Don McMinn

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

[Dialogue from Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises.]

Some things in life happen suddenly, with no forewarning. Like car accidents.

But usually, small actions, repeated over time, gradually accumulate and then suddenly morph into something big. Like the guys putting rubber bands around a watermelon. It happens gradually, then suddenly. Hemingway wrote that bankruptcy can follow this path, and we also see the pattern in other areas of life.

This dynamic can be either harmful or beneficial. Multiple, unwise small actions can lead to major problems.

• Use your credit card indiscriminately on a regular basis and eventually you’ll be in financial trouble. 
• Consume a few more calories than you burn day after day, and you may become obese.  
• Neglect relationships and they’ll turn sour.

But multiple positive, small actions can lead to significant and good results.

• Doggedly abide by an annual budget, get out of debt, and save for retirement, and you’ll have financial peace and security.
• Restrict your food intake and exercise regularly and you’ll enjoy a healthy lifestyle. Calories in/calories out; it’s just math.
• Deliberately prioritize and cultivate important relationships, and you’ll “never walk alone.”

The Bible uses an agricultural analogy to explain a similar phenomenon: the Law of the Harvest: “Whatever a person sows, this he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Notice:

• You reap what you sow. If a farmer sows corn seed, he’ll reap corn. You can’t plant corn seeds and expect to get broccoli. 
• You reap later than you sow. After the seed is planted it seems like nothing happens for a long time, but eventually fruit comes.
• You reap more than you sow. A single seed produces a lot of corn. There’s an exponential return. (In finances, it’s called compound interest.)

Identify some small tasks that you persistently do (both good and bad) that may accumulate and cause a major event. Drop the ones that are heading in the wrong direction an accelerate the good ones.

My family is teaching my six-year-old grandson, Benjamin, how to read and how to perform simple math. A key factor that determines the length of his lessons is how long he’s able to concentrate. He’s good for about 10 minutes, after which he needs to do something else (play games on the iPad, walk the dog). Then he’s ready for another lesson. His ability to focus will increase with age; that’s part of the maturation process.  

As a matter of self-awareness, all of us should determine how long we can concentrate on a single event. Then we should experiment with the Pomodoro Technique, a proven time-management method, to find our optimum routine.

The Pomodoro Technique was made popular by Francesco Cirillo. When he was a student at Rome’s Luiss Business School he used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer to regulate his schedule (pomodoro is an Italian word for tomato). He would work for 25 minutes, take a five-minute break, then repeat. (An added benefit of the Pomodoro Technique is that it presupposes that you’ve made a list of important things to focus on.)

By toggling back and forth between focused work and times of repose, we can extend how long we can work because the break-time (a planned distraction) helps reset our focus and energy. It’s even more effective if the breaks are seen as rewards, not just a change of pace. (Allowing myself a bowl of Blue Bell ice cream is an utterly righteous incentive.)

There’s nothing magical about the 25-5 ratio. Customize the principle based on what is optimum for you. 

First, experiment with your concentration level. How long can you read before losing focus? For how long can you respond to emails until your mind grows numb or begins to wander? Listen to a podcast? Work in the yard? Carry on a conversation? Your ability to concentrate will vary in different settings. 

For instance, years ago I experimented with increasing how long I could read in one sitting. I’ve settled on this routine: I always read three or four books at a time, written on different topics by different authors. I read one for 20 minutes, then switch to another for 20 minutes, and so on. I take a break every 45 minutes and then resume. It helps to have multiple and diverse books to read because I can’t sustain reading one author on one subject for an extended period of time. Using this system, I can read for hours. 

Your level of concentration can be increased. At the beginning of this post I mentioned that my grandson can only focus for about 10 minutes. As he ages, we’ll work on incrementally increasing his level until we discover his maximum. Isn’t it encouraging to know that concentration is a skill that can be developed, much like learning to play tennis or a musical instrument?   

Here are some practical steps:

1. Embrace the importance of being able to concentrate and focus. It can greatly enhance your productivity.
2. Assess your current capacity to focus in various settings.
3. Work on increasing your capacity to focus. 
4. Use the Pomodoro Technique to be more productive.

