Last week we covered talking and writing, and listening and writing, at the same time. In the en route portion of the Academy, you have to do that. It also works so much better when you can, and the ability to listen and write is a tool you need at every level of your ATC journey.

This week we're building on that with what I call the rate of speech tool. 

This tool is about rhythm. 

It's about pace. 

And most of all, it's about not rushing.

I want to start with something that isn't really a quote. 

It comes from the classrooms, mainly the non-radar classrooms of the en route Academy. 

It goes like this:

If you're not at the Academy yet, or you're headed down a different path, you might think, "Tom, this doesn't really matter to me." Actually, it does.

The one thing you don't want when you get busy, and I've said this multiple times on my podcast and in this blog, is to start talking so fast that you get a lot of "say again." 

You can take something that's busy and make it undoable just by talking too fast and collecting say agains.

There are parts of the country where people talk faster than they do here in the South. 

In the Northeast, the controllers talk faster, the pilots talk faster, and the pilots listen faster. If you work there, you have to listen faster too.

I got to see that firsthand. 

I was on a familiarization flight in the cockpit, flying from DFW to LaGuardia. You could tell when we crossed the Mississippi River. The crew tightened their seatbelts a little more and got ready, because the airspace gets much more condensed as you approach New York, DC, Boston, Philly, and Pittsburgh. That's a lot of major airports, a lot of traffic, and fairly small sectors. 

Everyone is talking all the time, and they're talking fast.

Coming the other way, once you cross back over the Mississippi heading west, things calm down. Not necessarily in traffic volume, but in communication. 

It's slower communication-wise.

But it doesn't matter whether you're in the Northeast, the deep South, or the West. It's all about rhythm.

Let's take it back to the Academy. I've told you before that your goal, no matter which option you're in, is to put the evaluator to sleep.

You can't do that if you're talking a hundred miles an hour. If you are, the evaluator will be on edge. They'll be catching everything you do wrong, and believe me, if you're talking that fast, you're going to do something wrong. 

You can't keep up, so you have to get into a rhythm.

It's amazing how much you can get done when you do. 

This podcast runs a little over 30 minutes, which is about the same amount of time as a radar run in the en route radar labs, 40 to 45 minutes. You'd be amazed how much time you actually have. 

The FAA gives you, at least in the en route portion, more chances to sit back and watch your classmates work.

One thing I used to tell my classes was to pay attention to how much time those students have. It's easy to see when you're watching someone else. When you're the one doing it, you don't feel like you have the time. 

You have to keep telling yourself, I have time to get things done.

The common mistake at the Academy is thinking, I'm getting behind. I have to talk faster. I have to do everything faster. 

That's when you start making errors. 

That's when you start missing traffic. 

Talking faster doesn't get you caught up or ahead.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen this. There's usually at least one student in every class who talks really fast. We get into the non-radar lab, and invariably, just about every grade sheet that student gets says the same thing: slow down. Slow down.

This is where last week's tool pays off. 

You can't write as fast as you talk. 

I'm not sure I know anyone who can. 

So writing makes you slow down, and that's a good thing.

Another thing you've heard me say on my podcast, and in this blog, is that accuracy is so much more important than speed. 

Speed you will develop. 

It's accuracy that's going to help you pass: saying things correctly, writing things correctly, and doing your priorities in the order you need to do them.

Fast is not the same as efficient. 

It feels like it is, but it's not. 

The goal isn't to get the words out as quickly as possible. 

The goal is to say the phraseology right every time. 

The goal is to read the clearance you pre-planned correctly.

I can't tell you how many students I've seen pre-plan the right restriction, and then give the wrong mileage or the wrong direction while giving the clearance. 

That isn't just a phraseology error. 

It ends up being a separation error, because the pilot is going to fly exactly what you tell him to fly. 

All the preparation you did gets undone if you rush saying it.

This is also where your pen comes in. 

I've seen students give the wrong call sign. 

Point to the strip. 

Point to the call sign. 

You can do that in the tower, and you can definitely do it in radar, where you're looking at the data block. 

One thing we told students in the radar lab was to be looking at, and talking to, that aircraft's data block. 

If you're going through the TRACON portion of the Academy, talk to the data blocks. 

You're not talking to someone in the next room. 

You're not even really talking to a pilot yet. 

You're talking to the data block. 

Look at it and make sure you get the call sign right. 

That's so important, and it's why the rate of speech tool matters so much.

Think about a single transmission. 

"American 2424, turn right heading 310, vector for spacing." 

That takes maybe two or three seconds. 

You can rush it and save maybe a second.

But if you say it fast enough that the pilot, who didn't know you were about to talk to him, doesn't catch it, he says, "Say again." 

Now you have to do it again. 

It takes twice as long. 

Realistically, it ends up taking about three times as long once you count the lost time and the extra frequency congestion.

You saved a second and spent three. 

That's why you want a good rate of speech.

It's important at the Academy. 

It's vitally important at your first facility. 

And once you've been a CPC for a while, you'll develop your own rate of speech, and it will be different depending on the sector you're working. 

I guarantee it. 

I've seen it, and I did it myself. 

Some sectors were very slow. 

Others you barely had time to catch a breath.

But it's still not about speed. 

Speed comes. 

I know it may not feel like it at times, but it does. 

It's about efficiency and clear transmissions. 

It's about standard phraseology and having a cadence. 

You can be working some of the busiest traffic around, and when you get into a cadence, everybody on that frequency gets into it too. They know when you're going to talk. 

If you're working a radar facility and taking handoffs, you know when other people are going to check on, so you leave a little more space between transmissions. You want those aircraft to check on, so you can do what you need to do.

You're not an air traffic monitor. 

You're an air traffic controller, and that means you control more than the airplanes. 

Controlling the frequency is one of the hardest things for a new controller to learn. 

Even with nine or ten years of experience, it was still difficult for me to get into that habit when I went from tower to a busy center. 

I'm in control of when I take the handoff. 

I'm in control of when people check on. 

I'm in control of how fast everything is going. 

I'll go as fast as I can go and still be accurate and still be clear. 

I won't go faster than that, because when I do, things start to break down.

