Tag Archives: habits

How Small Time Blocks Can Create Big Changes

Two men live almost the same week.

Both wake up to an alarm, put on work clothes, answer messages before breakfast, get children where they need to go, and spend the day solving problems that didn’t exist when they left home. Both stop for groceries, help with homework, load the dishwasher, and collapse into bed carrying tomorrow in their heads.

If you watched their 112 waking hours from a distance, you might have trouble telling them apart.

But several times a week, after the house settles or before it wakes, one of them opens a document and writes. The other waits for a different season of life—one with fewer demands, more energy, and a clean stretch of time that nobody else needs.

Months later, one man has a manuscript. The other still has a reason.

A split view of two similar family evenings, with a father writing at the kitchen table on one side and the table unused on the other.
Most of the week can look exactly the same. The difference is the hour one person protects.

In a recent 3-2-1 newsletter, James Clear shared an observation from writer and illustrator Tim Urban. Someone who writes three hours a day, five days a week, can have a book after forty weeks. The prolific writer and the person who never writes may spend six-sevenths of their waking lives almost identically. The life-changing difference is the fraction one of them defended.

We tend to imagine people who finish things as a different species. The writer wakes up inspired, lives in a quiet house, and spends whole days arranging beautiful sentences while coffee steams beside a sunlit window. That picture is convenient. If writing requires a monastery, then the rest of us are excused.

Most callings do not need your entire life. They need a part of it that the rest of your life is not allowed to take.

I wrote A Nobody’s Guide to Self-Help while managing a dealership and raising three children. That sentence makes the process sound much cleaner than it was. There was no cabin, no sabbatical, and very little evidence of genius. Some sessions produced pages I later cut. Some were spent repairing a paragraph that still wasn’t very good when I went to bed. Other times, I reread what I had written, changed three words, and wondered whether that counted.

It counted.

A tired father writing beside a laptop, cold coffee, work keys, and a child’s drawing late at night.
The sessions that build a book rarely feel important while they are happening.

The book was built during sessions that rarely felt important while they were happening. A child needed something. Work followed me home. My attention arrived late and left early. I didn’t usually feel like an author. I felt like a tired man trying to move one sentence a little closer to the truth.

This isn’t a victory lap. Finishing a book didn’t turn me into a model of discipline. If anything, it exposed how many other things I have postponed while waiting for the right mood or the right version of my life. We all have a small graveyard of intentions labeled “when things settle down.”

Things rarely settle down. They just change what they are loud about.

Fifteen hours a week isn’t easy when work is demanding and children are growing up in real time. And quantity does not guarantee quality. Consistency cannot replace judgment, revision, or honesty. It simply gives those things something to work on. Zero produces nothing to revise.

We often say we don’t have time when we mean we do not have time that arrives preapproved—free of guilt, interruption, or sacrifice. Protected time seldom presents itself. It has to be claimed from a phone, a television, another chore, or the endless appetite of other people’s urgency.

The goal isn’t to become consumed by the work. It’s to stop requiring the work to consume you before you take it seriously.

A finished manuscript resting among work keys and children’s school items on a kitchen table at sunrise.
A small, defended part of the week can eventually leave evidence.

At the end of one week, the protected fraction may look almost meaningless: a few hundred words, a rough page, one idea you aren’t sure you can use. At the end of forty weeks, it may be the only part of the year you can hold in your hands.

A life doesn’t always change because you found more time. Sometimes it changes because you stopped letting one small piece of it belong to everything else.

Inheriting Wisdom: The Power of Grandmother Sayings

My grandma used to tell me to be careful when I prayed for patience or courage. The Lord wasn’t likely to drop either one in my lap, according to her. He would give me opportunities to practice patience and put me in situations where they was required.

I understood the words when I was young, but I didn’t fully understand the warning. It sounded almost like she was telling me not to pray too hard. But what she meant was that character doesn’t arrive gift-wrapped. God may answer the prayer by handing you a hard person, a long wait, or a moment when doing the right thing makes your knees a little wobbly. That one little saying carried theology, realism, and a survival plan without ever turning into a sermon.

An older relative and a younger family member talking across a worn kitchen table.
The words matter. So does the voice that gave them weight.

I thought about her when I read an Upworthy collection of old grandmother sayings. One of them was, “Some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue.” On the surface, it’s just funny. Underneath it, though, are crystal clear instructions: do not confuse a good day with permanent status, and do not mistake a bad day for your identity. Stay humble when you’re flying. Stay steady when you’re the statue.

