I recently came across an article about Nick Saban, the head football coach at the University of Alabama. I am more of an admirer rather than a fan of Alabama and Saban. I’m overall very intrigued by college football coaches. I enjoy watching what makes them successful and what is detrimental to their leadership.
The Saban piece was fascinating. Of particular interest is the coach’s eating habits. Each day he eats the same thing for breakfast and lunch: “for breakfast, he eats two Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies; for lunch, a salad of iceberg lettuce, turkey, and tomatoes.” Why? “The regular menu, he says, saves him the time of deciding what to eat each day…”
If the coach is thinking about what to eat then he is not thinking about or doing something else. In Saban’s case it is the game plan, recruiting, or some other aspect of his leadership. This is a guy who has intentionally, some may even say fanatically, ordered his day by his commitment to his priorities. You don’t ascend to the height of a highly competitive field and stay there by accident. There is a tremendous amount of intentional ordering, reverse engineering, focus, discipline, and sacrifice.
This made me think a bit about leadership, whether in the church or in another organization. Leaders can often let others dictate their environment for leading. This is not usually an attempt at undermining their leadership but a result of a blind-spot in their own leadership. One area where this comes into play is the area of alerts on our phones. Any leader with a smart phone can get alerts about almost anything and everything. Once you get an alert for an email, tweet, or whatever you are immediately distracted. You are drawn to go and see or even respond to the alert.
This actually takes more time than deciding what to eat for lunch. In my setting as a preaching pastor if I got alerts while studying, reading, or praying I would never get anything done. It isn’t simply the time you lose but the mental momentum. When studying we are thinking. Thoughts are not static. When I am reading or writing my thoughts multiply like the Duggar Family. I can’t sacrifice this type of mental momentum.
Several months ago I turned off all alerts on my phone except text messages. I keep this on mainly to hear from my wife and kids. But I am even evaluating this and going toward having them call me (novel thought). I have noticed massively increased productivity since turning off email, twitter, Instagram, ESPN, Facebook, and calendar alerts. My mental momentum has increased and my thinking, writing, reading, and overall productivity have all increased. Additionally, I have noticed that these pregnant thoughts tend to augment visionary planning. I am able to better focus for longer periods of time and hash out important long-term vision planning for our church and family. It’s been great. Nobody told me I had to have alerts and no one told me to shut them off. I am responsible for leading myself and those in my charge. Shutting them off was a good leadership decision for everyone involved.
To be perfectly honest I am still working through the “checking” of things now that I don’t have alerts pushed. I have reevaluated email and demoted her to a servant rather than a master. Twitter and Instagram are in timeout with occasional time for planned purposes. Facebook is on exile, I find it to be a time vacuum except to check on a particular update or interact on my blog or with our church page. I can still do a better job with my time while waiting for a bus, in between sets at the gym, or during down-time at home. It’s a leadership issue, all the way around.
The Saban article helps because while he is a bit of a freak, so am I. I don’t want to be for the same reasons but the differentness of Saban is strangely attractive to me.
(here is a link to a summary of the GQ article on Saban)