If you find yourself getting a couple of say agains, that's your signal. It's telling you to slow down and watch your speech rate.

I know we're moving away from strips, and in some ways that's better, especially in en route. 

But one thing strips did was force you to write, even as a radar controller. 

Ask a bunch of controllers and they'll tell you they never wrote on a strip. 

They're lying. 

If something happens to an airplane, you're going to listen to the tape and write on that strip anyway. 

Why not do it up front? It doesn't take much time at all.

Writing on the strip keeps your speech rate matched to your writing rate. 

At the Academy you'll still have strips, except probably in the TRACON portion, and having to write on them keeps you from going too fast. In en route non-radar, you've pre-planned everything, so you're just circling it in black as you say it. 

It's a small thing, but it keeps you in check.

Here's something else to realize. 

When you're working traffic, you're not just talking. 

You're listening, thinking, and writing, even if you're only taking notes. 

You're updating each aircraft against every other aircraft. 

You're sequencing. 

Who am I turning in next? 

Who after that? 

Do I need to vector these guys who just entered my sector so I can turn them back in later? 

Your brain is going a mile a minute, and your rate of speech has to fit into that whole process.

Your brain is going to want to go faster than your mouth can. 

What I've found, working traffic and watching others work it, is that when your brain gets ahead and leaves your mouth by itself, your mouth says all sorts of things your brain never intended.

So keep your brain where your mouth is. 

Keep your mouth where your hand is. 

When your brain, your mouth, and your hand are all working at the same speed, great things can happen. 

You can accomplish some major things as a controller.

There's a flip side to all of this, and it's very prevalent at the Academy and in the real world. 

New pilots have the same issues new controllers do: they aren't confident on the radio. 

So they talk very softly, like this, because they don't trust that what they're about to say is right.

It doesn't matter whether it's going to be right or not. 

A pilot asked me the other night whether I could help her student pilot get used to talking on the radio. I told her it's the same problem new controllers have. 

You're not used to it, and the only way to get used to it is to do it. 

I don't want you whispering in case you say something wrong. 

I want you talking at a level where I can hear you and understand you.

You also don't want your workload to make you talk faster. 

That comes with experience, and I'm sorry, there's no shortcut. 

And remember to breathe. 

When you get busy, you have to breathe just as much as when you weren't busy, but students tend to stop. 

You still need pauses. 

When you feel rushed, you tend to shorten them. 

Sometimes there's nothing that needs to be said, and recognizing that is an important skill too.

Here's how it usually goes. 

The traffic increases and you feel behind. 

You want to talk faster. 

The pilot misses something and says, "Say again." 

You repeat yourself, which adds to the workload, so you talk even faster. 

It becomes a spiral that will take you straight down if you let it.

That's why this tool is so important. 

You have to break that cycle. 

You have to be able to tell yourself, the traffic may speed up, but I'm not going to. 

I'm going to keep the same rate of speech I have.

Level 1: pre-Academy. 

You have to know yourself, and you have to understand what's coming. 

The Academy is going to try to get you to talk fast, and if you know that going in, you can keep your cadence and your rhythm.

One caution: listening to live ATC isn't a great way to work on this. 

Most of those recordings are voice-activated, so there's very little space between transmissions. It gives you the illusion that controllers are talking nonstop, clearance, readback, clearance, readback, with no break. 

That isn't always true.

Instead, post the quote where you'll see it. 

It was posted in every non-radar classroom when I was at the Academy. 

Put it on your wall. 

Make it your phone's lock screen. 

Do whatever it takes to drill it in: fast is slow, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. 

Practice explaining something to a friend slowly, and tell them, "This is what I'm working on." 

Exaggerate it.

Level 2: the Academy. 

Now it becomes super important. 

Your speech rate becomes part of your ability to perform. 

As the scenarios get more complex, you have to resist the urge to speed up just because you feel busy. Do it right the first time, communicate it correctly the first time, and then move on to the next thing.

I like to compare it to soccer. I grew up playing and coaching it, and I coached into my late 40s and early 50s. I used to tell my students that I can still outrun a 16-year-old boy if he has the ball and I don't. (If I don't catch him in 10 to 20 yards, it's over, but usually I can.) That's because it's easier to run fast without the ball.

Watch a soccer game, and the player with the ball is usually moving the slowest. 

That's you doing a task. 

You slow down so you can do it correctly. 

Then you pass the ball and sprint to get it back. 

That's you between tasks. 

Level 3: your first facility. 

Oh my, you're going to feel behind. 

If you're at a tower, you'll be talking to airplanes pretty much right away, usually clearance delivery or ground control. 

At a center, it may take a while, though you might work radar now and then on the D-side. 

Real traffic adds variables, and it's live. 

It's people's lives. 

You'll deal with different pilots, different accents, and different workloads.

You'll learn, by watching other controllers, that your rate of speech shifts a little to fit each situation. 

But it still has to be slow enough to be understood the first time.

At every facility I've ever worked, you can hear it in some controllers. 

When they get busy, their pitch changes. 

They talk faster and louder. 

Then there are the controllers you could never read. 

They sounded the same no matter what. 

Those are the controllers who inspire confidence in pilots, and pilots who are confident in you will do what you ask them to do.

Level 4: professional CPC and trainer. 

By now you can adjust your rate of speech deliberately, and you know why you're doing it. 

Sometimes you'll talk faster. 

Sometimes louder. 

And when you're dealing with a pilot who doesn't understand English well, or is new, or is frightened, you may need to slow down and stay calm to help them through. You don't rush someone who doesn't know what they're doing. 

You're a certified professional controller, and how you say things is part of controlling the situation.

Practice the way you plan to perform. 

You can't practice with classmates at a hundred miles an hour and then expect to put your instructor to sleep in the lab the next day. 

You perform the way you practice.

Your speech rate needs to match the rate at which you can accurately perform the task. 

If that's slower than the person next to you, so be it. 

Fast isn't faster if you have to say it twice.

I'll leave you with a quote from John Wooden, one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time:

"Be quick, but don't hurry."

Think about that one for a minute. 

