  Today, he is producing mega-blockbusters for Walt Disney Studios.  Which movie would you rather go see?
  • Mossimo Beachwear Designer
    
In 1986, he started making shorts for beach volleyball and schlepping them up and down the California coast.  As his website states, They gained notoriety for their humble, grassroots start.  Now you can find his clothing line in every Target superstore across America.  Is the original aloha vibe still alive?

Walking Conference Calls: Optimal Performance Hack

147.11 Miles While on Conf Calls (Vivofit)

Get Paid to Walk & Talk on Conference Calls

Why sit at your desk for every hour of daily conference calls? Why not walk while you talk? Nobody said you had to sit and stare at your monitor.I walked 147.11 miles last month while on work conference calls. I guess you could call this a Life Hack.  After I told a few friends about this newly discovered Stick It to The Man technique their response was

“You have to write a blog about that”.

Before I divulge my secrets to getting paid to walk and talk on conference calls, let me offer you some comedic relief.  If you spend hours each day on conference calls then you need to read this article but first you need to watch this video from Tripp & Tyler.

Motivated to move

Now that you are motivated to find a better way to participate or even lead conference calls, let me help you.  Back in January while sitting in a meeting in frigid New Jersey, I caught a glimpse of a guy outside walking the parking lot.  I asked my co-workers if they knew what he was doing.

Over the course of the last year they watched him faithfully get outside and walk up and down every row of the parking lot.  As a result he lost over 100 lbs.  While they sat back and ate their fried chicken and stuffed risotto pasta, he walked and walked and walked himself to better health.

Removing the perceived obstacles

Walking a parking lot might sound awful to you.  You wish you could walk on a nice sunny trail in the woods.  Maybe you are a treadmill person who would rather walk and watch TV on the monitor?

I get it.

The idea of going out and walking a parking lot at lunchtime means you have to:

  • Have a pair of running shoes to change into
  • Put on deodorant after and before
  • Bundle up because the weather isn’t ideal today
  • (Insert other excuses here)

You could look at it this way or you could simply stand up from your desk, walk outside in your work clothes, with your work shoes, with your work dress coat and get your butt walking.  If you must have those items above, then leave them at your office with a spare set in your car.

If you know what your excuses will be, then you can eliminate them in advance of the resistance.

Unspoken rules are a myth

We often live under a set of rules that no one actually ever spoke or wrote down.  We sit during every conference call because we work in an office. We sit in the conference room or our office because that is what the social norm is.

Everyone else is sitting.
I guess I am supposed to be sitting.

Employee handbook

Try and find the section in your employee handbook titled Conference Call Requirements.  What you can’t find that section?  It’s because there isn’t one.

For the first eighteen years of my working career, I was convinced that my employee handbook mandated the following:

  1. You must be sitting while on a conference call.  You must sit at your desk, in the conference room, at the airport, or in your car.
  2. If you are not sitting, then you must be distracted and not providing value to the discussion.
  3. Every employee will take notes while attending the conference call and therefore each employee needs to be sitting.

Conclusion: There is not a rule that says you have to sit

Professionalism remains important

If you are going to attempt to break the rules of the herd, then there is a way to do this well.  There are also a few ways to really screw this up.

1) Is it ok with you if I walk while we talk?

Start with asking this question and ask for the other people’s support before you begin walking during the call. By gaining their agreement, then you are honoring the importance of the conference call and their time.  You do not want your co-workers to feel that you are not paying attention or are out goofing off picking up your dry cleaning while talking with them.

Key phrases: If you don’t mind or is it ok with you

2) You may hear some background noise while we are talking

It is critical that you communicate to the other people on the call that they may hear background noise and inform them exactly what they may hear during the call.  I live in a neighborhood that is constantly building new homes.  In the background there are dogs barking, dump trucks passing by and other sounds that can be distracting at times.

I have found that if you communicate what these sounds are in advance, people are much more comfortable knowing than guessing.

I’ve found this to be helpful when in an airport as well.

“Sam I am in an airport, you may hear some background noise as I am boarding a flight to xxx.
I hope this won’t be too distracting for you? “

3) Use an earpiece or wired earbuds

It is much more difficult to talk while holding your phone against your ear.  Secondly the outdoor environment reduces the noise quality significantly.  I have found that if I plug in my earbuds or an earpiece then I can maximize my listening and talking volume and therefore not reduce my level of participation.

