Efficiency is king. It’s at the root of the all popular saying “time is money.” One of my favorite examples of taking efficiency to the next level is how UPS routes their trucks to avoid left turns because they take too long. It’s a remarkable example of reflection (data analysis) to better use the time available. After all, the only absolute limiting factor on what someone can do with their life is the span of it.

It is why midway through college I decided to be more intentional about my organization. My time was stretched thin and I wasn’t willing to give anything up. Efficiency was my only option and everything read that being organized was key to being efficient. After training myself to take detailed notes, a calendar, a filing system and so on, I found myself having to sacrifice more than before to get the essentials done. Being organized was doing what organization is supposed to do. I could find the exact bit of information I needed at any point by going directly to it. It was then I realized something.

Being organized is not the same as being efficient.

The solutions others prescribed worked for them. Bullet journaling no doubt works for many people. By creating an organized system though, I was essentially following Google Map (it was probably Map Quest back then) directions everywhere. This works if you are trying to answer questions on a test, because there is a point A and B, the question and the answer.

When writing down notes I don’t always know that something could be a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist yet for my work. I need to create answers, not look them up. My meticulous notes meant the need to meander through my notebooks was gone. Because of that I had to already mostly know the solution to any problem before I opened my notes.

This may have come from the system I had adopted, but I believe it was because I began paving roadways for myself to travel when I needed to be wandering a forest or field. I gave up the strict system and went simple. Headlines and circled words. Doodles. Random thoughts I had when I got distracted for a moment. Everything added to glance at and skim over. Flip through pages and discover something I had forgotten that triggers a thought in my brain and sends me in a new and unexpected direction.

Giving yourself the opportunity to wander opens you up to discovery, even within your own notes.

My dad, like many dads, had his isms. At every opportunity he would recite them, evolving overtime with use. One of his best was, “Never make a trip without taking something.” Which eventually became “never make a trip” as we had all learned it over years of repetition.

Getting up to go to the kitchen meant you brought along a dirty glass. Passing the fridge required hollering to the rest of the house if they needed a can-uh-pop (soda for everyone outside the Midwest). Miscellaneous items would be set next to our stairs waiting for the next person heading to the second floor to bring them along. A small habit he planted in all of us that helped our home function.

This little seed grew and began to shape how I traveled through life. Where ever I go, physically, emotionally or otherwise, I try to bring something with me. Something good. Sometimes it is a gift, more often though I just hope to make the people or place I am going to an iota better (iota was one of my dad’s words).

It made me consider the needs of others and how being there would impact them. This isn’t to say I’m some one man humanitarian super hero saving lives and solving the world’s problems. I offer to bring someone else’s dirty dishes to the sink and clean them at work if I am getting up. Or I’ll make sure a friend living overseas doesn’t need me to smuggle peanut butter when I come to visit.

Doing this forces me to consider the needs of those at my destination. It has made me a better tourist by being understanding of other cultures. I’ve become more patient and calm. It has made me a better person.

File this under “things I wish school taught me” right along side balancing a budget and managing Outlook.

You will have to deal with a lot of bad ideas and not just the sort of thing that could be better, like Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. Really horrible, how the hell did that you even think that up, can we go back to a time when that thought didn’t exist sort of ideas.

It isn’t anyone’s fault. These things happen. You may have more information, they may have read some sketchy whitepaper, an influencer said so, who knows? But for whatever reason, you have to say yes and make it happen.

Compromise

Raw egg is nasty. Add a little heat and some salt though and you have something pretty tasty. Bonus points, it still kinda resembles that raw egg you were served.

It might be more work, but offering to do more in addition to the original idea can actually make everything come together. You might even end up with something appetizing.

Get some second opinions

You may not be in any position to say someone’s idea stinks, but Barb can. And Barb is pretty damn sharp. Get her input, and while going down this path, why not get Jack and Molly to weigh in too. They may find those compromise ideas that save the day.

It’s all in the execution

Ideas are cheap and easy, especially the turds. Don’t have a ton of oversight on this one? Good, make the most of it. Stay engaged and interested, but make changes where you know they need to be made. Explaining one small change after another as you go through the execution can change minds. By the time you call it a wrap, you’ll have something everyone loves.