Families around Dardanelle and Carden Bottoms didn’t always explain their worldview in essays. They packed it into warnings, teasing, Bible language, and comparisons that made sense if you had ever watched the river, worked a field, fixed a fence, or tried to stretch a dollar. A saying could correct foolishness without starting a fight. It could make bitter medicine go down with a laugh.

My grandmother grew up in the Bottoms in a large family that picked cotton. I can’t pretend to know every sentence that traveled through those fields or across that kitchen table. But I do know the kind of work that made concise wisdom useful. When your hands were busy, you didn’t need a lecture. You needed a line short enough to remember and strong enough to use the next time.

A notebook, recorder, family photograph, and cotton boll arranged to preserve a family story.
A phrase becomes an inheritance when the story around it is preserved.

That’s what makes these phrases more than colorful old speech. When a saying dies, the circumstance that produced it starts to disappear too. “What did you come for, a chunk of fire?” makes very little sense until someone explains the old stove, the borrowed coal, and the hurry involved. Once the story is attached, the phrase becomes a tiny doorway into a world. Without the story, it is just a strange collection of words.

As a father, I think about how easily my children have inherited names and photographs without inheriting voices. They may know where somebody lived and when they died, but not how they sounded when somebody got too big for their britches. They may recognize a face in a picture but never hear the phrase that could bring that person back into the room.

If I give my kids only the saying, I have handed them the shell. The story is the part that breathes. Who said it? What kind of trouble summoned it? Did everyone laugh? Was the lesson understood right then, or did it take twenty years to land? Those details aren’t decoration. They’re instructions.

The hard part is that some of the people I would like to ask are already gone. There are questions I can no longer ask them. That turns this from nostalgia into responsibility. Memory feels permanent right up until the last person carrying it is no longer here to answer the phone.

A father and two children sharing stories on a rural Arkansas porch at dusk.
Fatherhood turns memory into a responsibility to pass something on.

So here is a simple thing worth doing. Ask an older relative what sayings they remember. Don’t stop at making a list. Ask who said each one, when it came out, and what foolishness or hardship brought it out. Record the conversation on your phone or write it down while the voice and the details are still fresh. Then tell one of those stories to your children.

A family inheritance isn’t always land, money, a recipe, or a quilt. Sometimes it is one crooked sentence that kept people patient, cautious, humble, or laughing when life got heavy. It can vanish without anyone rejecting it. All it takes is for everybody to assume somebody else will remember.

Embracing Failure: Lessons from Ted Williams

I should be more consistent with writing. I don’t usually sit down and think of a particular topic to write about. Most of the time, it just comes to me. Just the other day, I was thinking about “failure.” I realized that many things I write about have failure as a central theme. I don’t consider myself an expert on anything, but if I were to bestow that title on myself in some regard, it would be “Master of Failing.”


To be honest, I’m not even mad about it. It took a while to learn, but once I figured out that failing was an important part of growing, I decided to embrace it. I’m not saying that I have never made the same mistake twice, but I feel like most of my failures are unique, and I use them to fuel growth and development.


I’ve been in the car business for almost 20 years. When you are a professional salesperson, failure is a constant factor. Even the best in the industry don’t sell to every customer they talk to. A GOOD salesperson should expect to close 30%- 35% of the customers they interact with. To put it in perspective, if a baseball player gets a hit one out of every three times he goes to the plate, he’s considered a Hall of Famer. Similarly, if a salesperson closes a sale with one out of every three customers, they’re doing exceptionally well.


That means that the best players in the game’s history fail two out of every three times they have an at-bat.


Today, I’m returning to 1941, when Ted Williams had arguably the best season at the plate in baseball history. He finished the ’41 season with a batting average of .406 with 37 home runs and 120 RBIs. To provide context, .200, the Mendoza line, is considered the low-end threshold for professional ball players. The average batting average of Hall of Famers is .303.


Williams played in 143 games that season and had 456 at-bats. But the breakdown of three particular stretches of that 1941 season interests me the most.


On April 30th, Williams entered the game hitting .462. Over the next four games, he hit .182, dropping his season average to .310.


By June 21st, he had battled his way back up to .415. But he only hit .318 over the next 21 games, dropping that average all the way down to .393.


