My One Word for 2021
Since 2014, I’ve picked a One Word theme for the year. (Last year was 2 words, but you get the idea.)
This year’s word relates to a question I’m obsessed with:
Where does sustained success come from?
To put it another way:
Where does creativity come from? How can creativity be sustained? What does it take to make something of value? What does it take to get things done?
Jerry Seinfeld on Work
Tim Ferriss’s podcast is hit or miss for me, with more misses than hits. His best interviews are when he doesn’t know his guest personally and is somewhat intimidated by him or her. In those cases he postures and shows off a lot less than at other times, and tends to ask genuinely curious, perceptive questions. This brings to mind what one of Jim Collins’s mentors had to say to him one time: “you need to spend less time trying to be interesting and more time trying to be interested.” (I think one of the best interviews Mr. Ferriss has ever done was with Frank Blake of Home Depot—a good example of being interested, especially in his probing and curious questions about prayer.)
The recent Tim Ferriss interview with Jerry Seinfeld was one of his better ones, probably because they spent a lot of time talking about a subject that both men are interested in: what it takes to get work done.
Jerry Seinfeld is a disciplined writer, which is the only reason he’s been able to thrive as a stand-up comic decade after decade. Here’s Jerry talking about the process:
“But my writing sessions used to be very arduous, very painful, like pushing against the wind in soft, muddy ground with a wheelbarrow full of bricks. And I did it. I had to do it because there’s just, as I mentioned in the book, you either learn to do that or you will die in the ecosystem. I learned that really fast and really young, and that saved my life and made my career, that I grasped the essential principle of survival in comedy really young. That principle is: you learn to be a writer. It’s really the profession of writing, that’s what standup comedy is. However you do it, anybody, you can do it any way you want, but if you don’t learn to do it in some form, you will not survive.”
“If you don’t learn to do it in some form, you will not survive.”
—Jerry Seinfeld, talking about the discipline of hard work
Putting Your Work In
You see this same principle in the lives of all professional athletes who make it. Sure, there are some people with talent who light up the highlight reels for a season or two, but there are no examples of athletes who stay on top for a career who don’t put in the work every day. There will always be Johnny Manziel types whose natural talent bring them fleeting success, but unless they learn to work, they will never be anything other than fleeting successes.
Recently I came across an interview with NFL quarterback Russell Wilson in which he said this:
“I gotta earn my career, you know, and how you earn it is by the approach that you take every day. There’s no such thing as days off.
“Someone asked me the other day….“How many days a year do you [work]”? The question is, How many days I don’t. That’s the real question. To me, it’s a 365 day lifestyle—it’s a lifestyle choice. I may take 2 days off a year…. That lifestyle allows you to play for a long time….
“Pretty much every day I wake up around 5….I always pray first and then I’m going to the facility or the gym and putting my work in.”
I don’t know of any professional athletes who have made it a career who wouldn’t say the same thing. Natural talent is what gets you in the door, but it’s hard work that allows you to stay.
My Life As an Artist
Several years ago now, I came to a conclusion about my work, and that is that my work is primarily creative. What I mean by that is that my primary task is to create something out of nothing every single week. I am—in my own peculiar way—an artist.
I know it sounds pretentious, but conceiving my job as a creative endeavor has been helpful to me. Every single week I stand up in front of a group of people—during the pandemic it’s been a much smaller group than before!—and preach. Preaching, to me, is about creating. Where there was nothing, now there is something.
I have the natural gifts to be a preacher—I have a good memory and I’m poised in front of groups of people. But those gifts can only help you to preach a good sermon once. But preaching once isn’t the job—preaching week after week after week, year after year after year—that’s the job. It is not possible to overstate just how hard it is to do this well.
And there is no way to do it well without putting in the work.
But let me confess something to you—that kind of work does not come easy to me.
My Two Best Sermon Series Yet
In 2020 I think I preached two excellent sermon series, in my opinion the best I’ve yet preached: Genesis (in two parts) to begin the year and Revelation to end it. I feel as if I actually understand those books now, and I felt like I was able to share that understanding with others in a clear and compelling way.
