Book review - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I didn’t love it - I love it

I have this love hate thing with Donald Miller writing. Some of the stuff he writes…well it doesn't do it for me. But sometimes the lessons he left me were so profound that they altered the course of my life and many of you reading this will have, at some point, been victimized by my learning one of those lessons.

In 2003 Donald Miller had written a bestseller Blue Like Jazz about a disillusioned Christian kid from Houston who graduated high school and escaped to Reed College in the Pacific Northwest. It resonated deeply with me and a whole lot of other people and became a surprise bestseller. A memoir from a struggling writer whose most popular work was about his own life.? His publisher pushed him to write another one. How exactly am I to write another memoir? Not surprisingly he experienced a dramatic creative slump.

When I read his subsequent book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years it profoundly reinforced my thinking about living intentionally. How is someone to write a memoir about their life? How are you to live a life worth writing about?

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Out of frustration the book chronicles his journey across the country with a friend. The adventures they have, the challenges they face, and the unintended memories they made.

He realized life doesn’t work how we think.?

Most of us have a preconceived notion -? you live a great life and then write about what you did.?

He realized that this notion is entirely upside down. He realized that you have to inject on-purpose moments into your life and to those around you. To create moments that give you pause, to purposefully create deeply held memories. To plan into your life adventures that give you a story.?

While I had acted on this bias previously this book cemented for me the role that I needed to play in the life of the teams I ran, the companies I worked within, and with anyone I could have influence. I have worked hard to plan adventures, challenges, events…moments.? I don’t remember the financial results my team had in Q3 2011 but I remember every moment of the team building trip where we spent a day whitewater rafting in Idaho Springs. That we rafted a nearly class 5 rapid at the end of the season was accidental. We had some scary moments but no one was injured…well, all that badly. The events paintballing in the Sonoran desert, the comedy clubs, the skeet shooting events, the escape rooms, the car racing, the sailing adventures were not really about fun, they were memories we lived together.

My guidelines over the years for my teams:

• Events that are physically engaging and difficult, but hopefully not dangerous. Scary without injury.
• Make it locally relevant. Let’s engage the culture of whatever city we are in…music and country culture in Nashville, cowboy stuff in Texas, fishing in Idaho, adventures in the desert, whatever.
• Remote if possible. Put away your phone and laptop and be in the moment. Something that requires focus and concentration.

My goal then and now to embed into your life an enduring memory. One that you get to keep forever. To graft people into a team by creating for them a common story, a difficulty overcome, an intimidating moment lived together.

Method360 every campfire, every beach volleyball game, every live country music event is our attempt to inject shared values and purpose. To create life for a team and a great memory for each of our people.

“A good storyteller doesn’t just tell a better story, though. He invites other people into the story with him, giving them a better story too.”?

I have to thank this book for cementing in my mind the importance of storytelling and adventure in professional life. I hope the people I have touched have benefited and paid it forward. It never was about the event, it was always about creating a shared experience that would endure.

Living on purpose is not just a tagline for me. It is a statement of purpose. I will strive to live up to it.