Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Binoculars

 

The Farther Down the Trail You Can See,

The Easier It Is to Choose the Right Fork.

One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost’s "The Road Less Traveled." I can easily relate to his dilemma.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

I am thankful to live at a time and place in which we have such a wide range of options in the paths of our lives. But sometimes having choices can be a little scary.

Who has not felt the heart-pangs expressed in these lyrics from "Far From the Home I Love" in the musical "Fiddler on the Roof"?

Oh, what a melancholy choice this is,

Wanting home, wanting him,

Closing my heart to every hope but his,

Leaving the home I love,

While Yogi Berra's famous counsel -- "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." --is good for a laugh, it’s not at all helpful with real-world decision-making. When two roads diverge in the woods of our lives, how do we decide which to take?

I have found two questions that, when used in tandem, give me greater vision and depth perception when I am faced with serious decisions about the direction of my life. Like a pair of binoculars, they help me see further down the forks in the road ahead. They help me study out the question in my mind and get clarity for myself as I prepare to ask for divine guidance

The first question is “What is my purpose?” At my very core, what am I really all about? What was I put on this earth to accomplish?

I am deeply grateful to Mary Tomlinson, my friend and my partner in Legacy Planning Associates, LLC (visit www.LegacyPlans.com), for helping me distill my internal sense of purpose into a clear and succinct personal purpose statement. Her On-Purpose process allowed me to cut through a lot of verbiage and put my finger on the real me in just two words.

Being clear about my purpose has given me greater confidence in my decision-making. When facing a fork in the road I ask myself “Which option is more likely to allow me to stay on-purpose, and which is more likely to pull me off-purpose?

The second question is “How can I serve?” Which option will provide the greatest opportunity to assist others and give back to the world? This second question keeps my life in balance. It helps me remember that it’s never just about me; it’s always about making a difference with the people I love and the causes I support.

This question helps me maintain perspective, a sense of the depth and richness of a life spent helping others. I see the world more clearly because I am not merely looking in a mirror.

Without the second question, I risk becoming a self-absorbed navel-gazer, vainly thinking that the world revolves around me and that this choice is only about my own self-centered happiness. Since a man all wrapped up in himself makes a pretty small bundle, without the second question I’m in danger of becoming microscopic and irrelevant in the larger scheme of things.

I have found that these two questions, “What is my purpose?’ and “How can I serve?” help focus, magnify, simplify, and give depth to my options. They are like a set of binoculars, allowing me to see more clearly the way forward. With them, the right choice is usually pretty obvious.

I believe the essence of an abundant, joyful life is learning to make good choices. This two-question approach has served me well through the years. Perhaps it may be useful to you too.

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Pyramids

 

Nomads don’t build pyramids; farmers do.

I am fascinated by pyramids and always have been. Going to Egypt is still on my bucket list, but I have made several trips to Central America to explore Mayan pyramids.

Pyramids are the ultimate expression of a legacy in stone. Centuries later, as we gaze in wonder upon their slopes or scale their heights, we want to know their builders’ stories.

Pyramids teach a number of lessons about how to leave a legacy, some positive and some negative, some obvious and others more subtle. I’d like to mention one that is important but perhaps less obvious:

Pyramid builders were not nomads or hunter-gatherers who roamed from place to place. Such transients could never have accumulated the resources required to construct a pyramid.

Before they erected awe-inspiring pyramids, those ancient builders mastered the decidedly un-glamorous work of plowing, planting, irrigating, weeding, cultivating, protecting, and harvesting their fields, season after season. They patiently tended their flocks, year after year. They successfully nourished their families and communities. A long-term commitment to agriculture was a prerequisite to successful pyramid building.

Without crops, there were no pyramids. Pyramid builders were farmers.

They understood and practiced what Stephen R. Covey called “the law of the harvest.” “All lasting results are produced in a sequence, are governed by principles, and are grown from the inside out.” Before you reap, you must sow, you must water, you must weed, and you must cultivate. There are no shortcuts.

