What good is learning?

I am currently listening to a Game Theory course from Open Yale during my commutes and enjoying it immensly. I had heard of Game Theory, but had no idea what it actually was until this course. At a little over half-way through 20+ hours of lecture, I can at least tell you what Game Theory generally means.

In addition to the general idea of Game Theory, I can also tell you right now what a Nash Equilibrium is, how to determine evolutionary stability, and the method for calculating the best mixed strategy response. Pretty cool, huh?

The trouble is, if you ask me about those things in 6 months, will I even have a clue what you are talking about? Maybe. More importantly, will I have made use of any of those concepts in my life? Probably not.

So why am I learning them now? For Game Theory to be relevant to life, I would need to do it a lot...far more than 20 hours of lecture, even if I was doing the homework. The same could be said of most of my college courses and most books I have read. The long-term impact of most seems to be small, at least counted in what facts I know and what skills I posess.

So why bother? Why learn at all? I can think of a few reasons, but the topic seems worthy of more thought and discussion than a simple blog post. Here is where I start:

• I like learning. New information is fun for me.
• Learning exercises my brain. When I run regularly, walking up stairs is easier. When I learn regularly, the thinking that I get paid for (i.e. work) is easier.
• Some learning is better than none. By flooding myself with 20 hours of Game Theory, I may retain 15 minutes. Getting those 15 minutes may be worth the 20 hours.
• Learning is a saturation process. Those 15 minutes cannot be obtained in less than 20 hours (or some such ratio). Learning requires a lot of input for a little to stick around.

What do you think? Why do you learn?

The Asymmetry of Discipline

Self-discipline turns out to be a funny thing. Discipline and lack thereof work differently, that is, their existence in one area of life has different consequences on the rest of life. They have different spheres of influence; they are asymmetrical.

For example, when I am self-disciplined in my eating habits (not this past weekend), I must also be self-disciplined in exercise and bedtimes. Effective discipline in one makes the others slightly easier (discipline becomes easier with practice...in general), but it does not remove the need for effort and discipline. Discipline in one area does not lead automatically to discipline in others.

On the flip side, lack of discipline in one area has a large area of influence. When I am not disciplined in my eating, it becomes easy, almost a given, that I will watch more TV, exercise less, and be more of a slacker. Lack of discipline in one area leads nearly always to lack of discipline in others.

This is asymmetrical and frustrating. It also implies that effort spent eliminating the lack of discipline may have a larger overall payoff than efforts spent increasing specific discipline. Elimination of gluttony may be more helpful overall than strict dieting.

Discipline is on my mind these days, so there is likely more to come later. In the meantime, does this match your experience? How do you deal with discipline (and lack thereof)?

Can hard work be a natural talent?

One of the ideas I found in Wooden on Leadership is common among coaches. It could be paraphrased something like this.

You can't do anything about it if they are taller than you, but it's your fault if they work harder.

The implication is that genetics handed me my height (or body type or inherent speed or whatever), but I can choose how hard I work, my determination, my character. Does this really make sense, though?

We all know the value of hard work. Put in more effort, and (generally) we get more rewards. We all want more rewards, and we would all (for the most part) prefer the longer-term rewards that result from hard work than the short-term rewards of sloth. Why is there such a disparity in how hard we actually work, then?

Some people appear to have a greater work ethic than others. They seem to more easily put off pleasure now for rewards later, and seem hard to distract from the task at hand. Others (I find myself in this latter category most of the time) hardly think past the next meal, let alone the resultant heart attack from a fast-food diet 30 years from now. Given the choice between hard work or blowing it off until tomorrow, such folks (we) take procrastination.

Is there perhaps a natural limit to our work ethic, then? Resulting from nature or nurture, am I limited in how hard I can work, just as I am limited in how fast I can run and how tall I will grow? Can such limits be extended to other elements of character? Self-discipline, kindness, generosity, contentment?

I do not have an answer to this question. More importantly, perhaps, I do not know what I would do with an answer. Would this give me an excuse to slack off, knowing that I have reached my natural limit? Or inspire me to work harder to reach that limit and perhaps prove it a little bit wrong? Do you think our character has limits? What would that imply for you?

Oscillation

As we all (in the US) recover from Thanksgiving, I am thinking about oscillation. The idea of moving between two points, back and forth, in some sort of rhythm. They talk about this in The Power of Full Engagement, increasing energy reserves and strength through cycles of stress and recovery. Today we are recovering from yesterday's stress of gluttony and hopefully not repeating it too much.