My new friend Matthew Kruchko recommends the ERA by Jawbone.  He too is a home office, business traveling family guy who is on the move a lot and swears by this Bluetooth earpiece.

4) Use the Mute button

You must learn to use the mute button.  Most people would improve the conference call experience for others if they would learn to use the mute function.  Even if you are sitting at your desk or in a conference room you should be using the mute feature a lot anyway.

I have been on hundred’s of conference calls (like the video portrays) where people’s dogs are barking, kids are asking for a snack and they hammer on their keyboard.

5) Not every call is a Walk & Talk candidate

Here is a list of call types that I do not apply this Life Hack to:

  • My boss for our weekly call
  • Prospective clients
  • First time interviews
  • All company meetings
  • Any call that I am leading that requires me to share my screen or present information

Consequences of doing this wrong

If you use your best professional judgment then you can make this work for you every single week for the rest of your career.  Misjudge the time, place and approach to this and immediately people will think you are not paying attention, not working hard, not professional, disinterested and not committed to your work.

Do this well and you can Stick-It to the Man with every mile.

Garmin Vivofit

I measured every mile and steps walked with my new fitness band from Garmin-Vivofit.  As they say, you can only improve what you measure.

The Vivofit measures every step you take each day, monitors your sleep, and scolds you with a flashing red bar when you’ve sat too long.  I would highly recommend investigating a few of these fitness bands to both help motivate as well as measure your miles.

Still not convinced?

Here are a few more resources to help convince you that sitting is killing us one conference call at a time.

Nilofer Merchant’s TedTalk 2013 –Got a meeting? Take a walk

Podcast interview with Nilofer Merchant-Sitting is killing us

Harvard Business Review: Sitting is the Smoking of Our Generation

How Sitting All Day is Damaging Your Body-LifeHacker

You Can’t Be Brilliant Every Time

Mining for Gold (photo by Creative Commons)

Everything isn’t epic.

Everything isn’t brilliant and better than the last.

We aren’t always remarkable.

Some days are simple, mundane and even average.

Yet our western culture is bannered with headlines that suggest otherwise.

I know titles sell, attract attention and shock us into investigating further.

The number of headlines that race across my screen making outlandish promises is causing me to not believe any of them.

  • 10 immediate steps to improve
  • 15 ways to be awesome
  • 3 reasons you keep failing
  • 7 simple things to fix everything

I don’t believe them.

  • Not every idea is going to work
  • Not every sale is going to close
  • Not every blog is going to have hundreds of thousands of followers
  • Not every client is going to get great results
  • Not every run is going to feel fast
  • Not every new hire is going to stay

Digging for gold

It reminds me of when you buy an entire album from your favorite band. Yeah I know most of the time we only buy the one song we love, but that feeds my example even more.

When you listen to the whole album you usually find one to maybe two songs that you really love.  The rest of them are fine, but they don’t strike a note in you like the others.

Why is that?

Why does the artist ship twelve or fourteen songs on an album when clearly only one or two are super solid?

He had to write twelve songs to find the gold one.

Were the others a waste of his time and talents?

No, instead we should consider that this is the process of extracting the art from within each of us.  In order to find the gold, you have to bust through a bunch of rocks in order to find a vein.

The artist wrote twelve songs in search of the one.

He knew immediately when he wrote it.  This one, the golden mother load, magically flowed out of him with ease.

The other twelve were just the prelude to the treasure.

I think this is how we should view our life’s work or as Pam Slim names it as our Body of Work.  Stop being eluded by the latest headline, frankly some of those writers are offering self-promotion more than substance.

Be willing to do the work, to ship your art without fear and know that every now and again you will find the gold you were looking for.

In the meantime, embrace that the other twelve versions are getting you closer each day to the brilliant one.

You are brilliant; you just need to keep digging.

Not For Sale. How Not to Sell Out

Cabo San Lucas-Mexico NOT FOR SALE

This message screams to every entrepreneurial tourist from the hillside of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Not For Sale

Why does this landowner feel compelled to post a 15″ x 92″ billboard facing the Pacific Ocean bay with capital letters stating his position?  I think I know why.  Put yourself in the landowner’s shoes for a minute.  He is saving a hundred phone calls from needing to be returned or ignored.

Here is the scene

Every rich guy that comes for seven days of self-indulgence sees this choice plot of dirt (see below picture) and cannot imagine that a shantytown would occupy this hillside

I’m going to call that guy and offer him a price he can’t refuse.