This spring I returned to my agrarian roots.

I grew up on a small family farm in Fruitland, New Mexico. When I say “small,” I’m referring to the farm, not the family. The family was large, with 13 children.

We raised much of the food needed to feed so many mouths. Besides milk from our dairy herd, we grew fruit trees and raised chickens, pigs, and a few beef cattle. But the garden was the heart of our self-sufficiency.

For us children, the garden represented endless work: plowing, fertilizing, planting, hoeing, irrigating, thinning, picking, washing, canning. But our parents understood that we needed the food and, more importantly, we needed to learn how to work until the job was done, every day, all summer long.

Since those youthful days, I’ve dabbled in gardening with varying degrees of success, but those early lessons mostly lay dormant. But this year, I was able to secure 2½ rent-a-rows in a local organic community garden and put those long-fallow farming skills to work.

The results were pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.

It required hard work, patience, tenacity, and timely counsel from an experienced local. It required steady, persistent attention, week after week, throughout the long growing season. There were no shortcuts. My fellow gardeners who neglected their rows lost much of their crop to weeds, bugs, and poor yields.

These lessons apply to legacy building as well as gardening.

I think the era of constructing stone pyramids is over. Our most important legacies, I believe, will be the impact we have on the people we care about. I agree with Pericles, who said that what truly matters “is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

Creating a significant and enduring legacy requires a long-term commitment to our most important associations. It requires that we master the decidedly un-glamorous work of planting, weeding, irrigating, and cultivating the relationships that matter to us most. It requires shepherding our flock with love and patience and kindness.

When it comes to farming and legacy building, the law of the harvest still applies. There are no shortcuts, no quick fixes, no overnight successes.

Nomads don’t build pyramids or lasting legacies. The wanderer who believes that fulfillment is waiting just over the next hill or the drifter who thinks the grass will be greener if he moves on to the next hook-up will not, in the end, have the resources required to produce a meaningful legacy.

At the end of his life, the relational gadfly will find himself alone and forgotten. He will discover to his chagrin that a man all wrapped up in himself makes a pretty small bundle, and that small bundles are seldom noticed or remembered.

The quality of our legacies will be a reflection of the quality of our lives and our relationships. Monumental legacies are left only by those who make monumental commitments to the people they love and then keep those commitments.

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Road Maps

 

If you don’t know where you’re going, any map will do.

One of my heroes died this week.

I was a fan of Stephen R. Covey long before his Seven Habits books made him a household name. When I was a freshman at Brigham Young University his organizational behavior classes were so popular it was nearly impossible to get in. Everyone was talking about how eloquently he taught obvious but previously unstated truths.

I carried one of his earliest books, Spiritual Roots of Human Relations, with me to Brazil. It strongly influenced my determination as a young man to lead a purposeful and spiritual life.

When his Seven Habits of Highly Successful People went multi-platinum in 1989, I felt he finally achieved the world-wide impact he deserved. I thought his ideas were powerful enough to change the world.

Habits One and Two of his Seven Habits were “Be proactive” and “Begin with the end in mind.” In other words, the first step is to recognize that you are not powerless; you can decide your course in life. Choose your own destination.

Second, as you move ahead, the direction of your journey and your attitude and comportment along the way should be consistent with the final outcome you desire. Build your life-map based on your chosen destination.

Covey’s principles call to mind Lewis Carroll’s famous conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don't much care where — ” said Alice.

“Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“ — so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you're sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

For Alice, whose only purpose was to get SOMEWHERE, it didn’t matter what turn she took nor what map she used. If you don’t know where you’re going, any map will do.

While it is good to be moving, it is better to be moving with energy and purpose toward a clearly defined destination. This principle applies to matters as small as making a salad for today’s lunch or as large as defining a legacy.

