The Value of Breathing Room

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searby2019

Today was a rare Friday afternoon where I had time on my hands (see how happy I am!) and it got me thinking about the value of breathing room in our business lives and how we use that room to think, plan, and reflect on our work.

I recently ran across this interview with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett about the value of your time and it was a great reminder to me of something my dad said to me early in my professional career – you better leave margins in your day to think and reflect or you’ll never have any creative or new thoughts.

Some weeks when I look at my calendar on Mondays there isn’t hardly a gap between any meeting all week. This is not healthy or productive. As Warren Buffett says in that video, time is the only thing we can’t buy more of so we had better protect it. In our personal lives we all agree wholeheartedly with that so why is it so difficult for us to believe it or adhere to it in our professional lives?

I believe that it is because we’ve been trained and brainwashed to think that the fast movers, the rising stars, and the top performers just run, run, run all day in the hustle for business. The reality is that those who succeed in business do work hard, but they also think and reflect. They stay in the moment with the people they are with, care about what they are doing to give it their full attention, and understand that QUALITY, not QUANTITY is what leads to a successful portfolio of business. They are patient enough to know that it is better to work through things with a challenging client that can do things at a high level than speed through things with a client that wants to cut corners and penny pinch.

So today I’m so glad I had some time for reflection and thinking. I’ll make it a higher priority the rest of the year. Have a nice weekend.

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Snow Day

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snowday

We don’t get too many snow days here in the Piedmont of North Carolina, but when we do, they are AWESOME! My kids have both pretty much been raised in the South, so snow is definitely a novelty to them. The fact that we have THE BEST sledding hill in the neighborhood is a plus. (You just have to make sure you bail before you hit the lake!) Snow days for my kids are simple – sleep in, more media time than usual, read some good books, and hit the snow for a day of fun before it melts tomorrow. It got me thinking about the value of a mental and emotional “snow day” for me too. And I needed it.

As an adult – a parent, a husband, and a leader in my organization – I feel like I have a lot going on. I’m certainly not the busiest man in the world and I try very hard not to project to anyone that I am too busy for them. But the reality is, I get mentally and emotionally tired sometimes; then I come home and we run around all weekend with family and kid activities. And then on Monday, we’re back at it. Sometimes us adults need a snow day too!

I woke up this morning thinking about what am I going to do with my snow day? Here’s what I came up with…

Rest. I laid in bed a few extra minutes and just rested my mind. I tried to control my breathing and think of nothing. It was calming and opened me up to the possibility of the day.

Read. I have a few books I’ve wanted to get started and I know today will be a great day to do that. Usually once I get started on a book, I make the time during the week to continue it and I almost always feel better about reading in the evening than I do watching tv.

Write. I don’t know why it is so hard for me to make time to write in the midst of the regular week. I know I enjoy it. I know that it makes me feel good. I know that it helps me work out my thoughts and feelings better than just stewing on them. Yet I still don’t make it a priority. I think that part of me feels like I need to be unhurried and clear minded to write well and I don’t have too many of those moments in the week so I just don’t do it. This morning, when I knew I would have some time and nothing really rushing me, it was one of the first things that popped into my head.

Organize. I have a few places at home that I’ve been meaning to organize and clean up but always feel daunted by the task. Today I’m going to tackle at least one of them and I know I’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment when I finish.

Play Games. The whole family will be at home all day and I’m sure we’ll get on each other’s nerves a bit. What we will most likely do to relieve that is play board games. It is a trick to get the kids to hang out with us and each other, but it usually works and nearly always leads to laughing, talking, and sharing in ways we don’t during the regular week.

Think. Today I will have time to just sit and reflect. Drink a casual cup of coffee and think about stuff. Think about my family. Think about my friends. Think about work. And dwell on how much I have to be thankful for in this life. And dream about what else I can accomplish.

As I refill my coffee for the third time and tap out these words I pause and reflect…

What stops me from doing this stuff during a regular day? Yeah I’m busy. Yeah the family is busy. Yeah I have a lot of responsibilities. But how much time do each of these things really take? My phone told me I averaged almost 3 hours of screen time per day last week. Of that, over 8 hours of it was on social media. I’m pretty sure I could have cut that in half to rest, read, write, organize, play, or think.