The central point in the book is that our optimum energy building comes from properly balancing stress and recovery, neither overtraining (too much stress) nor undertraining (too much recovery). It is a challenging notion, since our lives run linearly so often. At work, we work hard all day long, with barely time to eat lunch. Or perhaps we hardly work at all, doing the minimum to get by. I have done both, and they both leave me exhausted at the end of the day.

Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, we need stress, effort, and exertion to test our muscles and force more from ourselves than we thought possible. Then we need recovery to rebuild and regroup for the next effort. Too much of either one and we burn out or atrophy. The right balance and the sky is the limit.

I tend to undertrain in most areas. How about you? How are you oscillating?

Mountain Meal

Another reprint of an old Toastmasters speech from the Storytelling manual. Happy Thanksgiving!

I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving in many places.  There was a Denny’s in San Diego.  And that time that power went out in Seattle and my family ate by candlelight at the only open restaurant within 60 miles.  I’ve eaten Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws, my parents, with grandparents, aunts, and uncles.  I’ve even celebrated that most American of holidays in a tiny apartment in Germany, complete with turkey and apple pie.

But one of the most memorable Thanksgivings happened in 2002, on top of a mountain.  I had just moved away from Austin to Atlanta, and my good friend Dan and I planned a reunion backpacking trip.  We decided to meet generally half-way in Arkansas, the Ozarks.  In addition to the two of us, we also invited Mike and Jodi, who are now married, and Erin, whom I later married.  We didn’t know it at the time, but romance was in the air that trip.

Our meeting place was at the foot of White Rock Mountain, near Fort Smith, Arkansas.  Erin and I arrived first and shivered in the dark until the other three showed up.  The night was bitterly cold, the wind was blowing, and it wasn’t long before we turned in.  It felt late, but was probably only about 7:30.  Night comes early and hard in the mountains in late November.

While the others rolled into their tents, I looked about for a bare patch of ground.  Because you see there’s a slight complication when backpacking with 5 people…most tents are made for two.  So with Dan and Mike in one and Jodi and Erin in the other, it left me out in the cold…literally.  Fortunately, this was a time in my life when I was going a little bit crazy when it came to backpacking.  I had decided to be an ultralighter.  Ultralight backpacking is based on the idea that you should give up as much as possible…good food, comfort, warmth, whatever in order to carry as little as possible.  So to save my knees, I was carrying 3 days worth of gear and food in a 25 pound bag smaller than most school backpacks.  This included a bivy sack, essentially a waterproof liner for your sleeping bag that has all the advantages of a tent, except for the room, comfort, and aesthetics.

But that’s enough whining.  I made it through the night, and felt like all the more of a man for it.  Thanksgiving morning dawned bright and clear, and we packed up (me in about 3 minutes, everyone else in 30) and set off down the trail.  So while millions of Americans were waking early to start the turkey, or sleeping in and dreaming of the Madden multi-legged turkey, or staking out deer blinds in the forests, we were hiking in the Ozarks, majestic views of mountain valleys clearly seen between leaf-free trees.

That’s right, I did say deer blinds.  We were hiking at the height of deer season, so not only did we feel a little out of place wearing big backpacks, we also got to wear obnoxious orange vests.  Better that than getting mistaken for a 12-point buck, at least.

The 6 mile hike to the top of White Rock Mountain took most of the day, and we enjoyed every bit of it, always looking forward to the feast we had planned at the end of the day.  For you see, we weren’t skipping the traditional Thanksgiving meal, we were just planning to eat it on top of the mountain.

And eat we did.  Our main course was ham, presliced and grilled on the backpacking stove.  The meal was eaten in courses, since we only had one stove, so instant mashed potatoes were next.  Canned candied yams provided some more starch and a little sweet, and can of green beans was a nice substitute for the traditional green-bean casserole.  By this time, we were all stuffed, as is appropriate for Thanksgiving, and gazing contentedly at the rising moon.  But all this was simply the prelude for my backcountry masterpiece dessert…cheesecake.

Thanks to modern technology, you can get just about anything in a can or a box.  There’s a mix for everything from jambalaya to brownies to pancakes to chicken alfredo.  But the one that I enjoy most is the combination of my two favorite things in the world…Jello and Cheesecake.  Jello instant cheesecake doesn’t really taste like cheesecake, but it’s not pudding or Jello or anything else, either.  But it is perfect for a backpacking dessert.  After all, it includes everything you need, and the only preparation is really to mix the powder with some water and let it chill.  Chilling was no problem on this 40 degree night, and mixing…how hard could that be?