1784 phone calls later, the land owner must have cussed his way through painting this sign NO se Vende.  I laugh thinking that most of the phone calls likely came in English and his native tongue adds the explanation mark he intends.

Isn’t there something honorable about saying “Not For Sale”?  In a world where everything is for sale, there is still one guy who is saying NO.

You can’t have what is mine.  It’s too valuable to me.

I’d rather hang a hammock and drink a cooler of beer with my buddies than take your money.  

I am already wealthy in relationships, lifestyle and fulfillment. 

Go buy another plot of dirt and build your hotel. 

This one is No Se Vende. 

The view from next door-Pacific Ocean

How to stick it to The Man today

Joy Bucket-Key Ingredient in Regularly Sticking the Man

Two quick requests before I divulge my secrets on how to Stick It to the Man.

  1. I’m usually pretty upbeat in my writing. If this one seems a bit grim in the intro, hang on to the end for the sunshine to break through.
  2. Please don’t take this article to Human Resources and blow the whistle on us non-conformists.  I’m not going to give you advice on how to cheat on your expense report, pretend you are working when you are at the baseball game, or the like. This is a more covert approach.

Working for The Man

For a lot of years, I worked too much and played too little. My kids were little, my marriage was fragile, my career was young, my financial resources were limited, and my vacation time amounted to less than ten days a year.

If you’ve been working in your career for more than five-to-eight years, this idea of The Man will make sense to you.

If you’re married, have kids, a mortgage, and some general desire to “be successful,” this story will not need a lot of translation.

You’re already feeling the angst of The Man.

Get ready to revolt.

Who is The Man?

The phrase “stick it to the Man” encourages resistance to authority and essentially means “fight back” or “resist,” either openly or via sabotage. (Wikipedia)

The Man isn’t our boss, our company, or our customers; the Man is bigger than all of them. The Man is more intrusive than the government. He is more controlling and persuasive than any one person, organization, or individual in power.

The Man is

  • Mortgage payments
  • Deadlines
  • Obligations galore
  • The pressure to have green grass
  • The sticker on our windshield reminding us to not exceed 3,000 miles before the next oil change
  • The owners manual recommendations on everything we own
  • The house we live in
  • The Jones’s who live next door
  • The pressure to give our kids a better life than we had
  • The cars we drive
  • The PTA
  • The pressure to live an epic life
  • The word “should”

About eight years ago, the weight and pressure of working for The Man started making my knees buckle. With every additional grain of sand added, every increase in PSI (pounds per square inch) on my chest seemed to be foreplay for an inevitable implosion.

Kind of grim, huh?

Come on, haven’t you felt this same stuff yourself? If you had the pen, you could tell us plenty about your woes with The Man.

Remember, hang on to the end.

Transition the balance of power

The Man wasn’t standing over me every day imposing his dogmatic regime. I was allowing my obligatory beliefs and my allegiance to him to control my actions, decisions, and priorities.

How do I stop living under the weight of what I’m supposed to do and start living what I want to do?

How do you stick it to The Man?

You have to start with a quick list.  Title it “What I would do today if I was going to revolt to the system of The Man?”

Let me help you get started.  Think of all the stuff you say you are going to do if you were independently wealthy and didn’t have to go to work every day.  What about that list of adventures you keep saying you are going to take?  How about those Life List items you have vowed to complete. Write them all down.

If The Man didn’t have me, I’d…..

  • Watch the sunrise every day
  • Fly fishing in Montana where Brad Pitt caught that monster trout in A River Runs Through It.
  • Travel to Italy and spend a month taste-testing the countryside
  • Live in a shack on the beach of Hawaii
  • See Game 7 of the World Series

You probably don’t need a lot of help with the list. You can see my list here.

Here is the bottom line:

We are going to close the gap between the lives we wish we had and the ones we are living today. We blame it on The Man, but we are about to remove him from the picture.

Start Small

When the Man had me down, I blamed my lack of adventures on him. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough everything. I had this MSR Pocket Rocket stove stored in my basement that I had never used. I resented the fact that I hadn’t used it on some big multi-day trip where I brewed up Starbucks Via packets in my tent vestibule.

I decided I’d pluck it out of the basement storage and put it in the back of my car.  Maybe I’d find some way to use it.

MSR Pocket Rocket

If it weren’t for my friend Morgan and his Joy-to-use ratio idea, this stove would have stayed dormant in the basement.

His shitty grin said,

Why do you care if you only use that stove on the back of your truck instead of on a bike trip in France?
The Joy-to-use ratio is all that matters.