Don’t put your name on it

When all else fails… do what you have to do. Check all the boxes and be sure to keep giving all the credit to the one who birthed this nightmare. This is a last resort I think I’ve only ever had to go to twice in my career.

Uh… it was my idea

I’ve shared my fair share of garbage ideas. Thankfully more often than not, someone points it out to me. There have been those times when people nodded and said yes though. That’s OK though, anything significant will take some time to see the light of the day. Having a healthy serving of humility-o’s each day can save you from yourself. Always ask if something is worth doing? Is this good, or at least good enough? When you start to think no… ask others. Better late than never.

The gif has gone through a lot to get where it is today. From super short clips that were just another funky thing on the web to filling our news feeds. Now they contain entire movies, teach you how to cook upside down peanut butter brioche French toast, express how you feel at any moment and more. The gif has become one of the most versatile and interesting mediums.

Closed captions have become more valuable than ever on videos too. So much so that they become the main focus of a video many times. When I hit play on a video and there are no captions (or worse, janky ones) I will almost immediately give up on it.

These fairly recent developments have caused a significant behavioral change in how we consume video. Audio had been essential for the viewing experience of any sort of video on the web since the Hamster Dance days.

As the web grew up the battle of auto playing video (and audio) began. Animated banner ads and pop ups shouted for your attention, no one knowing what to do, sacrificing elegant marketing for shows of force. The early web required a level of street smarts or you’d end up in a library with someone moaning from some hidden pop up when all you wanted was information on the history of pants.

People learned to mute their computers. New browsers were created to block these disruptive pieces of the web. And because of that marketers and creators had to find new ways to get to you. When YouTube came around in 2004 and then bought by Google a couple years later it started to become clear that video had value on the web. It wasn’t until smart phones could start filming that things really started to take off though. Everything started moving to support more and more video and here we are. You can’t get away from video.

But a lot of our old habits are still there. We mute, block and hide anything we don’t have control over. When viewing the web we want it to feel like ours. It is on our device and is taking up our time. Anything that breaks that fantasy is rebelled against, like autoplaying audio.

We can’t blind ourselves and enjoy the web though and the powers that be (marketers and those selling ad space) know that. So autoplay video started to take over. Naturally, subtitles started to show up on videos.

Now, it would be insane to create a marketing video without subtitles. But just subtitles over a video is boring. That meant the video creators had to look to other techniques. Look at what Buzzfeed Tasty has done with their videos to teach a recipe compared to a traditional cooking show. Only the essentials are kept. The chef isn’t important, neither is a vast kitchen or banter. We don’t have time for that anymore.

What has happened is that the silent film has been reinvented. But in a world where film is cheap, silent films have been able to evolve and branch out.

In a battle between marketers and users, we have accidentally all become fans of silent films again.

When I was 20 I traveled to Japan with my best friend, Matt. At the time there were no such things as smartphones, but there were MP3 players. The web was still surprisingly limited. This was my first independent trip and would be the only one I would take without the safety of the internet in my pocket.

When I was 28 I would travel to Japan again, this time accompanied by my girlfriend, to see Matt be married. By now I had grown accustomed to having an iPhone with access to vast amounts of knowledge and advice. Unlike the first time, this trip was planned, structured.

Thankfully Matt had previously spent time in Japan. We had a few friends living in the country and we would make others — probably far fewer without Matt’s ability to conversationally speak Japanese. On the return trip I would be the one carrying experience, but lacking the language skills.

Each trip changed me. It wouldn’t be until my sophomore journey that I fully realized how much. When you are put into a situation that requires you to exist in the present it becomes nearly impossible to relate to other parts of life. For 8 years Japan was a bubble in my life experience.