And remember where we started: fast is slow, slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

We're continuing our trek through John Maxwell's book Success Is a Choice and looking at how it applies to us as air traffic controllers, and to those of you working to become one. 

The title of this series is Success as an Air Traffic Controller Is a Choice. 

Each week we look at an area where we get to make a choice, and where being intentional can make us more successful than we would have been otherwise.

This week we start with becoming more teachable.

I can't think of a better thing for controllers to remember. 

It doesn't matter if you're in my position, with 35 years in and close to 37, or if it's your first or second day at the Academy. 

We always have to be teachable, and we can always be more teachable.

Maxwell makes a point about talent that every one of us needs to hear. 

Talented people often think they know it all, and that makes it hard for them to keep expanding their talent.

When you think you know it all, you stop right there. 

Whatever level you're at is where you stay.

Teachability is all about attitude. 

It's the desire to listen, to learn, and to apply. It's the hunger to discover and grow. 

As Maxwell puts it, "Intelligent people with teachable attitudes can become extremely successful."

He also says that we are the lid on our abilities, in every aspect of our lives. 

If we stop learning and stop growing, that lid stays right where it is, and we can't go past it. 

If we stay teachable, we can keep raising the lid. 

We can expand not just our talent but everything else in our lives.

Maxwell gives five teachability truths. 

Let's go through them one at a time.

Teachable people are fully engaged in life. 

They get excited about things, and there's a real relationship between passion and potential.

If you're at the Academy, I can tell you from experience, both as a student and as an instructor, that the more passion you have for what you're learning and what you're going through, the better you will be. 

Passion drives your talent and energizes it.

Teachable people are always open to new ideas, and they'll learn from anyone who has something to offer.

That's not always your instructors, whether you're at the Academy, a CTI school, or an advanced ATC program. Sometimes the best things you learn come from your classmates, the people going through it with you. 

That's why the Academy lets you watch your classmates run problems. 

It's encouraged, and when I was there it was even required a couple of times in radar. 

I thought that was a great idea.

You get to see how a fellow student deals with the tasks that come up. We always tried to get our students to notice one thing in particular: how much time they actually have to get those tasks done. 

When you're in the D-side seat, things come at you so much faster than they actually are. When you're sitting behind someone else, you can see it, because you're not the one trying to get everything accomplished.

You'll learn a lot from your instructors, especially in three months of en route or a little over two months of tower. 

And if you practice together, you'll learn from your classmates too.

This one is going to be great for the Academy. 

Too many people view learning as an event instead of a process.

I've seen it over and over, and I still see it in the Discord chat and other places students gather. 

Students arrive at the Academy expecting learning to be a one-time thing. 

They expect to go over the lesson in class and then be able to apply it. 

It doesn't usually work that way.

Learning at the Academy happens day after day after day. 

That's why you have to practice, and practice, and practice everything you go over in that classroom. 

It's the only way to take it from the classroom into real air traffic situations. 

It isn't theoretical, and you can't just think about it. 

You have to actually practice it to make it practical and make it real.

Oh, do I know that one. 

I was one of them. 

I was probably fairly tough to teach, especially when I thought I knew everything I needed to know.

This is going to sound strange, but don't let your talent get in the way of your success. 

Don't rely on the talent you walked into the Academy with. 

Don't rely on the talent you had after a month. 

Stay teachable and make that talent grow every day. 

Try to learn something new every day, and you'll be amazed at the transformation you go through over your time in Oklahoma City.

This is the big one. 

Pride creates an arrogance of success: an inflated sense of self-worth, along with a distorted view of reality.

Here's how it plays out. 

You run a couple of good problems and you start to feel like you've got this. 

I'll tell you that you haven't gotten it yet. 

Maybe you're in the 11s and 12s in the radar lab and running near-perfect problems. 

You're so close to your goal. 

Don't go through two and a half months of intensity and then let up in the last two or three days.

One thing I've seen destroy students is thinking they knew everything they needed to know. 

It was heartbreaking to watch.

That attitude leads to a loss of desire to learn and an unwillingness to change. 

The moment you become unteachable, no matter what skill level you've reached as a controller, that skill level becomes your limit. 

You will never get better than the point where you stopped listening.

Maxwell points out several problems with pride, and they apply directly to our world.

Pride closes our minds to new ideas. 

Teachability is a willingness to open our minds. 

Pride is the exact opposite.

Pride closes our minds to feedback. 

You're going to get a lot of feedback at the Academy, whether you're in en route, tower, or TRACON. 

Sometimes it won't be as constructive as you'd like. 

When I was there, we had some amazing instructors, and we had a few I wouldn't have wanted to sit with my struggling students, because they weren't able to put their feedback in a constructive way. 

But many instructors were great with students, especially the ones who were struggling. 

Some actively wanted to work with those students.

Stay open to the feedback you get. 

Stay open to what your classmates tell you when you practice together. 

Be hard on each other, but accept that you're doing it for each other, not to each other.

I still do this one myself. 

A situation will come up at work, as it has several times over the last few weeks. I'll work it. Everybody lands, everybody takes off, everybody gets where they want to go. 

But it doesn't feel great, and it probably doesn't look great, and I know I could have done it better. So I'll ask the controller next to me, "What were you thinking when I did that?" 

They tell me, I try to accept it, and I understand that maybe the next time something similar comes up, I can work it better.

Pride keeps us from making needed changes. 

That one's huge. 

We have to be able to take feedback, admit our mistakes, and then change so we don't repeat them. 

When I trained people in the tower and at the center, I didn't care if they made mistakes. 

What I cared about was whether they made the same mistake day after day. 

We would talk about it at the end of each day, and some trainees either wouldn't accept the feedback or wouldn't make the change.

1. Recognize and admit that you have pride. 

We all do. 

We all have a lot of self-pride, and it's hard for us to accept feedback. 

But in the safety environment we work in, and the one you want to join, you have to accept that you don't know everything. You have to be able to accept help from others. 

Pride will keep you from ever seeking help and ever getting better.

I try to thank the people around me for helping. I did it at the center, and I did it constantly at the Academy.