Translated:

How much Joy you derive from using it each time matters more than how many times you use it or where you use it.

I started using the little joy bomb stove after a bike ride or a run.  During lunchtime at work, I started going out to my car  just to fire it up and brew up some coffee. I started Sticking The Man anytime I could find an excuse to light a match and boil some water.

I was winning. With every BTU I was getting revenge.  I was standing over Him for a change.

My Joy meter went up and my oppression meter was going down.

Take that!

Insert Joy Bucket

I had this white 10-gallon Home Depot bucket that I bought to use for Triathlons. I would stuff my towel, helmet, goggles, etc. into the bucket and use it in the transition area when switching between race legs. I also had this file of stickers that I was saving for the future when I could figure out what to do with them.

Bland bucket plus cool stickers = Joy Bucket

I plastered the stickers in a mosaic across its white canvas and it transformed into certifiable coolness. I took all the little pieces of gear that I had accumulated for the hopeful adventures that weren’t taking place and dumped them into the bucket:

  • MSR Pocket Rocket stove
  • Cook set
  • Petzl headlamp
  • Shackleton tea brew
  • Spare running socks
  • Stainless steel wine glass
  • Ramen Noodles
  • Starbucks Via
  • Sunscreen
  • Wool gloves from the Dollar store
  • Bike inner tubes, tire tools, flashers,
  • Spice kit
  • Pocket knife
  • 1/2 lb. of white minute rice
  • French Press & coffee grounds
  • Toothbrush, deodorant, tooth paste
The Man can’t keep me down

Here is what the Joy Bucket has become:

  • Portable anticipation
  • Serendipitous-expectant-possibility  
  • My favorite things assembled and waiting, short, small bursts of use

You see The Man doesn’t stand a chance anymore when his lopsided influence over my life has been diminished.   Now fifteen minutes on the back of my trunk can yield stories that last years. Ask some of my buddies about the time’s I brewed up a cup of Ramen or a French Press cup of Joe.

The Oppressed became Kings.

Summary

The Man only has as much power and influence as we permit. He is far less of a tyrant than we believe him to be. Find small ways to stick-it-to-him every day. I’ve gone fishing at 6 am and to my desk by 8:30 am but refused to wash my fishy hands just so I could smile each time I got a whiff of their odor.

He can only have what you allow him.

What would you put in your Joy-Bucket?

When are we going to fire up a brew together?

How Would You Measure Your Impact Without a Chart?

Photo by Holden McHugh

If you’re the alleyway graffiti artist from the photo my son took in Paris, how do you measure impact?

Our world is finitely measured.

Charts, graphs, metrics, this vs. that, goals, targets, and baselines.

Your impact cannot be plotted and measured on a chart.

Impact is so much greater and yet so allusive to always quantify.

Big Data Drives Big Charts

If you’re a musician then you have been programmed to believe that ticket sales or downloads are how your effectiveness or success is measured.  Where is the impact meter on your screen that shows how your music influenced another musician to dig deeper to find the lyrics buried inside them?

If you’re a writer, book sales are your master.

If you’re a sales person, year-to-date sales performance is your dogmatic boss.

If you’re a CEO, profit for shareholders keeps you awake at night.

If you’re a (fill in your place in the story), (then fill in your metric).

There are clear elements that belong on a chart like sales, profit, average order, cost of sale, number of downloads, total new customers and the like.  For every plotted data point there is a more human sub-text story of impact that usually gets ignored, dismissed or forgotten.

How would you measure your impact?

Our impact, the real deep way that we each shape and influence the world cannot be measured on a chart.

I had lunch with a friend over the weekend and we talked about this idea of impact. He wrote a book a year or two ago and it wasn’t a NY Times Best Seller.  He threw everything he had at it: video, online, radio, and social media support.

But it did not break any sales, download or viral video records.

Are the measured results the only verdict on his work?

Despite the record smashing desires, he is still hearing echoes about the impact that his book is having on individual people.  The stories that are still come in are about how his book is making a difference in one or ten or twenty people’s lives.

Should that be enough?  In the business world, you have to make a profit or you simply have a hobby.  Profits, progress, and popularity are a necessary ingredient to get a chance to write your next book or keep the doors of your software company open.

I want to highlight the tension between achieving the required profits and digging to measure the impact of your life and work.

If you threw out the charts and graphs, how would you attempt to plot your effectiveness and impact?

You might be surprised how the sub story of impact is more significant than you know.

