And that’s when we began writing our own songs. . . . We knew we had something; you could feel it, the hairs stood up on your arms, it just felt so different. We didn’t know what it was, but we liked it. I just came up with this riff for “Black Sabbath.” I played “dom-dom-dommm.” And it was like: that’s it! We built the song from there. As soon as I played that first riff we went: “Oh God, that’s really great. But what is it? I don’t know!”
—Tony Iommi
I once had an idea for a novel.
The idea came from a strange, surreal story someone had told me that was true. And it involved me. Somehow hearing that story sparked something in me and suddenly I had one scene and one line of dialogue.
That was it.
Once I realized I had that one scene with that one line, I realized I also had a character. And then another. And these characters had names, like Yves and Faruq. And then another character came out of nowhere who for some reason always wore sandals with odd-colored socks, and another character emerged who drove a gold Ford F–150 pickup truck with mud flaps.
Somewhere in there another character emerged named Rooster. He was the one who says the first line of the book, which I had as well.
So I wrote all of this down.
And then I thought of the ending. And then a twist that would come before the ending. Within a year I had pages and pages of scenes and dialogue and names of people and places. I knew that in that one particular conversation in that one scene toward the end that one character needed to be wearing a T-shirt that had this one particular phrase written on it.
This continued for years. Literally. Years.
I kept thinking to myself, Is this a novel?
Followed by, How does a person write a novel?
I did not know how to write a novel.
But I did know the first line.
So one day in the fall of 2008 I sat down at my laptop, stared at that blinking line, and then wrote the first line of that novel.
Far too often, we don’t start because we can’t get our minds around the entire thing. We don’t take the first step because we can’t figure out the seventeenth step.
But you don’t have to know the seventeenth step. You only have to know the first step. Because the first number is always 1.
Start with 1.
Step 1
That’s where you start. With 1.
It’s too overwhelming otherwise. It’s too easy to be caught up in endless ruminations: What if Step 4 doesn’t work? or What if there isn’t money for Step 11 or What if people don’t like the results of Step 6?
You have no idea what the answers are to any of those questions. The only thing that wondering and speculating will do is separate you from the present moment.
When you begin, the seventeenth step is sixteen steps away.
You don’t have to know how to do it,
or what it is,
or even when it is.
Because the first number is always 1.
It’s not 5, then 8, then 24, then 62.7.
It’s 1, then 2, then 3.
Your 1 may be a making a phone call or an appointment or filling out a form—it may be a fairly simple task and yet it may seem like the biggest, most impossibly massive task in the world.
This is very normal, and it’s only natural that it will feel at times like your shoes are made of cement and dialing that number takes more strength than lifting a house.
To do anything new—to do the 1—requires tremendous mental fortitude to not think about 2 or 3 yet.
That time will come. And it is not now.
Now is the time for 1.
You start with 1. And you work on that. Just 1. And when 1 is done, you move to 2.
You break it down into the next step and only the next step—
the next sentence
the next phone call
the next meeting
the next word.
Some people are stuck.
And they remain stuck.
And they don’t get unstuck, because they can’t get their minds around the whole thing.
But you don’t have to get your mind around the whole thing, you only have to get your mind around the 1.
This is true when you’re starting out, taking on new work, doing something you haven’t done before; it’s true at 2:37 on a Tuesday afternoon in October, and it’s true for whatever it is you have in front of you during the next few hours.
What is your 1?
At any moment in the day, you can do only one thing at a time. And the more intentional you are about knowing what your 1 is, the more present you will be.
Overthinking
I have a friend named Eddie. Over the past few years we’ve spent countless hours surfing together because we both love the same break near where we live. Eddie has long curly hair and usually surfs in a trucker hat so his hair sticks out the sides and he’s always smiling.
I have a friend named Greg who surfs that same break Eddie and I surf. Greg works in finance. His area of expertise is in analyzing massive amounts of data in the global commodities market. That last sentence is about the extent of my comprehension of what he does. He is, obviously, very intelligent.
One day I paddled out and Eddie and Greg were already in the water because Greg had hired Eddie to coach him. Eddie is an excellent teacher, and when Greg took a wave in, I commented to Eddie on how good Greg is getting. Eddie said that Greg’s only challenge was to not overthink it. He then leaned in and smiled his Eddie smile and said,
I keep telling him, “Stop thinking about shit that ain’t happenin’.”
Is this you? You’re here, in the middle of your day, doing whatever it is you do, but your mind is all over the place, thinking about 2s and 9s and 47s, playing out possible scenarios, wondering about certain outcomes, constructing conversations in your mind about what you’ll say and then what they’ll say and then how you’ll respond—thinking about shit that ain’t happenin’.
My friend Chico—that’s not his real name, but if I’m going to give him a fake name, it ought to be a good one, right?—runs a large nonprofit organization. He was telling me one day that he has all these big questions about where they’re headed and how their work is going to evolve and how the challenges of the city they work in are changing and what adjustments all that is requiring his organization to make. He told me that these questions are literally keeping him awake at night. He said,
There’s so much to do! How do I know what to do next?
But then, toward the end of our conversation, he mentioned that there’s a key person in the organization who isn’t on the same page as he is. He said it’s a growing problem because he has to keep monitoring this person’s work and correcting the work this person had done that isn’t in line with where the organization is headed.
Do you see the problem? Chico has his 1. He’s overwhelmed with all the work that needs to be done, but there’s a 1 right in front of him. He has the wrong person in the wrong place. He needs to change that. He has a 1. And yet what keeps him awake at night are the 6s and 11s and 24s.
Start with your 1.