3. Learn to laugh at yourself. 

I'm sorry you don't get to meet the instructor version of me, because one of my main tenets, as an instructor and as a soccer coach, was that you have to be able to laugh. 

It's even better if you can aim some of the jokes at yourself. 

This job is stressful and there's a lot riding on it. 

We have to laugh and tell jokes. 

When I was at the center, my goal was always to say something that busted up the entire specialty. I came close a few times, and I learned that people remembered what I said. I thought I was the only one who did.

Here's how you put it into practice.

John Wooden, the famous basketball coach, said it best:

"Everything we know, we learn from someone else."

I dare each of you to find something you did not learn from someone else. 

When you do, email me at tomhanes@sidebysideatc.com and say, "Tom, you were wrong. This is what I learned, and I learned it from inside me. No book, no audiobook, no podcast." 

I'll be waiting.

Thank you for reading. If you want help along the way, head to sidebysideatc.com. 

You can email me, text me, or set up a free call. 

Text is easier than calling, since a call may catch me at work, where I can't respond. 

If you're at the Academy, hang in there. 

If you're struggling, contact me. 

If you're not struggling, contact me. 

My goal is to make sure you don't feel alone as you go through this.

Don't try to navigate your ATC journey alone. Let's do it side by side.

Last week I talked about phraseology and the details. This week we're staying in the foundational phase of the tools you need as a controller, and I'm calling this one the multitasking tool.

If you've read me before, you know I'm not a huge fan of what most people call multitasking. I don't think anyone can really do multiple things at the same time. Plenty of people disagree with me, and that's fine. 

But there are some things you can and should be able to do together as a controller, and building that ability is what this post is about.

I want to start with a quote from John Maxwell:

"You don't become a great multitasker in one day. You build one small discipline at a time. Eventually, those disciplines become habits. And those habits free your mind to think ahead."

That fits air traffic control almost perfectly. If you've been following along, you know I'm a big believer in finishing one thing and then moving on to the next. These small disciplines are what let your mind do exactly that.

One of the biggest things Academy students don't realize is coming is strip marking.

They don't think about it before they get to Oklahoma City. They don't think about it in Basics, because they don't have to do it there. And strip marking is becoming less of an issue as the FAA moves further from paper strips. 

But there are still places where you have to use them, and the en route portion of the Academy is one of them.

Strips are still used in both radar and non-radar, but especially in non-radar. As long as non-radar is part of the Academy, this is something you need to be aware of.(It looks like the Non-Radar portion of the Academy will be going away early in 2027.)

You can't really practice strip marking before you arrive. 

What you can do is start training your mind to be ready for it. You'll need to mark strips while you're talking; and while you're listening, which is the harder of the two.

Nobody walks into this career able to do that from day one. 

For some people it comes more easily, and for others it's harder. 

But everybody starts at zero. 

If you're struggling with it right now, that's okay. We all struggled with it at some point.

Have you ever watched an experienced controller work and wondered how they're doing all of that at once?

Let me tell you about the time I did. 

I had been in the FAA for nine years and I was an experienced controller. I arrived at Fort Worth Center along with a handful of others who showed up the same day from different facilities. Three of us were experienced controllers, and the rest had come straight from the Academy. For several weeks we were upstairs learning maps and what the facility expected of us.

Near the end of that stretch, a controller transferred in from Oakland Center. He was on a different training track than the rest of us. The three of us who were already certified had all come from towers, but he came from a center, so he was fast-tracked. He went into our simulator, the DYSIM, and started running problems for the specialty he'd be working. It was one of the busiest areas in the building, if not the busiest.

We were allowed to go down and watch him work the most difficult sector in the building on a simulator problem. I stood behind him, watched, and realized I might be in the wrong building. If they were going to require me to do what he was doing, I wasn't sure it would work.

I'm telling you that story because wherever you are in your ATC journey, you may find yourself in the same spot.

The Academy likes to take your class in to watch a class that's ahead of you for a short while, so you can see where you're headed. Then a newer class comes in and watches you. It's a continuous process. You do it in non-radar, and you'll do it again in radar.

It's the same feeling every time. 

You watch what the class ahead of you is doing, and you start to wonder if you'll ever get there.

Part of what this blog is about, and part of what these tools are about, is getting you from where you are to where you want to be and need to be. 

Multitasking is one of those tools.

Let's talk about what multitasking isn't.

You don't magically learn to do two things at once. I say "appear to," because you're not actually doing multiple things at the same time. 

You're doing things quickly enough, surely enough, and correctly enough that it looks like you're doing multiple things at once to someone watching. The observer simply can't think that fast.

Think about driving. 

Your foot is on the gas and you're looking out the windshield. You're also scanning your speed, your fuel, and your route. If your car has a GPS display, you're checking when your next turn is coming. You're also noting who's beside you, who's ahead, and who's behind. (We'll talk about your scan in another episode.) 

You aren't doing all of those things simultaneously. Your scan is moving fast enough that you can drive and check things in the same moment.

Typing from something that's written down works the same way. You're reading first and typing second, but quickly enough that it looks simultaneous. 

Playing the piano, or any instrument, is no different. You're reading the notes and playing the notes.

When you first learn any of these skills, it takes a lot of concentration and you have to go slowly. Over time you get the mechanics down, and you get to go faster. Your brain learns that it can move ahead.

When you first learn to drive, whoever is teaching you probably doesn't have the radio on. As you get better and the mechanics become automatic, you can turn the radio on. 

Your brain is now free to listen to music without being any less involved in the driving.

That's what we're building.

The Academy will teach you, and then require you, to talk and write when you're giving a clearance, and to listen and write when someone is giving a clearance to you. That's particularly true in non-radar.

You'll start at the point where that's all you can do. 

I've seen students who couldn't listen and write at the same time. I've seen students who couldn't talk and write, even when the writing was just circling the clearance as they gave it. 

It sounds simple, but when you're sitting in that chair and giving the clearance, it isn't simple. 

Not unless you've practiced.

The more you practice, the more your brain gets used to it. 

If you can get to the point where you can talk and write and listen and write at the same time, you'll be so much further along than the people who can't. 

It's all about these little bitty things that you keep adding up, and adding up, and adding up.