It’s really all about priorities, isn’t it? I have placed more value on scrolling through social media than I have on those six things above that make me a better person in some small way. It’s an indictment on my own depth as a person that I value “liking” a funny video someone posted or checking out the latest outdoor gear on Instagram over feeding my own soul. So for my snow day, I’m going to take advantage of this time to unplug and recharge. I’ll check back tonight to see how many of you “liked” this post! 🙂

Who I Am.

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g2

Who I am today as a 43 year old man has been shaped by a lot of people. This weekend,  I realized how much I’ve been shaped by one man in particular. The picture above is of me and my Grandpa Parmenter. He’s dying and this weekend his 5 children and 13 grandchildren made the pilgrimage to Illinois to spend a few days with him and each other laughing, crying, and reminiscing about our times together. And this is how I realized how much of Who I Am has been shaped by Grandpa Parmenter.

Grandpa Parmenter took me on my first bird hunt. I still love to hunt birds and bird hunting has been a way for my son and I to bond, but that alone isn’t what shaped me in the fields of Illinois. When Grandpa was taking me bird hunting in my junior high and high school years, he was developing in me a deep love of being outdoors, an awareness of the importance of conserving wild and scenic places for outdoor recreation, and the value of sharing time outside with family and friends as a way to bond, and the satisfaction in harvesting the food you eat. This has manifested itself in the priority our family has placed on spending time together hiking, camping, biking, AND hunting outdoors together. It has influenced my interest in being involved conservation minded organizations like the Carolina Raptor Center and the U.S. National Whitewater Center and local food organizations like Carolina Farm Trust. It has greatly impacted Who I Am.

The first question Grandpa Parmenter asked me every time I saw him from the time I was around 7 or 8 years old was: “What are you reading?” I continue to be an avid reader who is married to an avid reader and we are raising two avid readers. Not only did this question hold me accountable to reading interesting books, but it instilled in me a lifelong love of learning. I know that I still have a lot to learn and though school is probably over for me, I work hard to learn every day. My Grandpa has only a few days left on this planet, but he has four books on the end table next to his chair that he is reading and when I was telling him today about a book I was reading he said “I’m gonna have to get that one and check it out.” Yes, I’ve adopted his love of history, particularly of the American Civil War, but the value of being a lifelong learner is what is most important and what has been passed on through me to my children. It has greatly impacted Who I Am.

Perhaps the greatest gift my Grandpa Parmenter has given me is a belief that my faith starts and ends with loving, serving, and caring for all people. My grandfather has modeled a life for me rooted in a belief in Jesus Christ but not tied to dogma. He has shown me that we are called to take care of the less fortunate in this world whenever we have an opportunity, regardless of their background or life circumstance. And he has been an example of how your faith can morph, grow, and change over the course of your life. In short, he has lived out the command to “love one another as we were first loved.” It has greatly impacted Who I Am.

I look like a Searby and my last name is Searby, but my Grandpa Parmenter has had as much influence on the man I am today as any other person. He has impacted ALL of the other significant men in my life – my own father, my uncles, my brother, and my cousins and they have all impacted me. I count myself among the most fortunate on this earth right now to have had the opportunity to spend time with him and I am grateful that we had just a few more precious moments together this weekend. I love you Grandpa and I promise that the impact you’ve had on me will be passed on to my son and generations to come.

JM

Push Pause

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pause

As I was driving into work this morning the phone was buzzing already with emails and texts, employees were calling me, and the day was already stacking up in my head. And all of a sudden I looked at the screen on my dash that controls the audio and saw the pause button on my iTunes control screen. And it struck me that maybe it was time to hit pause on more than just the music. For the next 15 minutes of the commute, I pondered this thought and by the time I put the car in park at work it was pretty obvious to me that I most certainly did need to press pause. On everything.

Life gets going fast and busy for most of us. Our families are busy, our social schedules are busy, and work is always busy. We’ve got to do lists that never seem to get done and goals that never seem to get reached. We’ve got lots of people who need our time and attention and not enough of either to satisfy them all. So we just work harder and faster and sometimes we try to work smarter. We start the day earlier and end it later so we can jam just a little more into each day and hopefully catch up. We think speeding through life at mach speed will prove to everyone how much we want it and prove to ourselves that we are finally worth it.

