Donald Miller's Blog, page 61

Keep Your Phone From Getting In The Way Of Your Work

I’ve said it before, but it bares repeating: If you want to get some quality work done, turn off your phone.

*Photo Credit: closari, Creative Commons

Of course, this may not apply to some of you. If you work at a call bank, obviously, or if your job requires you are able to be contacted, then you have to keep it on. But if you do creative work, or if you are able to go two to three hours without a phone, I think you’ll find the time remarkably productive.

Here’s how I structure my phone-free time.

I wake up early.

I’m usually awake by 5 or 6AM. I respond to e-mails and text messages using my phone. I check the news on my phone too. Then, even before people can respond, I shut the phone off. This marks the beginning of my phone-free hours. Because the hours are so early, few people are trying to reach me anyway. Most people don’t start calling till 8AM or even 9AM, after which I’ve already gotten a couple hours work done.

I am very intentional about the phone-free hours.

I go for a walk to start the morning, letting the dog do her business. Then I come back, sit at the desk, and enjoy a few hours knowing it isn’t possible to be interrupted. It’s amazing how much mental clarity is freed up when you are not able to be contacted at all. There’s no question I’ll get more done in the next two hours than I will for the rest of the day. Try it and you will see. My guess is if you stick with it, productivity will go through the roof.

I turn my phone back on.

When my brain is done writing, usually when I’ve got a thousand words or more into the computer, a couple blogs written and I’m getting sloppy, I turn my phone back on. I normally have a couple text messages and a few e-mails and rarely a voicemail. When your phone is off, people tend to find a solution that is smarter than you could have come up with.

I respond to everything immediately.

People have been waiting, so I get it all done at once. This work is normally completed in about ten minutes. No kidding. An entire morning of interruptions that would have derailed my work is taken care of in minutes. I’ve never had anybody dissatisfied with having to wait a couple hours for a clear, focused response.

I leave my phone on for the rest of the day.

I handle calls and text messages as they come in. The rest of the day I deal with side work, stuff like getting a package out, a letter written, or meeting with someone.

Since I’ve adopted the phone off morning, I’ve noticed I am less stressed throughout the day.

In fact, if my morning gets derailed by an interruption, I can’t help but think I didn’t get enough written that morning, and well into the evening, when I am with friends, I am still thinking about how much I have to catch up on the next day.

But now, I am not thinking about work at all. If the writing is done, and if I gave it a focused few hours, I am a much better friend, and I’d even say a better person in general.

Keep Your Phone From Getting In The Way Of Your Work is a post from: Storyline Blog

Kick Your Negative Self Talk To The Curb

It is often said a man is his worst critic. But I think the truer statement is this: a man is his own bully. All day long under the yoke of comparison and shame, we speak cruelties to ourselves.

It’s ok to tell ourselves “you could have done better on this or that,” but many times, we aim for the jugular.

“You really blew that!”

“Why are you even here? No one even cares.”

“That’s a stupid idea.”

“You look horrible today. What a mess!”

That’s not criticism.

It’s flat out injury. It is not a loving correction; it is verbal MMA cage fight.

The weird thing is, we’d never say those things to other friends or even strangers, so why do we find it so easy to talk this way to ourselves? In fact, the words we speak over ourselves add up to unacceptable language in most environments.

*Photo Credit: – Komodor -, Creative Commons

Tiny little sucker punches all day long. Jab. Jab. Knock out!

Most of the time, they’re just quiet little statements in our heads, but sometimes I even catch myself saying them out loud.

I forget an appointment = “What an idiot.”

I make a wrong turn = “You’re such a moron.”

I give a mediocre presentation = “You suck at this.”

These destructive sentences can form a life sentence.

If we bully ourselves long enough, whether out loud or in our head, we willfully drain out every last ounce of confidence, love and hope with words that eat away at the way we actually see ourselves.

So if I asked you to list five positive statements as well as five negative statements about you, which list would be easier to fill? For many of us, the negative list would be easier to populate. Not that it should come as any surprise. After all, practice makes perfect.

It’s time to kick the bully out of your head. It is time to call the browbeater by name… even if it is your name.

How can we do this?