You've heard me talk about the four levels, so let's keep using them.

Level 1: pre-Academy (or whatever ATC school you're headed to). 

You've been building individual tools: learning, listening, phraseology, the details, the alphabet, the numbers, your maps. But you haven't really built multitasking yet.

There are simple ways to start. 

Take notes at a lecture. 

Take notes from an audiobook. 

Take notes from a podcast. 

The key is that you can't hit pause. 

At the Academy, you can't stop the clock and finish writing before you move on. 

It's a lot like a lecture. 

When I was in college, we had a joke about one of my history professors: if you dropped your pen, you missed a thousand years of history. She talked that fast. (I'm just glad I didn't have her for Spanish. She taught that too.)

Pre-Academy, you can start training your mind to listen and write and to talk and write at the same time. That matters most if you're headed to en route, but it applies to tower as well. 

There's going to be writing involved: call signs, strip marking for clearances, and probably some strip marking for ground control, like writing runways on strips. 

If you can do those things while you're talking and listening, you're ahead of the game. 

And that's where we want to stay.

I can tell you from experience, from being there with students, that being able to write and talk, or listen and talk, "at the same time" will keep you from feeling overwhelmed. 

If you struggle with it, you're struggling to keep up, and that's when time seems to speed up on you. 

If you can do these things together, the clock seems to slow down. 

You seem to have more time to do what you need to do.

Level 2: the Academy. 

This is where you build the strip marking and clearance habit. 

Clearances and strip marking go hand in hand, and the Academy does a fairly good job of teaching them that way. 

You need to learn them that way too. 

A clearance isn't really given if the strip marking isn't there, because you need proof on the strip of what you did.

Level 3: your first facility. 

What you'll use depends on where you land. 

TRACONs don't use strips. 

I'm not even sure the TRACON I work under has a printer by the controllers' positions. I know flight data has one, but beyond that I couldn't tell you. Even so, controllers there take notes from time to time.

In towers, it's a different story. 

Where I work, we keep a pad with all the call signs, and we take our traffic count from it. There are times when it gets busy enough that it's very difficult to keep up, and we sometimes have to go back and ask, "How many touch-and-goes did that guy do? How many did this guy do?" and fill in the gaps. If you've built the habit of writing and talking, or talking and writing, at the same time, you'll be ahead and it'll be much easier.

At your first facility there is also a lot more pressure. 

You can't stop the clock when it's real traffic. 

You just have to keep going. 

Being able to do these simple tasks well enough, often enough, and fast enough will help you in training.

Level 4: CPC. 

This is where you become the guy from Oakland Center: calm, assured, and able to step in and work the problem. Remember, I came in as a CPC just like he did, and I looked at what he was doing and thought, Oh no. Will I ever get to that point?

You can. 

You can become the person other people watch and wonder, "How could I ever do that?" 

I got there, and there's nothing special about me. You can get there too.

It doesn't happen because the job has gotten easier. 

It hasn't. 

It's actually gotten much more difficult. 

It happens because those individual tools have become habits, ways you simply do things. 

That frees your brain to anticipate problems and to solve them in interesting ways. (That may be what we talk about next week, though I haven't decided.) 

It also lets you mentor and train others, and it lets you make better decisions.

Writing and talking, and listening and writing, may not sound like a big deal. 

It really is.

Even if you end up somewhere you don't use strips much, training yourself to write and talk at the same time pays off. 

Here's why:

So how do you build this tool? 

One thing at a time.

The Academy will teach you strip marking and where to write things. When you reach your first facility, they'll teach you whatever strip marking they use. 

Learn it, and learn it, and learn it until you can't do it wrong.

This isn't memorization. 

It's practice. 

As you learn the strip marking, you free yourself to concentrate on the listening and on the clearances. 

Practice it until your brain is free to move on, but make sure you finish what you're doing before you let it go to the next thing.

If you do that, you'll stay ahead of the entire problem or scenario, whether it's tower or en route. 

You won't be wondering whether you did that, because your strips or your pad are up to date. 

You can stay ahead without worrying about what you might have missed.

You have to trust the process. 

You have to trust that the practice will make it work.

It isn't about how quickly you become good at something at the Academy. 

It's about how consistently you work at getting better, day by day. 

That's what the Academy is about, and it's what training at your first facility is about. 

It's what Level 4 should be about too. 

Even as a CPC, you should be getting better at your craft every single day.

In the five years I worked with students, watched students, and taught students at the Academy, a few of them could multitask this way on day one. Most of those had come from a CTI school. Even students from the military struggled at times, because the military doesn't require the same amount of writing while talking or listening that the FAA does.

But a lot of the successful students weren't the ones who could do it on day one. 

I tell the same thing to every student I mentor and coach: it's not about doing it on day one. 

They don't give you an evaluation on day one. 

In en route, the evaluations come on day 29, and on days 58 and 59. 

They don't expect you to do it on day one. 

They do expect you to do it on the evaluation days.

So trust the process. 

Put in intense, focused practice, one tool at a time. 

And one day you'll realize you're not struggling at work anymore. 

Whether that happens at the Academy, at your first facility, or even as a CPC, all it means is that you've built your tools to the point where you can do them almost automatically.

I'll close with a quote from Robert Collier:

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."

That's what becoming great at this profession is all about: small efforts, consistently, day in and day out.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for hanging in there with me. If you need help, or you want to schedule a free call so we can talk about where you are in your journey and how to get where you want to go, you'll find the links at sidebysideatc.com.

Remember, you don't have to navigate your ATC journey alone. Let's do it side by side.

I almost skipped this chapter.

We're continuing through Success Is a Choice — John Maxwell's framework applied to becoming an air traffic controller — and when I got to the chapter on courage, I sat with it for a while and thought, this doesn't fit us.

Courage as an air traffic controller? 

That felt like a strange concept. 

We're not running into burning buildings. 

We're sitting at a sector.

But the more I worked through it, the more I realized I had it completely backwards. 

So we're not skipping it.

Think about where you are right now.

Maybe you're at CTI school. 

Maybe Advanced ATC. 

Maybe you're at the Academy. 