When I ask myself why and where that insight came from, there is one clear answer:
I put in the work, and God blessed it.
“Just Read for One Hour, You Idiot”
The kind of books I read to support these two particular sermon series are not quick reads—they require lots of concentration. I’m normally a quick reader, but with these books 20 pages might take me well over an hour. And so I committed to getting in one hour of reading per day, no matter what.
One hour of concentrated reading may not sound like much, but for me it was about keeping a sustainable pace, and allowing the hours to accumulate. “Just sit down and focus for one hour, you idiot” was the kind of self-talk I’d use, and it worked.
Consistency Is More Important Than Intensity
One of the things I really believe is that consistency is more important than intensity. Anyone can throw himself into a problem with frenzied determination for one day, but one day’s determined work is not what most problems need. Rather, most problems are solved with sustained, relentless focus, day after day after day.
To put it another way, the tortoise always beats the hare.
When You’re More Hare Than Tortoise
The problem is that I’m not naturally a tortoise—I’m naturally a hare. And in the age of the internet, I have to fight hard to keep my rabbit-like attention from flitting from one shiny carrot to another.
Deep Work
I know that Cal Newport is right, and that in a world of distraction the ability to give focused attention to the problem in front of you will make you that much more valuable.
I know he’s right, and I know that the only way I can survive in the game is if I put in the work.
At this stage in my life, this is more true than ever, because, by the way:
I have a book manuscript due to the publisher by April 1.
Jerry Seinfeld, Russell Wilson, Robert Caro
I think it’s because I’m not naturally a tortoise that I admire tortoise-like work so much. I find people like Jerry Seinfeld and Russell Wilson to be inspiring—I want to be like that. I want to be a tortoise.
For that reason, one of the books I read over the last several years and most enjoyed was a brief autobiography from the great biographer Robert Caro entitled, appropriately enough, Working. I loved reading about his patient, relentless process of coming to really understand his subject.
I also want to stand before God one day and give an account of what I’ve done with what he’s given me. I’d much rather be someone with one talent who made ten out of it than someone with ten talents who ended up with twenty.
But, that will only happen through work.
There Are No Shortcuts
The kind of work I’m talking about is the kind of deliberate practice, putting in the hours, doing the reps, private, unglamorous work without which it is not possible to be a sustained success. I’m not talking about meetings and appointments and phone calls and emails. I’m talking about sitting alone in a room by yourself and just, through force of will, making yourself focus on a problem, and working at it until you’ve wrestled it to the floor.
That’s the kind of work that honors God, because it shows we take his gifts seriously enough to actually develop and hone them.
In fact, I often feel the greatest sense of godly satisfaction when I can look back at something I’ve made and say, “I worked hard on that.”
There is a lot that I want to accomplish in the year ahead and in the years ahead. Like Peter Drucker, I’d like to accomplish more in the second half of my life than in the first. But nothing I want to accomplish will happen if I’m not willing to put in the work, day after day after day.
My One Word for 2021
And so, my one word for 2021?
Work.
P.S.
It’s 10:00 PM on New Year’s Day, and after I post this I’m going to bed a happy man. You know why?
Because I already put in my work for the day.
First day of the new year, done.
Father's Day Book Ideas
If you need some gift ideas for yer pops, you can't do better than a great book. You can click through and read my?2013, 2014, and 2015?reading lists for some ideas, but below I've listed five books I've not mentioned previously elsewhere, plus a bonus suggestion if you really like the father in your life.
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, Karl Marlantes
The title says it all. Karl Marlantes, a Rhodes Scholar who volunteered to serve in Vietnam, saw action there as a green Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marines. Those experiences obviously lie behind the terror, bravery, and misery he describes here.
Once an Eagle, by Anton Myrer
Another war novel. I was browsing the end notes of Tim Ferriss's?Tools of Titans and saw that?Stanley McCrystal referenced it. (It's my understanding that it's required reading for all the cadets at West Point.) It's the story of an American soldier who serves in the First World War and through the Second. The combat descriptions in the First World War scenes are among the most brutal I've read anywhere. I think every American man should read this book. (Be warned--it is?long: 1300 pages!)