Well, we didn’t have an electric mixer, or even just electricity, so we had to improvise on the directions immediately.  The instructions said to mix this stuff for like 6 hours on high…tough to do.  So as a compromise, we decided on the shaking method.  We had 1-liter, wide-mouth Nalgene bottles that would hold the water and powder perfectly.  Capped off, they could be shaken as long as needed and then poured out into the tasty graham-cracker crust.  So we combined everything and set to shaking.  And shaking.  And shaking and shaking and shaking.  We each got a turn.  Finally, it looked like it was beginning to mix well and it was time to pour.  Here’s where our naivete came into sharp focus.

The directions were to beat and pour and chill.  They assumed you’d be in your air conditioned kitchen…70, 75 degrees for the mixing and pouring, the fridge for the chilling.  We, on the other hand, managed to do our mixing in the fridge, so to speak.  So the Nalgene bottle, which had a plenty wide mouth when it came to pouring water, became a trap for our cheesecake.  Have you ever seen the traps they set for monkeys, where they put a piece of fruit in a box with a hole that’s wide enough to reach into, but when the monkey makes a fist, the hole’s too small?  The monkey won’t drop the fruit to retrieve his hand, and is easily captured.  This was kind of like that, as we struggled for the next hour to extract the maximum cheesecake-stuff from a now-tiny bottle using at best a spoon that reached halfway in.

Needless to say, my dessert plan didn’t work quite the way I intended.  But that night, we crawled into bed, them in tents and me in my bivy sack, stuffed and satisfied, content that we had shared a Thanksgiving meal that few others had…traditional home cooking on top of a mountain.

The remainder of the trip passed quickly.  We had beautiful scenery, we ate filling freeze-dried meals, and didn’t get shot by any of the hunters we saw.  But at the end, we ran into a site that made me stop and think.  There in the hillside, high above the road where our car was parked, was a dug-out cabin.  A natural cave had been further hollowed out and the entrance blocked in with stones to form a mountain home that was long abandoned.  And it occurred to me that the man who lived there would have thought nothing of ham and yams and mashed potatoes in the mountains.  He may have looked at us quizzically with the cheesecake, but with most of the rest, I realized that our recreation was his daily life.  I guess the world comes full-circle sometimes, and I wonder what do we do now, that 100 years from now will be for our great grand-children, their “mountain meal?”

Transformational Leadership

The Matrix of Leadership cannot be found, it must be earned.

Thus saith the Ancient Primes to Sam, hapless nerd/hero of the Transformers movie franchise. Sam, of course, earned the Matrix of Leadership, or else Optimus Prime would remain dead and The Fallen would have destroyed the sun. So we can say thank-you to Sam.

How did he earn the Matrix, though? It was not through any particular bravery (he gets called a little girl by his girlfriend) or desire to save the world (he turned down Optimus' offer for that earlier). Two things earned Sam the Matrix of Leadership: loyalty and hope.

He was loyal to the Autobots, and specifically his friend Optimus to the end, risking his life and the life of his family to save him. He then maintained hope that Optimus could be saved, even when all others had given up and the method of salvation itself had dissolved into dust.

Leaders should listen to this. Among the 638 other attributes that the leadership literature says leaders need, here are two that even a second-rate summer blockbuster can make clear. Be loyal to your friends and your people. Never give up hope. If a leader betrays, or a leader loses, hope, there is nothing left for the followers. Earn the Matrix of Leadership, and you may not save the sun, but you will be a better leader.

What inspires you?

Recently my friend Phil posted about some inspiring posters. Phil is a talented graphic designer, and it makes sense that cool posters inspire him (they're cool, but don't do the same thing for me).  What they did make me think about is what does inspire me. It turned out to be a hard question that I'm still working on.

Most of what I read and watch educates and entertains me. Basically, I feed my mind (or numb it...I make no claim to any educational value associated with Heroes). What is missing, though, is what feeds my soul. What inspries me to reach beyond myself to something bigger, grander, better?

It's a humbling question. Like I said, I'm still working on it. What about you? What inspires you?

On tantrums

My toddlers throw tantrums. Lots of them, it seems. Some are justified, like when their sister steals their juice or when their brother uses their head as a bongo drum. Most of the time, though, they are completely uncalled for. At least from my perspective.

When a child asks for a muffin and gets a different piece than what he was pointing at, I have little sympathy for the kicking and screaming. When they ask for music and it takes me 10 seconds longer to turn it on than they wanted, there is even less pity. It is clear to me that they are missing the big picture, and getting themselves worked up over nothing.

