Getting From Grind To Great

Confession - when it comes to work, I am a grinder.

I love to work, feel a measure of significance from work, feel like work is never done.

This is a fascinating stretch of work for me, with seemingly endless variety and challenge and at least three distinct writing projects, at various stages of completion and with various levels of pressure being applied! I'm getting to work almost entirely in my 5% Intentional Difference and that is incredibly invigorating.

But it's always been hard for me to shut it down, even at night. If there's something to be done, I struggle to be fully present with those I love.

This is - quite simply - a very real character flaw. Nothing good can come from it, ultimately.

I am well aware of this, and well aware that this is and probably will continue to be an ongoing battle.

So I have to be thankful for small skirmishes won. Usually won by my wife.

I was working at home today, no appointments, just me and blank pages to fill, content to create, emails to respond to, deadlines to hit. It could have been 3 degrees or 103 degrees outside, I wouldn't have known the difference.

(Again, not good).

In Charlotte today, it was beautiful - cool and sunny. The last day before a cold snap that will probably spare us the snow getting ready to be dumped on points northward on the East Coast, but will still make it cold in these parts.

Miranda texts and calls me from elsewhere in the house.

(Again, not good that I have to be called from within my own house).

"Let's go outside, in the backyard."

This was an affront to me because, after all, the fate of nations depends on my work because I am so dang important, you know?

So we went outside, to the yard and the swing and the slide.

And took this picture with #4 and #5:

Here's the deal. The writing I did today, the correspondence I engaged in, the phone calls I returned, the emails I pounded out...next week this time I'll be hard pressed to remember any of it.

But we'll be looking at this picture for years.

The grind has meaning and purpose.

But it is other things that are great.

Are you missing something great because of your grind, whatever that grind is for you?