If the end you have in mind is to leave a certain quality of legacy, you must begin by taking steps to tell and preserve your story and by living your life in harmony with that desired legacy. Covey taught that it is not possible to “talk your way out of a problem you have behaved yourself into.”

Living a life consistent with the way you wish to be remembered is the ultimate definition of integrity and the perfect recipe for a meaningful and remarkable legacy. To leave a large legacy, you must live large. To leave a smart legacy, you must live intelligently. To leave a loving legacy, you must live a life of caring and compassion. Wealth counselor Valery Satterwhite says, “The life you lead is the legacy you leave.”

This clever little poem by Benjamin Franklin seems to sum it all up.

If you would not be forgotten,

As soon as you are dead and rotten,

Either write things worth reading,

Or do things worth the writing.

My hero Stephen R. Covey did both. He wrote things worth reading and he did things worth writing about. He will not soon be forgotten.

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Bicycles

 

It’s a lot easier to keep your balance when you’re moving forward.

I once worked with the head of a large organization with 10 division and 3,000 members. He saw his principal role as chief trouble-shooter and putting out fires. As it happened, there always seemed to be plenty of trouble and fires for him to handle.

He had no clear vision of where the organization was going and was not enthusiastic about defining one or communicating it to the organization. How could he stop and do that, he asked, when he was overwhelmed dealing with problems and putting out fires?

In the meantime, without direction, the organization languished and the people in it were constantly squabbling, getting into mischief, and spawning emergencies. Dealing with these issues took even more of his time and made it even less likely that he would establish a clear vision of where they were going.

It seemed to me that his focusing on problems attracted more of them. At the same time, the lack of forward momentum caused the energy of the organization to be dissipated on petty internal concerns.

I have observed that heads of organizations who lack “that vision thing,” as George H. W. Bush described it, have a difficult time rallying their troops or keeping them out of trouble. King Solomon wrote that “where there is no vision, the people perish.” Usually they die from marching in endless circles, from starvation, or from constant infighting.

These officers may be in charge of organizations, but they are not leaders. Being a leader requires purpose, vision, direction, and movement.

My brother Lane is a leader who understands and applies Farnsworth’s First Law of Life, Leadership, and Bicycles. He has led hundreds of horseback trips into the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado in the past 30 years. He knows the mountains and he knows how to handle horses.

Lane has found that horses generally work hard and are well behaved as long as you keep them moving along the trail. However, if you loiter too long at the trailhead or if you stop too long or too frequently along the way, they will start biting, kicking, and shoving each other. (There’s a reason it’s called “horseplay.”) If that starts to happen, Lane says, you must get back on the trail as soon as possible.

In his view, the keys to a successful pack trip are to (1) know where you’re headed, (2) get moving, and (3) keep moving steadily toward your destination.

Farnsworth’s First Law of Life, Leadership, and Bicycles applies as much to humans as it does to bicycles and horses. Successful work groups, families, and individuals know and apply Lane’s three keys.

The concept that it is impossible to keep a bicycle at rest in balance is not very complicated. As a former student once derisively described it, this principle is “stupidly simple and ‘duh’ obvious.” “Everybody knows that!” he said.

I fully agree.

And yet, knowing that, how often do we find ourselves in a swirl of crises because we don’t have a clear vision and purpose?

How often do we get bogged down in a swamp of minutiae and trouble because we forget to focus on our primary objective?

How often do we allow interruptions and distractions to divert our attention and throw us off balance, draining precious energy and resources away from our main mission?

Sometimes, even if we don’t yet know all the answers to how we’re going to get to where we want to go, we just have to put one foot in front of the other and start moving.

Often the answer is to just “do it.”

When we do that, we frequently find that forward momentum itself resolves or makes irrelevant the nagging issues that kept us paralyzed.

Forward momentum itself gives us the energy to break through barriers that once seemed insurmountable.

Forward momentum itself takes us to a place where we can see how to reach our ultimate objective.

Sometimes the solution to our quandary is to simply jump on the bike and keep the pedals moving.

