Personal Evolution

Note: This is an article that we wrote a while back for a website dedicated to personal evolution. We decided to shut down that website so we could focus our efforts here, creating modern fantasy fiction.

It was just a couple years into my website development career when I began to recognize that my clients could be sorted into two camps:  those who prioritized pragmatism, and those who prioritized perfection.

The more pragmatic clients embraced quick turnaround.  They knew that their websites were living creatures that should never remain stagnant. These clients expected to make frequent updates to their sites, and so they tended to worry less about “pixel perfect” work and aimed instead to get their message online quickly and accurately, so they could use their resources to serve their own customers better. Pragmatists tend to be better decision makers, and thus more effective business leaders.

For the perfectionist clients, I noticed that they tended to fixate on the most mundane details. They spent hours discussing which style of bullet points to use, line spacing, and tweaking the color pallet and images for their website.  They believed that their pursuit of perfection was a badge of pride. I felt that it was a symptom of wastefulness, focusing on the trivial while losing focus on the big picture.  No visitors to their website would ever even notice those details–customers want accurate, easy-to-find information that is presented in an intuitive manner.  

It is just shy of blasphemy to suggest that the pursuit of perfection is an obstacle to success–but that is exactly what I believe!

This seems to hold true for all manner of creators:  whether they write, build furniture, create art, or develop websites.  It seems natural for people to applaud perfection, but to pursue perfection is to squander resources.

Satisfaction Today is Better than Perfection Tomorrow.

Sometimes you have to be willing to admit that “good enough” really is good enough!  This isn’t a matter of accepting mediocrity.  It is a matter of finding that sensible point where continued effort will yield diminishing returns–and then mustering the willpower to STOP.

It is my observation that we often use the Pursuit of Perfection as an excuse for indecisiveness which can lead to paralysis. Instead of launching a project and moving on to the next item on the list, we become stuck in place.

Even though I know this to be true, sometimes I find that I am guilty of this same mentality of pursuing perfection.  I will spend hours editing a simple blog post that might get seen by no more than a few dozen loyal readers.  Sure, I want to present my ideas with clarity and I take pride in my work, but at some point it becomes a huge impediment to progress–to actually publishing the damn article.

Pursuing perfection means compromising quality over the long run.

The pursuit of perfection means raising the bar and thus the barrier to entry. It means decreasing quantity of output.  Ironically, the pursuit of perfection means decreasing quality too. The single best way I can become a better writer is to write more.  

I am no literary genius, but I won’t even have a chance to find out what I am capable of if I fixate on achieving that elusive, mythical objective of Perfection.  

I am betting you probably have a project which you have gotten bogged down with because you have been trying to make it perfect. If so, I challenge you to step back from the project and ask yourself if that extra, small gain is worth the time investment.  Most likely the best answer will be, “this is good enough!”  Put a bow on it, and move on to your next task.

I take pride in being a nonconformist, in bucking tradition to blaze my own trail. I believe it to be the hallmark of a man that he should endeavor to leave his own mark on the world. Even so, Time has a funny habit of reminding me that the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

I grew up around farming. My parents and uncles farm and ranch on the same acres in southwest North Dakota that were homesteaded by my Great Grandparents after they emigrated from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900’s.

When we weren’t in school (or making a hobby out of genocide), my sisters and I spent our non-leisure time performing the usual chores to be found in plenty on a working farm: assisting the adults by tending to the chickens, pigs, calves and milk cows, maintaining the property by mowing and painting, and assisting in the shop and fields in various capacities ranging from running errands to driving trucks and tractors.

While I loved the lifestyle, I observed first-hand how difficult it is to make a living as a farmer. Careful crop planning and management of input costs such as seed, fertilizer, fuel, and time could be nullified by Mother Nature’s whim: drought, hail storms, rains arriving too late or frosts arriving too early, grasshopper infestation, weed infestation, and numerous other maladies.

The cattle side of operations had its own share of challenges.  Calves could be eaten by coyotes or come down with pneumonia or hoof rot. Bulls and cows can get hit by lightning as they stand out in an open pasture during a sudden, freak storm (it happens more often than you might think).

Even if the crops reached harvest or the cattle reached maturity, the volatility of commodity markets were the final boss to conquer. No amount of good management can eliminate the forces of global commodity markets:  fair weather in Ukraine may increase global supply of wheat, lowering prices. The national economy may be in recession, thus reducing families’ grocery budgets and demand for steak and hamburger.

Of course, no matter what the yield or profits may be, the bank which provided my father and uncles with operating loans would still expect payments to be made on time.

