Ken Fite

My family and I spent the last week in Iowa. Like usual, I brought along every device I could pack, including an iPhone, an iPad, a Kindle, and my laptop (so I could write… that was my excuse).

After a few days with the in-laws, we rented a car to visit some family. On the drive to go pick up the rental car, my father-in-law asked, “Do you have a map?” “No,” I said, “I have my iPhone.” After a few seconds of silence he finally said, “You better take the map” and handed me one.

He was right.

Just a few minutes after leaving Des Moines and heading north, my iPhone stopped working.

Well, it still worked… I could still play Angry Birds on it if I wanted to. But it didn’t work. No cell coverage. No email. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Pandora. Nothing. I realized that I wouldn’t have access to my toys until I got to the hotel that night. Forced offline, I started to get a little worried.

It’s a strange feeling when you realize you’re disconnected from the world. You move into panic mode and you start coming up with some pretty good excuses for needing access to “the grid.”

What if I miss an email? What if someone needs to get a hold of me? What if my car breaks down?

But the things we fear usually don’t come true. Instead of becoming disconnected to the world, going off the grid can make you more connected with the people you spend your time with.

Without the crutch of a gadget, being off the grid can even force you to pay more attention to life.

My boys, who are also addicted to Angry Birds, suddenly found themselves without their toys, too. Like their dad who had to engage with the real world, they found ways to be creative and have fun.

They climbed a mound of dirt next to a newly built house and pretended that it was a mountain.

They looked for rocks and washed them off with a hose to see what kind of treasures they found.

They ran around and played with their cousins, exploring a cornfield.

They helped name a stray cat.

Then the next day, we all tried to catch fireflies in their grandpa’s backyard.

We went to an Iowa Cubs baseball game.

We played on a slip-and-slide.

We shot each other with squirt guns until we were soaked.

We shucked corn for the first time.

We took a walk in the woods and my oldest son found a log that looked like an alligator.

When the kids lost their toys, they got creative and their imaginations took over.

I’ve written before about seeing life through a 4-inch screen… how I’d much rather live life in the moment instead of trying to capture every single experience with a camera, only to miss it.

A funny thing happens when we ditch the devices. Our brains reset. We get creative. We have fun.

What would happen if we decided to spend one day or even just one afternoon disconnected?

How could going offline for an electronics Sabbath help us appreciate more of what we have?

Don’t wait until you’re stuck off the grid to pay more attention to the things that really matter.

I had no idea what I was going to write about this morning. But that’s nothing new.

I opened the lid of my laptop, clicked on Add New Post, and stared at the blinking cursor of death.

I sat in silence for a few minutes and then said a little prayer for guidance before getting started.

Some call it writer’s block. I call it Saturday.

You see, a lot of people think that writers are just bursting with things to write about. That we can’t wait to sit down and share the amazing thoughts and insight stuck inside our head with the world.

But it’s not true.

We struggle. We worry. We do our morning ritual. We write what we feel called to write about that day, and then we click on Save or Publish and we walk away, hoping to have made a difference.

But the most important thing we do is we show up. Every single day. And we write.

We don’t wait until we figure out what to write about. We just write. Author William Faulkner once said, “I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.”

The one piece of advice I’d give someone wanting to become a writer would be this: Just show up.

It’s advice that applies to a lot more than writing. It can help with any decision or problem we face.

Funny how advice works, though…

We like to give it out freely, but rarely do we follow our own advice, even when we need it.

This was a hectic week. I needed to buy a retirement gift and struggled for days trying to figure out what to get. But it wasn’t until I took a step in faith and left the house that I found the perfect gift.

I also had to give a speech for the retiree in front of 75 people and agonized over the whole thing until I sat down to write it out and then practiced delivering it. It ended up working out just fine.

And then this morning. The blinking cursor of death that thought it would win showed up. But I sat down in faith and wrote some words about having faith that I didn’t even know I was going to write.

That’s how faith works. You show up. You do your best. You let God take care of the rest.

What I keep reminding myself when I don’t know what to do is to just take one step in faith – the first step – and things will work out. It’s like driving home late at night when it’s dark out. You can’t see the whole way home, all you can see is a small part of the road being lit by your headlights.