So the question, as always, is how am I any different? I do less screaming, but I think mostly because it hurts my ears. Adults tend toward pouting, in general. When my promotion happens a year later than I think it should, do I turn bitter about my job (just pretend this is purely hypothetical)? If my car breaks down (due to lack of proactive maintenance on my part), do I shake my fist at fate?

My tantrums are generally not as loud as my kids, but I might be more prone to missing the big picture than I would like to think. Kids can be hard on the ego sometimes.

Rules of Thumb

I just finished Alan Webber's Rules of Thumb. I liked it for a couple reasons. The first is that each chapter covers one of 52 rules of thumb. Each one is short and self-contained. That makes it easy to read in bits and spurts while watching kids...a big plus for a book these days.

The second is how he validates carrying 3x5 cards in your pocket. The rules that the book covers are simply bits of business wisdom that Webber has picked up over the years and recorded on 3x5 cards that he carries with him everywhere. My father does the same thing, and I never really understood it...until I started to as well.

The 3x5 card is not really the point. The point is that our brains are pretty bad at actually remembering things. Which means when you have an idea, or read a powerful quote, or hear a rule of thumb, you better write it down...pronto. Use 3x5 cards, a Moleskine journal, an iPhone app, whatever. Just write it down.

Who knows, maybe someday you can write a book.

How is your energy?

I just recently finished reading The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. The basic thesis: energy management is the key to high performance. This post has little to add to that, because I think they pretty much nailed it. The whole book is worth reading, but for now, here is a brief synopsis of the four "energies".

1. Physical. Is your body forming the right foundation for the rest of your life? You do need your body to do everything (including desk work), so keeping it working right is the first step. Sleep, eat, exercise.
2. Emotional. Are you positive or negative? One leads to greater energy, the other does not. Choose wisely.
3. Mental. How focused are you? Can you bring your mind to bear on what is required, be it detail or big picture? 
4. Spiritual. Are you connected to purpose and values? Without spiritual connections, all other energy flails without meaning.

There is no magic in their division, but I am finding it helpful to understand how I am using energy and how to develop more. Energy is key, how is yours?

What's your agenda?

Most meetings should have an agenda. Why are you there, what are you trying to accomplish, how long it will take. That is just good business.

Sometimes, though, an agenda is the last thing you need. The purpose of the meeting is just to be together, and what happens is what happens. Lunch with a friend, or breakfast with your spouse are often like that. The point is the person, not the meeting.

We run into trouble when we mix the two. No agendas at work lead to wasted time, since the people are not that important, and nothing gets accomplished. Having an agenda when you are romancing your wife is also a bad idea, it turns out (what, you don't want to look over our budget during dinner?).

So think about it before the meeting. If it needs an agenda, get one or cancel the meeting. If it does not, drop your preconceived notions. Just do not get confused.

5 reasons to make everyone in your company reapply for their job

1. Your maximum productivity targets are being exceeded.
   
2. Morale is uncomfortably high.
3. You lack the organizational will to cut staff strategically.
4. Unintended consequences are your cup of tea (they're like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're going to get).
5. The reorganization was moving too quickly and you'd prefer to drag it out.
   

Safety first...after you show you care.

At Shell, we are big on safety. We have big programs and we talk about it a lot and we are serious about it. We have to be. Our job is to extract, transport, process, and sell some of the most flammable, explosive, and toxic chemicals on earth. Safety matters, big time.

Yet sometimes all the talk falls flat. Sometimes it feels rote, like our leaders talk about safety because they are supposed to, not because they really care whether everyone goes home in the same condition they came to work in. Why is that? How can something so important end up sounding insincere?

I think it is because we all get cynical. All the talk about safety can quickly become a matter of statistics, lost time, and bad press. If that is all my leadership seems to care about, then I am not going to believe they really care about my personal safety...only their own stats. It is only when I believe they care about me as a person will I believe that they care about my health as more than a means of production. Only then will I buy into the safety programs and whatnot.

This is a key lesson for all leadership, it seems. If you want people to care about what you care about, care about them first. When they believe that you have their best interests in mind, or at the very least are aware of their interests, they are willing to listen and perhaps get on board with your leadership. If they think you are not interested in them, it is unlikely they will be interested in you.

Why?

Of all the question words, I like "why" the best. Why?

Who asks about people.
What asks about facts.
How asks about methods.
Where asks about locations.
When asks about times.
Why asks about purpose.