This morning, when I pressed pause, I thought about the value of that simple act. Instead of worrying about what the day had in store I thought about the value I could add to people. Instead of wondering which deals were going to close this week I gave consideration to how I could make this week better for my staff and our clients. Instead of fixating on all of the “what ifs” out there, I thought about the “what I know nows.” And a calm passed over me. A calm passed over me because that is what pressing pause does – it stops the noise immediately and fully, albeit temporarily. It quiets your world for a few seconds or a few minutes and that quiet provides space for thought.

Do you need to press pause this morning? I know I certainly did and I feel better for it already.

What you Don’t Value Until it is Gone

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I haven’t been writing here much. Maybe its the hustle and bustle of work, maybe it is outside of work things seem pretty great, maybe its self-centeredness, maybe its just laziness. Any excuse will do. The reality is that it is probably most closely linked to undervaluing daily mindfulness; all of those other things are just contributors to that core problem.

This week, however, my family has been gone visiting grandpa and grandma so outside of the 8-5, I’ve had a lot of quiet, alone time. I’ve had some really meaningful conversations with friends I haven’t talked to in awhile. I’ve been completely on my own schedule. And I’ve probably done more self reflection than I’ve done in a long time. This morning, I went for a slow, quiet run on this final Saturday before they get home, and it dawned on me…

You don’t really value things appropriately until they are gone.

I undervalue sitting and reading a book with my kids or running a few errands with them on the weekend. And they’ll both be gone from our home in less than 10 years. I hadn’t thought about that until I didn’t have the luxury of their time this week.

I undervalue a 10 minute conversation with my wife about something that is important to her or important to me. And when we don’t do it, those 10 minutes are gone and wasted. I longed for just a few minutes after dinner with her every night this week.

I undervalue the importance of writing in my life to express things that are in my heart, not just in my mind. And every time I don’t write it down, I lose a little bit of the passions of my heart.

I undervalue sitting still and being quiet even when there is a long list of things to do. The list of things to do will never be gone, but quiet moments are fleeting.

I undervalue the beauty of the place I live and take it for granted when I don’t stop to appreciate the blessing of our home. And the place we live is ever changing.

And I undervalue the importance of allowing my passions to be a more central part of my life; casting them off as “dreams” or “things I like to do when I can.” And opportunities to purse our passions don’t stay open forever.

I’d like to sit here and say “NO MORE!” I’m not sure that is realistic. Life gets going fast sometimes and takes us on wild rides we don’t anticipate. But I will sit here and say I will try harder. I will try harder to be more reflective and value mindfulness more regularly. I will try harder to slow things down in life and appreciate them for what they are before I lose them. And I will try harder to develop a consistent and deliberate appreciation for those things that are right in front of me and may soon be gone.

Everybody’s Busy

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timewheel

I often vent here, but I try NOT to make it overt and directed, more veiled in my own challenges and weaknesses. Today, however, I’ve reached a bit of a frustration point with people who are “too busy” to slow down, or have fun, or be thoughtful about a project, or enjoy their life – even the work part of their life.

Everybody’s busy. I get it. What I don’t get is why that has to get in the way of enjoying life. There are VERY FEW jobs that are truly life and death. ER doctor, surgeon, airline pilot, maybe a firefighter or police officer on occasion. The rest of us are working at jobs that generate value for society or our company or ourselves, but we don’t have actual life and death hanging in the balance of our day to day. I’m not trying to minimize the importance of ANY job. I want my kids’ teachers to take their jobs seriously, and I appreciate the Duke Energy employees that keep the juice flowing to my house. My colleagues and I provide an important service to our clients by helping them advertise their businesses so they can be successful and support themselves and their employees. We’re all a part of a big economic machine and have to do our jobs to keep the machine running.

