this post took forever

Hi all,

Happy Memorial Day (1).

I think this is the country's most unusual holiday from one particular angle- it is the only major holiday that is built around acknowledging hurt and loss.  Some of the other holidays get into this area a little bit but Memorial Day is the only one that seems to fully inhabit the high cost of moving from the past to the much improved present we live in today.

I did not understand why making such acknowledgements was important at this time last year, or in any past year, but I have a better grasp of it now.  The need to acknowledge one's loss and recognize the hurt it brings is an important step in healing, whether for an individual or for a country. Until it is done properly, I think some part of ourselves is doomed to remain stuck in the past.

As it so happens, this holiday weekend also sees the arrival of the 29th of a month. This marks a four month anniversary ('anniversary') of my losing a job.  It seems as good of a time as any to acknowledge a little bit about what's been most hurtful during the experience and what I've managed to learn in the process of working through the job loss.

One important realization I had was the extent to which work dictated how and when I handled tasks of self-renewal. In some ways, this does not seem like much of a realization because I knew it was somewhat true while I had the job. What I've learned in the past four months, then, is more of an acknowledgment than a revelation.

I stumbled into this line of understanding starting just about a month ago.  On the 29th of April, I admitted to myself that I was feeling very low, perhaps the lowest I've felt during a single week since the start of 2016.

That particular week was not objectively bad.  It was more like a vague sense that I was slightly off-center, that I was losing my command over some of the simplest things I do well. For whatever reason, at that point last month I had lost the sense that I was in charge of the way things were going.  Maybe the best word to summarize the feeling is adrift, the best cliched expression that I was not feeling very much like myself.

As I went through the process over that week of considering what was going on and formulating some first step to a solution, I began to notice that certain indicators were suggesting that I was slipping on some basic day-to-day things- exercise, eating, and getting rest.

The first thing I noticed early in that week was how tired my legs were.  My former high school basketball coach used to call these 'dead legs'- legs that were beyond sore or fatigued, more like legs that always seemed plunked into a layer of invisible mud (*).  I keep very close track of my workouts and, based on my records, there was no reason for this extra fatigue.

*He should know all about fatigue, given how much he had us run conditioning sprints in the first week of practice.

The second thing I noticed was my minor, trivial, but unexplained weight gain.  It was subtle but steady, a pound or so every two weeks for the three months building up to April 29.  Again, I keep close track of what I eat and, based on my records, there was no clear reason for this extra weight gain.

My third and final sign was a very low level of mental energy, manifesting in difficulty with writing these blogs and a lack of focus while reading books.  This was unexpected given that I was sleeping more than ever before- a full eight hours or so a night without the trouble falling or staying asleep that I had come to accept over the previous five years. But I did acknowledge that I was not finding it as easy to roll out of bed in the wee hours as I used to.

What was going on?  I was lost for explanations on all three counts.  And with these going on all at once, the need to understand what was happening and formulate a way to approach the coming days was urgent before one issue started to impact the others.

Fortunately, I have plenty of experience in dealing with those specific matters referenced above.  I kept in mind that good solutions involve breaking problems down and keeping the components separated as opposed to rolling all problems into one.  I thought back to the times in the past where I faced similar concerns and tried to again apply the same solutions that were once successful for me.

So, to deal with my 'dead legs', I dug out an old handbook about trigger point massage therapy and got back into the routine of focusing on stretching and massage after a run (2).  The weight gain, I guessed, stemmed from eating more often at home and finding things such as bowls of rice replacing what used to be plates of spinach.  I began to focus on eating lots of vegetables early in the day with a particular emphasis on greens and broccoli.  I was a little unsure how to approach the energy issue but thought that making sure I got outside within an hour of waking up would be a good place to start since I had been doing so, almost by accident, for most of my adult life.

Those were the three little changes- self massage, piling on the greens, and mimicking my old schedule to a basic level just to get outside.  Once I got these things going, I almost immediately started to feel a little better.

As I reflected on those adjustments this past week and considered why all of these little things initially went off track, I came to the realization I referenced at the start of this post.  Those three activities all represent what the book I wrote about last week, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, describes as 'sharpening the saw'- activities of self-renewal.

