Category Archives: productivity

You should have seen their faces.

This group of about twenty men and women had just spent the past thirteen hours beginning at one in the morning doing the hardest and most physically demanding activities of their lives. Over the last seventeen miles they had run, crab walked, bear crawled, alligator walked, elephant walked, carried a giant fallen tree trunk (for three hours), and even ran for a mile or two carrying another person across their shoulders. When they weren’t moving forward, they had done push ups, squats, lunges, and more. Some of it while standing in a cold river or lake. All of it, while carrying a backpack weighing forty-to-sixty pounds that was never allowed to touch the ground (as well as a couple of additional twenty-five-plus pound weights the team also had to figure a way to manage).

They thought at this point it was over. After a grueling five-mile Indian run through the busy streets in the heart of the city, they thought there could be no more. Mission accomplished. That they would get their reward (a small patch and the knowledge of having completed the course) and find a way home. They were wrong. There was more. And, when they discovered this, their faces bore the weight of every minute that had come before. In their eyes, the thousand yard stare of a people lost in suffering and pain. Yet, when the word was given to go that extra mile, carrying a buddy, they rose up, gathered what remained of their resolve, and did it.

I don’t consider myself very handy. In fact, when it comes to most DIY home fix-up stuff, I’m actually quite intimidated. Mainly because I have no clue where to start or what to do if something goes wrong. So, you might imagine what was going through my head when we purchased a house for a price so low that we could have put it on a credit card had the closing company been able to accept them. The caveat being, of course, that it needed a lot of work. Not as much as one might think, given the price. Yet, a fair amount. Enough so that it is things I have never done before. I’m like a deer in headlights.

Right now, our plumber can’t continue his work until the bathroom sub-floor is replaced. The Instructions show two people, one weekend, and a skill level of moderate-to-hard. I’m one person, with a few hours, and a skill level of w-t-f. Yet, here I am, about to load up my car with a crowbar, a reciprocating saw, my broken-toes, and a hefty helping of gumption and devil-may-care.

My four-year old daughter, Beatrix, always — Always! — tries food she has never had before. Despite the fact she knows she won’t like it. She tastes it, chews it, swallows it, and then decides. It does not matter what it is, she will always give it a fair shot. I contrast this with the large number of people who will refuse to eat something just based on how it looks or sounds. Not my Beatrix.

All of us have struggles, challenges, fears, and other impediments that we must overcome on a daily basis. More often than not, our boundaries are illusions created by the fear of what we are truly capable of. All of us, at some point, push through this fear and learn a valuable lesson in the process.

That, in ways both large and small, we are all superheroes. We move faster than speeding bullets (that we pull the trigger on), are more powerful than locomotives (that we purposefully step in front of), and bound tall buildings (of our own making) with a single bound. A secret identity we don’t ever see or admit to. Yet, when the task calls for it, we step into the booth as a person incapable and step out the other side as another doing things we never dreamed we could.

This essay is dedicated to GORUCK Challenge Class 167. A group of superheroes if there ever was.

My Great Grandmother Handy always kept her kitchen clean. Despite the fact that it seemed she spent most of the day within it in a state of constant activity.

She would awake early to start cooking breakfast for my Great Grandfather “Pa Pa” Handy and whomever else was staying over at the time. Eggs. bacon, biscuits, potatoes, fresh squeezed orange juice, and half of a grapefruit for Pa Pa. Just as routine, not a single pan was waiting to be cleaned by the time any of it hit the dining table. The kitchen looked just as it did before it all started. And, one could be assured, it would be just as clean only minutes after the dishes were cleared.

She often would tend the garden and start the laundry following breakfast. Which, in my child mind, never seemed to take that long. She would return to the kitchen with a full basket of figs freshly harvested from the tree in the yard. These figs found their way swiftly into a pressure pot and then into mason jars for preserves. The kitchen remained tidy the whole time. The only evidence to the contrary were the tools of task being actively used. Once their job was done they always swiftly and effortlessly returned to the place from which they came.

Lunch and Dinner seemed to be a blur of a single meal in her kitchen. As soon as one was served, preparation for the next was already underway. There was never a time in that span of hours that a pot was not on the stove, a pan was not in the oven, or a serving bowl or utensil was not being used. But, as I’m sure you can surmise, by the time it was all served, consumed, and cleared, the kitchen was spot free and ready for its business the following the day.

Even more amazing was that everything else got done as well. The laundry, the gardening, the grocery shopping, the cleaning of the rest of the house, and tending to Pa Pa’s growing list of needs as his health began to turn. One woman against a mountain and she managed to plant her flag at the summit each day.

It was many years after she passed that I was able to truly appreciate any of these minor miracles, let alone care enough to dissect how they were achieved. But age, passing time, and having the responsibilities of maintaining a family and household of my own has made me ponder my Great Grandmother’s deft skills regularly. How did she manage to do it? How did she juggle all of those tasks? The demands and needs? No matter the day or her own health or conditions?

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I have some clues — especially in the kitchen cleaning department.

Before she started cooking she filled the sink with soapy water. Whenever she used a pan, as soon as she was done with it, she washed it, dried it, and put it away. Instead of saving up all of those ten to fifteen second actions until they added up to an hour of washing after the meal, she learned in her years of experience that it was better for her to do them right away. That the time following a meal could be better spent on the next task than having the detritus of one create another. Remove pan from oven, plate food, wash, dry, put away, serve.

This memory lands home for me these days when I go to add yet-another-task to my list. More often I find myself thinking this — Would I rather add it to the list or would I rather add it to my journal? One is a record of things to do. The other, a record of things already done.

I know what Grandmother Handy would say.