Yesterday, however, I was on the brink of confronting two different people about chilling out, so I thought it would be a lot more productive to share some thoughts on the topic here that might actually be a reminder to people who care instead of arguing with people who clearly don’t care. The first guy was sitting next to me on the plane on the way home. I saw him first in the terminal in Madison, WI, talking loudly on the phone about work while he also pecked away on his laptop. I have no idea what sort of business he was in – some sort of insurance. Of course, he ended up next to me in first class (I got upgraded, he’s very important so I’m sure he paid). He was on a call as he boarded the plane, leading him to act like a jerk to the gate agents, flight attendants, and all of his fellow passengers as we all boarded. As he talked, he looked at email and texted so I’m fairly certain he wasn’t exactly engaged with the client on the phone. This continued the ENTIRE FLIGHT. He never took his headphones off. When he couldn’t talk on the phone anymore, he switched over to music loud enough that I could hear it and continued to peck away. Even as we landed, having a beautiful view of Uptown Charlotte, he never rested his mind – played Candy Crush on his phone instead and didn’t even look up. I pitied this guy really. I pitied his clients and colleagues. Most importantly for me, it was a reminder to JUST SIT AND BE QUIET a few minutes every hour.

The second near confrontation came on the bus ride to our cars. As we were driving to the parking lot, one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve seen in awhile was washing over Charlotte. It was every shade of red you can imagine. I just sat there and enjoyed it, then looked around the bus to see if anyone was sharing this with me. None of my 6 fellow passengers had a clue – every one of them had their eyes glued on their phones. I looked over to the woman next to me and she was very engaged with her Facebook feed. I leaned over and said quietly, “quite a sunset” and pointed out the window…she looked up for a second, said “uh huh,” and went right back to her phone. All I could do was smile; and I decided just to enjoy the sunset.

Life’s fast, I get it. But we don’t all have to be running at that same speed. We all have things that seem urgent and important in our lives and work. Nearly all of us are “busy.” Let’s just all remember to stop and enjoy the world going on around us and enjoy one another. Be engaged with whatever you are working on, whether personal or professional. We’ll all be happier and more productive in the process.

Community

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brr-team-pic.jpg

This past weekend, a friend of mine convinced me and seven other insane guys to run the Blue Ridge Relay. As the sign above states, this is a 208 mile relay run that includes 27,000 feet of elevation gain and loss over the course of 24+ hours (it took us 33 hours). I did this because I have found that if I do not have some sort of audacious goal in front of me from a fitness standpoint, I am a lot less likely to stick to an exercise regimen, so this sounded right up my alley. I had no idea why these other guys were into this; I didn’t know any of them other than my friend, the ringleader, until 2 months ago. What I got out of the weekend was very unexpected.

The word community is thrown around a lot these days. You hear it in churches, city council meetings, neighborhood associations, and book clubs. It seems to be something a lot of people are seeking in their lives. I guess I’d never really gone looking for it. Over 33 hours in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I believe I found community in its truest form in several places.

Dictionary.com defines community as:

“A social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or 
interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger 
society within which it exists.”

I’ll go along with that, but I think there is a little more. More importantly, I think I learned this weekend a couple of secrets to actually ACHIEVING community.

The Blue Ridge Relay requires a massive amount of volunteers to pull it off. Every 3-10 miles, there is an Exchange Zone (EZ) where one runner finishes his/her leg and hands the team bracelet to the next runner. There are 36 of these zones and they are at rural churches, community centers, fire houses, elementary schools, and small businesses scattered all along the route between Grayson Highlands State Park (VA) and downtown Asheville (NC). At every one of these exchange zones, I saw a glimpse of true community – people just helping out others who wanted to be a small part of their town or area. There wasn’t really anything in it for them, they just did it because they cared about their little corner of the world and wanted to share it with others. Some of these people were standing outside at 3 a.m. directing traffic. It was NOT glamorous. What I learned about community from these gracious individuals is that when you have it, you just pull together and get things done because you’re proud to be a part of this THING and you want to show others what being a part of it means.