But that’s all we need to see. If you just follow the path that’s lit, you’ll find your way home.

If you’re struggling with a decision or if you have something weighing on your mind – just show up. It turns out, writing is a lot like life. Show up and take a step in faith. The path will become clearer.

This morning, I woke up and read the obituaries.

It’s the advice author Austin Kleon gave in his book Show Your Work!, which I’m currently reading.

Kleon says that reading the obituaries can be like having a near-death experience. He writes, “Reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine…although I certainly don’t want to taunt [death] or court it or invite it any closer than it needs to be…I do somehow want to remember that it’s coming for me.”

I’ve never had the desire to read the obituaries. I always knew they were out there, but that was the kind of thing that I thought older people did while eating toast and drinking their coffee. Not me.

But this morning, I decided to try it, and I read about some really interesting people.

I read about a high school teacher of 32 years named William Kelsey who was determined not to let the kids he taught “fall through the cracks.” Knowing from personal experience that all students learn differently, he was committed to teaching in a way that was visual, fun, and engaging. He wouldn’t just teach his classes about marine biology from a textbook – he would bring real, live, animals into the classroom and teach about them. When he taught students that didn’t want to go to college, he would work with them to help them find their talents and discover what their calling might be. He found his own calling and passion for marine biology by accident, when that was the only class available for him to take one semester as a graduate student at FSU.

I read about Patrick Stover, a local postmaster for over 35 years and how after he passed away, his daughters decided to retrace his steps and visit the various places around town that carried significance for him. They visited the post office where he worked and the fire station where he volunteered for 30 years. One daughter said that her father’s rule for living life was, “You set an example, and you don’t brag about what you’ve done”. He saved his money and spent it on things that could never be taken away, like education, paying for all three daughters to go to college. And he spent his money on travel – camping in the Rocky Mountains and driving a Volkswagen van across Italy and Switzerland during a family trip – to create lasting memories with the people that he loved. At his service, his daughter thanked him for teaching her about life and about adventure.

I also read about Robert Patterson, Jr., a lawyer and a fifth-generation Floridian who loved to dance at parties and also loved to wear bright-colored yellow, green, and pink jackets at important business meetings. Patterson was once awarded a plaque by former Orange County Mayor Richard Crotty for being “The World’s Nicest Man.” It was only after Patterson’s granddaughter started asking questions about his military past for a school assignment that Patterson shared that he had been awarded a Purple Heart and also given 4 stars of valor for his service in World War II of which he still carried shrapnel in his body from the combat. He didn’t see a need to mention any of this before. What irony that this fun-loving but humble war hero passed away on the 4th of July.

Although I thought it would be a bit weird waking up today to read the obituaries, I learned a lot.

Kleon was right – obituaries aren’t really about death, they’re about life. Reading about how these amazing people lived their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine, too.

It’s Independence Day.

For most of us, that means that later today, we’ll be cooking out, stuffing our faces with delicious barbecue, and lighting sparklers and snakes with our kids that will forever mark up the driveway.

The Founders would be proud.

But Independence Day always seems to remind me of something else – the year is halfway over.

It reminds me of the goals and dreams that I declared on January 1st would become a reality. And it reminds me of my failures when I compare my goals to what I’ve actually accomplished this year.

Back on New Year’s Day, I wrote about how we should stop making resolutions and start setting goals. I explained how resolutions never work, but setting specific daily goals can make us unstoppable. I wrote it, but I didn’t live it. Sometimes it’s hard to practice what you preach.

You get busy. Life takes over. Our goals and dreams take a backseat to life’s endless demands.

And sometimes we sabotage ourselves with the wrong daily goal to give our dreams a chance.

I had a goal of writing six books this year.

But instead of focusing on a daily word count, my focus was on time spent writing. I still woke up before the rest of the world, but I clocked it in each day instead of reaching for a specific goal.

The reality is that sitting down to write 500 words a day and sitting down to write for a few hours seem like similar goals, but they’re not. One is specific and leads to a destination – 500 words is the exact length of this blog post. It’s enough to write six 30,000 word books in a year.

