Do you struggle with what you do? Do you wish you were better at it?
Ira Glass - the host of This American Life - talks about the tension between taste and what we produce. He says there's this stage of life, usually a few years, where your tastes (what you like) are beyond what you can produce (what you do). You make like a killer band, but you sound like a hillbilly when you play. You may read a great writers, but you sound like a teacher from an episode of the peanuts when you write. You may want to life your life like a leader you know, but instead you find that your life looks a lot more like an assistant than a leader.
The Writers
Between the two polars of what you like and what you do is the struggle. Within this struggle is a tension. Recently, a friend and I were discussing this tension, particularly the struggle of writing. Were were talking about writers we like. Writers we look up to. Writers we were currently looking for inspiration. Here's a quick list:
- Jonathan Safran Foer
- Cormac McCarthy
- Stephen King, On Writing and The Bachman Books
The Struggle
"The struggle," he said, "is that it's not fair to read great writers. I mean Stephen King just wrote and wrote and wrote. Is that you?" "Well, no," I said, "I have a job. A wife who's pregnant in a couple of months. An incredibly busy life. I write everyday, but not like Stephen."
So how do we write (live) like we want? C.S. Lewis is another hero of mine. He wrote constantly, even when his life was chaotic. In the biography Jack, George Sayers tells of his life. C.S. Lewis wrote despite a tragic life, a sick woman to care for, full days as a professor at Oxford, a house to keep up and manage, and a live-in brother who was an alcoholic.
The question I want to ask is: What's not fair? That they did it or that we can't?
The Grace
The apostle Paul brilliantly unpacks the grace of God both as a means to salvation, new life with Him, and priority, momentum-building, push to fight hard as we become better at what we do. "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." 1 Corinthians 15:10
I remember pastor Guy at River West preaching through the book of Ruth. He told the story of God's grace on her life as Boaz and his men opened up their field for her to glean. And yet, she did not take advantage of God's grace. Instead, she worked harder. "She came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest...So she gleaned in the field until evening." Ruth 2:7,17.
The Fight
Here's my point: where we are given grace, we are to continue to live life to it's fullest. There is no slacking; no breaks because we feel tired. We are to be up earlier than the rest; we are to stay up later than the rest. We are to fight to accomplish what we are called to. We must be diligent at it.
My life as a husband, father, pastor and writer is both awesome and busy. In the middle of all of it, writing is nonnegotiable. It certainly never takes over the other categories of my wife, my kids, my role as a pastor; they come first. And yet, I still have to write everyday. It's like a pulsating drive I can't stop.
8 Ways To Become Better at What You Do:
1. Know your thing; what your called to do. You'll know if because it's the one thing you can't turn off, ever. For me this is writing.
2. Discipline yourself. Be up early. Stay up late. Do both even on tough days. My mornings begin about 6am (this morning was 5am.). I tend to go to bed about 12am or later.
3. Continue to push yourself to become better at what you do. Once you find your thing, be diligent at it. For me this is reading and writing. I do as much as I can everyday.
4. Carry your tools with you. I carry a notebook, or a way to capture ideas with me pretty much everywhere I go. It's critical to the process.
5. Don't miss the opportunities in the moments. I've learned to take the time to flesh out an idea on the spot, instead of optimistically hoping I will remember the idea later in the day.
6. Set goals beyond yourself. Create a high bar that pulls you out of your comfort zone. My goals of writing are well beyond my skill set. This pushes me to work harder.
7. Create rhythm of practical, achievable goals. Set them to be accomplished in a realistic amount of time. For me this is posting a blog about 3 or 4 times a week.
8. Work for the glory of God. We fight not for the glory of ourselves, but for the glory of God. We strive so that he will be glorified in our work.