The Book of Proverbs counsels us: “With all thy getting, get understanding.” I would like to add the following to that sage advice:

With all thy getting, get going!

P.S. I recently had a conversation with Scott Rassler, a seasoned financial advisor in South Florida, about the importance of this principle.

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Vacuums

 

Unless you fill your time with passion and purpose, worthless clutter will get sucked into your life.

24/7.

No matter how you do the math, it always adds up to 168 hours per week. Whether you’re male or female; old or young; beautiful or plain; married, single, or somewhere in between, everyone gets the same number: 168.

The issue is never the number of hours; it is always what we choose to do with those hours.

Nature abhors a vacuum. If we don’t fill our time with worthwhile activity, all kinds of clutter will rush in to fill the void. Before long, all that stuff smothers the life out of us.

During my 60 years on this planet, I have witnessed a quantum leap in the number of ways we can spend our time. While the amount of currency we have in our pockets has stayed the same — 168 per week — the size of the bazaar has mushroomed and the glimmer of the merchandise has gotten much shinier.

Sometimes shinier is not better. Lately it seems that much of what is for sale in the marketplace of life serves only to distract and amuse us, rather than nourish, inspire, strengthen, and connect us.

If we’re not careful, we can end up spending a large chunk of those 168 hours surfing, tweeting, watching sports, working puzzles, playing video games, and mastering virtual worlds. While such distractions may not be harmfulper se, they can cut into our capacity to make a difference in the real world and can prevent us from experiencing a more abundant life.

The hours and the energy we spend killing angry birds (or whatever is your addiction of choice) are lost forever to doing things of more lasting value, like reading to our children, learning to paint, teaching a grandchild to fish, planting green beans, taking a walk with our spouse, strengthening our faith, or sharing stories with a shut-in.

Unfortunately, an inclination to do good is no longer sufficient to withstand the allure of mindless amusement. The siren call of distractions is so powerful today that only those who have found a deeper, more passionate purpose in their being and who use their time to bring that purpose to life are able to resist it.

Discovering why we are here, our purpose for being, is the only sure way to protect ourselves from the curse of shallow amusement. Knowing our purpose fills our life with direction and meaning, and crowds out clutter and drivel.

It also helps us find our passion and learn what makes us come alive. When we are doing what we truly love, we have no need for vacuous distractions.

It is not crucial whether following our purpose and passion is our vocation or an avocation. What is important is that it engages us, inspires us, and drives us to excellence.

When we fill that space at our core with purpose and passion, we eliminate the vacuum that sucks in less meaningful ways of using our time. We are energized and empowered to transform the real world, and we find lasting joy in doing so. The result is a life of greater abundance.

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Peanut Butter & Jelly

 

Be careful what you spread around, because some of it will end up on you...

When our six children were small, we made a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And as both peanut butter and jelly are wont to do, a lot of it wound up on us and them instead of on the bread. Our dry cleaning bills were astronomical in those days. I guess that's an occupational hazard of raising six children.

I have found that it's not just peanut butter and jelly that end up back on us when we spread them around. The same thing happens with our outlook on life.

Two good friends of mine illustrate this principle.

One - I'll call him "Edward" - has had troubles, but also more than his share of blessings. He has a beautiful and loving family, an engaging career, and plenty of expensive toys. Yet he always seems to see the grey cloud behind every silver lining.

When something goes well, he claims the credit and takes his success for granted. When things don't go so well - which seems to be quite often - he's quick to find fault and play the blame game.

He's also the first to invite you to his own private pity party. There, his tales of woe and his lamentations of life's unfairness are multiplied.

Many of his former friends have learned to avoid him. They don't need the weight of his pessimism to drag them down. As Edward senses their withdrawal, he gets defensive and moody and pulls away from them. His circle of friends shrinks and the downward cycle continues.

He wonders why there is so much negativity around him.