My point is: no matter how careful a farmer or rancher may be, his or her best efforts can get trumped by forces such as weather or markets, which are completely outside of his or her control.

Farming requires faith.

When I was a teenager, I recognized that while I possessed my Dad’s entrepreneurial spirit, I did not inherit his faith. I could not fathom putting in the effort that he did, to so often see his chance at profit wiped away by a storm or eaten by insects.

So I went to university where I studied Business Management.  I founded a web development firm from scratch, and I built up a respectable client base over the course of 14 years. When the oil boom arrived in our backyard, I segued into working as a contractor on a drilling rig (which is where I met RaeLea, and where we both continue to work). It’s quite a bit different from farming and ranching!

Both careers have been challenging and satisfying, but my persistent passion has always been storytelling and writing. This website was founded in part as a way to exercise (and maybe exorcise) my love of storytelling in written form.

I write in my spare time because it’s extremely difficult to earn a living as a writer. There are of course authors made famous by their breakaway best-selling novels, but they are outliers, not the norm.

As a writer, I punch at the keyboard every day. Sometimes the well runs dry and I cannot summon inspiration. Often, I write tens of thousands of words, only to grow disillusioned with the concept and set it back on the virtual shelf.  I know that even when I write a story that I think may be worth sharing with others, there’s a good chance that many of my readers will find the story boring.

To succeed as a writer, I need to put in the hours, whether the concept pans out or not. I need to invest energy into studying technique and putting those ideas into practice. I have to commit to years of effort to bring a novel to life.

I must do all this, with full knowledge that my stories might never sell, might never reach break-even (and statistically speaking, probably won’t).

Despite the tribulations, despite the probability of critical and commercial failure, I still write.  I have stories in my head, and they need to get out into the world.

I could not think of two trades more different from one another than farming and writing, and yet, I see now that they have a lot in common:

• They both require a long apprenticeship
• They both depend on persistent, unwavering work ethic
• The payoff for both is mostly in the hands of external forces
• Both require a certain faith (or stubbornness).

I think I may finally understand why my father persists with his fields and livestock so stubbornly every year, despite the adversaries which are stacked against him. I understand, because I feel a similar calling to tell stories, to write.

Dad could never stop planting, even if he wanted to, because farming is embedded in the composition of who he is. He has a compulsion to grow things, to make something where there previously was nothing.

Isn’t that what storytelling is?  Writing is taking the seed of an idea and cultivating it until it becomes something which can reach maturity and be harvested to share with others. Maybe the readers will “buy” it, or maybe they won’t. A writer does not let such a challenge stop him.

By embracing my persistent passion for writing, I think I understand the stubbornness my younger self had labeled as the “faith” my father has. Though our interests may differ, I see now that I must have inherited that trait after all.

Strangers often stop me to ask (usually with an English accent), “Excuse me good sir, but I must observe that you are a specimen of the human physique. How often do you visit a gym to maintain such a fine figure?”

Though that has never actually happened, if it did it would of course be flattering of these strangers to ask me such a thing.  I would tell them so, but then have to shatter their illusion by informing them of the error in their assumption:

I have never worked out in a gym.

You might say it’s against my religion to join a gym (that is in fact how I frame my aversion to the places).  I cannot ever recall setting foot inside of a gym, but I imagine them to be jungles of steel contraptions with distracting TV screens among which mobs of sweaty bodies share in one anothers’ stench and body heat.  This is, incidentally, also my perception of sports bars and night clubs, which I also habitually avoid.

Despite my disdain for fitness clubs and their ilk, I am a big believer in the value of regular exercise to achieve physical fitness.  I just do not believe that gym memberships are needed to achieve physical fitness, nor are they a good value proposition.  $30-$50 per month for the privilege of essentially renting shared, generally unnecessary equipment is a poor return on investment.  There is the time consideration too:  it is enough of a task to get one’s self motivated to workout in the first place, without adding the effort of having to leave the house, drive across town, and presumably share a shower with gym rats afterwards.  Who has time for such catfacery?

It is truly a better value to exercise at home:

• The barriers between motivation to execution are dramatically reduced.
• You don’t need expensive equipment (or renting use of such).
• You can reduce the probability of having to interact with a gym rat.  That is never a bad thing.

If it seems overwhelming to figure out an effective workout regimen without the benefit of gym equipment or a personal trainer (more waste of money), then allow me, for the moment, to serve in that guiding role by providing you with an example of what I have found works for me.

My Simple Exercise Regimen

The most important thing to remember where fitness is concerned is that the best exercise routine is the one you will actually do.  I believe in keeping things simple with the best Return On Investment (ROI).  Meaning:  the most effective workout for the least amount of time and expense.

