Jack’s Buzz

Sticking a trip to Guatemala in the middle of a 30-Day Challenge is like putting too much salt in a pot of beans. Salt is not affected by beans, whereas too much salt has a ruinous effect on beans. Similarly, a mission trip is not much affected by a 30-Day Challenge, but the Challenge ends up in the infirmary.

Such was my January attempt if one measures Challenges by standards of perfection, which one ought not do. The spirit of a challenge is to see what works and what does not; to push oneself; to increase gains and decrease drains, and ultimately to find a larger sense of well-being. Simply stated, if one attends a successful mission trip and it blows up his entire 30-Day Challenge list, he counts a win. Moreover, if one finds even one positive truth as a result of said blown up Challenge, it’s a big win, or two wins, or whatever helps with recruiting down the line.

Enough background, let’s get on to what I learned. I’ll give you some orienting issues, then the particulars of my challenge list.

First, the 30-Day Challenge offers a great way to get used to trying new stuff. People who try new stuff stay younger, smarter, and faster, and that is no lie. Yards of data follow oceans of studies proving that human achievement flows from challenging goals like blood flows from a punch in the nose.

Second, I tend to try too much stuff. My list was too long (again). I tried things I could not complete (especially with a mission trip in the middle of the month-long experiment). This is not bad.

Third, the more stuff I try, the more I learn. I conclude, therefore, that trying too much stuff, while a bit deflating, is not necessarily a bad thing.

I tried to do a few things every day for a month, a few twice during the month, and a few just once. First, the dailies:

• Lower total calories. I do not have the willpower for a hunger strike. I admire people that can get along on 1,000 calories per day, even they look they just got out a Turkish prison. I was hungry the entire month except when I was in Guatemala, which is an obviously odd statement, or when I decided that being hungry was stupid, which it is unless you cannot avoid it (like in a Turkish prison). What’s more frustrating is that I saw no measurable effect from cutting calories. Likely, I would need to do it longer and more consistently. Two weeks on, eight days off, and then ten days on doesn’t work, it just confuses my body and puts my metabolism into famine mode. That, combined with less strenuous workout due to a back injury  (see below) quails weight gain for the month. Bad word. Bad word. Bad word.
• Measure how one day’s intake affects the next day’s performance. I found that I had more energy on days after I ate less bread, but staying off other carbs mattered little. Of course, the whole was so screwed up by (see above) that this one’s inconclusive.
• Do three things each day that increase a sense of well-being (stretch, yoga, write things for which I’m thankful, exercise, get enough sleep, pray, meditate come to mind). Yoga class is where all the people that “Keep Austin Weird” hang out. This is certainly a function of living in Central Austin, in which case, I might be a candidate for yoga in the privacy of one’s home or at least with people who do not have a world view that gives human rights to cockroaches. Otherwise, this item led to a surprising elevation of the next day’s mood. Writing things for which I am thankful led to the biggest gain.
• Minimize time with negative and unresponsive people. I was already good at emotional time management, now I’m better at it. Paying attention for a month was beneficial and revealing. I cut short some relationships and recommitted to keeping a few others walled off.

2-4 times during the month: Create Opportunities

• Visit churches near our house. Sadly, this was a bust and presents an ongoing dilemma. Perhaps my standards are too high, but lame music followed by boring (or uninspired) teaching leaves me feeling that I wasted a valuable day off. It appears that one unintended consequence of the mega-church boom is that smaller, neighborhood churches suck (I am of the opinion that the sulkiness of the latter created the rise of the former and it’s now a circular relationship). At the risk of self-image and pride in what God has done with us in the past, Janet and I are inviting some likewise church-challenged friends over for a Sunday eve gathering. Let me know if this intrigues you enough to want an invite (it’s not ill-mannered to invite oneself to a Bible study, by the way).
• Tear out part of my yard, count it as an exercise day. I confess anger at my physical limitations. In April, I tore one of the annular disk rings in my lower back. If I move just the right way – like bend forward – knives. It’ll take six months to heal. More bad words.
• Explore our neighborhood on foot, with Janet. Austin’s North University neighborhood is the city, and city life carries risks and rewards. Yesterday, I walked to the grocery store and carried my purchases home. That felt great.