Knowing why leads to the others. Tell me why your company exists and it is easy to figure out what you sell to whom. It doesn't work the other way around.

Who, what, where, when, and how all have objective answers (whether you know them or not). Why is subjective, pointing to underlying motives.

Why has power. Without a reason, without a purpose, the who is aimless, the what is meaningless, the how is mechanical, the where and when are arbitrary.

Why is multi-dimensional. As any 4-year-old knows, there is no limit to the number of times you can ask why. There is always a reason behind the reason.

Why makes us human. The search for purpose separates us from animals who care only about the what, the who, the where, the when, and the how (relating to food and sex, primarily...not that we don't care about those, too...we just add the why).

That's why I like why.

Emotional Control

The New York Times recently published an article about yelling at your kids that I discovered through a couple blogs that I follow (Nathan's and Digital Dads). It opens up a nice debate about various forms of discipline, but that is not exactly what it got me thinking about.

I started thinking about why we discipline. There are lots of good reasons, and lots of bad ones. One of the reasons in between is to "control" our children. I think it is good that parents have accountability for what their kids do in public. I do not think it is good if parents expect their kids to be perfectly responsive robots.

In the end, though, we cannot control our children. Like it or not, they are independent (and often willful) individuals. We can intimidate, encourage, coerce, bribe, threaten, punish, and cajole, but never control. In fact, the only thing we can control is...us.

So that brings me back to the question of discipline methods. I am averse (not immune) to yelling not because it is ineffective, but because it demonstrates a loss of emotional control. Spanking is arguably legitimate discipline...if used in an emotionally controlled environment. Uncontrolled emotional spanking is little different than plain physical abuse.

I think that the key to effective discipline is not the method, but the source. It is ok to feel emotions. It is not ok to let the emotions control me. If I am controlling my emotions, discipline will work. If my kids are controlling my emotions, and my emotions are controlling me, discipline fails.

This is my thinking based on 2 years of fatherhood with 3 kids. What's your experience?

Magical Mystery Tour (aka Marriage Key #2)

While I'm in the mode of giving advice I'm not qualified to give, I thought I'd share another key to a happy marriage. (Editor's note: if you are looking for a legitimate marriage blog, check out Simple Marriage.)

I was thinking about the romance of new love. How a couple can talk for hours on the phone or over dinner, endlessly fascinated by each other. What is it that drives that happy couple? I think the key is mystery.

We all love the unknown in some way. We are fascinated by it, romanticize it, dream about it. The known is mundane. Comfortable, perhaps, but generally dull. We know what has happened, what is happening, what is going to happen. There is no mystery in daily life.

Yet that is exactly what a marriage needs to stay fresh. There must be a sense that there is something about our spouse we do not yet know...some dream, some habit, some past experience, some fear. With that sense of mystery, we are compelled to talk, explore, learn, and become one.

The challenge of this is that after a few years, it becomes easy to assume we know everything already. There is nothing new, and no reason to talk for hours. No reason to pursue, no reason to romanticize or dream. When we think that, it does not demonstrate knowledge, it reveals ignorance. Allow me an analogy.

To me, English Literature seems pretty straightforward. Authors wrote books that we read and then talk about plot and character and stuff like that. In fact, I have read Shakespeare and Dickens and Poe and even enjoyed it. I would say that there is actually very little to learn there. Does this show that I know all there is to know about English Lit?

Absolutely not. An English Lit professor would put me to shame with her explanation of the depth of the subject and quickly demonstrate my ignorance. Plus, she would likely then confess that there is more she does not know than what she does. Her knowledge humbles her to realize the depth of her field, which can never be seen by an outsider.

The same is true of our spouses. The more we know, the more we should be humbled about what we do not know. No human being can be completely known in a lifetime. And if you are reading this, I know you have known your spouse well short of that.

You are married to a mystery. Explore it fully, and never forget that there is more to discover around the next bend.

Frustrating kids

I was sobered the other day by my children. They were frustrating me, annoying me, getting on my nerves. Whatever I wanted to happen, didn't, and whatever I didn't want to happen, did. Messes, tantrums, whining, ARGH!

I thought I was even-keeled. I thought I could go with the flow. I thought I was calm, relaxed, laid-back, and mellow. Then I had kids.

Is it their fault? When I am frustrated, does it point to some rebellious, disobedient spirit in them? Maybe. As I thought about it, though, probably not most of the time.