Sitting in a chair to write each morning wasn’t specific enough. There’s Facebook and cat videos and too many other distractions out there for butt-in-chair time to be a good enough writing goal.

It’s easy to get discouraged but we need to celebrate what we have accomplished so far.

What I keep reminding myself is that I still wrote a book this year, the best one I’ve ever written.

And how many people spend years writing their first book?

Norman Vincent Peale’s advice on success was to, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Set big enough goals so that even if you fail, you don’t really fail.

We like to give up on our goals when we get off to a bad start. It’s easier to give up and decide to try again next year than it is to readjust. Today might not be January 1st, but it doesn’t need to be.

Declare a new goal.

The year may be halfway over, but we still have half a year left. Don’t waste it on cat videos.

Tonight, while you watch the 4th of July Fireworks, take a look at the stars and be reminded that if you focus on the right daily goal, you can accomplish anything. Remember to shoot for the moon.

“Get down here right now!” That’s what a dad was screaming at his kid a few weeks ago at church.

We had just listened to a sermon on a topic like anger or something. The kid was in the second story playground and would not come down when it was time to go. The dad was getting mad, and loud, and started to yell because the kid would not budge. I said to myself, I’d never do that…

Never say those words.

Because, trust me, the moment you say something like that, the universe destines you to find yourself in whatever situation you just told yourself you’d never find yourself in.

And so I thought about that dad last Sunday when eleven o’clock rolled around and it was time for my two-year-old to come down from the second story playground and decided that he wouldn’t.

Like the dad from a few weeks before, who I now realize hasn’t been back since that playground incident, I was getting mad, and loud, and yelled, “Get down here right now!” Noah wouldn’t budge.

Two-year-olds don’t take well to demands from adults.

As I stood there, staring up at my son who stared back down at me with the eyes of a crazed fugitive on the run from the Law, I saw that there was a lesson in leadership that I could learn from him: You can’t make someone follow you, listen to you, or do what you want – unless they want to.

In one of my favorite books How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote that, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” I love that. It shows how we can’t change how someone feels, thinks, or acts. It reminds us that they have to first be open to change before being asked to do anything. You can force people to do things, but that loyalty never lasts.

I told my son that we were late for church and he didn’t care. He laughed, as if he were saying You’ll need to do better than that.

I offered him a cookie that didn’t exist and it did no good. I told him I was going to eat the cookie and laughed back at him, trying to strike a blow to the one thing he holds dear. But no luck.

I told him we were going bye-bye as my wife and I confidently walked away and then hid around a corner and asked each other, “What are we going to do?”

Ultimately, I had to crawl underneath openings two feet high to get my son. He looked about as shocked to see me up there as one of the sweet church ladies watching the terrible scene play out.

I’m still not sure exactly how I could have made him want to come down.

But I do know that because I focused on my wants instead of his, because I didn’t find out why he didn’t want to come down, nothing worked. I need to remember this with people of all ages, too.

A few weeks back, I wrote a post for my mom for Mother’s Day. I wanted to take a moment to recognize my Dad and thank him on this Father’s Day Weekend for everything he’s done for me.

If your dad’s still with us, I hope this post inspires you to also write a thank you note. And if not, maybe spend a few moments thinking about your dad and reflect on the memories you still have.

Thank you, Dad.

Thank you for being a great provider.

Your job was demanding but I never heard you complain. And our family never went hungry.

Thank you for going out and getting another job after you were let go, even though it was farther away and required travel. You could have easily collected unemployment and sat around complaining about how life was unfair, but you didn’t. You hit the pavement and found something else. I don’t think you knew that as a little boy, I was watching how you handled that, but I was.

Thank you for letting Mom and me tag along and go out of town with you as much as you did. Those trips as a family were fun and made my childhood special and I still think of them often.

Thank you for not being mad at me when I accidentally broke your mom’s China when I was five years old and hid underneath your bed for what felt like forever. I felt bad enough already.

Thank you for taking me out to breakfast on Saturday mornings. It’s a tradition I keep with my boys today and I look forward to it every week. I like to think that they might keep the tradition, too.

