Career

Want to be a better man? Develop one good habit per month

Way back in 1892, a psychologist named Willam James said, “All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.” 

Most men think what they do every day is a series of decisions. But that’s not right. Most of what we do is a habit. A researcher at Duke University wrote that 40% of what we do in a typical day is actually a habit instead of a decision. 

Think about the stuff you do every day from your morning routine to the route you take coming home from work. All of those are habits more than decisions. 

Men are habit machines

So it makes sense that if you want to be a better man, you need to develop better habits. 

Let’s start with the fundamental question of “Why do we form habits?”  

I wondered why humans have the pre-wired ability to form a habit instead of being born with the habits built-in. I did some research and learned our brains are designed to constantly look for ways to reduce the effort required to stay alive. To automate routine tasks so men could use their brains to hunt, figure out how to defend themselves against an enemy, or find a better place to live. 

By the way, men have not lost the innate drive to improve their environment so that it’s a little easier to survive. It’s just changed as the world has become more complex. Now men develop new technologies or improve existing ones to make it a little easier to survive. 

I don’t know what habits Willis Carrier developed so he had the energy to invent air conditioning but I’m glad he did. 

This is why forming good habits is so important and bad habits are so destructive to a man. Bad habits will sabotage your ability to do something amazing like Willis Carrier. 

Here’s a secret that should inspire any guy who has tried to break bad habits but constantly relapses and loses his motivation to keep trying; 

You don’t break old habits as much as you overwrite them with new ones.

But what habits does a man need to develop? Here’s a three step process to identify the new habits you need and how to develop them. 

Step 1 

Think about the men you admire, it doesn’t matter if you know them personally. Men who are successful businessmen, great dads, or world class husbands.

Step 2 

Spend some time observing them and take notes about what they do. Pay special attention to what these men do that’s different from what you do.

  • They do what they say they’re going to do. Every time!
  • They correct actions/behaviors in others without denigrating the person
  • When talking with someone, you can see the person has their full attention.  They don’t look at their watch. They don’t respond to a text message. It’s clear that this conversation is the only thing that’s on their mind at that moment.
  • They provide explanations but they don’t make excuses for themselves.
  • They have control over their life and time instead of time having control of them. Their schedule is full of things and people that matter to them. 
  • He listens more than he talks.

Step 3

Identify the one habit of that guy that you’re going to develop this month. Just a heads up, don’t try to develop more than one new habit per month. It exponentially increases your chances for failure. 

Write it down.  

Tell your spouse and coworkers what it is and ask them to help you notice when you fail.

The biggest thing you need to know before you begin developing a new habit is it’s a process. First you’ll notice after the fact when you didn’t do it and think “Dang! I did it again”. Later you’ll notice when you’re doing it. Finally, you’ll progress to the point that you realize after you’ve done it and you’ll celebrate internally by saying “I did it!”

Bingo! You developed a new habit in just one month. 

Now that you’re armed with the confidence you can develop a good habit, choose another new habit and start the process over 

Change 12 habits over the next year you’ll be a better man.

PS

Special thanks to a successful man whose habits I try to emulate, Ron Klein, for the idea for this article, 

 

Dee’s 3’s – how to deal with hard times like a marine

A man’s life is full of tough times; divorces, health problems, or losing a job. The question is not If it will happen to you but When. 

So step one is to accept that fact instead of burying your head in the sand or living like you’re exempt from hard times. 

Too many men, especially young men, have been raised in an environment that has them thinking their lives will be free from any difficulty. And if some difficulty does sneak through, the solution is to find someone to sue or have them fired. 

That’s how boys think, not men.

Men understand there will be hard times, so they need to learn how to deal with them.

Did you know some hard times you face will result from bad choices you made, some hard times will result from the bad choices made by others, and some hard times will happen because good decisions can have bad outcomes? 

Because hard times come from so many different directions, it means you won’t always see them coming. So you must develop the skills and mindset to deal with hard times if you want to be a man who survives and thrives.

One way is to incorporate the Marine Corp way of dealing with hard times into your life. It’s just three words,

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

What does that even mean? How does it work in practice? Here’s a story directly from the United States Marine Corps Field Manual, FMFM 1-0 called “Leading Marines.”

“During Operation Desert Shield, as Marine forces began to expand their lodgment, one of the “greatest concerns was overland transportation. Doctrinally, the Marine Corps planned for moving support no more than about 50-80 kilometers from a beachhead port. Faced with double and triple these distances,… [Marine logistic leaders] resorted to a series of practical if somewhat unconventional actions to solve the problem.” By leasing as many civilian trucks as possible, virtually every truck in Saudi Arabia was thrown into some kind of use regardless of its age or mechanical condition. Dubbed “Saudi Motors,” the new transport fleet grew to more than 1,400 vehicles and eventually included 50 colorfully decorated 10-ton lorries, over 200 civilian buses, and about100 rental cars – everything from Toyota Landcruisers, to Mitsubishis, to Jeep Cherokees donated from allied governments.