Most of the time, they are being kids. There are three of them between 17 and 29 months old. That is not a recipe for calm...ever. So when I am frustrated, if it is not their fault, who does that leave?

Me.

My frustration says far more about my need for growth and maturity than it does about theirs. How am I being selfish? How am I finding my worth in their behavior? How am I valuing quiet compliance over their unique hearts?

It amazes me what they can teach without the ability to form coherent sentances most of the time. My kids frustrate me sometimes; maybe I can learn to be a better man through it.

John Piper rocks my world

Noel Piper, John Piper's wife, has been posting their daughter's adoption story over the last couple weeks. One of the posts that stood out to me was a reproduction of John's letter voicing his agreement with the adoption. It highlights two challenges for me.

1. A model of Biblical submission and love. Noel states several times that after many hours of discussion, the final decision would be John's - submission. In his letter, John states that Noel's heart's desire is the most important factor in his decision - love. He agrees to adoption not purely out of his own reasoning, but primarily to love and sacrifice for his wife. When was the last time I made a decision like that?
   
2. Consistency of commitment and character. John makes it clear that after honoring his wife, adoption is a way to live a radical commitment to love, racial reconciliation, male/female role modeling, pro-life, and every area of his life's ministry. He is (and they are) willing to put their beliefs on the line visibly, publically, and irrevocably. Have I ever done that?

If I didn't respect John Piper before, I certainly do now. He is far from perfect, I know, but he has established an impressive platform to speak from.

Don't trust the nice

I recently had a revelation about the reorganization and downsizing at work. There are two broad categories of people now working...those that will continue to work, and those that will be laid off. The revelation was that for most of the people in both groups, today is about the same.

They come to work, they do what they are asked to do, they eat lunch, they gossip and worry and try to predict the future. Those that will no longer be working do not (for the most part) have "Short-Timer" on their badge or a day-to-day lease on their office. We are all just doing our jobs as best we can.

Yet behind the scenes, there is more going on. The managers and decision makers have opinions and thoughts. Whether they can articulate it or not, they already know if they really want to keep you (and me) or not. At the same time, they may not know what they think until the question is asked, and even if they do, it is unlikely that they will share it with us.

The conclusion? You cannot trust the nice. Nice is what everyone will be until they hire or fire you. Taking confidence from someone's outward demeanor is completely unfounded. Rarely is anyone truly evil, but rarely will they be open and honest with themselves or with you from the beginning.

So what to do? First, stop being mediocre. The excellent ones get genuine praise, not ambivalent niceties. Second, base your thoughts, emotions, and actions on your reality, not others'. This goes for positive and negative stuff from others. In the end you get to live with you, I get to live with me, and others live with themselves. No one gets to trade places.

Agree or Disagree or Both or Neither?

Scott Young recently posted about advice he disagrees with, including some of his own. It is a fun post because

1. I agree with him
2. I disagree with him

The cool thing about the web is that there are folks out there I agree with and those that I disagree with. The same is probably true for you. Here is the surprise in the days of black-and-white partisanship...sometimes they are the same person.

It is fantastic to read something that both affirms and challenges me at the same time. The list isn't long. Go read it and see if you can find yourself nodding in agreement and writing him off as a fool at the same time. I did.

The Key to a Happy Marriage

The title is a bit ambitious and very misleading. If you think that a blog post will give you The Key to a happy marriage, then you are

a) reading the wrong blog and
b) fooling yourself.

There is a key that I am thinking about today, though. Self-awareness. Simply the ability to know what I am feeling and thinking plus why I am feeling and thinking that way. If I do not know myself, why would my wife have a chance?

As an example, imagine I am mad at my wife. If I know that the reason is that she said something that touched a core insecurity around finances, I can tell her that and we can sort it out. If all I know is that I'm mad and she's a jerk, there is not much to work with.

So be aware of yourself. Check your thoughts and feelings, figure out what they are all about, and share them with your spouse. You'll both be glad you did.

Jail Time

It is perhaps an odd fantasy, but sometimes I wish I were in jail. I wish I were locked away from the world not because it needs protection from me, but because I want to escape from it.

In my fantasy, jail is a place where I have all the time I want to read, think, write, sleep, work-out...all the things that I want to do but that are crowded out by petty things like work and cleaning the kitchen.

Jail, of course, comes with a cost, and that cost is far too high a price for a couple more books. It makes me think, though; if I want that extra time to do those other things, why do I not make it happen? Why do I let the world put so many demands on me that I would feel more free in jail than out?