On New Year’s Day, someone in our neighborhood killed one of my neighbors and severely traumatizing two others. That felt scary. I prayed for protection and justice, and I loaded my guns (which pi**ed off the yogini). A man police linked to the crimes was found dead in his apartment before the month ended. You make whatever connection you like, but I think the demons came calling one night and took their reward. (Not enough space here to explain fully.)

Living in the city means you keep your wits about you. It also means convenience to shops, medical care (I walk to my doctor’s office), great restaurants, knowing your neighbors, pocket parks, historic homes, and music venues. While not for everyone, Janet and I love it.

• See if it works better to end the day by doing some laptop work in a store. It does.
• Complete store visits by lunchtime Thursday. Use the rest of the week for appointments. Impossible. No matter how much I try to schedule my week, I cannot schedule my week. I’m here to help people, and doing so cannot be scheduled.

1 time during the month: Seek Possibilities

• Reread a book that influenced me in the past. I tried rereading Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Dear Lord, that book is boring. I couldn’t get through it. Here’s a link to a recently revised list of books less likely to bore. I plan to revisit (and highly recommend) The Ragamuffin Gospel.
• Wait three days before saying yes to new opportunities. Great idea, used once in January with outstanding results.
• Gluten free for a week, evaluate results. This one surprised me. My energy level increased noticably during my gluten free week. Admittedly, the placebo effect comes to mind. Perhaps another test is in order. Making a commitment to refrain from killing, skinning, and eating glutens is a pain in the schedule. I’m not ready to change, but am ready to test again.
• Dairy free for a week, evaluate results. Didn’t do it. My list, my rules.
• Write a bucket list with Janet. Didn’t do this one either. Not sure I need to. We’ve done fine without a bucket list, and really, it seems like a terribly self-centered thing to do.
• Pay a first visit to one of the music venues near our house. Or two! Waterloo Ice House had great music and service though the food was average. Central Market was amazing and FREE! Other people’s kids run around playing then go home crying for more. The music was outstanding both times – bluegrass one day, jazz another. The eclectic crowd offers people-watching rivaled only by large airports and bowling alleys. The chefs throw down some excellent, value-priced food. Not a bad evening’s entertainment. Holler if you want to go and we’ll join you.

I hope you had fun with your 30-day Challenge, and I hope my story inspires you to try something over the next month. Actual results may vary.

I believe in setting goals and in 30 Day Challenges. I can’t imagine going through life without some things to shoot for. Nor can I imagine a year without 3-4 monthlong opportunities to push myself in several areas.

This is my third 30 Day Challenge. My first taught me the value of a manageable (smaller) list and how to evaluate and edit midterm. My second taught me to include things to stop doing as well as new tasks to try.

This time, I’m doing my challenge with a half dozen (+/-) people with whom I work. We intend to tweet progress using the #kn30days hashtag. I also have a mission trip to Guatemala during the month that will challenge my Challenge.

I broke my list down in three categories. First are tasks that I want to complete every day for 30 days – seriously challenging but not impossible.

Second level tasks are things I want to do 2-4 times during the month. They represent opportunities that may become more regular in a future list.

Third, I list things I’ll only do once. I’m looking for possibilities, trying new things to see what they reveal and how they fit.

Here’s my list of dailies:

2-4 times: Create Opportunities

1 time: Seek Possibilities

Follow me on Twitter @jacksbuzz to see how it goes.

I’m two days past the end of my first “30 Day Challenge,” trying to decipher what I learned. (If you have no clue what I’m talking about, read 30 Day Challenge: Gini got me into this.)

Results

• Walk dog 6x/week. Dropped it (here’s why). Drop = tie.
• Limit TV to 14 hrs/week (incl. football). Averaged 12.6. Win.
• Check email only 3x/day. (Here’s why). Tie.
• 5 healthy dinners/week. Averaged 6 for a win.
• Water, water, water… gallon/day. Averaged 5.5 days/week. Loss.
• 5 workouts/week. Averaged 5.5. Win!
• 5 small meals/day, 5 days/week. Averaged 5. Win.
• Read 1 book on relationship  development, 1 on leadership. Read 1.4. Loss.
• Spend 1 entire day in prayer. Win.
• Invite friends over to discuss what we can do to help Africa. Win.
• Meet w/ financial planner. Fail. No excuses.
• Knockout 3 items on honey-do list. Completed 20 and received excellent kisses. Meeeeeyoww, baby – win!