The other - I'll call him "John" - has had more than his lifetime share of deep water, but he always seems to bob to the surface, smiling and grateful. He goes out of his way to connect people in his wide circle of friends, and he's constantly looking for ways to help others get ahead.

The concept that it is impossible to keep a non-moving bicycle upright is not very complicated. he is quick to express. People seek out opportunities to be with him. Not surprisingly, success seems to find him wherever he goes.

He's the first to attribute that success to others and to share the benefits with his team. He seems to have little ego or need to be in the limelight.

For him, life is good.

As I think about Edward and John, I'm reminded of an 1850s trading post in a small settlement in a pleasant valley along the Oregon Trail.

Wagon trains passing through would spend the night and stock up on supplies before heading further west. On occasion, some travelers weary of the long journey would pause to consider whether they should stop and homestead in the valley.

One such traveler approached the shopkeeper and asked, "What kind of people live here?"

The merchant replied, "Well, before I answer that, tell me what kind of people live in the place you just left."

"Oh, they weren't very neighborly. They seemed to only care for themselves, and there was a lot of fussing. We couldn't wait to leave," answered the traveler.

"I think you'll find the people here are a lot like that," said the shopkeeper.

The traveler decided to keep on moving.

The next day, another traveler, also weary of the long trail, asked the merchant about the people living in the valley.

Once again, the merchant gave the same reply: "Well, before I answer that, tell me what kind of people live in the place you came from."

"Oh," said the traveler, "they were kind and generous. They worked hard and took care of each other. We loved our little community and really hated to leave, but there was just no more land available."

"I think you'll find the people here are a lot like that," said the shopkeeper.

The traveler and his family decided to stay and homestead in the pleasant valley. They soon discovered the people there to be kind, generous, hard-working, caring, and loving, just as the merchant had described them.

So often, what we encounter in life is but an extended reflection of ourselves. Are we happy with what we're spreading around?

Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership and Roughnecks

 

Everyone you meet on the road of life has something to teach you; slow down and listen.

The most useful lesson those roughnecks taught me — a once-in-a-lifetime nugget from the most unlikely of sources — came on a blistering August day when I first experienced “pulling a wet string.”

* * *

I’m still not sure how I survived the summer of ‘74 on an oil rig in western Colorado. The work was back-breaking and conditions were dirty and dangerous. But it paid well and I needed the money for college, so I stuck it out.

I was the odd man out in our four-man crew. I was an honors student headed to law school who went to church every week and didn’t smoke, drink, or chew. The others in that crew, let’s just say, were none of the above.

On the rig, no one had a name, only a nickname, a nom de guerre. At 22, I was the “Kid.” If I had stuck around a little longer I might have earned a more substantial moniker, but everyone knew I was just summer help.

“The Driller” or “Drill” was in charge of the crew. He wasn’t much older than I but had been working on rigs since he was 14, and he was a crackerjack rig operator. He worked hard and drank hard. On Monday mornings he liked to sing a ragged rendition of James Brown’s “I Feel Good, Like I Knew That I Would.” It was his way of convincing himself that his blood-shot eyes and hangover weren’t all that bad. His goal was to become a “tool pusher,” the guy who got to drive a company truck from rig to rig and bark orders to rig crews like ours.

“Grody” (named for his thick, dirty mustache that seemed to catch a piece of everything he ate or drank) was the other deck hand besides me. He was the old man of the crew, having been around the “oil patch” for nearly 20 years. He was quietly comfortable on the deck operating the tongs and the slips, but had no ambition to be in charge of the crew. He spent most of his weekly paychecks on weekend binges with his girlfriend Teresa.

“Red” (named for his bright orange hair and ruddy complexion) was the one-eyed derrick hand who danced along a narrow perch 50 feet in the air, catching the tongs and the 50-foot stands of tubing as they came up from the well and leaning them back in the derrick. He was a practical joker. He loved spitting Red Man chewing tobacco on Grody and me from above. Grody would swear at him and threaten all forms of obscene bodily harm, but Red would just laugh because he knew Grody was afraid of heights and couldn’t come after him.