It was this fleet, together with some quick thinking by Marine leaders that led to the establishment of a remote logistics base well beyond the distances “allowed” by Marine logistic doctrine. “

Think about what you would have done if you had been a Marine in that situation? 

Would you have said, “sorry, the Book says we do no more than 80 Kilometers”

Or

“We’ve never done it that way before.”

Or

“We don’t have the equipment or resources to do this.”

A man can’t think like that because it means he will fail to answer the bell when his family or others need him to step up and handle a challenging situation. So that’s why I want you to be the man who knows how to improvise, adapt, overcome when times get tough. 

Here’s what the process looks like

Step 1 – Improvise

The first thing you have to do when faced with a tough situation is figure out what tools you have and how they can be used in a new way. There’s a great line in the movie Apollo 13 that illustrates this.

The engineers are meeting to figure out how to get the astronauts home when somebody says the spacecraft was not designed for what needed to happen. Mission Control Chief Gene Kranz says ,“I don’t care what it was designed to do, I care about what it can do.”

That’s the mental attitude to improvise. 

Step 2 – Adapt

Once you figure out your situation and what tools you have to work with, you are in a new normal. Now you have to adapt or figure out how to move forward in the new normal. You have to think differently to survive. The biggest mistake you can make now is to fall back to old ways of thinking. 

Step 3 – Overcome

Now that you’ve done the hard work, it’s time to kick ass and execute. This is where you overcome your situation. You conquer it.

Just like a Marine.

 

Reverse Engineering Your Life

Before everyone had a GPS in their pocket, the old joke was a man would never ask for directions or admit he was lost. It was funny because there was a certain amount of the truth in it. 

The bad news is there isn’t a GPS for life which means a lot of guys just float through day after day with no real plan to follow. They make decisions in the heat of the moment without thinking about the future consequences. It’s like they’re taking a road trip without a map. Instead of having a planned route, they just hop on the road and make turns whenever the mood strikes them.

What’s weird is they’re surprised when they don’t end up where they meant to go and some are even pissed off and look for somebody to blame. 

That’s life for way too many guys and it’s not good, but there is a better way. So I want to show you a process for how to develop a plan to get you where you want to be in 2, 5, or 10 years. The time frame isn’t important, the important part is for you to have a plan you’re following.

But before we talk about planning, we need to establish some axioms about your life:

Playbook for Men Axioms for Life

#1: Your life is a checkbook and you write a check for it every day

#2: You must have a WRITTEN plan

#3: Everything in life costs something (time, money, etc.) and you can’t ignore that fact.

Those three axioms are going to frame the process of coming up with a plan. 

I think the biggest takeaway is nothing in life is free. Everything you want costs something of value, money or your really valuable asset, time. So choose wisely. 

Now I want to show you how to set goals based on where you want to go, not where you are. In other words, how to reverse engineer the life you’ve always wanted.

REVERSE ENGINEERING YOUR LIFE

Step #1:

Write out your priorities (no more than 7) and put them in order of importance. For instance:

  1. God
  2. Wife
  3. Kids
  4. Extended family
  5. Career
  6. Church
  7. Serving others

Step #2: 

Pick a day for yourself and your family sometime in the future and picture that day. How far in the future? I would say a minimum of 2 years and a maximum of 10 years. But it’s your choice, just be reasonable. Nobody can set goals for 30 years from now. What does your life look like? Ask the following questions:

Housing

  • Where do you live?
  • What does your house look like? 
  • What vehicle(s) do you drive?

Health

  • How much will you weigh?
  • How much will you exercise weekly?
  • What day will be your Sabbath?
  • What do your vacations and holidays look like?

Financial

  • Where do you work?
  • How much money do you make?
  • How is your money spent?
  • How is your money saved?
  • How is your money invested?
  • How is your money tithed?
  • What is your insurance package?

Marriage

  • How often do you pray together?
  • When is your date night?

Family

  • How many children will you have?
  • How old will your children be?
  • How will they be educated at that time? Public, private, or home school

Extended Family

  • What is your relationship like with each family member?
  • Do you take vacations together?
  • What about holidays/special days?

Friends

  • Who are your closest friends?
  • Which people have you dropped as friends?
  • What things do you do with your friends?

Learning

  • How many books have you read by that date? 
  • What other experiences have influenced your life (conferences, mentors)?

Ministry

  • What church do you attend?
  • How involved are you?
  • How are you studying the Bible?

I’m not promising you’ll never have any problems if you follow this process but I am telling you the chances of you ending up someplace you never wanted to go are almost zero. 

The best way to do this is when you have the time to really think through each question. 

Now grab a notebook and reverse engineer the life you’ve always wanted. 

PS

The late great Alabama football coach Bear Bryant kept a copy of this poem in his wallet to remind him about the value of a day.

“This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. 