His average peaked again at .413 during the heat of the pennant race in early September. But a .292 stretch over the next 17 games saw it drop right to the .400 mark near the end of the season. Entering the last day of the year, he was so close to the .400 mark that a bad day at the plate would have kept him from reaching that sacred number.


This is important because even though his season as a whole is considered extraordinary, not every day, or even week, was even considered average. But during those subpar stretches, Ted Williams didn’t panic. He didn’t change up his swing. He didn’t stay down in the dumps and stop coming to work. He showed up every day, stepped inside that chalk-outlined box, and did his job to the best of his abilities. And he let the chips fall where they may.


The most significant lesson I’ve learned about failure is that it’s interwoven into the fabric of success. It’s more about ‘fall, learn, grow’ than ‘pass or fail.’ These three unremarkable stretches of Ted Williams’ historic season wouldn’t impress anyone. But his resilience and determination during those times are just as, if not more, important than his successes.


We get so caught up in results that sometimes we lose focus on the processes. Instead of getting up and walking out of the pit of despair, we let ourselves get so deep that we can’t even climb out. We let our losses define us even though we may be on the cusp of a breakthrough. Our inactivity lets the tide sweep us back to the starting line when riding the wave will get us closer to our destination.


I used to tell kids when they’d ask me a question, “I wish I had it all figured out.” I don’t tell them that anymore because it isn’t true. I’m glad I don’t have it all figured out. My next failure is always right around the corner, and I’m excited to see what revelation it will lead to. I try (emphasis on “try” ) to be consistent and open-minded while keeping a positive attitude. In the words of the great poet Henry Longfellow: “Learn to labor and to wait.”


Show up. Stay the course. Keep your head high. Learn. Don’t quit. Don’t ever quit.

Clarity and the Responsibilities Which Come With It

As I sat in the pew every Sunday morning in church, I heard people pray for ‘clarity.’ As a kid, I didn’t understand what that meant. To me, life was simple—no responsibilities, no stakes. But as I grew older, I realized that clarity is one of life’s most sought-after yet elusive aspects. It’s what we crave when we’re faced with hard decisions and uncertain futures 

I’ve had many moments in my adult life where I did just that. All I wanted was a clear path to form before me. I’ve been faced with hard decisions and made tough choices without having enough information present. What I wouldn’t have given for an “eliminate the worst option” or “freeze time” card that could have helped me along the way. Or better yet, why can’t someone just make the RIGHT decision for me?

There is no proverbial light bulb that goes off. You don’t just scratch your head until you have your “aha” moment. Clarity comes when the tangled web of your experiences and your chaotic glimpse of the future magically line up. It’s when you know something must be done in a specific way or in a certain amount of time. In the sense I am writing about, clarity is seeing the best version of a particular part of your life and an actual path toward getting there.  It is more than just a moment of insight—it’s that instant when you know, without a doubt, what you need to do, whether it’s finally taking that job offer or walking away from a toxic relationship. 

This struggle and the challenge of its brother, hindsight, are not new; they’re as old as time, as seen in the story of Cain and Abel. We all know the story, and I believe that, more than anything, it is a vital allegory about personal responsibility. When Cain sees his brother’s treatment for his hard work and sacrifice, he realizes that he would be getting the same treatment if he had willfully performed the duties asked of him. We’ve all been there to a certain extent.

Imagine finding yourself at the bad end of a situation and then realizing YOU are the one to blame. Everything on the test was covered in class, but YOU didn’t study it. Your transmission goes out in your truck, but YOU blew your money instead of saving it. Your boyfriend breaks up with you because YOU didn’t take the time to learn how he needed to be loved.

Hindsight is 20/20, but clarity happens when you learn these things before it’s too late. Unfortunately, it’s not always as easy as studying for a test or saving money. The problems of life come with layers and complexity.

My grandma always said to be careful when praying for patience or courage because the Lord won’t just give it to you. You’ll have to earn it. He’ll give you opportunities to practice patience and put you in situations that allow you to be courageous. Those aren’t always the most popular places or events to be involved in. I’ve learned the same thing about clarity.

There is a sense of comfort and security in the ambiguity of the future. If you can’t tell what you COULD become, COULD obtain, or the relationships you COULD cultivate, then missing out on them doesn’t hurt. You never saw them and can’t lose what you never had. You can blame outside circumstances, timing, or many other things that are not in your control. You can easily avoid blaming yourself.