Thank you for saying Yes when I’d ask you to throw the ball with me out in the yard. I know you really didn’t like that kind of thing, but you did it because you knew that it meant something to me.

It meant the world to me.

Thank you for lying on the floor all night long while keeping my hand in a bowl of ice water after I grabbed your car’s scorching hot exhaust pipe when you told me not to. Sorry I didn’t listen to you.

Thank you for driving me to basketball games all over town when it was inconvenient and probably the last thing you wanted to be doing on a weekend after working hard all week long.

Thank you for not being embarrassed that I was the worst player on the team, demonstrated with antics like trying to make a basket from half court for what must have seemed like no good reason.

Sorry about that air ball from half court. I really thought I was going to make the shot. Thank you for not making me feel like an idiot after the game on the way home. I was trying to impress you.

That was the reason.

Thank you for grilling me endlessly when you noticed that a cigarette and a beer were missing from your stash. You had so many, I really didn’t think you would ever notice if I took one of each.

I forgot that you were an accountant.

Thank you for quitting smoking and drinking 30 years ago. I wonder if you’d be reading these words today if you hadn’t made and stuck to that tough decision. You would have missed so much.

Thank you for working two years past when you were supposed to retire to help put me through college. I didn’t think much of it at the time but realize now how much of a sacrifice that was.

Thank you for saving for my college so that by the time I left high school, school was completely paid for. It gave me a sense of security knowing the only thing stopping me now would be me.

Thank you for making me pay my own way when I changed majors so many times while trying to “find myself” that I ran out of paid credits. That’s when I started taking college seriously.

Thank you for telling me you didn’t believe I would finish college. It was the wake up call that I needed. I know now I wasn’t proving you wrong, I was proving what you really believed right.

Thank you for always being happy to see me, whether I was gone for a day or gone for three months. I always knew when I walked through that door you’d have a smile on your face.

Thank you for all of the talks over the years, from how to handle broken relationships to career advice. You didn’t always know what to say, but you were always there to listen.

Thank you for hanging in there when you went to the hospital twice. I almost lost you both times. Thank you for fighting for your life, I can’t imagine my boys not knowing you.

Thank you for being such a great Pawpaw. My boys love you so much. I know this because they go berzerker whenever they learn that they’re going to visit you. I know you love them even more.

Thank you for being a great husband to Mom and staying married for over 40 years. In a world where people like to take the easy way out, you two stayed together even when it wasn’t easy.

Thank you for setting that wonderful example for me. Happy Father’s Day. I love you, Dad.

There’s a theory in weightlifting that training to failure is necessary for seeing results.

Training to failure is where you run so hard that you can’t take another step, or you work a specific muscle in good form repeatedly to the point where you couldn’t do one more rep even if you wanted to. This is the point where the muscle fibers break down. They rip apart and tear at a microscopic level. Within 24 hours, your body will start to hurt while it repairs itself.

You’ll know you worked out right if you feel like your legs are made of jello and you walk funny. Or if you worked your arms so hard that you can’t lift them to wash your own hair without swinging them back and fourth in the shower to get some momentum. And if you forgot to grab some shampoo first, good luck starting all over. Working out to failure is a lot more fun than it sounds.

But that’s when an amazing thing happens. If you worked out in good form, if you worked your muscles to the point of failure, and if you fed your body plenty of protein, your muscles will grow. You’ll get leaner. You’ll walk by the mirror and will notice the change. You may start wearing v-necks. If you repeat this process, and stay committed, you can completely transform your body.

This can only happen if you work out to failure. Muscles don’t grow bigger and get leaner if they’re just worked a little. If you drop and do five push-ups, I can guarantee you won’t see any results.

How many reps does it take to reach failure? It depends on the person and their level of fitness. But the key is that it’s only during extreme pressure where we have the potential for growth.

I had a hard week. You probably did, too. Things seem to get more complicated every day. At times, I felt like I was being stretched to the limit. Even to the point of failure. But what I’m realizing is this: it’s in our failures where we have the opportunity to grow into a better version of ourselves.