Here are some quick tips:

1. Become aware of the messages. All of us need to work on recognizing the unhealthy patterns and self-criticism. If we are aware of it, we can stop it.

2. If you say it, fix it. You’re an expert at bullying yourself. You have been doing it all your life. If you made a mistake or screwed something up, replace the first overblown, over-judgmental, and over-exaggerated phrase that comes into your mind with something a bit more graceful and realistic.

3. Apologize to yourself. Yes, it may seem weird but this is what mature, healthy grown ups do when they have hurt someone. Apologizing helps bring importance to the verbal bullying and will help you grow.

When you no longer make room for negative self talk, you create space to hear grace and truth.

Time to kick your inner bully to the curb.

Kick Your Negative Self Talk To The Curb is a post from: Storyline Blog

Are You Going Through Hell Right Now?

My year hasn’t exactly gone as planned. The company I founded, These Numbers Have Faces, went through stages of great growth last year, but the maintenance of it all has been really challenging.

For months I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. Anxiety has come roaring back into my life and all the while, there are hundreds of talented students on the waiting list to join our programs in Africa.

*Photo Credit: mikael altemark, Creative Commons

To top it off, my wife and I are expecting our first child in only a few weeks time. We’re thrilled of course, but the future is downright scary.

Worry, fear, dread, regret.

We’ve all been there.

Like many of us do in times of trial, I’ve rushed back to the foundations of my faith, praying in earnest for rest, peace and spiritual renewal.

Then I found a passage in Sarah Young’a Jesus Calling that changed it all. They were words that gave me the first leg up off of rock bottom. Words that, for the first time in a long time, quelled the battery acid of worry in my gut:

They helped me rest in these truths:

My future is uncertain. This is how it is meant to be.
Secret things belong to the Lord, and future things are secret things.
My worry is an act of rebellion.

In my top office drawer I have a green folder that holds some of my most prized documents. They aren’t awards, certificates, or photographs; they are clippings of prayers and quotes like the one above. These brief reflections, handwritten or printed from my office computer, act as anchors of hope in times of uncertainty.

Over the last few months, this folder has grown and grown.

What has saved me this year has been opening this folder every morning to read and reread its contents. I set aside 20 minutes each day and let these familiar words pour over me. The same words from the same people, over and over. This repetition, this act of obedience, has become the foundation of my day. And, miraculously, it has brought peace.

Are you going through hell right now?

Build your own green folder. Allow it to become your spiritual and emotional survival kit.

It’s not out of the norm to keep a first aid kit in your car or a few gallons of water in your basement for an emergency.

We should follow the same guidelines for our souls.

In your times of mental clarity and hopefulness, file away the quotes, phrases, verses, prayers and letters of encouragement you know you will need in times of disbelief and despair.

Then build on the habits of repetition. At the same time every day, read the contents of your folder. You’ll be surprised at the way this habit will guide you into the future.

Are You Going Through Hell Right Now? is a post from: Storyline Blog

How To Know If You’re Setting Yourself Up For Failure

The first time I joined a gym, the trainer worked me out until I nearly died.

She put me on a machine and had me lift the weights in sets of ten, decreasing the weights each time, doing as many sets as it would take until I literally couldn’t lift an empty bar. She wanted me to know what a workout felt like, and wanted to make sure the initial work out was as hard as it could be, so I’d have something to compare my subsequent workouts to. I think she hated men.

*Photo Credit: Jon Clegg, Creative Commons

The result was that I could hardly get out of bed the next morning, or the morning after that, and I hated the gym.

I associated the gym with pain and emasculation.

And even when I went to the gym, unless I nearly killed myself, I felt like I hadn’t worked out at all. After a year or so, I just quit going.

Years later, though, I met a personal trainer at a coffee shop. He was hoping to write a book and I struck up a deal with him. I told him I’d give him some pointers on writing if he’d reintroduce me to the gym. He agreed, and I definitely got more out of the deal than he did.

For our first workout, we got on stationary bikes and I started to pedal hard, trying to impress him. He quickly told me to slow down, to get my heart rate up to a level where I had to open my mouth to breathe, but could still talk. I did so, and it was pretty easy. We rode for about twenty minutes and then he told me to stop. I assumed we were going to move on to the real workout, but he said we were done. He told me to go home, that I’d done a good workout.