I never took much from that section because I always thought I did well in that area.  And in a way, it remained true over these past four months because I continued exercising, eating well, and sleeping sufficiently.

But the way I applied my understanding was naive because it took me so long to consider how I would need to adjust in the wake of the layoff.  What I did not realize until just a month ago was that all those solutions I described above were simply my returning to things I used to do at work or at defined times relative to work commitments.

Consider- stretching and using self-massage techniques were something I used to do twice a day during breaks.  Work ended, so I stopped doing it.  

The two meals I ate at work always involved large quantities of spinach or kale to go along with a salad (*).  Eating at home now meant that I was less disciplined in piling on the greens.  

*The idea that the lunches I packed for the future were healthier than the lunches I pulled out of the fridge was kind of interesting to me.

The requirements of showing up to work on time meant that I was always up and outside within an hour of waking up- and usually a lot earlier than that.  In the months after the layoff, there were days where I spent hours inside, doing pointless things like reading or writing this blog, before I set foot outdoors.

The more I think about it, the more obvious it seems to me now.  Work, and especially full-time work, takes up a ton of time.  My former role generally required me to leave for work by 8am and saw me return home at 7pm (*).  Not being a math prodigy myself, I'll just make a rough guess here- that is fifty-five hours a week.  So, to do all those renewal activities, there is really no choice but to find ways to fit them in around the framework of the job (29).

*In terms of 'in the office' time, I usually was there from 930am to 610pm or so- the rest is commuting, breaks, etc.

The reason for this is worth restating- most things take a ton of time.  I'm not going to pretend I 'learned' this from my layoff but it was definitely a truth that I opted to merely coexist with for a long time instead of acknowledging the reality of it.  

In a way, I suppose that is not all that different from my initial idea- that work was dictating many of the other things I did to a degree that I did not realize.  I don't think I really learned this- I think I simply acknowledged it last month for the first time instead of choosing to keep the idea in the background and coexist peacefully with it.

To just acknowledge that losing a job hurt was a big step.  It was disruptive to how I approached the mundane tasks I undertake on a daily basis to keep myself healthy, energized, and mentally refreshed.  To reach this point took some time but, ultimately, it was also a simple conclusion to reach once I looked at those facts I described above.

What was not so simple in the past four months was acknowledging how disruptive the layoff was for me emotionally. The most difficult part of the layoff was the way it put my own grieving on hold and in a way this remains very much in progress.  It happened in a way that I still do not fully understand but, having been able to acknowledge it to myself in steps over the past few weeks, I feel better equipped to examine the effect and figure out how to best get myself back on the path I was on at the end of last year.

Grieving, after all, might be the most important self-renewal activity.  It is also likely the thing that takes the most time. Unfortunately, being a rookie to this process means I don't have the wealth of experience to draw from to make the right adjustments as needed. It is not like when I notice my ankle is sore and decide to stretch or when I see that the scales are tipping a little more than usual and fill a bowl with spinach.

But in the same way that getting my workouts back on track involved acknowledging the need to take care of my body or getting my diet back to normal involved acknowledging that my plate no longer had the same greens on it as usual, getting my grieving process back on track involved (unexpectedly at this time last month) acknowledging to myself that the layoff took away a central support that I was relying on to facilitate healing.

The central support I'm looking for could be anything.  Sadly, the irrefutable law of searching is that things are always in the last place you look.  So far, I've only been able to cross off possible candidates.

It is not writing, even though I find writing helps in certain ways, because I've been writing here for three months- since February 29.  It is not volunteering, something I stopped doing briefly after the job loss, because I resumed doing that on March 29.  I don't think it is anything I resumed doing from the above list I crafted on April 29 (though my fingers are crossed).

The last time I felt very hurt before my mom died was early in 2014. I suffered a badly sprained ankle- so bad, I remember being told at MGH that I might have been better off with a clean break.  I was in a walking boot for six weeks and expected to limp for many weeks more.