Overall 7 wins, 3 losses, 2 ties. I’m just OK with 7-3-2. That’s not good enough for me, but I’m not going to hang myself either. In my first season, I made it to a nice holiday bowl game.

Lessons 

Dropping a task is acceptable in the 30 Day Challenge world. Honestly, if you don’t drop a task along the way it’s probably because you didn’t try anything stupid. You’re probably not trying enough new things.

Failing stinks, but if you aren’t failing, you’re probably not stretching yourself either. In my next challenge (likely January), I’ll try something out of my comfort zone, something with a high chance of failure. If I fail, I’ll hate it, but if I succeed, I win big.

Many of my challenges were in the wellness category. All of us have an old uncle advising: “When you have your health, you have everything.” When I was a bullet-proof, twenty-something, I though my uncle was just old. Now I’m old[er], and I think he was wise. Paying attention to water consumption in high-heat Austin drought, was a smart move. When I didn’t, I paid with dehydration headaches during a couple of deceptively cool 93-95 degree days spent working outside. Stupid.

Before the challenge, I was averaging less than four workouts per week, so by setting a much higher than normal goal, I improved significantly. I wake up most days with a lot of low-back pain. That’s gotten worse since I returned from Kenya in July. My mood, however, improved as I worked out more often meaning that I deal with the pain better than I did when I exercised less.

As a result of eating in a way that boosts metabolism (5 small meals/day) and working out more, I lost 6 pounds of fat and gained 2 pounds of lean muscle in a month. This month, I will have to spend $30-40 having my pants taken in. I’m not complaining.

Reading and career success are intertwined in the same way that water, eating well, and exercising lead to wellness. I like to read and I really like career success. I like to learn as I read, so my usual fiction:non-fiction ration is 1:5. I also take a lot of notes as I read (notes that I later use in teaching life balance classes). So, I’m fine with not completing my reading goal. To read two books per month is easy, but to digest and be able to teach the content of two books per month now seems overly ambitious. The important point seems to be that I set a work-related reading goal and stay on plan.

Whatever success I have in my work for the last 25 years, and it’s been high, I correlate to the time I spend with God. God grants success in case you’re wondering. For me, spiritual grounding leads to career success. Prayer, Bible reading, contemplation, study, listening to God – all that stuff pays rich dividends in my life. I’m spiritually saturated, and I want to stay full. So I planned another prayer day for this month.

Relationships are also very important to me. As a bonus, I found that spending time talking with friends about Africa not only solidified those friendships, but it revealed new opportunities for  meaningful work over there. I’ve planned another Africa conversation for October.

I’m looking forward to seeing if I’ve really defeated some old, bad habits as a result of this challenge. Whenever one adds something into his or her life, it takes time away from something else. No adds without corresponding drops. The point of this kind of challenge is to feed good habits and starve bad ones. I didn’t drop many activities with this challenge, and I found myself time-pressed in ways I did not like. So the next couple months, I’m hunting margin. My next 30 Day Challenge will likely include as many things to quit or dial down as it does things to add.

“There is a point at which one tires of every challenge.” This is a quote that I just made up but sounds so profoundly cynical that I am sure I got it from Truman Capote or W.C. Fields. Whatever the source, I always hit it and at rather predictable times.

The thing about seriously challenging the way one manages his or her time – and that’s really all a 30 Day Challenge does – is that he or she cannot simply add on new and better stuff. He or she must also drop some old, tired, but often comfortable stuff. Wasting time on Facebook has to go if one wants to workout five times a week. Mindlessly watching a movie for the fourth time (or reading a juicy novel) has to go to give time for non-fiction reading (the kind that improves one’s life). What gives way to five-meals-a-day to boost metabolism? Big, heavy, time-consuming gorging and the ensuing trip to the couch.

What I found in the past, however, is that doing something like a 30 Day Challenge is always worth the sacrifice. Things come to light that are not otherwise discovered. For instance, a discovery that fictions are easily forgotten and not often worth my time (exceptions for Power of One, The Shack and a few others) came from a purposeful choice to read one non-fiction book each month – a habit now in its third decade (that’s a lot of learning). Twenty years ago, I accepted a professor’s challenge to hit the gym three times a week and watched my sleep habits, grades, and moods improve. All I lost was twenty pounds and time spent fuddling around wondering why I lacked energy.