The Unashamed Truth About Leadership

Pacific Ocean meets Columbia River

It’s difficult some days to know the way to the right path.

It’s a challenge to know what the effect is of the conversation I just had with an employee.  I used a coaching and sports analogy to attempt to communicate my idea.  But maybe I just sounded like another chowder-head using a sports analogy.

When I took the car away from my 18 year old today, was that the right thing to do?  How much patience should I extend and how firm should I make the boundary in the sand?

I don’t know.

Learning to lead without feedback

I had a few glasses of wine last night with some good friends and we talked about this idea of stepping into what we call “Young Kingship”.  Yes I’m entrusted with a lot to manage, care for and grow but the truth is that it is an experiment.

It is an experiment in outcomes.

Science experiments usually consist of a couple of key factors:

  1. Try something different
  2. Give it some time
  3. See what happens

I run experiments every day at work, in life and at play.  Yet it’s still an experiment, an unknown, and a risk as we wait for the outcome.  Will the employee(s) that I lead embrace the invitation for action vs. in-action?  Will my son understand the lesson is about respect and not about a clean car?

Most of the time I don’t know what will happen.  Most of the time I move forward in spite of a clear distinctive path.  I used to wait, pause, ponder, poll the room and then decide what to do.

Leadership is lonely

I would wait around for a real-time poll to measure the audience’s reaction to my leadership.

I wasn’t leading.  I was trying to build fans.  The irony was that they weren’t willing to follow me, as they could smell the fear in me.  Now I’ve learned that the more I lead, the more lonely it becomes out on point.

No “good job”.

No “thanks dad”.

No “thanks so much for doing that”.

Instead I hear crickets chirping.

Lewis & Clark

I often picture Lewis and Clark on their epic adventure trying to unlock a pathway to the Pacific Ocean through local waterways.

Can you imagine how lonely they must have felt?

Two years of stumbling, mumbling and fumbling their way forward.  I bet they couldn’t recall if the mission was a mythical story or reality.  They must have felt crazy some days and heroic an hour later.

They nudged their way west as they experimented with another dead-end, another shortcut turned foolish and a second winter stuck sipping whiskey waiting for the river to thaw.

Dollar Cost Averaging

If I judge my parenting, career performance or leadership on any specific day, I might just throw in the towel.

The experiment process allows us the time to await the results over a period of days, weeks, years and decades.

Lewis and Clark found the passage to the Pacific Ocean in two years.  It took them another two years to get home to tell anybody about it.

My children’s children will likely be a better measurement of my parenting success and shortcomings.

For my employees, I am leaning on the idea that the best judgement of my effectiveness should be measured over the course of their entire career.

I have to remind myself not to pull out the grade card and tally up my score each day.  The unashamed truth about leadership is that we don’t always feel confident about what we’re doing.  We should keep moving forward in spite of that uncertainty and counting on Dollar Cost Averaging to make up for the bad days.

Keep going

Play More with Your Kids: Scooter Hero’s in Denver

Scooters in Denver

I never play enough, but when I do it’s usually pretty sweet.

The irony is that I love to talk about playing but I actually spend more time dreaming about it than actually doing it.

Although my play plots low on the line graph for overall time spent each year, I’m told I’m pretty good at it.

My daughter and I hit the road this summer and meandered across the Front Range of Colorado for 48 hours.   I’ve done this a lot with my son over the years but my daughter and I had never dirt-bagged it together like this.

We hit the Denver Natural History Museum, road-side camped above Boulder, swam in the historic El Dorado Springs pool and rented a scooter in downtown Denver for a couple of hours.

We had no real plan

None of this was planned. We just moved from one idea to the next and let the day unfold. The truth is I/we pray a lot about what the next step should be.   It’s not always crystal clear but a lot of the times it’s perfectly evident which path we should pursue.

Found on Yelp

I’m a big Yelp fan when it comes to finding where-to-eat and in this case renting a scooter (what I would have originally called a moped-old school I guess?).

Here is what I loved about Dave at ScootoursDenver, he started the business for fun.  Dave started the company because he had always had ideas swirling around in his head for companies to start or ideas to launch and he choose to just do it.

The bottom line

We romped around downtown Denver on a hot summer day for hours. We rode through city parks, stopped for lunch, shot video and had a phenomenal daddy-daughter experience together.  Check out the photo gallery below.

Don’t make playing so hard.

Just go for it.

If you’re ever in Denver, check out Dave’s ScooToursDenver.

Keep going.