Suspend Judgment
I once had an idea for a short film.
I’d been giving sermons for a while and people had been suggesting that we film them. But I’d seen that done before and I didn’t find it very compelling. I had this sense that there was a way to film a sermon cinematically, with scenes and images that organically connected to the message. I’d been talking about this with some friends who agreed to form a creative company and figure it out. I then wrote a script based on a parable I’d told about something that happened to my one-year-old son and me. We went over that script draft after draft after draft until we were satisfied that it would work as a film.
And then we raised money. We were thinking maybe the film could play on television, which for a half-hour show meant the film would need to be twenty-two to twenty-three minutes long.
We filmed for almost a week, the footage was edited, and then the producer showed me a rough cut they’d made from the usable footage.
A rough cut that was ten minutes long.
This was a problem, because people had given money to see a twenty-two-minute film, not a ten-minute film.
I remember watching it and having two very strong reactions:
What will we tell the people who gave us money?
followed by
I haven’t seen anything like this before.
We carried the rough cut around on a VHS tape (remember those?) and showed it to a number of people. No one mentioned the length. And everyone wanted their own copy.
You start with your 1, and then you suspend judgment on what you’re doing, because you don’t know what you have when you start.
No one does.
When you are constantly judging what you’re doing, you aren’t here. You aren’t present. You are standing outside of your life, looking in, observing.
The time for judgment will come at some point, but in the moment, you have only the 1. And then the 2. And then the 3 . . .
In the case of those short films, we ended up making something shorter, but, in the end, better than what we set out to make.
The first number is always a 1.
You don’t know what you have when you start, and so you suspend judgment on whatever it is you’re doing while you’re doing it.
Nerves
I once had an idea that involved lots of memorizing.
I was giving a series of sermons on the book of Ecclesiastes and the more I studied the first three chapters, the more I pictured the wisdom teacher sitting in a palace at the end of his life, trying to explain to someone younger what he’d learned from his full and turbulent days. It became less and less an ancient text to me and more and more a personal confession, like I could feel the teacher’s heart behind the words.
As I worked through how to present my image of the teacher, I had a growing sense that the best way to explain how it must have felt to hear him wax on like that would be to memorize the first part of the book and then deliver it like a speech, a rant, a confession while I walked through the audience. Which meant I had to memorize it, and then beyond that, I had to know it, feel it, own it. (The actors reading this are thinking, Yes, it’s called acting.) I remember standing in the back of the room about to start with butterflies in my stomach, realizing that I had absolutely no idea how it was going to go.
If you are working on something, about to deliver it, moments from opening the doors, an hour from everybody arriving, a week from the release date, two minutes from getting the results back, and you have butterflies in your stomach, be grateful.
You are in a wonderful place.
Nerves are God’s gift to you, reminding you that your life is not passing you by.
Make friends with the butterflies.
Welcome them when they come,
revel in them,
enjoy them,
and if they go away,
do whatever it takes to put yourself in a position where they return.
Better to have a stomach full of butterflies than to feel like your life is passing you by.
What You Don’t Know
As I walked through the congregation, delivering those lines from the book of Ecclesiastes, I realized it wasn’t what I was expecting—I thought it would feel big and profound, like an announcement about how the world works. Instead, it felt small and intimate, like I was confessing something. I wasn’t expecting it to have such emotional resonance. Because usually when you’re teaching about what someone else said, you talk about that person in the third person. But when you take a shot at being that person, it changes everything.
Now it’s direct,
provocative,
unavoidable,
electric.
We work hard to outline and plan and design and estimate and organize whatever it is we’ve set out to do, all the while keeping in mind that when we start, we don’t actually know what we have on our hands.
It may be rubbish.
It may be brilliant.
It may be shorter or wider or longer or taller or louder or quieter or bigger or smaller than we originally thought.
We don’t know, and so we suspend judgment. Right now, all we have is the satisfaction of doing it.
You don’t know exactly what you have on your hands.
The Ramp
When I was thirteen years old my favorite thing to do was ride my BMX bike. I rode trails, I learned tricks, but the thing I did most was go off jumps. I couldn’t get enough of that feeling of flying through the air.
At the edge of our driveway was a stretch of grass that led to a swing set, about twenty feet from where the grass met the pavement. I decided that I would build a ramp so big I could leave the pavement, go off the ramp, and land next to the swing set.
So I set out to find the materials. We lived on a small farm at the time, and there were seven buildings on the property where my dad stored wood and paint and tools. I remember going through those buildings, searching for just the right pieces of wood, rummaging around looking for just the right nails.
When we’re young and we want something, we do whatever it takes.
When you’re in the store and you see something you want, you ask your dad over and over and over. You drive him crazy until he gets it for you or gives you one of those definitive no’s that keep you quiet.
When it rains and you’re stuck inside, you build a fort using every single blanket and cushion in the house.
When it’s a summer night and you’re outside with the kids from the neighborhood, you find a can or a flashlight and you invent a game.
You make things,
you find what you need,
you hunt down the supplies,
you do this instinctively.
You figure out what the 1 is and then you don’t rest until you’ve got it.
Somewhere along the way in becoming adults, it’s easy to lose this potent mix of exploration and determination. We settle. We decide this is as good as it gets. We comfort ourselves with, It could be worse.
If your life isn’t what it could be,
if you know there’s more,
if you know you could fly higher,
then it’s time to start building a ramp.
I wanted that feeling of flying through the air,
but to get it I had to use nails and paint and wood.
That’s how it works.
You want a better life?
You want to find your path?
You want an ikigai?
Find a 1.