For me, however, the real lesson of community last weekend came from the 8 guys I shared this experience with in the mountains. I had an inkling a month ago when we got together for a training run up in the mountains that I was going to like these guys. We had fun, laughed, and talked easily about work, running, and life. I had no idea how sharing the incredibly challenging experience of running for 33 hours straight with little or no sleep would deepen those relationships and develop true community. During the course of the weekend, we each had little victories and defeats. Some legs you felt great and came off the course beaming and proud. Other legs it was all you could do to drag yourself to the exchange zone and you just wanted to collapse as soon as you handed off the bracelet. In both cases, these guys were there to greet each other, provide encouragement, and share in either the victory or the challenge. You knew they understood because they were going through the exact same thing. And they knew you didn’t need a lecture, just a shoulder to lean on and someone to hand you some water. As the day and night wore on, we all started to smell, hurt, gripe, and long for it to be over. But we pushed each other on because the task of finishing could only be done together. And as we stood together at the finish line for the picture above, it dawned on me – this is what TRUE community really is – people who commit to a common goal, participate equally according to their strengths and abilities, push each other on in the tough times, and share in common victories together.

It takes being willing to take on something REALLY TOUGH together to create genuine community. I’d love to see our churches, city councils, neighborhood associations and even book clubs truly become the communities they talk about by taking on something REALLY TOUGH together. I believe that if a group of 9 guys who barely knew each other a month ago, certainly didn’t agree on everything, and had lots of different motivations can come together, create genuine community, and accomplish something audacious, then ANY group willing to attack something tough together with a commitment to not quit, will realize not only community, but amazing things.

Cheers to my new friends and being a part of a new community. I hope you will find one too!

Nobody Cares

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jack

The other day I was sitting in a meeting listening to someone babble on and on about something that was VERY important to them and the thought crossed my mind: “Nobody cares.”

In the next instant, it occurred to me that I do a lot of babbling on and on about things that are important to me and the reality is that NOBODY CARES.

I don’t mean that nobody cares when a child falls down on his bike like my son did above and needs someone to help him up. Instead, I mean that nobody really cares about all of the reasons, excuses, needs, wants, and hopes that you have unless those are also relevant to them. The only person that cares about all of that is the one who is running their mouth. For everyone else, they want to know what this has to do with them or they are waiting their turn to talk about the stuff they care about.

I started to write today about how we need to be more conscientious of each other’s feelings, genuinely listen to others we are with, and bemoan the fact that everyone is just so selfish that they don’t care about what other people have to say. But you wouldn’t really care.

Instead, I’m going to commit to only opening my mouth when the things I’m going to say are something that the others in the room have a genuine stake in. I’m also going to try to kindly hold other accountable to not blabbing on and on about things that no one cares about.

The Lonely Extrovert

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extroverts

Somewhere in your life there’s an extrovert that you think has it all together. Great family, great job, fun to be around. When there’s a party they are always having a good time – smiling, laughing and flitting around like a butterfly. If you work with them, they don’t ever seem to have any trouble at networking events and they always speak up in the Monday morning meeting. If they are your neighbors or parents of your kids’ friends, they always seem to be running the best family on the block. They are the first one you call when you feel like you just need to get out of the house and “do something” because they’ll always say yes. And they will help out with any side project or business idea you’ve got!

Here’s what you might not know…some of these people are extremely lonely. I’m not talking about the “I’m sitting at home alone in the dark brooding” kind of loneliness. Us extroverts don’t get like that too often because we get energy off of other people, so we just naturally get out and about, do stuff, hang out with friends and acquaintances, go to lunch with colleagues, or just talk to strangers if we have to. It is how we fill our emotional tanks.

The kind of loneliness I’m talking about is the kind where you realize the importance of deeper, rooted, more in depth relationships and then look around to find that you don’t have many. For extroverts who come to that realization, lonely takes on a much deeper, more difficult meaning. It becomes disconcerting because it doesn’t go away with more people, which is always our first response. It creates the same feelings that I imagine introverts feel at a 3 hour cocktail party with a bunch of strangers – How do I get out of this?

To be clear, this loneliness is not usually something that can be filled by a spouse or children. Those people are central to our lives and relationships with them are much more about interdependence and the deepest kinds of love than they are being “just friends.” My wife is the single most important person in my life. Period. Friend doesn’t begin to describe our relationship, and she is ALWAYS there for me when I need it, but she cannot fill my every need emotionally.