Maybe you just decided to apply and you're starting the process. 

Maybe you're in the military working traffic right now.

At every one of those moments, when you made the decision to go after this career — that took courage.

I've told this story before. 

When I first decided I wanted to take the test, my wife and I were dating. I called her up specifically to tell her what I wanted to do, and I knew she was going to be against it. I just knew it. 

I knew she'd hate the stress. I knew she'd hate all of it.

So we're talking, and I say, "Hey, I've got an idea. I want to go take the test to become an air traffic controller."

She didn't even hesitate. She said, "Oh, I think you'd be great at it."

And I thought, you have got to be kidding me. You really have got to be kidding me.

But she meant it. 

And it was in that moment that I realized this was what I needed to do. 

That this was what I was going to be called to do.

Some of you have that. 

You have friends and family backing you all the way. 

And some of you are going to have to make this journey largely on your own.

If that's you, understand that's exactly one of the reasons I'm here. 

I don't want any of you feeling like you have to go through this alone — because every single one of us, at some point in this journey, is going to need help.

But make no mistake: deciding to do something this outlandish takes courage.

C.S. Lewis said,"Courage isn't simply one of the virtues — it's the form of every virtue at its testing point."

Here's what that means for us. 

It takes courage to apply. 

It takes courage to take the test. 

It takes courage to travel to Oklahoma City, a place you may have never been. 

It takes courage to walk into a room full of people you've never seen before, knowing you don't know it all.

That may sound simple. 

It isn't. 

It takes courage to commit to something bigger than what you started out as.

You can do nothing worthwhile without courage.

To discover and develop your talent, you're going to need courage. 

And once you display courage, it's going to get tested — continually. 

Here's where.

Your courage will be tested when you seek a truth you know may be painful. For us, the truth you're seeking is the dream. It's the goal. And I'll tell you right now, especially if you're headed to the Academy: there is going to be some pain in it.

It'll be tested when change is needed but inactivity is more comfortable. People resist change. That's just human nature. The moment you decide to step out of the ordinary, you're going to be challenged.

There's a line in the book worth sitting with: 

our situation doesn't make us — we make our situation. 

Our circumstances don't have to define us; we can redefine our circumstances through our actions.

And then this one: we must be willing to give up all we have in order to become all we can be.

How great is that? Read it again.

It'll be tested when learning and growing expose your weaknesses. And they will get exposed — especially at the Academy. It's easy to be brave in an area of strength. It's much harder in an area of weakness.

That's exactly why you need a support system in place before you start finding out what your weaknesses are. Family. Friends. A coach. Your classmates. Your instructors. Somebody. Because you're going to have to get past those weaknesses, and doing it alone is brutal.

It'll be tested when you take the high road while others treat you badly. This one may not come up as much at the Academy, but keep it in mind. If a situation comes up — a classmate, or an instructor — take the high road.

That said, I'll be straight with you: don't assume that everything an instructor tells you, or how they tell you, is proper. If an instructor does something you feel is genuinely improper, by all means let someone in the FAA know. There were several instructors during my time who had no business being instructors. Unfortunately.

It'll be tested when being out front makes you an easy target. When you decide to be a leader — and I want all of you to be leaders — part of the deal is that you take some flak, because you're out front.

But here's the beautiful thing about it. A leader is willing to take that, so the people behind them don't have to. Sometimes you're going to be out front and you're going to absorb the barrage. That's just what it is.

And it'll be tested every time you hit an obstacle to your progress. Adversity is always the partner of progress. Anytime we want to move forward, obstacles, difficulties, problems, and predicaments show up. We should expect nothing less — and if you're at the Academy, you already know all about that.

But we should almost welcome those things. Because what they mean is that we're progressing. We're growing. Every one of them is something we can learn from.

Inside. Not outside.

There is no one who can make the decision for you to have courage in the face of adversity. 

People can try. 

If I'm your coach, I will try. 

But it is an internal decision and it always will be.

You'll face internal decisions to follow the rules in all walks of life, and especially in ATC. 

Internal decision. 

You'll face the choice to push past adversity or let it stop you. 

Internal decision.

And let me be specific about what I mean by "the right thing," because I'm not talking about the rules, or the SOPs, or the LOAs. That's not it.

The right thing — the thing that actually takes courage — is the practice. 

The studying. 

The work outside the classroom and outside the lab that you have to do to be successful.

Doing that continually. 

Making it a habit.

I want y'all to really hear this: it takes courage to do that day in and day out. Especially when you're not seeing results yet.

And I'll say this plainly, because somebody needs to hear it: we all progress at different speeds and different rates. 

Some faster, some slower. 

If you're progressing slower than you think you should be, it takes courage to keep going anyway.

Keep practicing. 

Keep studying. 

Be courageous in those exact moments, and you will see growth. 

You will see yourself get better. 

It will happen.

But if you decide not to — it won't. 

It's pretty simple. 

Decide to stop practicing, and you stop growing, and that dream gets further and further away.

That is not what we want for you.

One thing I noticed about the classes that were most successful at the Academy — they weren't just close-knit. 

They had leaders. 

And usually not just one. They had several people who, because of who they were and the decisions they made day in and day out, got looked at as leaders by the whole class.

Every class needs that. 

Every class needs somebody who, at the right moment, stands up and says: hey, we've got this. Let's get through it.

Here's the payoff. 

Act courageously, get past adversity, and watch your horizon expand — every single time.

If you want success, you have to show courage. There's no other way to reach your potential.

And it's your potential you're chasing. 

Not somebody else in the class. 

Not somebody else at school. 

Your potential as a person and your potential as a controller. 

That's the target, and reaching it takes courage.

It may not seem like being an air traffic controller is a courageous career. But there are going to be so many times in your career when you face adversity. 

I've been there. 

And how you face it is going to say a great deal about the person you become.

I'm not the same man who decided to take that test about 37 years ago. 

I'm not the same guy who walked into the tower in Brownsville, Texas. 

Not the same guy who walked into the tower in Dallas. 

Not the same guy who walked in the door the first time at Fort Worth Center. 

And not the same guy who walked into the Academy to become an instructor.