Just like our muscles that will never grow unless they reach their breaking point through repeated training, you and I can’t grow if we’re never stretched to our limit, either. We like to play it safe. We like to avoid reaching the breaking point. It’s scary because we don’t know how we’ll get through it.

But it’s not something to fear. It’s something to expect. We’re in training to become better people.

When we recognize that we’re close to our breaking point, push through to the other side.

That’s where we’ll find our breakthrough.

My six-year-old’s last soccer game was on Saturday. The entire season had – at least for me – led up to this game. My friend’s son was on the opposing team, and they’re quite good. They always had over 12 players show up each week. Plenty of kids to rotate in and out whenever they’d get tired. Our team was lucky if five showed up. But we were the underdog that kept on winning.

As my friend and I stood watching my son’s team kick his son’s team’s butt, we started talking about how much better the boys were getting. He made the comment, “If only I had more time, I would have practiced with him.” I agreed and felt the same way. “If only we had more time.”

We didn’t say much more after that. Those last few words hung in the air. And in my mind.

For some reason, I was taken back to a conversation that I had ten years earlier.

An acquaintance had met my wife and me for what we thought was going to be a dinner to catch up but ended up being a sales pitch for trying to get us to join a multi-level marketing business.

I was not interested. We were not interested. We wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. We explained as nicely as we could – multiple times – that we didn’t have enough time.

As uncomfortable and awkward as that dinner meeting was, I’ll never forget what he said next, as he tried to convince us to join his business. He said, “We all have the same amount of time. There’s 168 hours in a week. But it’s up to us to decide how we’re going to spend them.”

It’s true.

Our kids won’t be little forever. My son might not want to even play soccer next year. And there’s no guarantee that the people we love will be here tomorrow, either. We all know this deep down. We tell ourselves that we’ll spend time doing things that matter tomorrow. But like the sign in the coffee shop that says Free coffee tomorrow, tomorrow never really comes, now does it?

So how do we find more time? It’s simple. We make time.

It’s an answer that invites eye-rolls but it’s the only answer there is.

It’s like the rock, pebble, and sand experiment that my eighth grade science teacher showed us.

• The sand represents social media, phone calls, emails, and busywork that feels good in the moment but keeps us from devoting time to what really matters.
• The pebbles represent the things in our lives that have little consequence if we don’t do them right now… things that need to get done but can wait if we would just walk away.
• The rocks represent the most important things in our lives. Spending time with loved ones. Saying Yes when your six-year-old asks you to play or practice soccer with them.
• The jar represents our limited time. We can’t get a bigger jar that holds more than 168 hours a week. The only thing we can control is what we put in the jar and when we put them in.

If you pour the sand in the jar, then add the pebbles, you’ll never get the big rocks in. There’s just not enough room when we put the unimportant things in first. The sand gets packed at the bottom. We may get a few pebbles in, but the rocks won’t fit. There’s just not enough room for everything.

I still remember when my teacher showed us how to fit everything in. He put the big rocks in the jar first. Then he added in the pebbles, which found their way through some of the openings left by the big rocks to fill the void. Finally, he poured in the sand that filled up all of the remaining space left by the rocks and the pebbles. It all fit, even the big rocks. It’s all the same crap – but it all fit. As a thirteen-year-old middle schooler seeing this for the first time, it blew my mind.

There’s never enough time to get everything done. But there’s always enough time to get the most important things done.

When it comes to choosing between working a little bit longer or doing something meaningful, close the laptop and walk away without hesitation. There will be plenty of work to do, no matter how much gets done right now. It will still be there. But the things that really matter might not.

The truth is, there was always enough time for my friend and me to practice soccer with our boys. We didn’t need more time. We had the time. We just chose to spend it elsewhere.

And that’s a tough thing to admit.

Yesterday, I published my latest book, Remember to Remember: Improve Your Recall, Memorize Anything, and Never Forget a Name (the Kindle book is FREE today, by the way!). This is the best book I’ve ever written. I say that about every book I write, because it’s true. I continue to learn the craft of writing and I see myself improving.