I learned some interesting lessons from that colorful crew that summer. One of the most lasting was on the day we “pulled a wet string.”

Normally when you pull the string of pipe from a well (in this case about 12,000 feet of 2 5/8 inch tubing), the pump at the bottom has been unseated and all the oil inside the tubing has run back into the bottom of the well. Sometimes, however, the pump gets stuck and the oil can’t run out, so the tubing is completely full of oil.

That’s what they call “a wet string.”

Pulling a wet string is one of the worst things that can happen on a production rig like ours. As the tubing full of oil is pulled from the well and the first 50-foot section is unscrewed at the derrick floor, several gallons of oil from that part of the pipe spray out on the deck hands and the driller. Then another 50-foot section is pulled up and unscrewed and you’re showered again.

By the third or fourth time, your clothes are saturated and oil is dripping from your hair and off your hardhat and into your eyes. Your eyes are stinging and you’d like to wipe them but your gloves are full of oil too. It’s inside your steel-toed boots and your underwear. Everything you have on is ruined and will need to be burned at the end of the day.

The deck and all the tools are slick and oily. Your brain is screaming to hurry up and get this over with, but you have to take it easy so no one gets hurt. It’s like a slow motion dream — the kind in which you’re trying to flee but you’re running through Jell-O.

And then you realize there are still 11,800 feet of wet string to go. That means 236 more oil showers, and it’s not even 9 o’clock yet. Without a doubt today will be one of the nastiest, most wretched days of your life.

* * *

Around noon we stopped for lunch and were squatting in the shade eating our sandwiches with oily fingers. No one felt much like talking. Finally Driller broke the miserable silence.

“Pretty tough day, huh Kid?” he asked.

“The worst,” I snorted. “If I had known this was going to happen, I would have quit yesterday.”

Red chimed in sarcastically. “Hey, don’t forget the extra fifty bucks wet string pay.”

“We get an extra fifty bucks?” I queried.

“Yeah," Red explained. “They say it’s to buy new clothes, but it’s really just to keep the whole crew from twisting off.” (That’s oil patch lingo for walking off the job en masse.)

“Aw, this ain’t nothin’,” added Grody. “You should try doin’ this in the middle of the winter. Happened to me about three Januarys ago over near Steamboat.”

“This is so disgusting. How do you stand doing this year after year? Why don’t you get another job, do something different?” I asked.

Driller scrunched up his face and almost rolled his eyes. “That’s what you ain’t learned yet, Kid. It don’t matter what you do, every job’s gonna have its share of wet string days.

“Every now and again, even if you’re some hot-shot attorney in a three-piece suite at a fancy law firm in downtown Denver, even then, _____ happens. It don’t do no good to try and run from it. You just gotta learn to make the best of it.”

“He’s right,” Grody nodded. “Every job’s gonna have its share of wet string days. Take the good with the bad and deal with it.”

* * *

“Wet String Days.”

Their words still ring in my ears. I can’t say that I appreciated their wisdom that day, but it did stick with me.

Over the years I’ve found it to be true. Even the best of jobs, even the best of lives, have their share of wet string days, days when the wheels come off and everything falls apart.

“Wet String Days.”

I’ve discovered that it helps to have a name for those kinds of situations. When something’s labeled, it’s easier to recognize it, talk about it, and find a place for it.

I’ve learned that life is not about avoiding wet string days, because you can’t. Life is about learning to handle them when they happen and not letting them sour you for the majority of days when the pump doesn’t get stuck in the tubing and the pipes aren’t full of oil and you don’t have to burn all your clothes at the end of the shift.

It’s about finding joy in the journey. It’s about learning life’s amazing lessons from the interesting people you meet along the way.

Bless those roughnecks and the lessons they taught me. I wonder where they are today?