The truth is, jail would put the responsibility in someone else's hands. Without it, my time is my own responsibility. I can play games, watch TV, read, or play with my kids. The walls of the jail must be built by my own discipline. By shutting out what I do not want, I have the freedom to enjoy what I do. By allowing in what I do not want, I trap myself. I alone bear the blame for my choices.

Discipline is hard. Discipline is freedom.

Learning from people

I have posted before about the benefits of encountering things outside our normal experience (try something new, selective reasoning, who needs conflict). This morning I was thinking about people like that.

We all are inclined toward hanging out with people like us. Others who think like us, look like us, act like us, believe like us. As a result, there is always a huge swath of humanity out there, even in our own neighborhoods and cities, that we never spend time with. They are still around, though, on TV or at the grocery store, so our minds are forced to put some sort of characterization on them. One of the defining elements of mankind is that such characterizations (stereotypes) are rarely complimentary.

Unbelievers are fools. Believers are kooks. Gays are freaks. The poor are lazy. Blacks are criminals. Whites are racist. Frenchmen are cowards. Communists are evil. Conservatives are Nazis. Liberals are communists.

The list goes on, and on, and on.

Yet many of us have met at least one person from a group that is not ours. Someone who dresses differently and talks differently and believes differently. Nearly always, we are surprised at some level about how...normal that person is. It turns out that very few people are actually fools, kooks, freaks, or criminals. Most everyone is actually pretty normal.

So I want to encourage us all (myself especially) to do a few things.

1. Meet someone not like us. Have lunch, talk, listen. Intentionally expose ourselves to others.
2. Use that person to change our perception of the group. It is tempting, after meeting someone who challenges our stereotypes, to assume that they are the exception. That is possible, but it is not likely. More likely, our stereotype is wrong, and we need to allow that to change.
3. Remember that each individual does not represent the group. After changing our perception of the group based on the new person, keep in mind that the next new person we meet will change it some more. Keep group perceptions fluid (we will never eliminate them completely).
   

Book learning is one of my favorite kinds, but people learning is way more powerful, important, and hard.. Try it and let me know what you learn.

People vs. Titles

In the midst of the giant reorganization at work, I have been thinking about the difference between people and titles. Specifically, the fact that in large organizations, titles are expected to do work. That is, I (David) am not asked to do something, I (Process Engineer) am asked to do something.

Who cares? I do. I am expected to do things because I hold the title of "Process Engineer", not because I want to do them, or am even able to do them. As a result, we have a bloated system of competency tracking and development that defines what the person holding the title should be able to actually do. After all, it is the person who does the actual work, not their title.

Unfortunately, this puts everyone in a bind. A large organization needs defined roles with titles to prevent chaos, but rarely does a job description fit an individual's strengths and desires perfectly. So we are forced to fit square pegs in round holes, or at best elliptical pegs in round holes.

The take-home message? Beware titles. Remember that when you ask for work, an individual will do it, not a title. When you are doing work, remember that others are usually just looking at your title, not you as an individual (unless they're reading this blog). Overall, keep in mind that you work with people, not titles

My kids are better than yours (aka - Your kids are better than mine)

Parenting can be brutal. With young kids (which is what I have experience with), the emotional and physical drain is greater than I would have ever imagined. Egos seem particularly vulnerable. When I see other kids, it is easy to see how much better behaved they are, how much more put-together their parents are, how much cooler gear they have, how much more fun they are all having. I am humbled by how easy life is for them and how I must be incompetent to be having such a hard day/week/month.

When I think this way, though, I have to consciously remind myself of reality. Any little snapshot of anyone's life generally looks prettier than the whole of the reality. Other parents are probably looking at my kids and thinking similar thoughts because they do not, and cannot, see my whole picture any more than I can see theirs.

So I want to encourage myself and other parents out there. My kids are not really better than yours, any more than yours are better than mine. My kids are mine. I love them and do the best I can to parent them and we are going to be OK. Stop stressing about other families and love your kids. That's all we can do.

Crushing Blows

Sometimes we are crushed. Our spouse, our boss, our kid, our friend says something that kicks us in the gut, knocks the wind out of our sails and puts us down for the count. With or without the metaphors, it sucks.

I experienced one of those blows recently at work. Hopes and aspirations that had been building for days were crushed in a four minute telephone conversation. It took me a few hours, but I recovered by remembering a couple things.

