I Saw the Pan and Made a Flash

I am tired.

Before you get any farther, this is not meant to be a self-congratulatory Tacti-Cool post. Just me trying to share some knowledge learned the hard way so you can learn it the easy way.

Less than two weeks ago I completed my first ever combat deployment, and my third deployment in four years.

More notably, it was my second deployment as the Senior Medical Officer of the largest combat-ready medical department the Navy has afloat. Six operating rooms. A 600-bed floating hospital at full expansion. The only two floating hospitals that are bigger are not warships. They're hospital ships, unarmed by treaty. Boxer is actually able to protect itself and others.

In my 798 days at the command, 394 of those days were spent out on the ocean. Almost 50% of over two years spent away from my wife, our dogs, family, and my friends.

But, when your ship is afloat there is no CVS, Walgreens, or local pharmacist, there is just ship's medical. Or, my department, that I was responsible for, but that is a story for another time.

Days on the ocean start with a departmental or command leadership sync, and end when the ship and the crew decide it ends. There are no weekends. No local pub. Just my stateroom, my rack, a laptop, and whatever hour was left after the crew and ship were cared for.

Probably the biggest positive of deploying on a ship: your commute disappears. The Medical Department was only a ladderwell, or a flight of stairs, away from my stateroom. My usual 45-minute commute became 45 seconds.

Some will say that is the only positive. Well, I disagree, and I'd estimate those are just people who have problems making friends. This holds for almost any unit you deploy with: you end up being friends with close to half of it, which could be in the tens or thousands of people (thousands on Boxer).

Those friendships help. But they do little to ease the guilt you feel when you think about those at home. You calculate how much of their life you've been absent from. You feel the pang of wanting to be there every time you hear how hard it is to maintain everything without you. Remember, the biggest jump in workload is when two becomes one. Every spouse's workload doubles when their service member deploys. If you want to thank anyone for their service, it should be the spouses.

When you have unlimited time, you drift. You spend three weeks trying to conceive and design the perfect logo. You plan and outline the course you never record. I know, because I've done that too.

This deployment removed that option. I was lucky to get ninety minutes of free time on a good night. In those ninety minutes, I either started it, made progress on it, or finished it. Or I lost the shot for good.

You learn what actually gets things moving. You learn motivation is weather and process is climate. You learn to take the one smallest action that crosses from planning to doing, tonight, because tomorrow the ship might have other plans for you.

I decided I wanted to start my military-to-civilian medical practice transition and start working more in longevity, performance medicine, and coaching. I decided to start writing about my opinions on medicine, and the compromising imbalance between responsibility and authority.

So I built a free assessment, an $11 toolkit, a six-week protocol, and a newsletter. Ninety minutes at a time. From a 4 year old gaming chair. Bungee cords wrapped around its base, clipped into the desk's locked drawers. The desk itself welded to the deck and bulkhead. In a stateroom that was about 10 x 6.

Over a week ago I took my last flight off Boxer.

No more ladderwell. No more rack. Full days, actual weekends, more free time than I have had in two and a half years…

So I am taking some time for me. Having some fun. Didn't write for a bit. Posted a video many of you saw. And still have a few more signature food spots to eat at before I finish reintegrating during this month of leave.

But no more deployment means I must resist Drift myself, and the thoughts I've typed up on focus and procrastination are about to get a regular world stress test. I had a built-in process created by limitations and constraints: the deployment was my discipline. Now that structure is gone.

Here is the distinction that matters. Whether the process holds without the deployment constraint is a real test, and I do not know the answer yet. Whether building it was worth it is not up for debate. It was.

I saw the pan and made a flash. Many never even see the pan.

A process built for wartime is not fake just because it doesn't translate into peacetime activity. It just means peacetime needs its own process, this one built on purpose instead of built for me by the constraints of a deployment.

I am not telling you to find a warship.

What I am telling you is that the thing you are waiting for, the open week, the clear desk, the surge of motivation, is not coming. It never was. There is no open week, or clear desk (surges of motivation, maybe, pending the strength of your coffee). But here is the real deal… You do not need them!

The constraint you are cursing might be the most honest planning partner you will ever get.

So get to work. Unless you're also tired. Then go take a nap. Then get going on the thing you only think about.