Living, Learning and Growing

Maybe there is a reason why I'm drawn to books...

2022 July 19

I don’t think there is any doubt that I’m drawn to books, the question is why. In recent years I’ve largely checked out of social media, the posts being for the most part, some sort of “short-form” communication. Take text messages for example; how many times in your own experience, has a text message failed to communicate what you intended, or worse yet, was received and meant to mean, by the recipient, something totally other than what you had intended? If you’re like me, and perhaps I’m just a “bad” short-form writer, that has happened more times than I can count.

It’s been “busy” around here lately, and I’d say there are basically two causes of that busyness; repeated pig escapes, and the storm damage that we experienced on June 13th, and which I first wrote about in the Newsletter of June 17th. So it’s been over a month, and over the heat of those two things any “down time” I had evaporated. For the most part I could work the storm damage recovery on my schedule, but not the pig escapes. What evaporated was the time I usually take for myself, which if I’m to make a life of what we are doing, is absolutely necessary.

This brings to mind Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. As it turns out, this book is also a good example of why I need time to myself, and why I learn best from books. I have the summary of the book around here somewhere, on a plastic card, maybe 2-1/2 by 3-1/2 inches or so, front and back, that I use as a bookmark. The 7 Habits book is in part boiled down to a little four quadrant chart.

That’s it. An entire book is summarized in that chart, and in the actual 7 Habits on the back of the card. Of course a lot of the nuance is lost in the summarizing, but that’s why I still have the book! Let’s apply that chart to the pig escapes issue. Finding and re-patriating the pigs is in Quadrant I, it’s Important and Urgent, we have a lot invested in those pigs; but, preventing those escapes is in Quadrant II, the preparation and planning to prevent escapes takes time, is itself an investment, and while not Urgent, is Important in keeping us out of Quadrant I. Fortunately for me, Joel Salatin and Chris Slattery have already documented much if not all of what is necessary to prevent pig escapes, and shared it in their book, Polyface Designs. Our planning and work, and dollar investment, has to do with the application of what Salatin and Slattery have shared. Kenton and I started that yesterday.

Why the delay? Well, I suppose it boils down to the need to invest yet more time and money, but as recent history has shown it would have been worth it. Having said that, there is a lot of value in the experience of having struggled with the pigs. How I learn best is by reading, and experiencing what I’ve read.

Let’s step back to the example of 7 Habits for a moment, and, let’s apply that to why you haven’t seen my second post on the 2nd Amendment. I know and have written a lot of the detail of what I want to say on the subject of the 2nd Amendment, and why I would literally be willing to die to protect it, but what I’m spending so much time on is boiling that down to its fundamental elements, as Covey did with the four quadrants and 7 Habits. Here is a more complete summary of 7 Habits; you see here the four quadrants in context.

This includes the 7 Habits of course. I’ve done this before while at Caterpillar. I had to read several books for my job, and summarize those books on an A3 sheet of paper, one side, that’s about an 11”x17”. Here is one I did on The Toyota Way, perhaps not my best, but you get the picture.

There’s an old saying, “to teach is to learn twice.” Quite true. And in effect, that “book report” on The Toyota Way is how I teach myself; it takes a lot of time, and laser-like intensity to do it well, but in the end I know the subject matter.

So what I lose by not investing in Quadrant II, is the time and money that avoidance strategy costs me in Quadrant I. It’s time to get back to what I know.