Click. Click. Click-click. Click. Think of the potential that waits inside of a pen. The ink could jot an inspiring word, record an intention, or spawn a picture. A mile of ink is charged, ready, and at the command of the poised penman. The nib and two eyes stare at the blank page. Excuses fill the mind. Every bone feels heavy. There are so many other things to do. Apathy wins…again. The sun sets…again. Click. The pen closes unproductively.
There is a certain, dangerous level of comfort that can be reached in life where the grand aspirations are finally achieved. That or the personal goals that once were prepped and promising have expired like the preserved food in the pantry. That or the opportunities that were anticipated and welcomed have moved from needing ingenuity to chore status, needing time, money, and energy, the same as last week. Where entertainment has become cheap and lacks exhilaration. Where the level of drive and energy feels like the summer breaks of high school...slouching. Call it comfort or call it stupor. This decline can leave the truest of valedictorians tired and in bed often through lunchtime.
I’m not a sluggard; I don’t miss work. And I’m not depressed, although I could see how others in my same situation, the situation described above, would slip from tired to blue to requiring intervention. I merely have dabbled in the drug of laziness and no longer have a new horizon in front of me to pursue. I'm intimate with the problem, and being a stereotypical male, I know the solution. In fact, I have deployed the solution in times past. And if I can say so myself, the proposed rocket pack from my past is inspiring.
One note before I launch: I am not a psychologist; I’m only a whole Bible believing human. However, I personally have witnessed many forms of depression, from mild to life-threatening, and in every case that I’ve encountered among family, friends, and strangers there has been hope. The hope swells when help is requested, and the hope rather recedes when the demons are wrestled in isolation. So, if you are on this same slip and slide, get hope; ask for help. From who? Think of the person you’d trust to feed your dog before you leave on a two-week Alaskan cruise. Call them.
With that said, I’ll launch. Click.
The Rocket-Pack Advice
I’m a parasite to people that exhibit energy. In one case, while working as a pilot for a regional airline out of Detroit, one of our flight attendants exhibited this rapturing energy. Throughout the four days of our traveling together across the northeast, he had me hooked at every spare moment on his business adventures. He shared podcasts that I listened to on the layovers (and long after our trip concluded). He shared the various ideas that he had organized and executed with his team members. He gave me his elevator pitches (two-minute sales pitches aimed at exciting investors). He told me of his money-guzzling computer-server-speed problems, his talent-search problems, and this and that. Not to mention, he was an aspiring YouTube sensation. This lava delta of energy spilled onto my internal fire, and for the next three months, through the wintertime, I gobbled up all the how-to-start-a-business podcasts I could. Yet, before we parted ways in the airport at the end of our trip, he left me with a nugget of gold, a bit of philosophical advice. The advice is what got me going and kept me going through my next hustling stretch of life. The business I started was called Oils Partner LLC, and in those following months, I formed two LLCs, programmed an e-commerce website, imported 40,000 items from China, purchased customs bonds, established a new nexus in the state of Georgia, acquired packing materials, bought a truck and trailer, and did all this while raising a two-year-old at home, moving my family from Michigan to Georgia, and launching my time-consuming literary hobby. Oh, and I never quit my full-time position as a pilot (which was wise in hindsight because though the business was profitable, the $3.50 I was raking in every week would have impoverished my family quickly). What was I trying to prove? I don’t know, but through this self-studied master’s program in business, I acquire a cargo-ship load of respect for small-business owners. Respect to the point that I would rather pay full price at mom-and-pop shops now than go coupon clipping. Looking back, I marvel at the amount of energy that I was able to muster to make this all happen.
That flight attendant’s nugget of advice was something that had been shared with him, so please know up front that this is not exactly original material. I took it and shaped it somewhat to my liking, and it’s this shaping that I’ll share with you, a tool to ward off spurts of life where getting out of bed, for whatever reason, has become a chore.
It requires a pen, a journal, and less than three minutes of time before bed. Each of these elements is critical:
A pen—you can’t erase it.
A journal—it binds your entries together as a written testimony.
Less than three minutes—a period of time that the tiredest individual still has to spare at the end of the worst of days.
Before bed—a window that psychologically is the best time to instill something in the subconscious.
So, what could you write with a pen in a journal that is so empowering that even a flight attendant could be the CEO of two businesses, a YouTube creator, and not have quit his day job? My answer is three things: a future regret, top priority items, and a reward.