I spent most of that 'boot time' lounging around, wondering if I wanted to commit to a painful, grueling rehab process or if I wanted to scale back and wait for time to slowly take its course.  Having already undergone the latter option after experiencing a very similar injury in 2008, I knew that track would likely run a year or two, far longer than I was interested in being hobbled.  On the other hand, would there be any point in suffering through a difficult rehab commitment that would challenge the damaged ligaments and often leave me in the same kind of pain I found myself in on the night of the injury itself?

The most interesting thing that happened in this six week stretch involved my reading. Contrary to everyone's expectations, and especially my own, I actually read less than usual despite having all this extra time to read. In fact, I barely read at all.  Like I described a little bit above, the best way to summarize my mood was that I felt slightly adrift, that I thought I was not quite feeling much like myself.

I talked about this strange reading result with my mom at the time and she essentially laughed me off.  You can't read, I remember being told, if you are hurt.  At some point, I understood that she was not referring to my ankle.  She was referring to my deepest desire to get back to full strength as quickly as I could. Once I decided on crafting the most aggressive rehab course I could, I found myself starting to feel better and found my focus for reading returning.

I bring this story up because I suspect that what I am looking for involves a renewed approach to reading.  To enjoy reading and to find ways to read good sentences is something I'm very grateful for.  It gives me access to hundreds of lives and voices I would never otherwise find and I can use the accumulated wisdom from these writers to find my way back from being lost, to pick out a handhold to start climbing out of the holes I dig my way into.

To draw those insights from what I read again is likely the central support I leaned on last year that I am looking for again.  The time I used to spend commuting on the bus was significant- over an hour total, each day- and I spent almost all of this time reading.  At no point can I recall this reading being difficult or my lacking the focus on my reading in the way I described happening at the end of last month even though times were a lot more difficult last year.

I wonder if the stability created on these daily bus rides was something I grew to rely on last year to keep my reading focus and drag me forward on the path toward healing.  I wonder if the bus provided the shelter I needed to read those difficult sentences that I at the same time found most valuable- the ones that acknowledged the difficulty of loss yet conveyed at the same time that this too shall pass.

As I prepare for my next week's regular monthly admin post, I see signs of reading that is getting back to this level.  But it is a slow process and one that I think has quite a bit of distance to go before I feel like I have made the full adjustment of making reading the act of full self-renewal it was while I framed it around my job.

It is possible that I am wrong about all of this, of course.  But I don't think it matters much because the key step of acknowledging the hurt and recognizing what's been lost has been made. From here, I won't have much reason to look back.  And journeys forward are always easier if you are looking ahead to where you are going.

Thanks for reading.  Back Friday with the usual monthly admin- and although I possess no crystal ball, I predict a high possibility of a two-part admin post once again (30).

Tim

Footnotes

1. So this post was not about Memorial Day...

I suppose it works the same way for some people around a holiday.  One of the nice things about holidays is the ease with which one can roll back the years and think about what was going on during a specific past day.  I bet this is because holidays tend to see recurring traditions- barbeques, family dinners, dressing up like Elvis and begging for candy- and it is easier to link back through time with those consistent signposts along the way.

So, last year, what did I do on Memorial Day?  Nothing- I was food poisoned.  And I haven't bought anything 'cooked' at Whole Foods since.

As illnesses go, it was fairly memorable.  I got to work as usual on Thursday, felt immediately horrible, and got home to collapse into bed and sleep for eighteen straight hours.  I then proceeded to eat more applesauce over the next three days than I had in my entire life up until that point.

2. A trigger point is what?...

In short, trigger point massage is a technique where you massage spots on your muscles that are tense and causing pain to manifest elsewhere. These spots are generally found by searching on your muscles for points that respond to pressure with acute pain.  Although not necessarily pleasant, I've found this technique very helpful in keeping soreness low while going through a difficult workout routine.

29. I picked twenty-nine for a reason just be patient please...

I did find ways to resume some of the renewal activities I stopped doing in the wake of the job loss.  I always liked writing so I started doing this blog- on February 29.  I used to volunteer on Wednesday mornings because of how well it fit into my work schedule- I resumed volunteering on March 29 (with a different organization).  Given those coincidences, it seems kind of appropriate that I got back into doing more of these things that I used to lean against work on April 29.  Who knows what I'll resume doing on June 29 (*)?

