The holiday season can be busy. For me, it is a time when work is slow, which gives me a chance to pursue one of my favorite hobbies: reading. Over the holiday season, I read a self-help book that will help me maximize my time and improve things long-term. So, this year, I selected the book “Win the Day” by Mark Batterson.
I don’t remember where I was when this book was suggested. I remember being with Steve Gardner when it happened because he pointed out that it seemed like a good book to read before I purchased it. (I like to credit people who suggest books, so they continue to suggest them to me.)
The subtitle is “7 Daily Habits to Help You Stress Less and Accomplish More.” It was the perfect fit for my end-of-the-year tradition.
So, what are the seven habits?
Flip the script. The opening sentence of this chapter is, “If you want to change your life, start by changing your story.” If you don’t like your story, you need to figure out how to flip the script and reverse the narrative. He points out the difference between success and failure in our stories. We tend to make self-fulfilling prophecies. The history of the world is full of people who have made a conscious decision to get off their current path and change their lives. The first step is to flip the script.
Kiss the wave. This was the most problematic habit for me to wrap my head around. Batterson says whenever we see an obstacle in our way, we need to realize the obstacle is the way. We must deal with the obstacles to get on with life. He calls it kissing the wave. My struggle is with the wording. I don’t see waves as obstacles. But the point of the habit is still a strong one.
Eat the frog. If you have ever talked to me about productivity, you have heard me advance this idea. It is one of the key principles I like to advance. The origins of the phrase are in doubt. Batterson, like many others, gives the credit to Mark Twain. However, one needs to be careful when crediting Twain with anything. He often gets credit for things he said after hearing them from someone else. But the meaning of the phrase is never in doubt. If you are faced with a difficult task and know you will have to do it sometime, you should do it and get it over with. Don’t put difficult things off. Just eat the frog.
Fly the Kite. The habit is another one I often talk about, but I call it something else. For me, it is about kissing many frogs. (Frogs are just for eating, of course). Batterson’s “Fly the Kite” is about building a bridge from the United States to Canada near Niagara Falls. To succeed in life, we need to be able to try many things. Be able to experiment. We aren’t going to succeed with everything we try, so we need to keep trying things. The final and best answers aren’t always going to form the place you expect. Even when you find an answer, you might need to start small and keep increasing the solution size until you get to where you need to be. In this case, you fly a kite across the river and keep increasing the string size until you have a rope think enough to start building a bridge.
Cut the rope. Speaking of rope, this was my second favorite habit. He brought it home by telling the story of Elisha Otis. He had invented a better way to do elevators. Nobody trusted his solution to the safety break until he put himself above a crowd in an elevator and ordered an axman to cut the robe with him inside an elevator. Batterson’s point is that playing it safe can be risky. You aren’t going to make a difference if you insist on keeping everything the same. It wasn’t dangerous for Otis to have the rope cut because he knew it would work. But nobody else did. He needed to show the world he knew what he was doing.
Wind the clock. Batterson points out, “Time is measured in minutes. Life is measured in moments.” Again, I struggled with this definition. The concept was simple enough. An old fashion clock doesn’t just tell you the Time. It shows you all the different times of the day. The minutes before and after are visible on a round-the-clock with two hands. Don’t forget the past, and remember the future when going about life. We need to wind the clock and keep the past and future in mind, but we also need to Seize the Day. You never get the current moment in Time back. Make the most of it.
Seed the Clouds. Batterson says, “Sow today; what do you want to see tomorrow?” He tells the story of a chemist named Vincent Schaefer, who flew in an airplane to seed clouds with dry ice to make it rain. The concept is that you must take action to help you get the desired outcomes.
If you read this summary and worry that many of these concepts are secular, don’t. Batterson pastors a church near the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and he backs up his habits with Biblical references that will lead to a God-honoring life.
Reading this book was a great way to ring in the New Year.