Let me explain. When I close my eyes at the end of a lethargic day, I can see tasks that I should have accomplished but that I have no more time or energy to accomplish. This thought alone doubles the next day's agenda, making it seem even more insurmountable. Going to bed with angst already stirred for the next day is discouraging, so why drag the failures of spent time into tomorrow? Instead, in those three minutes before sleep, whether I'm discouraged or content, I think of what I would regret not accomplishing the next day. Then, click, I write it down on the next line of my journal under the present day’s date, something like: Tomorrow, I would have kissed my wife before I left for work in the morning. After all, you can dig into tomorrow much easier than you can bury the past. Next comes tomorrow’s top priority items, TPIs I call them because it’s shorter to write. To be clear, this is NOT the place nor time to write all the items that I need from the grocery store. Rather, this is the place and time to offload the biggest items that I need to get done. Maybe it’s just one top-most priority item, and maybe it’s more, but keeping in mind the time constraint, I tell myself no more than three. I write something like: TPIs 1. Fill the pickup’s gas tank. 2. Call and schedule an appointment at Manning’s. 3. Take J to TKD. This shouldn’t take me more than a minute, and maybe it requires me to look at a schedule or to ask my wife a question, but it’s simple and yet directive enough to address the largest items on my plate, that piled plate of spaghetti we call life. With the most critical items written down, forgetting is impossible, and I usually sleep better as a result. Before I get to the last reward element of this tool, I want to point out a unique thing that happens when I accomplish something on my list the next day. Accomplishment creates momentum. With momentum created so early in the day, I reach my reward having earned it, and when I accomplish all the items on my list, plus some things that were a little less important, I enter the decline of the day more satisfied. Food tastes better, sleep is more welcoming, and I'm told that my affect is more pleasant. Why? Because I'm hungry, I'm tired, and apparently, I move around subconsciously, if not consciously, wearing my micro accomplishments. In a sense, this exercise creates pride of ownership. Not only do I rise in the morning fixated on these few to-do list items, but I also have written down an incentive for accomplishing them. Something like: Enjoy a cup of tea with my wife. In regard to the reward, only I know what will motivate me, and this motivating item has to be something realistic, a small pleasure that brings me enjoyment. One note here:
This motivational tool is meant to inspire personal achievement, your achievement, and I can foresee it failing quite miserably if prescribed to someone else, say to a moping child.
The most motivating part of this exercise is when I reach the evening, and whether I generally succeeded or spectacularly failed in the day, I discover one of two obvious things. I discover that I accomplished what I meant to accomplish or that I put too much spaghetti on my plate. Either way in my example, I would have remembered to kiss my wife, and even if I missed taking my kid to his activity because the truck ran out of gas, I would be able to chuckle at myself when I discovered my foresight from the night before in my journal. Then, click, with my pen in hand at sundown, I would jot down: Tomorrow, I would have filled my wife’s gas tank, maybe the same TPIs (or maybe not), and something else I could enjoy as a result of my labors.
This tool is accelerating in nature, and sometimes I set the journal down for days or weeks on end. Nevertheless, it is the nugget that was shared with me, the one that fired up the biological coal engine inside, and thus I share it with you.
So, when will you be heading to the bookstore to buy a journal?
I no longer apply this tool to the objective of outdoing my coworkers in their accomplishments, but the tool is helpful nonetheless to keep me going when the soles of my shoes start falling apart from the daily grind. To me, the tool has been super shoe glue and has been a continual blessing.
Biblical Blessings and a Parallel
Speaking of blessings, there is a parallel issue I see that far surpasses the value of my suggested simple exercise. The parallel to this motivational exercise is rooted in the repeated Biblical emphasis placed on obeying YHWH's commands. Genesis 26:4-5, Exodus 19:5-6; 23:22-25, Deuteronomy 7:9-15; 11:27-28; 15:4-6; 28:1-14, Joshua 22:1-6, 1 Samuel 12:14-24, Romans 2:25-27; 3:19-31; 6:12, Philippians 2:12, 2 Thessalonians 1:8, and Hebrews 5:9; 11:8 are all instances of YHWH calling people to obey the items on his to-do list. And if affirmative grammar isn't convincing enough, how about the consequences of disobeying the items on YHWH's to-do list? Deuteronomy 28:15-68, Judges 2:2-17, 2 Kings 18:12, Jeremiah 11:3-8, Daniel 9:10-14, Matthew 23:23, John 7:19; 7:49, and Galatians 3:1. These lists are far from comprehensive. Yet, before this list sparks objections on a dissentious doctrinal issue, remember Romans 4:7-8 (KJV): "...blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." The Bible defines this sin, sometimes clearly and sometimes not so clearly, but it calls us to repentance just the same, gives us an opportunity to have our sin covered, and tells us to "go, and sin no more" (John 8:11, KJV). This action step of going and sinning "no more" not only separates the blessings from the curses but also mirrors the trouble I was having with laziness. I have succeeded in securing many comforts in life, but at the same time I have succumbed to lying in bed not wanting to do my daily work, run down with depressive resistance and laggardness. Just like I have been forgiven from my hopeless state of sin but still find excuse after excuse to remain wallowing in my sinful ways. So, how could I overcome this spiritual slothfulness? How about by following the similar command of writing YHWH's to-do list down on the gates and doorposts of my house? Deuteronomy 6:9; 11:20. Eureka! There is Biblical precedence here for writing to-do lists! All worldly applications aside, at the end of the matter, I will evermore insist that obedience to YHWH's law, His list of things to do, is galactically more important than our private agendas.
Shabbat
One Biblical command that specifically addresses the underpinnings of this indolence brought on by comfort is to accomplish Sabbath rest. Yes, it sounds backwards, but rest is truly a command packed with a rocket. Shabbat, or Sabbath, is YHWH's oxymoronic rule to do no work and to not require others to do work either. This ordinance is a similar principle to my suggested, journaled reward but with an added means of inciting productivity. Take the illustration of a timed standardized test. Because of the time limit, test takers work more diligently, especially toward the end of test, and what is the classic sound that test takers make when they are told put down their pencils? It sure sounds a lot like The Click of a Simple Pen to me. I’m not sure if my double entendre worked here, but my point is that the same hustle happens to Shabbat keepers. They have a quicker step throughout the work week and especially as the sun falls on the sixth day. And on the flip side of Shabbat, after resting my tired bones and eating preprepared meals, I find my eagerness spooling, and eagerness is the trait I think most fathers and mothers are in search of these dilatory days (or at least this one).
Keep clicking,
JH
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