So much changed and just as much was exactly how I remembered it. Each time in Tokyo we rushed to make the last train of the night, falling asleep on our feet. Breakfast was always bought at a convenience store (they are the same thing as the US, but full of appetizing pastries and iced coffee instead of unlimited liquid cheese for sweaty hot dogs). We never touched a cab door without the driver snapping at us to let go. The Peace Museum in Hiroshima wreaked havoc on my emotions, twice. The public transit made me dread getting on the L ever again. A typhoon screwed up our plans. Asahi tasted better, we didn’t eat sushi and Okonomiyaki kept the title of the greatest food ever — even better than pizza. We got lost, often.

And then, Matt was living in Japan and getting married. Our friends Jon and Shiho had kids. Everyone had smartphones. I was with a woman I love. There was an island full of rabbits. Robot Restaurant was a real thing. We fed wild monkeys. There wasn’t a nuclear reactor leak. I didn’t terrify my mom by not being at the hotel I said I would be at. We didn’t spend our nights partying in bars. I wasn’t too caught up in the moment to be able to sit back and enjoy it.

Japan is a place of magic and wonder. I didn’t quite understand that my first time there. I knew it was incredible, it’s impossible not to know that. But I didn’t appreciate that we were walking through cities thousands of years older than the one I lived in, but looked like they were decades into the future. I didn’t realize how much would change. And how that change would be good. And how much would feel familiar.

About 15 months ago an egg-sized lumped appeared on my dad’s neck over a few days. It wasn’t supposed to kill him. It did, yesterday.

Cancer sucks, but what happened to my dad was crueler than most. Beyond the pain, brutal treatment, sickness and everything else that comes with cancer, this one took his voice.

My dad lived an incredible life and to the benefit of everyone around him he was a damned good storyteller. I spent a lot of time trying to coax another story out of him. He was a greaser, part of a high school gang, welcome at the Playboy clubs that were in Chicago, an ad man with one hell of a portfolio, stand-up comedian, singer in a band and probably a lot of other things I never got to hear about.

I’ll never get to hear him tell another story. Thanks to him I heard some incredible tales that helped shape who I am and how I will remember him.

Tell someone you love a story that is important to you. I have a couple that about my dad that I think only I remembered. I don’t know why these have stuck with me all these years, but they have.

If you would like to share your stories with me too I would be overjoyed to read them. You may reach me at jon@alt42.net.

Here are a couple stories about me and my dad.

Broke Something

In the summer we would go to the park across the street to play catch, often with the added bonus of tiring out the dog. My dad since I can remember had a lot of pain when throwing overhand, but his days as a pitcher tugged at him always. Every now and then he would forget about the pain and let one rip. He could put some heat on it.

I was pretty good at making the catch, but this time my glove bent. The baseball hit me dead center in the chest. It hurt like hell. Breathing was hard but I let out a yell.

“I think you broke my scrotum!”

My dad started cracking up, me thinking it was because he walloped me. I think I got away with calling him an asshole in that moment. Between fits of laughter he diagnosed my scrotum as being horribly misplaced. It dawned on me I meant sternum.

I couldn’t help but laughing. My chest still hurt, but there was no stopping it. After a few minutes we regained composure and went back to tossing the ball.

My First Drink

I think I was about 8 years old. We were at the swim club at the end of our block. Out front families gathered to eat individual pizzas or round yellow nachos with orange cheese. Us kids would run around in the grass, playing tag and making up rules for how we weren’t “it” when someone got you just before reaching home base.

The adults sat around at the picnic tables doing whatever adults did. When the food showed up they would spend 10 minutes trying to get all of us to calm down.

I was parched so I picked up the large water bottle my dad just set down. Taking a big gulp I knew something was wrong with this water. My cheeks were puffed out, filled with liquid, and my eyes watered. I got my mom’s attention, pointing from mouth to water bottle and back again. Finally one of my parents realized I had just filled my mouth with beer. My mom balanced helping me and giving my dad a furious glare. My dad shrugged it off.

There was a strict no alcohol policy at the pool, so they couldn’t say anything about there. By the time we finished swimming everyone but me had forgotten all about it.

I am looking forward to the day I forget when my dad had cancer and just know he had it at some point and now it is gone. Until then it will be staring me in the face.