Every day I try to grow. 

A better me. 

A better dad. 

A better husband. 

A better controller. 

A better podcaster. 

A better coach.

A better mentor.

Because if I ever stop — if I ever feel like I've attained what I needed to attain — that's when I start going backward.

So every day for me is about becoming better, stronger, more resilient. 

More perseverance. 

More courage.

I'm in the middle of that process right now. 

So are you. 

I don't care who you are, where you are, or how old you are. 

We're all in it.

That's exactly why this company is called Side by Side ATC.

Whether it's this blog, the podcast,  the coaching/mentoring program, whatever it is — we're going to do it together. 

We're going to get through the process of becoming a controller, or becoming a better controller, side by side.

And honestly, that's what I wish I could have given more students when I was in Oklahoma City. I really believe there were quite a few who would have made it if they'd had somebody there with them — more than I could be as an instructor standing at the front of the room.

So if you've got a question, email me at tom.hanes@sidebysideatc.com. 

Questions about the website? I'm an air traffic controller, not a website builder. Send them anyway — I'm happy to answer.

And wherever you are in your journey, we'll get through it. Together. Side by side.

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."- John Maxwell

This is exactly where we're headed this week, because Level Four really is about becoming a leader.

We've walked the whole road now. 

Level One was pre-Academy — building the foundation. 

Level Two was the Academy, or CTI, or the military — where all that preparation meets performance. 

Level Three was your first facility, where learning becomes reality and you start working real traffic.

This week we finish it. 

Level Four. You're a CPC.

And this is the one everybody's chasing.

Here's the trap a lot of people in those first three levels fall into: All I have to do is get certified. Then I can coast. Nice career, punch the clock, ride it out.

If you think about certification as a finish line, you are going to miss out on an awful lot.

And understand — certification itself is a process, not a moment. 

In the en route environment you'll certify on being area rated first. 

That lets you rip strips. 

Then you get your D-sides, which lets you work a position while you're still training on others. 

Then radar school, and you start certifying on your radars. 

Every specialty at every center has its own progression for which sectors you work first. Generally it's the easier sectors first — though there are specialties and there are centers that don't have any easy sectors, and you just get thrown in.

That whole progression is a process. 

Becoming a CPC is a process. 

And it should never, ever be the finish line. 

It's a goal along the way.

You've had a purpose and a plan at every one of these levels, and I've said before that they have to be fluid — they have to change as you move up. 

That doesn't stop at Level Four. If anything, that's where it matters most.

Every CPC will tell you about this day.

You're sitting on the last sector you're training on. Your supervisor's been plugged in. Your trainer's been plugged in. 

And then both of them unplug and walk away.

Now it's your sector.

Now they're all your sectors. 

You're the one responsible. 

And a lot of the time, you're the only one on that sector.

That's the moment everything changes.

You're not worried about surviving anymore. 

You survived. 

You survived the Academy. 

You survived training. 

That weight comes off your shoulders and it's an incredible feeling.

Now — that doesn't mean you'll never train again. You will.

Even if you never change facilities, I guarantee you they're going to change what sectors your specialty owns, and you'll be training again. 

When I was at Fort Worth Center we had four sectors in my specialty. I certified on all four. Then they gave us two more, so I trained on those — now I'm certified on six. Then they took those two away, and I'm back to four. Then they decided to give us two other sectors — three, really, but two were being combined into one.

So now I'm certified on six again.

That's what happens over the course of a year. 

Over the course of a career. 

And I never even changed specialties. 

Some people do change specialties and go through the whole thing again with different sectors, starting back on D-sides — it goes much faster the second or third time, but you're still doing it. 

I stayed put and still had to train on new sectors. That's just a fact of life.

If you change facilities, you are starting over. 

But you won't be starting as an Academy graduate. 

You'll be starting as a CPC transfer, and they treat you differently.

In a terminal, hopefully there's movement — though right now, unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot. 

And there's only so much a tower can do as far as giving you new sectors. So you may not train much again, and if you never change facilities, you may never train again at all.

But even without training, you still have to have goals.

Becoming a CPC doesn't make you immune to any of this. 

The drivers don't go away. 

They evolve.

Your purpose used to be get through training. 

That was the whole thing.

Now your purpose has to expand beyond yourself. 

How can I contribute? 

How can I make this operation better? 

Do I have ideas that might actually improve it? 

And how can I help the newer controllers succeed?

And here's something important: these drivers aren't just for work.

Now that you're a CPC, you can expand your horizons. 

You can have a purpose outside of work. 

Up until now your main purpose had to be succeeding in training. That was correct. But now you get to look wider.

One caution, and I've seen this go wrong. 

I have watched new trainees come into the center and immediately get hyper-involved in the union — to the point that they're not training, and it's actively costing them. 

I'm sorry, but that's not your purpose. 

Your purpose is to train and certify. 

Then you expand. 

Get certified first.

Give yourself time after certification, too. 

It doesn't have to happen the day after you certify. 

Get comfortable. But start thinking about it.

You'll notice something at the centers, and in the towers too — and the busier the tower, the more likely it is: controllers are great at side hustles. 

Side businesses. 

Side things.

And to a certain extent, you need that. You need something more than work.

I've known people — I still know people — who don't really have anything outside of work. 

They're not the happiest people at work. 

And they'll keep working for years and years past the point where the FAA forces them out, because that's what they have. That's who they feel they are.

So have a plan. 

Continuing education. 

Career goals inside the FAA. 

Facility involvement. 

Leadership opportunities — there will be plenty available. 

Look into them.

And if your plan is focused on something outside of work entirely? More power to you.

For a lot of my career, my focus was outside of work. 

My family. 

Traveling with my wife before we had a family. 

Somehow I always knew I needed something out there to point at. It's what allowed me to come in, work the traffic, do what I needed to do day in and day out, and have something else I was building.

Education, becoming a pilot, starting a business, whatever it is. 

Have a purpose. Have a plan.

You're right in the middle of it now — but now you're modeling it.

Others are watching the details of how you work. 

How you see things. 

How you process them. 

Your professionalism. 

Your communication habits. 

Your consistency, being there day in and day out. 