*And what will happen next February?

And yet, even those things took a ton of time.  Just think about it like this- on February 29, one month after my layoff, I started a blog.  One month means thirty days of NOTHING- I'm no math major but I'll put the numbers up- 30 x 24 = 720 hours.  A post takes about an hour or two and the initial admin to launch a blog is about the same- so it took me 720 hours to get around to doing something I wanted to do that required four hours of my focused time.

Same goes for March 29.  Two months after my layoff, I started the process of a new volunteer role.  Two months means sixty days of NOTHING- I'm no math whiz but I'll give the numbers a swing- 60 x 24 = 1440 hours.  Training took three hours and the TB test took three days (the waiting period for the result to come in)- so it took me 1440 hours to get around to doing something I wanted to do that required four hours of my focused time plus a three day waiting period.

30. Professor Trewlawny might find this sarcastic...
The person who writes the blog is predicting that the upcoming post might be split into two parts...what an AMAZING prediction...

leftovers- 'eat this, not that' (dieting) + 'seven habits' (peter principle)

Hi all,

Friday's post generated a pair of tangents (one from each book) which I decided to cut out of the main post due to their size and editorial nature.

Enjoy the post and I'll see you next Monday (1).

Tim

I. Assessing the value of 'Eat This, Not That' for potential dieters 

A quick disclaimer before we get started on this particular soapbox. The Eat This, Not That series is not explicitly for dieting- it is about the facts of food.

On the other hand, the front cover of at least one of the books has the phrase 'the no diet weight loss solution'.  You can't judge a book by its cover (*) but I do still take it as a hint that these books more or less exist to catch the attention of anyone considering a diet.

*Mostly because authors don't make the covers...I think?

So, what value do these books have for someone interested in applying the concepts directly to their next weight-loss regimen?

One thought I had while originally writing last Friday's post was about how many default food decisions we mindlessly accept every day that run counter to goals of healthy living.  In particular, the small additions that come in the form of toppings or sauces to otherwise healthy dishes can bring added calories that I recall coming as a surprise to me when I first poked through these books.

The best example is salad dressing.  I always hated salad dressing when I was growing up but I never considered anything else as a salad topping until I read these books.  Once I did the reading, I recognized that almost anything is an acceptable topping and began to use salsa instead (much lower in calories than dressing).  Making this substitution proved a major starting point for introducing more vegetables into my diet.

Salad dressing falls into a category of food that is particularly dangerous for those counting their calories- dressing is calorically dense yet still consumable in large volumes.  These types of foods ('foods') tend to go ignored by your body when it assesses hunger levels. Therefore, since your body is unlikely to tell you that you are 'full' when eating these foods, controlling their consumption generally requires some form of your own willpower to walk away from the table.

Harnessing such willpower is a difficult task, however, so alternate methods which focus on making your body feel 'full' as you consume the food in question are valuable to know about.  One good method the book described is dilution- you take the high caloire, low volume item item and add a low calorie, high volume item to make the food fill you up faster.

This is ideal for food or sauce that is rich enough to maintain its taste if something else is added to it.  The best idea I recall from these books was adding plain yogurt to dipping sauces such as blue cheese.

You can also see this wisdom reflected in eating cookies with milk. The glass of milk fills you up faster than the cookies and, overall, is likely to cut down on the total calorie consumption when compared to a sitting where you consume only cookies.

The other angle presented to a potential dieter is to eat the same food but with a brand or cooking method that involves fewer calories. Two cups of pasta, equal in size, shape, and color, will have different caloric totals based on the brand.  The key is fixing volume and focusing on substitution to alter the distribution of the nutrition.

An intelligently designed pattern of dilution and substitution can undoubtedly build a successful diet and ultimately improve health outcomes.  A diet built solely around this book might lead a dieter to eat a cup of broccoli before each additional slice of pizza or to drink a glass of water before each additional beer.  The volume of food consumed remains the same and, since the 'good stuff' goes in first, there is less room leftover for the high calorie food.