Angels Flight (A Harry Bosch Novel),?by Michael Connelly
I discovered the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly last year, and at this point I've read 14 of the 21 Bosch novels. Harry Bosch is a homicide detective in the L.A.P.D., and Connelly has a gift for bringing the Los Angeles underworld to life in vivid detail. Angels Flight takes place right after the Rodney King incident, and I think it's one of Connelly's best novels (though I'd recommend all of them).
Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers, by Ralph Moody
As I mentioned in a previous post, we read through this memoir as a family earlier this year. For dads who need a great book to read with their kids, I can't recommend Little Britches?highly enough. Ralph Moody lived on the Colorado prairie as a boy in the early 1900s, and this memoir tells about the hard but rewarding life he experienced there. Great for dads and kids alike.
The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, by Peter Hitchens
Peter Hitchens has become one of my favorite journalists, and I read his columns and blog at "The Mail on Sunday" regularly. Mr. Hitchens is the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, a man well-known for his strident atheism. Peter Hitchens, in contrast, had an adult conversion to conservative Anglicanism, and this book is partly a memoir of that journey.
*Bonus* Suggestion, If You REALLY ?Like Your Dad: a Fancy Bible
As I mentioned in my post about my 2018 Bible reading plan, I bought myself a fancy Bible to read through in 2018:?a Cambridge Clarion Reference ESV in Black Goatskin. I'm telling you: this Bible is just so beautiful you can't NOT pick it up and read it. Buy your dad a Bible, and encourage him to read through the New Testament with me, starting August 24.
I‘ve written a very short whitepaper on a subject I care a lot about communication.Subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll send it to you for free:The Simple Technique Anyone Can Immediately Use To Become a Better Communicator.(If you are already a subscriber, drop me a line and I'll send you the whitepaper.)
If I Could Have Any Billboard....
"If you could put any message on a billboard that millions of people would see, what would it be?" Tim Ferriss asks this of his podcast guests, and it's got me thinking: What would I want to say?Any message worth putting up would have to be one that folks wouldn't get elsewhere--why else go to all the trouble to get the billboard if you're not saying something interesting?So, here are some ideas that I don't think you'd see anywhere else.
Anything Worth Having Comes With a Cost
I talked about this billboard option earlier today in my Sunday sermon. I've been racking my brain, and I can't think of a single contrary example. Even things that are free to me still cost other people. The reason this is an important message is that it reminds us that when we face difficulty in learning Spanish or getting in shape or becoming sober or raising kids or being married, we should persevere: that the cost should be expected, and it's worth it.
Human Nature Doesn't Change
We think we are so advanced: we have the iPhone and the jumbo jet and the electric toothbrush. And, when it comes to our technology, we?are advanced. But, technological advances don't change human nature: our biggest problem is within, and it has been forever. How do we best?use all this technology? That's where wisdom is required. People have been the same everywhere: we're just as jealous, petty, brave, murderous, kind, etc., as we ever were. Technology doesn't change human nature, which means we need to learn the?exact same lessons of our ancestors: how to forgive, how to face our fears, how to have a flourishing family. Those lessons take time. All the technological advances in the world are useless at best and dangerous at worst if we don't take the time to learn from what the people before us learned. (This is why, by the way, the liberal arts are more important than ever. Sure, I have an iPhone, but that won't help me have a great marriage. I can fly around the world, but what does it take to raise my kids well? Homer and Dostoevsky, et al, have something to teach us here.)
Progress Is An Illusion
Human nature doesn't change (see above). So, it seems to me that the more advanced we get, the more ways we find to kill each other. Now, I'm grateful for our advances in medical technology, for example--I can't imagine living in a time without modern dentistry--but life is still difficult, and sin has a way of ruining everything. Take the internet, for example--it's brought lots of good things, but it has also made pornography available to children--something that no society has ever had to deal with before. I believe that we should always be striving to improve and develop our civilization, but I also believe that there are no problem-free situations, and that everything this side of heaven comes with unintended consequences. (This is what Tolkien called "the long defeat.") Neither human nature nor the world in general is perfectible (this fact is why I'm not a progressive), and though it is possible to make advances in this or that area, Progress will always be out of reach.