Clarity puts the responsibility squarely on your shoulders. It forces your decisions and actions to align with a target. Missing that target has tangible consequences. It requires you to be the best version of yourself so you can be ready to accept the blessings when they start pouring in. It means making multiple sacrifices in the present for what you will obtain in the future. This can be a tireless and trying task. It’s not the carrot at the end of a stick. It’s what awaits you after navigating through the labyrinth.  

Clarity is a powerful gift, but it’s also a call to action. It demands that we face the truth of our choices and take responsibility for our future. Whether we embrace it as a blessing or shy away from it in fear, clarity offers us a chance to shape our destiny. Either way, it’s one hell of a thing to experience. The question is: will we rise to the challenge?

Strong Timber

There is a tree at work that I watch throughout the year. It sits slightly off the road, between the bank and the car lot, but closer to the bank. I’m not sure what type of tree it is, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at it when I’m outside. 

I’m no dendrologist (I definitely had to Google that one), but it’s probably 30 years old. Many trees in our little town are more giant and more beautiful. In fact, I’ve probably driven by this one for most of my life without noticing it. But I’ve learned that the older I get, the more I see the little things.

I enjoy the changes it makes throughout the different seasons, from complete and green to bare and rugged. One year, I even spotted some mistletoe high up in the branches. Trees have long served as a reminder to us to let go, start fresh, and flourish.

And grow.

If you watch a tree every day, you can’t see it grow. You may notice a difference if you only see it once a year. If you only see it every ten years, it won’t be the same tree you remember initially seeing. 

The other day, I was watching it and noticed the top swaying in the wind. It was the only portion of the tree moving, going back and forth briskly. I thought for a minute that it may even snap. The contrast it highlighted with the thick trunk and sturdy branches was noticeable. But then, it hit me.

Every other part of that tree had gone through a similar stage in its development. The rest of it was sturdy and stable because the wind and weather had tested it in the past. Either pass the test and become stronger, or let the weather snap you in two and prevent further growth. The biggest oaks and pines in the world are the ones that have weather the hardest, most frequent storms. 

And you can say the same thing about the strongest people. 

“Good timber does not grow with ease:

The stronger wind, the stronger trees;

The further sky, the greater length;

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.”

–Douglas Malloch

Blades of Potential

Disclaimer: I always need to reiterate that if I write and publish it, I believe it. How we all apply it to our lives is the hard part. As much as I relate to these ideas, implementing them has sometimes been challenging. If this life can be “figured out,” I haven’t done it yet. Writing gets it from my brain to a place where I can think more clearly. Blog posts like this are a way to keep steering in the right direction.

I subscribe to a fantastic newsletter from Farnam Street called Brain Food. Here is the link if you want to sign up : https://fs.blog/newsletter/ The whole idea behind Farnam Street is to help you master the things that other people have already figured out. The weekly newsletter is a catalog of articles around the internet that help you see things through a different lens. A few months back, one of the feature articles reported from MIT on a study in which scientists were trying to figure out why razor blades were so easily damaged by hair.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably not thought much about the disposable nature of razors. More than likely, you buy a new pack when the old razors get dull. But when you think about it, it really is a bit odd that something made of stainless steel is damaged by something as soft as human hair. The article even mentions hair is 50 times weaker than steel, yet only a single piece can cause the edge to chip. Once one initial chip or crack is present, it becomes susceptible to more chipping, eventually causing the entire edge to become dull.

At this point in the article, I had an idea of what could cause the problem, but I wanted to read more to be sure. All I could think about was how our lives can be turned upside down, flipped around, and tossed about by small things that turn into big things. Sure, you can take a hammer to a razor blade and destroy it in a heartbeat, but more often, they get worn down over time until they eventually can’t work to their full potential. That sounds an awful lot like our lives as humans.

Here is a link to the article. Long story short, the team found three reasons that a blade could become more prone to chipping:

· The microstructure of the steel is not uniform

· The blade’s approaching angle to a strand of hair

· The presence of defects in the steel’s microstructure

I believe there are similar reasons we can become prone to “chipping” as well.

· Our foundation and governing principles are not uniform

· Our approach angle to our mundane, everyday tasks

· The presence of defects in our foundation (blind spots)

Developing our foundation and governing principles starts before we have any control over their creation. It begins with our genetics and parents, and over the years, other people come into our lives that help shape them as well. Friends, teachers, coaches, mentors–all have a huge role to play in our development. Eventually, we mature to a point where we begin to think independently, but our past relationships and experiences affect us in ways we couldn’t control, even if we wanted to.