I stood there shocked, feeling ripped off.

After all, I’d given him valuable information about writing, like the fact that books are often broken up into chapters.

Dave explained to me, though, that if I showed up at the gym and got my heart rate up for twenty minutes, I’d worked out. He said I needed to do that every day, and if I did, I had nothing to feel guilty about. He then told me to come back the next day, and we’d do the same workout, only increase it a little bit.

The next day we rode for twenty minutes and he congratulated me on working out two days in a row. Then he asked if I wanted to do anything extra. I did, of course, so we ended up doing a mildly difficult workout with weights.

Within a month, Dave was working me out so hard I once had to stop him and ask if I could go out in the alley behind the gym to throw up. And no kidding, he moved the rest of the workout into the alley so I wouldn’t throw up on his floor. But he kept working me out, always reminding me that what we were doing was extra, that I’d already finished my workout.

That was six or seven years ago.

These days, I almost never exercise for under an hour, and I exercise at least every other day, depending on whether or not I am traveling. I love going for long walks or hikes or bike rides. What changed? All guilt went away. Before, I’d nearly kill myself and feel guilty for not doing enough. But now, I feel like anything over twenty minutes is extra. Before there was negative association with exercise; now there is positive association with exercise.

The same technique can be used with all sorts of areas in our lives where we are defeating ourselves. The question is, what constitutes a satisfactory job? What do we really need to do to be a good father, a good employee, a good wife, a good teacher?

If we do that, we’ve done a good job, and anything else is extra. What you’ll find is you’ll do a whole lot extra, and feel great about it.

How To Know If You’re Setting Yourself Up For Failure is a post from: Storyline Blog

Who Are You Hurting With Your Distractedness?

My grandfather spent his career days driving trucks, hauling chickens and other goods from his tiny farming community into “town” — meaning cities that had more than a couple thousand people. When he wasn’t on the road, he also ran a little store and breakfast diner near his home where I would fill up on homemade biscuits, bottled cokes and Reese’s Cups as a kid. I think the only reason I didn’t end up weighing 300 pounds is because I had to walk there.

Looking back, I admire how hard my grandfather worked.

But I also admire that he took breaks to ride his motorcycle. Growing up, it seemed like that was the one thing he always made time to do for himself.

*Photo Credit: Vir Nakai, Creative Commons

In fact, he didn’t stop riding his motorcycle until the dawn of his 80th birthday a couple of years ago. I remember him telling me matter-of-factly that he’d sold his bike and was done riding.

My grandfather was still incredibly sharp and had no health issues affecting his ability to ride. So with a tone of confusion I asked, “why?”

His answer stuck with me.

“Well darlin’, people just don’t pay attention anymore. And when people don’t pay attention, we all get hurt.”

In the literal sense, he was talking about this era of distracted drivers. It’s no secret to anybody who owns a car, but especially a motorcycle, that since cell phones, the roads have gotten weird.

People have stopped paying attention.

They’re dead stopped at green lights scrolling through Instagram, passing into lanes without checking their blind spots because they’re reading a long text, ramming into bumpers because they’re sifting through Groupon emails.

We’re distracted (I’m distracted). And many have gotten hurt.

But his stated retirement as a motorcyclist didn’t stick with me because I have a deep conviction for road safety.

It felt more like a danger warning for my life.

These simple words from my grandfather about no longer riding his motorcycle have become a reminder to me to look up and share the road with those closest to me. We get so buried in our phones, calendars, goals and worries that we can forget to hone in on the people doing life alongside us. The people who might need us to look up. The people we might be hurting.

When we stay so distracted that we lose sight of the needs of our friends or where God’s at work in our own lives, it stings. We hurt ourselves and we hurt other people, often the people we care about most.

Looking up helps us guide one another.

When we pay attention, a community comes back to life because we’ve stepped outside of ourselves, turned a few things off, and committed to what’s in front of us.

By saying “I see you” we help light a lamp at the feet of our friends.

And when we choose not to pay attention, my father’s father might have said it best — “we all get hurt.”

Who Are You Hurting With Your Distractedness? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Knowing What You Want Will Keep You From Making Bad Decisions

Ever wonder why Joseph didn’t sleep with Potiphar’s wife? He certainly could have. She came on to him often, and finally got so tired of his rejections that she lied and said he tried to rape her. Joseph ended up in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

But what gave Joseph the strength to not give in to temptation?