From studying innumerable articles on the subject (with much credit due to the fantastic Dr. Mercola), I have pieced together an exercise regimen which aims to provide the best ROI. I am always fine-tuning the plan as I discover new information, but this is what currently works for me:

• Everyday lifestyle behavior
• 7 days per week — stretching exercises
• 1-2 days per week — High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
• 1-2 days per week — bodyweight strength training, using “Super Slow” technique

Everyday lifestyle and behavioral changes.

Don’t underestimate the cumulative effect of little changes.  This includes such basics as taking the stairs instead of elevators, parking your car on the far end of the parking lot instead of near the door, and using your body instead of machinery for basic everyday tasks (such as shoveling snow instead of using a snow blower, hoeing the garden instead of reaching for the row-tiller, digging holes by hand instead of using equipment).

This is by no means revelatory stuff, but I think we often choose convenience over fitness.

As a recent example, I am personally amazed at what an effective full-body workout it is to dig a hole by hand!  After I hand-dug a 6′ x 5′ x 6.5′ hole this past Summer to install an egress window on our house, I have renewed respect for old-time grave diggers (and maybe their less illustrious counterparts, grave robbers).

Sit as little as possible.  We all sit too much, and our bodies were just not meant to be seated so often.  If you must sit (such as traveling or at the office), aim to get up and walk around for five minutes every hour, and avoid sitting for more than an hour at a time.

There is a lot of research which points to the dangers of sitting. Here is a video which summarizes nicely:

Stretching Exercises — 7 days per week

You should of course stretch before and especially after every workout in order to maximize the effectiveness and minimize injury. Even on rest days where you do not work out, however, there are many benefits to stretching, such as increasing flexibility and minimizing risk of injury.

Dedicate five minutes per day to stretching each of your main muscle groups for approximately 30 seconds per muscle.  Mayo Clinic has an excellent slideshow guide to show you how to safely and effectively do this:  Mayo Clinic’s Guide to Basic Stretches.

High Intensity Interval Training — 1 to 2 days per week

Don’t let the term scare you;  there is nothing especially remarkable about HIIT except the effectiveness.  Athletes have long known the benefits of mixing up their cardio workout with spans of intensive speed, done in short intervals.  A 20 minute HIIT workout has shown benefits which would take more than 90 minutes at a steady pace.

A 20 minute HIIT routine is simple:

• Begin with a three minute warmup, pedaling (or walking) at a casual pace.
• Then, after three minutes do eight repetitions of the following:
  • Pedal as fast as you can for 30 seconds.
  • Return to your casual pace for 90 seconds.
• After doing eight reps, cool down at a casual pace for about one minute.

While you can certainly interval train by walking and running, the best way to do HIIT is on a recumbent bike.  A recumbent bike is not the sexiest piece of exercise equipment, but it has many benefits such as eliminating impact to your knees and joints when compared to running or even an upright bike.  It is also much easier on your back versus the unnatural slouched position that a standard upright bike forces you into holding.

The recumbent bike RaeLea and I own is the Exerpeutic 900XL.  This is the one we purchased (actually three of them so far:  one for at our workplace, one for home, and one we gave as a gift).  This one has good overall reviews, a 300 pound capacity, is lightweight and very affordable at less than $170.

Bodyweight Strength Training — 1 to 2 days per week

“Bodyweight” just means exercising using your own body weight in lieu of a weight set.  You can integrate resistance bands to increase the workout intensity if you feel the need, though I don’t usually do so.

Strength training has been proven time and again to effectively burn fat, and no, it does not necessarily mean that you will “bulk up” by doing so (just look at my own girlish figure as an example!).  Dr. Mercola unsurprisingly covers strength training basics in great detail, if you are interested in learning more.

The most important method of maximizing the effectiveness of your strength training exercise is to use the “Super Slow Technique.”   I like Dr. Mercola’s version of the technique:

1. Begin by lifting the weight as slowly and gradually as you can.  Dr. Mercola suggests doing this with a four-second positive and a four-second negative, meaning it takes four seconds, or a slow count to four, to bring the weight up, and another four seconds to lower it. (When pushing, stop about 10 to 15 degrees before your limb is fully straightened; smoothly reverse direction)
2. Slowly lower the weight back down to the slow count of four
3. Repeat until exhaustion, which should be around four to eight reps. Once you reach exhaustion, don’t try to heave or jerk the weight to get one last repetition in. Instead, just keep trying to produce the movement, even if it’s not “going” anywhere, for another five seconds or so. If you’re using the appropriate amount of weight or resistance, you’ll be able to perform four to eight reps
4. Immediately switch to the next exercise for the next target muscle group, and repeat the first three steps

You can figure out the types of strength-training exercises which work best for you, but for simplicity’s sake, I have found that these work well for me:

• Yoga Planks (2 to 3 times per day, aiming for 2 minutes each time. These are nice because they require minimal movement but are great for working core muscles and lower back)
• Squats (excellent for working compound muscle groups and balance)
• Push-ups
• Pull-ups (or “chin ups”)

 …all of course using the “Super Slow Technique” to maximize the workout and reduce the amount of time spent working out.

