Leaf Blower

I'd like to start by acknowledging the self-indulgence of this piece. I prefer to receive advice than to give it, and I urge you, dear Reader, to take this with a grain of salt. But I had an idea that crystalized some thoughts on navigating life and it felt like this was something worth sharing because it's an idea that's helped me when there's too much fighting my goals. I step back and think of leaf blowers.

Specifically, the act of leaf blowing, actually. If you've ever had to clear leaves out of an area, you know that a leaf blower is a great tool. If you've every needed to get leaves into a specific spot, you know a leaf blower is at best adequate. All obstacles affect leaf blowers disproportionately. Going uphill? Prepare for leaves in your face. Windy? Prepare for leaves in your face. Wet leaves? Prepare for .. well, you get the idea. My point is not that leaf blowers suck. My point is they provide a great opportunity for evaluation and correction.

What is a goal?

When leaf blowing in adverse conditions, you must evaluate some things. Can you change the obstacle? Typically not--it's usually immovable or the wind. Now the important question: what is your real goal? Are you moving the leaves to a specific spot or is moving them to that spot just your solution to accomplish your goal of clearing leaves out of an area? This is the principle decision that needs to be addressed when we meet adversity in life. Must we challenge the difficulty or can we turn that difficulty into a tool to accomplish our real goal. When leaf blowing, if the wind picks up, rather than fighting the wind, perhaps you can simply change your destination and still accomplish the goal of clearing the leaves. Maybe you can even let the wind assist. The same for a hill, you can simply move the leaves downhill rather than pushing them uphill.

When asking someone what their goal is in life, you're likely to get an answer like: "I'd like to travel," or "To own my own ______." But those aren't goals. Not really. Those are solutions. To drive at the goal, you have to keep asking "Why?" until the answer circles back on itself.

"Why do you want to travel?" "To learn more about the world."

"Why?" "So I can better understand myself."

Ah ha! Now we're getting somewhere, but we're still not at a goal yet.

"Why?" "So I can make decisions that fit me best. Because knowing my strengths and weaknesses allows me to help others with my talents and improve myself as a person by accepting and addressing my weaknesses."

Almost there: "Why?"

"Because if I can help the world have less want and less hate then my kids will have a better and happier life than they would otherwise, and that will allow me to feel that I've fulfilled my responsibility as a parent and allow me some peace of mind as I watch my kids take the reins of the world and hopefully continue to steer it to a better place for humanity."

Bingo. "Peace of mind" is a goal. But all those intermediate answers were mixtures of milestones and solutions and they are very important. That's obviously one hypothetical scenario that's a bit self-serving in the end, but that's the exercise. Wrapped up in those 3 letters are larger questions. "What are you going to do once you've accomplished your goal?" "What is going to motivate you to keep going when it's hard?" "What is going to motivate others to help you?"

Milestones are not goals

When I was in high school, I would go on primitive camping trips in Colorado that took us to the tops of some of the tallest mountains in the Rockies with nothing but what we could carry on our backs. Climbing a mountain teaches you a lot of valuable lessons. Don't run downhill--gravity will win. Spam and Mrs. Dash are a magical combination. And false summits are brutal to the psyche.

The common wisdom of late has been to make lots of little, attainable goals on your way to your larger goal. This has the benefit of giving you a sense of accomplishment that can be very motivating. Many games are built on exactly this model of rewarding small goals to keep pulling you back into the game for that little endorphin rush when a checkmark and a prize reward a task completed. I don't disagree with the principle, I disagree with the terminology.

Words have meaning and calling something that isn't your goal a "goal" when it is, in fact, a milestone is going to be detrimental to the overall process. Either because you become satisfied with the accomplishing mini-goals and lose sight of the real Goal or because it becomes exhausting chasing "goals" without actually achieving your end goal.

Milestones, on the other hand, are designated markers along your path, assuring you that you're still moving toward your goal. They give you something to look back on when you've despaired and feel like you've accomplished nothing. So when you don't feel strong enough, you can say to yourself, "But look at how far I've come. I'm stronger now than I was when I started so I can surely make it at least that much farther." So when your legs are about to give out and you don't know how to convince your foot to move in front of its twin, you can see that next milestone within reach if only you push a little farther. There's nothing even subconsciously telling you that this milestone is the peak of your mountain. Its only promise is that you're still on the right track.

Solutions never fail

They either advance your plan or give you an unexpected lesson on how to better attain your goal. It's been said that Thomas Edison claimed "I have not failed to make a light bulb 700 times. I have succeeding in finding 700 ways not to make a light bulb." This is one of those quotes that appears to be at best paraphrasing a much more specific answer, but the principle is the same. Solutions that you learn from are not failures because they still push you toward your goal.

Trying different ways to get the leaves from one place to another is the only way you're going to figure out what the best method for your situation is going to be. There isn't a video you can watch online that will show you how to clear your lawn. No example lawn is going to look just like yours, have the same plants as yours, the same type of leaves, the same wind conditions, the same mixture of dry leaves, wet leaves, and sticks. Any one of those will necessarily change what is the best way to accomplish your goal.

There is no single Best solution. Every solution you try is going to have a trade-off; some aspect of the goal that this solution is better than others that sacrifices proficiency in another aspect. If you accomplish your goal and you're satisfied with the solution, then it's a job well done. If you feel like there must be a better way, then by all means seek it out and find it. By trying.

The only time it can ever be said you've failed to achieve your goal is when you stop trying. When you set down the leaf blower, walk back inside, and just let the leaves sit in the yard; that's failure. Having the leaves blow back in your face, end up 20 feet from where you intended, or stare back at you defying the 200mph air current rushing past them are not failures so long as you try something else.

Sometimes the solution is to do nothing

After settling on what your real goal is and finding yourself unable to determine a solution around, over, or through an obstacle between you and your goal, a secondary question necessarily arises. While leaf blowing: do these leaves need to move right now or can it wait? Will it make a difference to wait? Wind dies down and leaves dry out. If you just wait and prepare for when the current challenge is no longer in your path, you can make much better use of your time and energy.

Maybe waiting lets you build up your savings a little more, maybe you get more time to practice, more time to learn about starting a business. Time is not necessarily the enemy of accomplishing a goal or even reaching a milestone. Sometimes it's exactly what you need in order to allow an obstacle to pass.

If you're going to wait though, there must be a plan for what to do while waiting so you're in better position to move again when it's time. You must also set a clear metric for what that time is. It must be something concrete that you can't argue with yourself about when the time comes. "Once an investment has increased by 20%..." "Once I've completed x hours of education on a specific topic" "Once my product is capable of" As long as you don't allow yourself to get trapped waiting for a scenario that will never happen or allow yourself a metric that allows for too much interpretation, you'll be forced to either move on when it's time or else to stop trying altogether.

Maybe just grab a rake

Sometimes when the leaves are just fighting and you're just feeling like it's taking forever to clear the leaves with the leaf blower; sometimes it's just time to put it down and pick up a rake. It is very easy to assume that the technologically superior tool is always better at working toward a goal. However, there are times a rake will outpace a blower.

When working toward a goal, it's critical to evaluate your tools and to be sure that the one you're using is really best to move you forward in the exact set of circumstances you find yourself. Technology is a beautiful thing that allows for so much efficiency in our work. It's easy to get tunnel-vision though and to lock yourself away from the better tool for a job just because it's missing the bells and whistles of your existing tool. But that might well make it the more efficient solution.