Having finished writing this post (30 minutes), I’m heading to the backyard to pick some figs.

An interesting article I read this week

A Summit of Their Own  (published in the New York Times, January 24, 2021), tells the story of how a group of Nepalis and Sherpas recently succeeded in summiting the second tallest mountain in the world – K2 – in winter. It had never been done before and was the last great prize of high-altitude mountaineering.

What beauty are we blind to? — Toby Ord

Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize), is about life in Grover’s Corners, a small town in New Hampshire. One of the main characters is Emily Webb. The play follows her from a precocious young girl through her wedding to George Gibbs, and her early death.

In act three, Emily returns from the afterlife and visits her hometown, wanting to relive one day—her 12th birthday. She joyfully watches her parents and some of the people of her childhood, but her joy soon turns to pain as she realizes how little people appreciate the simple joys of life. She realizes how every moment of life—particularly the small, simple, mundane aspects—should be treasured. 

When she visits her grave on the hill, she says, “Good-by, good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners…Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking…and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.” 

She then looks toward the stage manager and asks abruptly, through her tears, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute” The stage manager replies, “No. The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.” The play ends.

I’m admonishing myself in this post. I like to stay busy: I always have a to-do list, I’m goal-oriented, I don’t like to waste time, and I’m inordinately time-sensitive. But I’m missing out on a lot of wonderful things in life. I need to recalibrate my life so that I notice and savor small, slow, and simple things that don’t cry out for my attention but will reward it. 

Things like: Buddy’s bark, Benjamin’s freckles, a perfectly shaped cluster of grapes, a well-tuned chord, holding Mary’s hand, a fresh blackberry, a perfectly still lake, a well-written phrase, a kind gesture, growing a plant from seed, the sound of thunder in the distance, the smell of a sliced lemon, gravity exerting its influence on a tomato plant.

Psychologist Carl Rogers noted, “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.” He advocated launching “fully into the stream of life.” Our lives will be richer if we embrace adjectives such as enriching, rewarding, awe-inspiring, meaningful, and yes—small, slow, and simple.

A particular phrase from Winston Churchill’s iconic speech to the British Empire during WW2 is well-known and oft-quoted: “Never give in, never, never, never, never.” Most of us are not familiar with the rest of the sentence: “except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

Grit, tenacity, determination, perseverance…these traits have been lionized as foundational and unquestionably beneficial. We’re taught from an early age to “stick with it and don’t give up.” 

But often the best thing to do is to quit. So let’s add “the willingness to jettison” as a necessary and honorable character trait.

For instance: 

• A Gallup poll found that 85 percent of workers were either “not engaged” with their work or “actively disengaged.” Why do these employees continue in a job they obviously don’t enjoy? 
• Many college students declare a major before their freshman year. Halfway through their degree they realize that they don’t enjoy the subject and/or they’re not particularly good at it. But many persevere until they graduate and some even feel compelled to start their career in that field, often committing themselves to years of career-unhappiness. 
• An entrepreneur will start a company that struggles for years, never getting traction or becoming profitable. But she won’t pull the plug.
• A company will produce a product or service that fails from the start, but tenaciously and hopelessly hold onto it. 

I think there are two reasons we fall prey to this dilemma.

One, we yield to the sunk lost fallacy. Having invested time or money into something, we are hesitant to quit it because that would mean we would have wasted all that time and money (although they’re already lost). Often, the more we have invested and lost, the longer we persist in thinking it will work out.

Two, we were taught from an early age to never give up and to not renege on a promise or commitment. But sometimes the smartest and best thing to do is to stop in midstream and pursue something different. American computer scientist Paul Graham says, “We’ve all heard the theme of ‘don’t give up on your dreams.’ I know what that means, but this is a bad way to put it, because it implies you’re supposed to be bound by some plan you made early on. The computer world has a name for this: premature optimization. So instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. This is what most successful people actually do anyway. Instead of plan-and-implement, adopt a test-and-learn model.” 

As comedian W. C. Fields said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.”