I’ve heard cancer called a silent killer. Something goes haywire in your body and cells start a mutiny, that’s cancer. Fever, pain, symptoms don’t even have show until it has been around a while. Television and movies have always made it this whirlwind of a disease. Lives get uprooted because of it, drama ensues, there are ribbons and walks. The short reality of it for me has been far less exciting — but I wish it had all those distractions.

The type of cancer my dad has escapes me, some sort of skin cancer but not on the skin and instead inside him. I have no idea how it works, but I do know this one is no stealthy assassin. Instead, I can see the lump, slightly smaller than a golf ball, his skin now curves at an unexpected point on the side of his neck. It rests there, mocking and hurting my father. At any point I expect it to sprout an arm complete with a tiny hand flipping the bird.

There is a lot more to face than the reality that my dad has a life-threatening illness. In fact, I would say that has been the easiest part. People get sick unexpectedly all the time. A diagnosis is easy to swallow because you don’t have to chew on it for long. It’s like taking a bite of steak only to find there is a wad of tough fat in there. You gnaw and mash at it hoping to break it up, but give up after a bit and awkwardly pretend to wipe your mouth just to spit the fat out. After the diagnosis that is what the rest has felt like, that mastication.

There is no way I can imagine what my father is going through or anyone else in my family for that matter. All I know is what it feels like for me. While I am not an enthusiastic sharer of my emotions I do have urges to talk about this one. Each time I start to speak though I feel my own lump start to grow in my throat and I go mute. Crying isn’t my concern. Over the years I learned to choke them back with a cough and a few rapid blinks. Even if I did bawl I wouldn’t mind — at least I don’t think I would.

Something about speaking publicly and candidly about someone’s cancer, especially your dad’s cancer, is difficult. I’ve seen other people go through cancer, for better and not, but never spoke much about it. Now with my own family we can speak about it with each other, but uttering a word outside the tribe feels taboo — at least for me it does. No one really wants to hear about cancer. It makes everyone within earshot feel horrible, but no one will say it. Instead an awkward line of questioning and attempts to console follow. While I appreciate how immediately my friends show concern and want to help I can’t help but desire a distraction or change of topic.

I’m guessing a lot of people stuck with something shitty going on in their lives feel this way. I doubt an HIV positive person would want to spend significant amounts of time speaking about their condition. You just want to go about things like they always were. Sure, there is a big ass elephant in the room, but there is nothing that can be done about the elephant. It isn’t like the tension between friends over a monetary dispute that can be talked through and resolved.

Just now, at 27, I am realizing how human my father is. As kids he would pitch overhand despite having no rotator cuff, he fell out of a tree with a chainsaw and walked on a broken ankle for 3 weeks, our dog nearly gave him 9 fingers over a dispute about whether a rib bone was food or not. He is a tough guy, a superhero, but I only now really understand he isn’t invincible. No matter the injury I had never seen him as beat up as after the first chemo treatment. Despite his exhaustion, inability to eat and a nasty cocktail in his blood, he still wouldn’t stay seated. He spoke through clenched teeth but he helped put up our screened-in porch — a yearly ritual some tumor wasn’t going to stop him from.

Fortunately, he is still really fucking tough. Unfortunately, his hair wasn’t so resilient. My dad is now bald, something that does not run in our family. On the bright side, the doctors say his beard will stay, which is great for me since I’ve never seen my father’s chin nude. After all the changes I’ve seen him go through in such a short period of time, him losing his beard would have been one of the more arduous.

It was an ongoing threat that one day he would shave the beard. No one wanted to call that bluff. Hell, the beard is older than I am. I’m pretty sure his relationship with that hair predates my mother. The only two pictures I can recall seeing of him clean-shaven are from his grade school years and young adulthood as he leaned against his dark blue 1965 Mustang. Before I knew the beard would stay I said I would glue it to his face. I’m not sure if I was joking or not.

In a way that beard reminded me that when I look at my father that bump on the side of his throat is the least important thing about him. When I talk about him I should tell people about the time he made out with Stevie Nicks in the Playboy mansion, or get frustrated because I forgot how to fold a napkin into a bra like he has shown me a hundred times, and not that for a few months he has a stupid lump on his neck.