First, Joseph knew what was his and what wasn’t, and Potiphar’s wife was not his, and Joseph had a great deal of respect for Potiphar. Second, and second is important, Joseph knew his own destiny.

*Photo Credit: Oleh Slobodeniuk, Creative Commons

He’d been told in a dream he would become a powerful man. And that was beginning to happen in Joseph’s life. Joseph ran all of Potiphar’s affairs. He may not have known it then, but he was in training to run all of Egypt.

One of the most important elements of story has to do with what the main character wants. Does he want the girl? Does the football team want to win the state championship? If we don’t know what the main character wants, the story is boring and dull and it’s torture to sit through.

The same is true for a human life.

If we don’t know what we want, or where we are going, the story is boring. And worse, the protagonist makes terrible decisions.

If I offered you a penthouse condo in New York City worth millions and stipulated that in order to claim it you had to drive across the country, would you be tempted by the offer of a run-down shack in the midwest? The only way you’d be tempted by that is if I hadn’t offered you the condo.

When we don’t know where we are headed in life, we are vulnerable to temptation.

A good character in a good story knows what he or she wants.

What do you daydream about?

What successes have you had? What do other people believe you are good at? What other lives out there inspire yours? When do you feel like you and God are working on a project together?

These are all clues that help us understand how we are wired and help us decide what to do with our lives. Write it down and head that direction. Feel free to let it evolve and change, because you will evolve and change. Just don’t wander around in a directionless fog.

Can you think of a person who has inspired you who was completely directionless? What would the world be like if God just wandered around and didn’t want anything or wasn’t trying to accomplish the rescue of the world?

Knowing What You Want Will Keep You From Making Bad Decisions is a post from: Storyline Blog

Do You Only Extend Grace When It’s Convenient?

The thing about migraines is that they don’t make an appointment. They just show up. Unannounced. Like those bad feelings you have for another person and you think you’ve gotten over whatever it is they did to you, and then BAM! They’re back. Caught you by surprise. When they announce their presence, migraines always say the same thing:

“I’ve got you — you’re mine for a while.”

My migraines never occur when it’s convenient.

They never arrive while I’m already reclining in a hammock, medicine at arm’s length, with nothing riding on what I have to get done that day. It’s as if they are spying on me, waiting for a chance to pounce.

So you can imagine my reaction when a migraine came knocking right in the middle of the most important and intense week of my year! What a bad piece of timing!

*Photo Credit: Stefan Neuweger, Creative Commons

I organize an annual event called the Writer’s Symposium By The Sea, where we bring in writers from all over and talk about the craft of writing. We’ve had Don and the Storyline Conference there twice. We’ve also had Anne Lamott, Ray Bradbury, Billy Collins, Kathleen Norris, Dave Eggers, Philip Yancey, Eugene Peterson, Mary Karr, and, well..

You get the picture.

My interviews with these writers are all televised and on YouTube. It’s like Inside the Actor’s Studio, but I’m not as creepy as that guy. (I wonder if he gets migraines?)

And in the middle of last year’s Symposium: Woop There It Is — a migraine right in the afternoon, a few hours before one of the interviews. The auditorium was sold out for the event.

The show had to go on.

Some people can power through their migraines. Not me. It’s a force that’s stronger than my will power. It’s Hurricane Katrina compared to my wimpy exhaling. I have to get in a dark room, close my eyes and sleep. Not for days, necessarily, but for at least an hour, especially if I catch it in the early stage.

As I felt this storm gathering, I tried to think of who I could call for help. I didn’t have time to go home, sleep, and then come back. It would be full blown by then. I needed somewhere, something, someone fast, or it was going to be very bad.

Then I remembered.

My wife and I have friends who live just blocks from my office. They also get migraines. I knew they’d understand, and hoped they’d be home. Sue answered after several rings. I explained my predicament. She asked if I was strong enough to drive to her house – otherwise she’d come and get me. I told her I could.

“I’ll leave the front door open,” she said. “Just come in the house and go into Justin’s room.” Justin, their son, was away at college.