The misguided concept of “No pain, no gain”

Whenever exercising, remember to listen to your body.  That old adage “no pain no gain” is just plain foolish.  Sore muscles are good, but a painful back or knees is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. If your body is in pain after working out, you are doing something incorrectly and you need to reevaluate.  Often that means stretching more effectively before and after your workouts, hydrating more, and improving your overall form.

And remember:  if you want to go back to the basics, you can just grab a shovel and start digging a hole!  

Tis the season for goal setting! There is something about a new year that motivates us to self-improvement. Almost everyone makes a New Year’s resolution at some point in his or her lives.

And almost everyone—sooner or later—breaks their resolutions.

Why is it so damn difficult to achieve our goals?

I struggled with that question for years. It frustrated me that I could be so ambitious about setting goals for myself, and yet so terrible at achieving them.

One day, a client of mine taught me an important lesson about objectives. You see, she consulted for nonprofit organizations, advising board members on how they can be more effective planners.

My client had a simple rule: You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

That struck me like a lightning bolt!  I learned a lot from that client over the years, but I can parse those lessons down to three simple tricks for achieving goals.

The three simple tricks to reaching your goals:

• Be specific — remove ambiguity.
• Quantify the goal — make it measurable.
• Make the goal actionable — identify specific steps that can be taken to achieve the goal.

After that, whenever I set new goals for myself or my business, I applied those three tricks. It was not long before I began to see a definite improvement over my old, aimless method of goal-setting.

Examples of more effective goal setting

Below are examples of some common goals in the first column, followed by a measurable version of that goal, and finally an actionable plan to make that goal a reality.

By following these three simple tricks, I am confident that you will improve the likelihood of achieving your goals. It works for me!

Best of luck in your quest for self-improvement!

Note: This is an article that we wrote a while back for a website dedicated to personal evolution. We decided to shut down that website so we could focus our efforts here, creating modern fantasy fiction.

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a great dream, only to wake up and quickly forget what you had just dreamt?

It can be annoying to forget what may have been an exciting adventure, sensual romance, or intriguing mystery. As a creative person, losing that other-worldly dream sequence can mean losing a source of priceless inspiration.

A few years ago, I began discovering techniques to better harvest the seeds that my dreams produced. I am sharing some of these techniques with you now. Hopefully my tips will help jump-start your own dream development.

Dream Tip 1: Appreciate your dreams

I consider my dreams to be whispers from my muse. I sometimes half-jokingly refer to my muse as The Great Squirrel—a fictional demigod of my imagination who chitters random nonsense while I sleep. Sometimes that random nonsense actually forms the basis of a fresh story—in fact, that’s often the case.

Whether you choose to personify your dreams or if you take a more practical approach, I believe those subconscious thoughts are to be treasured. These thoughts are reflections of whatever deeper theme we are fixated on. Knowing that, we can tap those thoughts for inspiration and problem solving.

Creative people in particular can benefit from remembering their dreams. Artists and writers, certainly, but also creators who build and those who have complicated problems to resolve, such as engineers or entrepreneurs.

Tapping into our subconscious minds means that our brains are working for us, even in “sleep mode.”

So, learn to appreciate your dreams and do not be dismissive of them as mere silliness.

Dream Tip 2: Make note of your dream immediately.

Keep a notepad and pen on your night stand. The moment you come out of a dream, you should make an effort to write down key elements of the dream onto that paper. Don’t wait to jot them down–if you awake even a little, pencil in an outline of the dream. If you trust that your dream may be remembered when you wake up fully, you’ll regret it when you inevitably forget.

Do not use your phone or computer for taking these notes. Looking at a bright electronic screen will wake you up and kill your chance of falling back to sleep. The goal here is to remember your dreams but you don’t want to eliminate sleep in the process.

I also experimented with using an audio recording device (a digital recorder) to verbally record my dream notes. This was faster than writing down notes in the dark but was not exactly appreciated by my sleeping wife!