Now 2/3 through my current round of challenges, I am finding new truths and anchoring old ones. Here’s my list and a few lessons.

• Walk dog 6x/week. Impossible. Janet likes doing this and often includes it as part of her workout routine. She really only needs me to fill in when she can’t do the job. So it’s a honey-do though I haven’t counted it as such as yet. I should just drop it.
• Limit TV to 14 hrs/week (incl. football). This is easy. There’s nothing much worth watching besides football anyway, and most of those games were on as background to half-doing something else. Turning the TV off is easy (there’s even a special for button for it).
• Check email only 3x/day. Bad idea. I know what the time-management and leadership gurus say. In my case, they’re full of prunes. It turns out that many of the people that depend on my advice email me in urgent need. I could ask them to text or call, but that would not be caring for the needs of others would it? Since caring for the needs of others is one of my non-negotiable core values, this one is gone.
• 5 healthy dinners/week. Eating healthy at night is easy when you have a soul-mate-sweetie-pie-high-school-sweetheart for a wife. Janet wants me to live and be healthy, so this one was nothing more than, “Hey baby, can you help me eat more healthy foods at night?” Done deal.
• Water, water, water… gallon/day. Pain. In. The. Bladder. Still, I feel better when hydrated, so this is just not an option.
• 5 workouts/week. First discovery is that, yes, I can find the time and no, it’s not easy. I’m doing six, actually, but over time, that may drop back to five. I also found that I can workout a lot harder than I originally thought. I had to get out of the gym to learn the latter truth, but there’s not time here to go into all that.
• 5 small meals/day, 5 days/week. It’s just discipline, but it does create a constant flow of energy throughout the day. The 3:00pm “I need a nap” cycle broke the third day after I started eating smaller, more frequent meals. I’m not a farmer, why eat like one?
• Read 1 book on relationship  development, 1 on leadership. Again, this seems pretty simple. I was already reading one book per month, so cutting the mindless meandering and inserting something helpful and useful is just a decision.
• Spend 1 entire day in prayer. Harder than it sounds, but doable. Like fasting, this is really an issue best cleared with God before attempting.
• Invite friends over to discuss what we can do to help Africa. I should do this one three or four more times. Easily one of two most fun items on the list.
• Meet w/ financial planner. Not yet. Dreading it, but cannot say why.
• Knockout 3 items on honey-do list. Huge win. I completed eight the first week, fourteen in twenty days. I like doing stuff around the house.

Some of the things I am attempting are disturbing my comfortable routines. Honestly, it’s easier to drop back to the rut and laze around. But I’m pushing through to the end, hoping to learn more.

Comments welcome.

Normally, I am told, Fridays and weekends–especially long holiday weekends–derail people from their healthy intentions. Things like 30 Day Challenge disintegrate under the pressure of friends wanting to go for drinks, more friends coming in town, family bar-b-ques with massive quantities of potato salad and pie. On Labor Day Weekend, one finds himself yielding to nachos, beer, and couch. Not this one.

We opened Mighty Fine #4 in Cedar Park Friday. There was cake and bagels (what?). I had 1/2 piece of cake, which was worth the investment, and no bagel. I stayed on plan. It was surprisingly easy.

Started Saturday doing up-downs in my 114* attic. My desire to eliminate one daunting task from a 67-item honey-do list turned into killing three items. Aaaaaand the list grew two more, but I got kisses.

Since we pretty much eliminated bad food from the house, my consumption stayed on target. Since I was already soaked from hanging out in my Bikram attic, I worked out. Since all the early TV games sucked, I left the TV off and took my college sweetheart/wife to see Texas beat Rice in person.

We walked a couple miles (blister), and saw old friends at a tailgate with a live band and top shelf tequila. I was good, meaning only one, smooth shot. It was an excellent evening. The weather even cooperated by falling from kickoff 100* all the way down to 93 as we walked the mile back to the car. Staying hydrated was expensive but easy to remember.

My challenge began on a Thursday (9/1), so a week is a little awkward to measure. It’s Sunday, so I should be doing a review and look forward plan. Nope, only half done with week one. Since it started with “first really crappy day in a year” immediately followed by Labor Day Weekend, I stand a larger than normal chance of failure, right? Nah. Power through. This is cake.