Love, kindness, forgiveness. They’re often like a cool breeze on a sweltering day: they can hardly be seen except for the way they feel.

Sweet and welcome.

At a recent hotel stay, the staff was particularly kind. Almost everyone was cheery and eager to help. Simple questions were answered with what seemed like delight.

I mentioned this to the front desk as I checked out. The attendant smiled genuinely and said, “Thank you! That’s so nice to hear. Yeah: we have a really great work environment.”

Beautiful. Her reply had nothing to do with corporate mission or employee training. It was about the culture.

A good work environment makes doing good work all the easier.

At a museum’s busy entrance, visitors passed through a low-sensitivity metal detector. The device had bright blue lights, and it flanked the left and right side of a wide passage.

A uniformed guard, over and over, shouted the phrase, “If I don’t stop you, keep walking. If I don’t stop you, keep walking!”

The guard was clearly annoyed that people kept stopping in front of the metal detector, awaiting instructions and causing backups.

Unfortunately, most people have been conditioned to wait. At places where security is tight, metal detectors are single-use only. You wait your turn. You wait until the agent beckons you. If you walk through too early, you’re scolded and told to wait.

The museum guard was fighting years of conditioning.

Since the system wasn’t intended to prompt visitors to pause, a better design would have blended the detection elements with the architecture or kept them hidden.

People naturally do what they’ve learned to do. Good design encourages the appropriate behavior.

The careful preparations we make before we leave a place …
… often center around what we want to find when we return.

Sometimes our best work feels effortless. Everything falls into place and we’ve barely broken a sweat.

Other times, we work strenuously for what ends up being an average outcome.

The quality of our input doesn’t always guarantee the quality of our output. But putting in the work is how we give ourselves a shot. We give our best effort again and again … and every so often, the results are brilliant.

And every so often is enough.

Our search results can depend a lot on how we begin; the first constraint informs all that follows.

For instance, does your search for a house begin with the name of a city, or a certain number of bedrooms?

Does your search for a car begin with a manufacturer, or a certain feature?

Does your search for a partner begin with a physical attribute, or a certain worldview?

We’re always filtering — but that primary filter plays a huge role.

Agriculture wasn’t the result of innovations in hunting and gathering. Better chasing and foraging didn’t prompt thoughts of domestication.

It would have been away from those activities — during quiet times of observation, contemplation, and curiosity — when concepts of farming and trial cultivation were born.

When we stop running, then we can begin to imagine.

Sometimes it’s away from the work, when we sit still, that our ideas begin to blossom.

Overheard at the office: “The day’s almost over. I’ll just look at it tomorrow.”

That’s a fine strategy in many situations. The end of the day is not necessarily a good time to start something you can’t finish.

But while it’s an acceptable strategy, it’s not an effective ongoing posture. “Almost over” can also mean “not done yet.”

What do you do when you only have a few hours left in a day?

What do you do when you only have a few weeks left in a season?

What do you do when you only have a few years left in a lifetime?

We’re always running out of time. But that last bit can be just as fulfilling as the first. And it doesn’t have to be steeped in productivity. It might be an intentionally peaceful rest after a hard-fought day.

Not “how much you’re loved” — just “how much you love.”

(My father offered this kind revision to my post. Thanks for the re-framing, Dad. You’re definitely right. Love you.)

Not how you look, but how you feel.
Not how much you’re paid, but how meaningfully you contribute.
Not how many friends, but how much you’re loved.
Not how long you live, but how fully you live.

Our personal successes might be easily overlooked if we’re measuring the wrong things.

Sometimes we can find tricks and shortcuts … but most of the time, what we seek requires hard work and dedication.

When we forget this (and we do forget) we can spend a lot of energy searching for the right tricks and shortcuts — when that energy would be better spent focused on the hard work.

You don’t need an instrument to make music.

You don’t need a canvas to make art.

You don’t need words to make poetry.

You don’t need eyes to have vision.

You don’t need movement to dance.

* * *

You are limited only when you choose to be.

These words from Dwight D. Eisenhower still have weight decades later:

“People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.”

Edges are important. Pushing boundaries is part of making things better.

However, in many areas of life, the “middle of the road” is where we need to find ourselves in order to make any progress at all. It’s the usable surface.

We love when our comments are returned with, “Exactly right! I agree completely.”

And we need that validation.

But it’s just as important — and a good practice in communication — to have challenging conversations where others begin from a place of, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

That’s our opportunity to dialogue.

Tension, but good tension.

Don’t run from it. Dance with it.

From the Bhagavad Gita:

“You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of the work. … They who work selfishly for results are miserable.”

This wisdom sinks deeply.

The fruit will come in due time, perhaps. Either way, don’t let it be your focus.

Keep your gaze upon the work at hand.

* * *

H/T Scott

I listened to a reporter being interviewed on the radio. The reporter’s response to every question the anchor asked began this way: “Yeah. So, — ”

Without fail.

Every response.

I began to listen for that intro instead of listening to the content of the answer.

That introductory phrase is common these days. It’s rampant in reporting and academia. It seems to be a short form of, “I understand the question. It’s a good one. I have an answer. I’m putting together the best words to convey that answer.”

All good things. But it’s unnecessary verbal filler.

Even worse, it becomes a distracting pattern.

Whether you’re in the Q&A business or not, it’s useful to be aware of our own patterns and idiosyncrasies. We all have them.

If yours distracts listeners from what you’re trying to say, it might be time to retire the habit.

We’d love to have the perfect tools, adequate space, a sufficient budget, an ideal team, and boundless energy.

At times, we do.

But most often, we work with, amidst, and from … imperfection. Rarely is everything in place exactly as we’d script it.

Even so, look what we can do! Look how resilient. How resourceful. How clever.

Some of our best work comes out of flawed situations.

Turns out, imperfect is a great place to begin.

It’s up to us to actively prioritize the most important things in life.

If we wait until the important things prioritize themselves, we’ll have wasted too much time.

Don’t wait.

The time is now.

Distillers don’t sit idly while their whiskey ages and matures.

Between the barrel and the bottle — those multiple years — there’s work to be done. Marketing. Networking. Leveraging other revenue streams.

While our long-term projects are often most important to us … it’s the related small wins and day-to-day efforts that sustain us along the journey.

Our goal may be over the horizon, but we have today’s footsteps to walk.

A wise friend remarked, “I’ll have to decide how I feel about that.”

Feelings happen. Sometimes they are welcome. Sometimes they catch us off guard.

But they always happen within the context of us. And that means we can make choices.

There’s a lot we can’t control, but we can control ourselves. We can decide how we feel about things.

We can let our feelings emerge as they will — but we can also consciously choose.