Having different opinions on different topics is normal, but the things that we believe on a foundational basis are rarely if ever, changed. And if they are, you can bet it is a challenging process. When these principles are at odds with each other, they cause a rift, which leaves us as a prime target for internal conflict. “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.” — Matthew 6:24-26

To remedy this, we must do some soul-searching and figure out what we TRULY believe. We must know who we are and be conscious enough to understand that we can’t fool ourselves. If our actions don’t align with what we believe, then there is no uniformity in our microstructure, and it’s only a matter of time before our foundation starts to crumble.

Those actions are the second reason we don’t reach our potential. We get so caught up in the “big” parts of our lives that the daily tasks and how we perform them get lost in the shuffle. Martha Beck coined the phrase, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” If she’s right, that is one of the most profound statements I’ve ever read.

Our life really is a whole bunch of little things done over and over again and sprinkled with the occasional “big” thing. A 75-year-old man may take 50 family vacations over the years, but he has dinner with his wife 18,250 times over that same period. Which one of those is more important at the end of his life? Doing the little things right can be tedious and mundane, but how we approach and attack them can make all the difference in the world. 

Just like a blade can have defects in its microstructure, we, too, can have defects in our foundation. These blind spots can give us a false sense of how our world works. The great Persian poet Rumi said it best: “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I am changing myself”.

The most significant defect in our foundation is denying the prospect that we could be wrong about something—or everything. When we refuse to entertain the possibility that our ideas can be tested–and even changed– we reject the opportunity to grow into our full potential. 

Razor blades are disposable. It would make little sense to inspect each one at a microscopic level or study the effects of each shaving session on the edges of the blade. Our lives, though–they are anything but disposable. The great news is that if we create a strong foundation within ourselves, become open to learning and growing, and embrace the importance of the small things with passion, we can grow closer to unlocking our full potential. It may not make the pages of an MIT research magazine, but it will help make our small circle of influence exponentially better. 

A Social Idiot Analyzes Social Media: Part One

“Is this real life, or is this just a fantasy?” Social media wasn’t around when Freddy Mercury and Queen recorded Bohemian Rhapsody. Still, those words ring loud and clear some 35 years later. Has social media become prevalent enough to be considered “real life?” Or, is it still just a hobby and time-waster that shouldn’t be taken seriously?

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34651067

According to a study found on Statista, over 70 percent of the US population uses social media. 70 percent is enough to win a two-thirds majority, would be a passing grade in school, and would make you feel comfortable that you wouldn’t have to plug in your iPhone for quite some time. The same site also posts a survey that found only 62 percent of the population was employed.

Aside from the overt data tracking and targeted advertising on all of the most popular platforms, the concept of social media on a grand scale is also still a very new idea. (Remember when Facebook at least TRIED to hide the fact that they were tracking you?)

https://newstyledigital.com/is-facebook-spying-on-your-conversations/

As far as long-term implications are concerned, we have no idea what to expect. Some may consider it the grandest social experiment the world has ever known.

Statista also reports that the average time spent per day on social media is 145 minutes. The keyword there is average. So for two and a half hours a day, the average person scrolls other people’s feeds, shares news articles, looks at photos and videos, or creates status updates for their circle sphere of influence. But if you consider the “light users,” that means many people spend considerably more time a day doing those things.

Take a few liberties and assume an average workday of 8 hours and an average of 8 hours of sleep at night. That leaves 8 more hours each day to fill your time with other activities. Some of that would be spent eating, grooming, and doing the daily humdrum routines we are used to. But on average, 70% of the population use over 31% of their free time accessing social media.

Disclaimer: This is not a scientific study, just an observation based on loose assumptions. I also realize part of the workday could be spent on social media, and I have not accounted for weekends either.

https://www.bcheights.com/2015/11/18/consuming-social-media-in-small-doses/

So what does this mean? Well, for the 30% of the population that doesn’t use social media, it can’t be “real life,” right? And the light users who only use it sporadically would probably fit into that category as well. But, I would say it is very much “real life” to people who use it consistently. If this is true, then that means these different types of social media users will see and process the world entirely differently than each other. How does this affect the way they interact together? How has the world around us changed to cater to each different group? What can we expect in 20 years?

We’ll look at some of the questions and more in Part 2. Thanks for reading!