Dream Tip 3: Keep a Dream Journal

When you’re awake for the day, that’s the time to fully transcribe your dreams from your notes. Using the brief (and messily-scrawled) dream notes to jog your memory, fill in the blanks in chronological order. Go into as much detail as possible.

I find that the best time to write in my Dream Journal is right after I wake up, while the dreams are still fresh. The longer I wait, the more likely important elements of the dream will be forgotten—regardless of how complete my notes are.

Dream Tip 4: Be prepared to sacrifice sleep quality

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: unfortunately, shallow, interrupted sleep yields more dreams and better chances of remembering those dreams. Dream-filled sleep is not usually restful sleep.

I’ve found that some of my least restful nights result in some of my best dreams. It’s probably oxygen deprivation or just not spending much time in the deep sleep portion of the sleep cycle.

A full sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes and is repeated several times through the night. When you’re asleep, you go through cycles of sleep states: first light sleep, followed by deep sleep, then the juicy dream state—otherwise known as REM Sleep (Rapid Eye Movement).

Being awakened during your REM sleep state is how a dream can be more easily remembered.

I’m not going to recommend methods of purposely waking yourself up during the REM sleep state but you might find that having children or pets can increase the chances that you’ll be awakened during the dream state of your sleep cycle.

No human can sacrifice sleep quality every night—not without eventually having a mental breakdown or legitimate health repercussions. So proceed with caution.

Hey, I never said these tips would be compatible with good physical health!

Dream Tip 5: Preserve your position

When you do happen to awake in the midst of your dream state, you may find that it helps to stay in the physical position you emerged from your dream in. If you were laying on your side when you were dreaming, stay in that position as you recall your dream.

This serves as a sort of muscle memory to aid in recalling the dream. I believe this may involve maintaining pressure points on your sinuses or other parts of your body—for example, the pressure of the pillow against your temples. If you relieve those pressure points, it becomes difficult to remember specific elements of the dream.

Dream Tip 6: Accept that not all dreams will be winners

While these techniques I am sharing may help you to remember your dreams, they won’t directly impact the quality of the dreams you have. If your dreams are confusing and incoherent, they probably will still be confusing—at least at first.

What I’ve found is that as I remember my dreams more completely, they start to make more sense. People who appear in my dreams serve as actors, playing characters. High school classmates who I haven’t consciously thought about for decades will suddenly appear in one of my dreams. I’ve come to learn that I am not dreaming about that person, but rather the personality or theme they represent.

I’m not going to get into dream interpretation here, but my point is that when you can remember your dreams more completely, they may start to become more coherent if you choose to spend some time digging into them.

And of course, sometimes a strange dream is simply just a strange dream!

Dream Tip 7: Embrace the Process

Like so much in life, persistence pays off. It took me many months to discover these techniques, and the process was riddled with ideas that were non-starters or just unhelpful.

Yet with consistent effort, I have found that my Dream Journal began filling up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that by journaling my dreams in detail, two surprising things happened.

First, many of my “bad dreams” which had been recurring and nagging me for years became infrequent and then in some cases disappeared completely. I don’t know if this happened because I worked through whatever subconscious issues were prompting those dreams to occur, or because I “dumped” the dreams onto the page and got them out of my head. In any case, I welcomed getting rid of some of those annoying filler dreams.

Second—and most pleasantly—I now can look back at my Dream Journal and see that there are some scenes which are part of a larger story arc. These are stories where I as the protagonist or as the observer of the story, persist from one dream to the next. The standalone dream sequences which individually lacked sense have begun to come together into sometimes richly-detailed, serialized stories.

Discovering certain patterns and themes in my Dream Journal has led me to add layers of detail or backstory into some of the stories I write. This in turn motivates me to spend more effort on cultivating those dreams.

Benefits and outcomes of remembering dreams

So why go through all this effort? Why would you want to expend precious sleep to jot down notes or take time out of the day to write down details of your dreams?

As a writer, I am never lacking for story ideas as a result of developing my dreams. I have a variety of genres and themes in the dreams I am now able to remember. This serves me in being able to take my stories in directions which I probably never would have thought of in my fully-awake state.

As an entrepreneur, I am constantly surprised at how often a solution to a marketing or management problem arrives in my dream state. Not all of the solutions are winners, but they often lead me down a rabbit hole that produces worthy outcomes.

I’ve talked to visual artists who tell me that their sculptures, sketches or paintings came to them from dreams they remembered. So, too, with engineers and analysts dealing with complex projects.

You’re already dreaming—why not take advantage of the firing of those synapses in your sleep state to enhance your creative life in new and surprising ways?

Good luck in your own personal harvesting of dreams! Please share your ideas and feedback by leaving a comment below.