My first book took a month to edit because I had so many mistakes to fix. If my editor had been Mrs. White, my high school English teacher, I would have taken ten lashings with a metal ruler. It needed a lot of work. But my new book only took a week to edit. It’s a great feeling to see progress, but one area that I still struggle with when writing is wasting a lot of time trying to make it perfect. It’s called perfectionism and if not kept in check, it can be a fast track to unhappiness.

At times, I’m an extreme perfectionist, 100% focused on any task I decide to concentrate on. Whenever I work on something, I want it to be perfect before I call it done. It’s something I’ve struggled with, even before I started writing.

After college, I took a job in Corporate America. I remember complaining to a coworker about how long it was taking me to finish assignments. What he said next has always stuck with me.

He said, “Ken – are you wasting time trying to be perfect?” I really didn’t know what he meant by that. Of course I was trying to be perfect – I didn’t want to turn in work that I wasn’t proud of. That’s when he explained to me the concept of being good enough. Not in a sloppy kind of way… more like, was I spending time making unnecessary edits before turning in the work that I completed?

I think a better way of putting this is that published is better than perfect.

Author Tim Ferriss calls this the minimum effective dose.

The minimum effective dose is the smallest dose that is needed to produce a desired outcome for any goal we want to accomplish. It’s drawing a line in the sand to know when you’re done.

The thing about the minimum effective dose is that anything beyond what is required is wasteful. Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. You can’t make it more boiled by adding more heat.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go the extra mile. We absolutely should do more than is required, and more than is expected, where it makes sense. But how often is that really necessary?

The struggle is that there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done. And we can fall into the trap of spending more time on things than is necessary or even required if we’re not careful.

My new book is 93 pages long. That’s 30 more pages than my first book. This is the kind of thinking and the perfectionism trap I fall into when I try to outdo myself when writing another book.

My next book has to be longer than the last one. It has to get read by more people. It has to get better and more reviews by readers than the last one.

It’s nonsense.

It took five months to write this book. Two of those months were wasted trying to make it perfect. That’s two months I could have been writing the next book. It’s two months I’ll never get back.

The manuscript for the best book ever written is sitting in someone’s drawer right now. Never to see the light of day. Never to make a difference. Never to change a life. Don’t let that be you.

There’s more dragons to slay. There’s new battles to fight. Whatever project you’re working on, finish it. Get it done. It’s not perfect, but publish it anyway and set out on the next adventure.

I was driving home when out of nowhere, the sun disappeared and it started to rain. It was rush hour and I was still half an hour away from home. I had a bad feeling that things would get ugly.

What happened next shook me to the core.

I had already driven up the on-ramp and was stuck in the middle lane of a major highway with no exit in sight when the skies opened up and it rained harder than I had seen it rain in a long time.

I panicked.

I thought about trying to slowly change lanes and maybe pull over on the shoulder and turn my hazards on to wait the storm out but I knew that would be dangerous. I couldn’t see the shoulder.

To the left and to the right of me was a blur. I knew there were other cars there but I couldn’t see them anymore. The rain was coming down so hard that they became invisible to me.

All I could see was ten feet of the road in front of me. I knew I was in a lane. I knew I was a safe distance from the car in front of me, I could see the brake lights up ahead. But that’s all I knew.

I couldn’t see the road all the way home. But I never could, anyway. All I needed to see was the ten feet in front of me. And then the ten feet after that. Eventually, I would make it home safely.

That’s when I realized that I would be okay.

I think about that drive home whenever I find myself, or the people I care about, in a situation that seems hopeless. Too many give up when things get tough instead of fighting for what they want.

Most will never know how close they were to a breakthrough if they had just fought a little harder.

It’s hard to see the whole plan. It’s impossible for us to know how everything is going to turn out. We can’t control things. We can’t control the future. But we can navigate what we see, right now.

Clarity comes with action. When we take a step in faith, the next door will appear. If we wait for everything to be perfect, we’ll never start. And if we quit when things get tough, we’ll never finish.

When we find ourselves driving through the storms of life, with no way to pull over, say a little prayer and keep on driving. Focus on the ten feet in front of you until you make it to the other side.