I got to their house, went into Justin’s room, where all the shades were drawn, and a bottle of cold water was on the nightstand.

I was out like I had been clubbed.

When I woke up an hour or so later, I took a reading of my brainpan. Seemed okay. The storm had mostly passed. I opened the door to leave and saw Sue sitting in her living room, with a book. I thanked her and headed for my car.

But something caught my eye on the way out the door. Her husband and a bunch of workers were sitting on the back patio. It looked like they were just killing time. When they saw me, they started to get up.

“What’s happening out there?” I asked, still preoccupied with my own issue.

“We’re having the patio re-built,” she said.

“Wow,” I said. “I never heard any hammering or sawing or anything! I must have really been…”

And then it hit me.

Sue and her husband Kim had told them to take a break until their friend was done with his little nap. The workers were still on the clock. Kim and Sue were still paying them. But they needed to be quiet for a while.

When I got in my car I heard the hammers and saws back to work.

Migraines don’t make appointments. Neither does kindness. Neither does grace. Neither does friendship. Grace shows up, unannounced. Right in the middle of the pain. And it says, in a more authoritative voice than anything else:

“I’ve got you – you’re mine for a while.”

Whose pain could you help heal by extending kindness today, even if it’s inconvenient?

Do You Only Extend Grace When It’s Convenient? is a post from: Storyline Blog

You May Be Making Your Bad News Even Worse

We share a common struggle — knowing how and when to deliver bad news. My tendency is to delay the delivery, or worse, try to avoid the need for delivery by allowing time to pass. But I’ve found this only makes the inevitable harder.

So, what is the solution?

Say what you need to say as quickly as possible. Don’t wait a week to respond to that email when 5 minutes of courageous writing can resolve it. Don’t wait until the day the project is due to let your collaborator know you’re two days behind. Don’t keep dating the girl if you know it’s over. Don’t keep saying yes when you know the most honest answer is no.

*Photo Credit: wetwebwork, Creative Commons

I understand this is easier said than done.

But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.

Recently, I resigned from managing a musician that is also a great friend of mine.

For the last 3.5 years, we partnered together to grow his music career in the best way we knew how. We didn’t let anyone else define what his career should look like, but made decisions we knew felt right, even when everyone else thought we were crazy.

This past February, I had to make one last decision I knew felt right.

I told my friend I needed to transition out of my role as his manager.

It was a decision I wrestled with for a long while. But no matter how many times I tried to convince myself I could press through the busyness of another tour or another record, deep down I knew it wasn’t possible for me to keep that pace long-term (considering all of the work I do across multiple projects). With his career continually on the rise, I knew the best gift I could give was the opportunity for him to continue with another manager who could keep up with the pace.

Walking away from the opportunity to work with someone I esteem greatly is what made that decision so hard.

But as soon as I knew the decision was upon me, I didn’t wait.

For his sake, for my own sake, I knew if I waited, it’d be out of the fear of disappointing a friend rather than the goodwill of each other.

When I’m able set aside all of my fears, and many times my own selfish desires and insecurities, the decisions I need to make become much clearer. The right decision becomes much clearer.

Then all of the sudden, what I once thought of as bad news isn’t so bad. I’ve wasted no time, thus letting it healthily transform into something positive for both parties.

Do you have bad news?

Bad news wouldn’t be so bad if you’d just be willing to deliver it.

Ultimately, when you decide to be upfront and honest, you give others the respect of space and time needed to move on. You contribute less baggage to those you date. You allow more time for clients or employers to find a better fit. You throw out resentment and leave more room for forgiveness and grace.

Dr. Henry Cloud suggests, “Do today what you have been avoiding. You will pick up clarity and energy as a result… not to mention brain space.”

You May Be Making Your Bad News Even Worse is a post from: Storyline Blog

What If Christians Stopped Serving Out Of Guilt?

I had lunch with an accomplished surgeon awhile back who told me the two words that will kill the heart fastest are the words “ought to.”

The reason I was having lunch with this surgeon was because I was interviewing him for a potential book. He’s a head surgeon at a nationally renowned hospital and does an enormous amount of charity work, even advising the American military on how their hospital ships can be more efficient while being used in disaster relief. If the average doctor saves hundreds of lives in the span of their career, this guy has likely saved hundreds of thousands.