I’m talking about the kind of relationship where you wade through your extrovert’s small talk and conversation to get to the really mucky stuff going on in their life deeper down. The kind of friendship that has the patience to let you peel off all of their layers of extrovert protectionism until some of the soft and sensitive stuff starts to show up. The kinds of friendship that isn’t afraid to just cut right to it and ask them how things are personally, on the inside, because you don’t really care about the big deal they’re working on at the office or the kids’ latest exploits. What you care about is YOUR FRIEND. These are hard to come by for all of us. I’ve only got three of them in my life and they’re all in different states. They’ll read this and know who they are and probably call to make sure I’m ok. And we’ll talk about our upcoming trip together or agree that we have to find a time to get together – that’s the trick. These are the kind of friendships that get to the core quicker when you’re together, but they are challenging to dig into via text, phone call, or Facebook. We extroverts NEED these face to face moments because we’re so good at the bullshitting that it takes looking us in the eye and asking those challenging questions to get under the surface.

So when you run across your friendly neighborhood extrovert today, give them a hug and ask them how they’re really doing. You might be surprised at their answer and they might really need a friend. Or they might just want to go have a green beer – Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Audio OFF

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audio-off

It’s been a noisy few weeks. The start of a new job has led to lots of meetings, phone calls, and interruptions. The holidays brought the in-laws for two weeks and our house was buzzing the whole time the kids were out of school. Snow days this week meant more madness in the house and business is off to a crazy start for 2017. So today, after I dropped the kids off, I decided I’d just turn the AUDIO OFF for the drive to work.

Of course, the fates rewarded me by giving me the longest commute yet since I’ve started working uptown again. I was 10 minutes late for a meeting I should have been 20 minutes early for, and traffic was bumper to bumper which led to a general insanity on the roadways. My patience was tested. More than once I wanted to peek at my phone, or flip on NPR to hear the latest news, or simply jam out to some music. But I had decided to turn the audio off for a reason and I stayed strong.

A few weeks ago, my good friend, Dr. Jason Pittser, told me that sometimes on his drive to work, he just turns everything off and spends those moments with his thoughts, clearing his mind, and reflecting. I really felt like I needed that this morning, and I’m so glad I did it.

Not having the noise and distraction of the radio, email, phone calls, texts, etc in the car made me hyper-aware, but also allowed me to explore some thoughts and feelings that I’ve been ignoring. It was a bit disconcerting to have the full attention span to realize how many people around me were paying very little attention to their driving. I watched in the rear view mirror as the guy behind me texted, smoked, talked on the phone, drank coffee, played with his GPS, and jammed out to the radio; praying all the while he wouldn’t rear end me. I saw a guy get so frustrated with our slow moving line of traffic that he drove on the shoulder, through the grass in the median, and around 2 cars to get into a lane he thought was faster; I passed him 5 minutes later. I could hear the rumble of the radio in a Tesla driven by a woman WAY TOO YOUNG to be able to afford a Tesla while she applied her make-up to the booming bass. All the while I had to resist the temptation of thinking how much better of a person I was than all of these morons. Fact of the matter is, I’ve allowed most of these distractions and more. I’ve experienced those same frustrations. I’ve allowed outside forces to dictate my mood. But not this morning.

This morning, as I sat quietly in the hum of life around me I was reminded how fortunate I am. I was reminded that my worries are not the worries of the world, nor should I treat them as such. I was reminded of the value of dreaming and wishing and hoping. I was reminded that I have been ignoring exercise so far in 2017 and need to stop making excuses. I was reminded how thankful I am to have healthy kids and a healthy wife. I was reminded that when I slow down and practice a little mindfulness, my heart rate slows and my blood pressure drops, and I allow room in my brain for thinking about things bigger and more important than a random meeting; things that affect my health, and family, and joy. And I smiled a lot.

If you are reading this, I want to challenge you to do something, right this second. Shut off every thing that can make noise or create distraction around you. Shut the door to the room you’re in. I know you can do this because a few minutes ago you were surfing Facebook or Twitter and ended up here, so you’re not THAT busy. Just turn it all off for 5 minutes. You don’t have to meditate or come up with anything profound, just sit and BE for a few minutes. Focus on your breathing and let your mind wander just a little. Close your eyes, and smile. When the audio is off, there is room for more than you can imagine.