1. It wasn't personal. Nothing was said that was insulting or degrading, just disappointing. Sometimes it is personal, but usually when we are crushed, it has more to do with our perception and less to do with the other person really having it out for us. Moving the conversation away from the personal helps soften the blow.
2. It was helpful. The guy on the other end of the phone line had perspective I did not have. His apparent crushing of my dream (albeit one that had only formed recently) was simply a preemption of later disappointment that would follow significantly more work. 

Not all of our disappointments can be salved by these two things, but for me, a surprising number are. Maybe they can be helpful for you as well.

Normal Expectations

One of many books I am in the middle of is Wooden on Leadership, written by the great UCLA coach John Wooden and published when he was 95 years old. It is an impressive, common sense guide to leadership based on his career as a basketball coach. I recommend it highly.

The thought that struck me reading it recently, though, is the stark difference between his basketball teams and any team that I have ever worked on. His teams were strict, not out of misplaced authoritarianism, but out of a single-minded drive and passion for excellence. He talks about the "Normal Expectations" for his team, including being a gentleman, on time, a team player, industrious, emotionally controlled, and unselfish.

How is that different from teams at work? Those characteristics would never be mentioned. In an individualistic society where independence  is valued above all else, people would rebel against being told that they were expected to be "industrious". We are all professionals here, right? Don't tell me what to do or how to act.

Yet excellence on the basketball court or in the meeting room require the same basics of human respect, interaction, and hard work. Very few leaders require such things of their teams, putting faith in the "professionalism" of individuals and caring only about the final work product.

Wooden is one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time because he cared not about the score, but about the details of character and behavior. The score took care of itself. Should we not be following his example?

Followership

There are lots of books about leadership out there written by leaders. Those are good, but I would like to see some stuff written for followers. After all, we are all followers, so should we not want to be better at it?

No? Why not? Because we should all aspire to leadership, not improved followership? Those things are not exclusive, though. I know of no leader who is not following someone and/or something. In fact, we can go through life without ever leading anything, but we would be hard-pressed to avoid following.

Here is a start to what I would like to see in a book on followership.

1. How to pick a leader. If I must follow, I might as well follow someone/thing worth following.
2. How to support the leader. If the leader is leading me where I want to go, I want to do everything in my power to make him successful.
3. How to lead and follow simultaneously. In any organization with more than 2 people, there is a very good chance I am leading someone at the same time I am following someone else. How do I live in the middle?
4. How to influence the leader. I suppose this is similar to leadership stuff about "leading upward" and 360 degree leadership. It is hard to take someone seriously when they write about me "leading" my vice-president. Influencing, though, makes sense.

Would you buy this book? What else should be in there?

The power of simplicity

Jonathan Fields recently posted his eleven rules for "moguls in training." It is a short list of leadership lessons based on extensive reading that he has done. I found it interesting for two reasons.

The first is that it is a pretty good list. It does a good job distilling leadership experience and theory into tag lines that are good for posters and daily reminders. They are powerful in their simplicity.

The second is how useless the list is in the absence of all the background reading. If you take that list and try to lead only on what is there, you will probably fail. If you have the background (from reading and/or experience) to understand where the lessons come from, then a short list is helpful.

It is a key thing to remember...there is power in simplicity, but only with an understanding of what lies behind it. E = mc² is one of the simplest and most powerful equations in physics. If that was all, though, anyone could be a nuclear physicist and atomic fusion would be a high school chemistry experiment. Clearly, there is more to the equivalence of matter and energy than a short equation. The power comes from summarizing complexity with a simple statement, not eliminating the complexity.

Keep this in mind the next time someone tries to share the "3 Steps to Happiness" or "15 Ways to Make Money Blogging" or any other simple formula. Simplicity is powered by underlying complexity that cannot be ignored.

Net Present Value

Net Present Value (NPV) is a powerful measure that businesses use all the time. For those that do not use it, NPV is the value of all future revenue minus all future costs, both discounted to the present day using the time-value of money. Using NPV, decisions can be made based on a longer-term view than simple up-front cost and benefit.

The trouble is, I ignore this in my everyday life. Yet it can make a huge difference. Paying twice as much for a jacket that lasts four times as long makes sense, except that I am cheap, and I rarely look beyond my wallet.

Two lessons come out of this.

1. Think about the future. It usually does not take much thought or time, but the decisions we make today matter (both purchases and otherwise).
   
2. Buy Avalanche Wear. I bought an Avalanche fleece vest many, many years ago only because it was on sale. Beyond making me think about this question, it has been my go-to mid-weight warmth in the Grand Canyon, on ski slopes, and around town. It has been the best outdoor clothing purchase I have ever made (and I have made a lot).