They see all of it.

And the newer controllers at your facility are going to reproduce what you show them.

That's a lot of responsibility. 

But that's part of this amazing career.

You're not practicing to get through training anymore. 

You're practicing to get better at the profession you chose.

And the FAA will make sure you get practice — always. 

There will always be things they want you drilling on, and most of them revolve around those unusual situations that just don't come up. Hopefully once in a career, if that. You practice them so you're ready when they do.

There's traffic management within your sector, within your specialty, within the building — and if you go that direction, outside the building. 

Those things take practice.

And if you decide to become an instructor, you really need to practice at that. 

It does not always come naturally. 

The good instructors hone their craft continually, exactly like the good controllers do. 

You refine your techniques not just as a controller, but as a teacher.

I've always said it's not one big picture — it's a lot of small pictures.

Well, once you're a CPC, those small pictures start to grow. 

You can scope out, so to speak. 

You start seeing not just your sector but the sectors around you. 

How you can help them. 

How you can ease the load in their airspace when you're able to.

You become aware of the total operation — the flow, the needs of the sectors in your specialty and in the facilities next to you. And you can do that now because you have the experience. That's why it expands.

It's no longer just about seeing five, six, seven moves ahead to get through a rush. 

It's about seeing the sectors and facilities around you and asking how you can help.

And then something else gets added to your picture: trainees.

That's a whole different picture. 

Because now you have to figure out who this person is. 

How do they learn? 

How do they process things? 

It's not about you anymore. 

It's about somebody else's career.

It's always going to be about performance. 

This is a performance profession.

You are still going to have bad days. 

Bad sessions. 

And you're going to have great ones.

I've said this before: there will be days you walk out of that control room, or out of the tower cab, absolutely certain you're the best controller in the world — because what you just did with those airplanes was amazing.

Then you'll go on break, come back half an hour later, sit down, and nothing will work. And you'll walk out of that session expecting the chief to call you into his office and fire you.

Both of those are extremes. 

Both of them will happen to you. 

Be ready.

And neither one of them is real. 

It was real traffic, I understand that. 

But you're not the world's greatest controller, and you're not about to be fired. 

The truth is you live somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

That's where all of us live.

Now, you may need a long conversation — possibly spanning several years — to convince some controllers that they are not, in fact, the world's best. 

But I guarantee you somebody somewhere is better. 

Doesn't matter who you are or where you are. 

Someone's always better. 

And someone's always worse.

So aside from the over-the-shoulder once or twice a year where your supervisor plugs in to make sure you haven't deteriorated, performance now means something different. 

It means being there. 

Shift after shift, week after week, month after month, year after year.

Being consistent. 

Being the professional that puts the P in CPC.

Every trainee's goal is to become a CPC. 

You watched experienced controllers. 

You learned from them. 

You imitated them.

Believe it or not, somebody's watching you now. 

Somebody's learning from you. 

And somebody is going to imitate you — whether you like it or not, and whether you realize it or not.

You can absolutely say, "I just want to be a CPC. I don't want to train. I just want to work traffic." 

That's fine. That's a legitimate choice.

Just understand that the new controllers coming in are watching you anyway, and they'll copy what they see.

Good or bad.

Oh, now this is where the fun starts.

You get to be an OJTI — on-the-job training instructor. 

You get to mentor new controllers, and it is a fascinating experience. 

You get to hand down the lessons you learned when you were the one sweating it out.

You'll hand down what your trainer told you. 

And unfortunately for some people, you'll also hand down how they trained you. 

How you were trained tends to become how you train.

Hopefully you had some great ones. 

I was blessed over my career — I owe it to some of the best trainers out there. 

They had to be the best in the world. 

They were dealing with me, and they got me through.

Training is not for everyone. 

Being a trainer is not for everyone. 

But if you take it on, understand that it's a huge responsibility. You can't just say "this is how you do it, now do it." 

You have to instruct. 

That's why we call you an instructor. 

That person comes in with no experience — especially an Academy graduate — and you have to pass along the experience you earned. 

To do that, you have to understand them.

And again: I wouldn't suggest this for at least a couple of years after you certify. 

Get settled. 

Become the controller you want to be. 

Then start helping other people become theirs.

So it comes down to this at Level Four: What kind of controller do you want to be remembered as?

It's never going to be how many airplanes you worked. 

It's going to be how you treated people. 

How you contributed. 

Who you helped.

I've seen it. I've had trainees go on to do amazing things. I've had trainees who didn't. 

At Level Four it becomes bigger than you. 

You get to decide not just what kind of controller you'll be, but what kind of person. 

And if you decide to become a leader in some way, shape, or form — and you don't need the union or management to do that, you can lead just by how you work — you get to decide what kind of leader you become.

That's when this job becomes even more special than it already was.

So there they are. 

The four levels. 

Level One, building the foundation. 

Level Two, where preparation meets performance. 

Level Three, where learning becomes reality with live traffic. 

Level Four, where you go from developing yourself to developing others.

And here's the biggest lesson in all of it: success in ATC is not a destination. 

At every level you have purpose, plan, phraseology, practice, picture, and performance. 

Those six drivers never disappear. 

They never go away. 

They evolve, they change, they grow as you grow — and hopefully you keep growing.

So two questions for you:

I'll leave you with Martin Luther King Jr.: "The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort, but where they stand in times of challenge and controversy."

Level Four is a level worthy of your desire to get there. 

And it carries a dichotomy: it's where the fun starts, because you're no longer training — and at the same time, it's where you take on more responsibility than you've ever had, including responsibility for other people. 

A whole new journey starts.

Everybody wants to get to Level Four. 

It's a worthy goal.

Thank you for reading this series, and thank you for continuing to come back. 

My purpose — the reason I plan, the reason I keep trying to get better and better at this — is so I can help you. That's it. That's the whole thing.

So please remember: you don't have to navigate your ATC journey alone. Find someone to help you. Find people to go through it with you.

If you need someone, let me know. Head to sidebysideatc.com and set up a call, or text me at 817-233-8199. No pressure, no clock.

We can do this together. And we can do it side by side.

Have a great week.