Catch a Common Theme?
I believe suffering and difficulty are part of life and that human nature is not perfectible. If ever there were a people who needed to be reminded of those inconvenient truths, it is modern Americans. That might sound harsh, but I actually find those messages to be helpful! When things get hard for me, I shouldn't be surprised--it's just the way life works. But, if the three billboards above seem too negative, here's one more:
In the End, Everything Will Be Okay; If It's Not Okay, Then It's Not the End
I think that message is basically the best news that's ever been given, and one you?can't hear too often. Keep going! What about you? What would your billboard say?
All the Cool Kids are Meditating, Man
I was just listening to the Brian Koppelman interview on Tim Ferriss's?Tribe of Mentors podcast, when one of Koppelman's answers struck me. The?Tribe of Mentors podcast is billed as "short life advice from the best of the best," and in it Ferriss asks his guests a series of standard questions, in a much shorter format than on his more well-known?The?Tim Ferriss Show podcast. One of the standard questions (a really good one) is:In the last five years what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?Here is Brian Koppelman's answer (beginning at 10:52 in the podcast):
"I know many of Tim's guests say this, and the answer is: meditation. For me, I do transcendental meditation, and I do it every day for twenty minutes, two times...first when I wake up in the morning, and then around 3, or 4, or 5, or 6 in the afternoon. And what I have found is that doing this mediation--taking this time--has drastically decreased the physical manifestations of anxiety and it has given me far more clarity and far more peace."
Some quick thoughts:
- ?He's right: many of Tim Ferriss's guests on this podcast and on the?Tim Ferriss Show talk about meditation. These folks often tend to be Silicon Valley/Hollywood/Venture Capitalist types, and they often mention how meditation has been a helpful practice to them.
- Because these folks are Silicon Valley/Hollywood/Venture Capitalist types--"California" in mindset, if not location--their practice of mediation tends to be "spiritual and not religious" in a New Age vein.
- It shouldn't be surprising that spending time quieting the mind and the soul brings helpful benefits. This shouldn't surprise us because people have known this for literally thousands of years, in every culture that I know of.
- It's almost as if we were created a certain way, and certain practices--independent of time and place, across all cultures and centuries--just produce good things in people's lives....
- Maybe human nature isn't plastic; maybe wisdom is not making yourself what you want to be, but rather making yourself fit the world.
- If the same folks on Tim Ferriss's podcasts had kept saying "prayer" instead of "meditation," they wouldn't seem nearly as cool, would they? Prayer is boring; meditation is cool.
- We're a culture that's forgotten what we used to know, and so we grab various life-giving practices out of the heap, but because we've forgotten what we used to know (like the folks in the Foundation in the Isaac Asimov novels), we're not able to use them to their full benefit.
- I recently heard Robert Barron say something interesting about prayer:
"Please don't think of prayer as something that God needs: God doesn't need your prayer, doesn't need my prayer. It's not like we're in this sort of pagan thing, where 'unless I get this much done, God's not going to do something'--don't think of it that way; he's not a 'pasha' that we're trying to impress with our supplications--prayer is for you, prayer's good for you, it's not good for God. God loves it because it makes you better and happier. It's not for God's sake, it's for your sake."
- The difference between Christian prayer and meditation seems to me to lie primarily in what you believe about ultimate reality: meditation is about quieting your heart and mind so you can experience the inner peace that comes from becoming more in tune with Reality, whereas prayer in the way and name of Jesus is about a relationship with the Person behind all reality. In the Christian tradition (and Jewish tradition, for that matter), Reality is not impersonal at all.
- The unique insight of the gospel is that Reality is a Person, and he's made himself known to us in the manger.
- Christians believe that God is Love. That beautiful idea is popular, but think about it: love requires personhood--love cannot be impersonal. Meditation is a good thing, but I don't think it can lead to love in the same way that prayer can, because prayer is about coming to know the source of Love itself, and his name is the LORD.
Anyway, it just struck me that many of the world-class performers that Tim Ferriss has interviewed have mentioned mediation. (Though I don't think I've ever heard a single one of them mention prayer.)