When I asked why he desires to help so many people, his answer surprised me.

He said “because it’s fun.” And then he went on to say “I like helping people because I enjoy it, I’m the opposite of an evangelical.”

I don’t know if he knew I was a Christian, but the comment came like a curveball and I had nothing to say. I was so accustomed to the passive guilt complex so many of us hear week after week and in book after book that I knew he’d have no shortage of evidence that Evangelicals are constantly being made to do good things they don’t really feel like doing.

In contrast, as I read through the book of Acts, I found this:

A defining characteristic of the early church is they felt joy in their work.

I don’t see a lot of shame and guilt manipulation in Acts, just a bunch of people who act like they are weirdly in love with each other and with God. And I want to emphasize the word weirdly.

So, I’m debating cutting back on the ought to’s and ramping up the fun in serving others. Some aspects of service feel more like duty. Others feel more like fun. I wonder if we stopped the “ought to” aspects of loving people and got more in touch with the kinds of service that come out of our skills and passions we wouldn’t be more effective.

Of course there are people who would say if we only did what was fun and not what we ought to, we’d not care about other people at all, we’d just be out having sex and getting drunk all the time. If that’s you, I’m really sorry. I mean that.

But not everybody is wired that way.

If you set most people free from all guilt and shame, they’d likely live normal lives and still be altruistic. I really believe most people are pretty good at moderation and don’t need a guilt trip to govern themselves.

What about you, though? Do you live with a feeling of “ought to” in your life? And if you were more like my new friend the surgeon, doing good things for people because it was a fun and fulfilling way to live, do you think you’d be an even more giving person?

What If Christians Stopped Serving Out Of Guilt? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Collaboration Isn’t About Impressing One Another

I married my deejay and music producer. Since we said, “I do,” we’ve been traveling, working, creating and performing together, sticking closely to our respective processes.

*Photo Credit: audiomixhouse, Creative Commons

Recently, the electric feeling of an idea was born in both of us. We started brainstorming, talking about themes, beats, stage versus studio, rhymes. Then we decided to come up with a name for our duo. All of this sounded really cool.

Then we sat down to actually collaborate.

He closed the door to our home office and started building the music we’d use. I sat at the dining room table buried in scattered lines of poetry. He let me listen to what he was building, and disappointingly, it wasn’t what I’d imagined the music would sound like. I read him my scattered lines, and to him, they didn’t make much sense. This quickly turned into an argument.

My husband has a mind full of beats per minute, keys of music, sounds, bass and instruments. I have a mind full of metaphors, story and verse. We frustrated each other and it suddenly seemed there was nothing we could do to see each other’s opposing points of view.

That was when we had to make a decision.

We decided that even though it might be messy — him banging on an MPC, me scribbling random lines on paper — that if we were going to really collaborate, we couldn’t do it separately.

I sat down and listened to the process it took him to build the music. I relaxed and tried to fulfill what writing poetry always is, listening first to hear how the words want to be said.

We stayed in that room for hours, but eventually our frustrations unraveled into a piece of poetry and music that made all the messiness worth it.

I learned there are three things to consider when collaboration gets messy.

1. Pull Back The Curtains

Reveal ideas that are unfinished, unrefined, and unedited. When people want collaboration they don’t want your perfection, they want your reality and they want you to bring that to the creative table so everyone can get their hands dirty making the idea the best it can be.

2. Control Freaks Don’t Make Good Collaborators

Collaboration and control do not mix. The more I try to control, the more I miss out. Sometimes creativity is in the accepting and letting go. When I have relaxed, used the “yes and…” approach instead of the “no, that’s not my way” approach, the ideas arrive faster and better.

3. Conflict Is Good

Use conflict to your advantage. Don’t resort to name calling, not listening, becoming defensive or anything else we do when we feel insecure. Conflict during collaboration is not about being right or getting your point across. Dig beneath the conflict to discover how different perspectives and ways of thinking, processing and creating can complement each other, create a strong idea, and make that idea an even better reality.

Inspiration and creativity are waiting to be found in the messiness of collaboration.

Are you willing to let go and listen?

Collaboration Isn’t About Impressing One Another is a post from: Storyline Blog