What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever…

leaving something in its place I have traded for it. I want it to be gain, not loss — good, not evil. Success, not failure in order that I shall not forget the price I paid for it.” -Hartsill Wilson

PPS

Thanks to Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church for the big idea behind this column.

 

The 5 Types of Employees No Boss Wants

Being a boss can be a great job. You give people a way to provide for their families. You get to help team members improve so they’ll have opportunities for better jobs in the future. There’s not a downside.

Except when you end up with one of these types of employees. Any of these types of employees are enough to make you dread going to work and also seeing them walk towards your desk.

Here are the 5 Types of Employees No Boss Wants

#1 Confrontational

This is the guy who is always looking for a reason to argue about something. Anything. Everything. Especially if he thinks someone else is getting a benefit that he’s not getting.

He will also confront you over any imagined disrespect. He’ll parse your emails until he can concoct a theory of how you disrespected him.

#2 Know-it-all

There is nothing they don’t know. NOTHING. And don’t even think about challenging their expertise.

#3 No solutions, just problems

This guy comes to the boss anytime there is something even slightly out of the norm. There’s nothing wrong with that except he never has a suggestion for how to solve the problem.

#4 Perpetual Victim

This guy has never made a mistake or poor decision. It’s always someone else’s fault or they were the victim of circumstances beyond their control. The victim thinks nobody else at work likes them. And God forbid the boss offers feedback, it’s only because he’s threatened by the victim.

#5 “I should be the boss”

This guy will tell everyone who will listen how he should be the boss and the boss should be the janitor. What’s interesting is he has all of the answers, but only after the fact.

Do any of these sound familiar?

 

PS

Thanks to my buddy Rick Howerton for the inspiration

A Message to Garcia

1899

A Message to Garcia

By Elbert Hubbard

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.  When war broke out between Spain & the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba–no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly.

What to do!

Some one said to the President, “There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.”

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How “the fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, & in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing- “Carry a message to Garcia!”

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.

No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man- the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, & half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, & sends him an Angel of Light for are sitting now in your office- six clerks are within call.

Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio”.

Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task?

On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?

Which encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia?

Was I hired for that?

Don’t you mean Bismarck?

What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?

Is he dead?

Is there any hurry?

Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?

What do you want to know for?

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia- and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.

Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Correggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce” Saturday night, holds many a worker to his place.

Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply, can neither spell nor punctuate- and do not think it necessary to.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

“You see that bookkeeper,” said the foreman to me in a large factory.

“Yes, what about him?”

“Well he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for.”

Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizen of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” & with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’erdo-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer- but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go.

It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best- those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it yourself.”

Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular fire-brand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slip-shod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry & homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds the man who, against great odds has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes.

I have carried a dinner pail & worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; & all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village- in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed, & needed badly- the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

Should You Take That New Job?

This is the Playbook for Men Podcast, short answers to the big questions about being a man

This episode’s short answer is to the big question of should you take that new job? 

You know the situation, you’ve got a job and you’re pretty happy with it when suddenly you get a message on LinkedIn from a recruiter. And the next thing you know you’ve got a job offer. Now you’ve got to figure out should you take it

How do you know what to do? Do you take a chance with a new job or do you stay with the known quantity, the job that you’ve had and you know how to do it and everything’s going really really well for you.

These kinds of decisions are when you wish there was a systematic way, a process that you could work through to help you evaluate this new job and whether you should take it or not. I’ve got one for you. You break the decision down into three categories; personal, professional, and pay.

Personal

  1. Are you happy in your current job? Do you like your coworkers? Do you like your boss? Are you fulfilled? Do you get to do work you think is making a difference in the world? 
  2. Are you bored at your current job? It’s just not much of a challenge because you’ve been doing it for so long that it just is really gotten to be routine 
  3. How would the new job impact your quality of life? Things like family time. What would your hours be? Would you be traveling a lot? Would you have the freedom to be able to attend your kids sporting events. 

Professional 

  1. Are there going to be opportunities for promotions where you are or are you kind of tapped out? The people in the job that you’d like to have are still a long way away from retirement so you’re boxed in. 
  2. Maybe you’re considering changing industries or careers. I’ve done that a few times myself and that can be a scary prospect. 
  3. How stable is your current company? Wiith Covid you never know about some companies. Are they going to be able to make it? 
  4. How stable is the new company? Are they a startup of an established company. 

Pay 

  1. Is the salary offer a raise? If so, how much? The general rule of thumb is it needs to be 25% increase to make it worth moving. 
  2. What about benefits? How much do you have to pay for health insurance? Is there 401(k) matching? What about vacation time?
  3. Is there a chance to get equity?
  4. Is there a bonus program? 

After you work through the list and just when you think you’ve made a decision, I want you to STOP and sleep on it. If you wake the next morning and still feel good about your decision, for it!

Don’t look back. Don’t second guess yourself. Be confident you’ve done all you could to make a good decision. If it works out, great and if doesn’t, don’t worry about it. Just take these list rinse, repeat.

You can listen to the audio version by clicking here.