Over time, the calorie consumption has no choice but to drop.  It is an appealing approach for someone who acknowledges that eating three slices of pizza instead of four would help with their weight but is unable to muster the willpower to stop eating and unsatisfied without the feeling of that fourth slice in their stomach.

I do believe that these books are a good resource for anyone seeking to diet as a means of losing weight and the ideas about dilution or substitution are quick to grasp and easy to apply.  However, they most likely work best for people who casually overeat but will stop when they feel just past full.

This is because the philosophy underlying the books does not directly recommend the one thing that will work for anyone- eat less.  The reason why it does not make this recommendation is partly commercial- everyone knows this to some extent and selling a book based on this advice seems like a very difficult marketing job to me.

But I think the real reason this recommendation is not made is because eating less as a dieting strategy is hard, if not impossible, for those who turn to these books for advice.  Eating less, after all, refers to an outcome of the factors that motivate us to eat.  What this book offers is a prescription for the effect, not a diagnosis of the cause.

The value of any diet book is similar in ways to the value of any single piece of advice- the recommendation that comes closest to addressing the source of the issue will have the most universal value. The Eat This, Not That series (or at least the books I read from the series) only looks at how to optimize the last step- your plate- and therefore, I suspect it only has value for the very specific subset of dieters that I referenced above (2).

II. The Peter principle 

The Peter principle is a concept in management theory.  It states that performance-based promotions will ultimately result in an organization where "managers rise to the level of their incompetence." This is because, by definition, an individual stops being promoted when they are no longer good at their job, leaving these people in a position they are not performing very well in.

No doubt about it, this observation is true to an extent (it may even be true on average).  But some things are true and yet irrelevant.

As an example, I could observe that the air I inhale for oxygen is exhaled with a greater concentration of carbon dioxide.  It might be stated that 'humans will exhale until they can no longer find sufficient air to inhale' and this is true, again, to an extent.

The observation does not mean the next step is to change the respiratory system.  The challenge is to find a way to deal with this carbon dioxide and the solution, if I recall, is known as trees.

When I thought about the example I described in the last post to illustrate challenges that face newly promoted managers, I was reminded by the idea described by this principle.  I can see the argument that a manager who meddles or micromanages is simply a living example of the principle in action.  Using this argument, it could be said that promotions should be based on other criteria.

But the organization that changes the system to prevent the problems stemming from this type of promotion creates a new problem unless it finds a different way to publicly reward a top performer.  Otherwise, employees at lower levels are shown that rewards will be linked to factors not directly related to outright performance.  And there is no more likely outcome in such an environment than the emergence of office politics.

My guess is the way around the problems described by the Peter principle is to reward performers publicly without those rewards solely being promotions.  It is the best argument I can come up with for transparency of pay because it provides a company a very easy way to reinforce a culture of performance without locking itself into allowing someone under-qualified a chance at a top job.

A place where doing well means good things for the employee and for the company, I once read, is a way to know that an employee is at 'a good place to work'.  Overreacting to an observation such as the Peter principle puts an organization's ability to be a good place to work at risk if the reaction is such that an employee loses faith that good performance will be recognized, rewarded, and meaningful.

Footnotes...

1. Quick blog admin reminder/tangent... 

No post next Friday or Tuesday.  I am recognizing all holidays over here at TOA HQ but, given that I also like holidays for their reading potential, I will post something Monday AM ( probably in the 5am - 6am range).

2. The other way to look at dieting books tangent... 

Problems which have sure solutions tend to result in only one advised approach- the one that works.  If you do not want your child to get chicken pox, for example, you get the vaccine.  If you cannot see the blackboard, you get glasses.

On the other hand, problems which do not have sure solutions tend to have many advised approaches.  The common cold has no cure- so everyone has different methods for 'curing' it.  And despite many years of trying every possible method under the sun, I am not quite ready to write a blog post titled 'This is how you fall asleep when you are having trouble falling asleep'.

The dieting concept falls into the second category, I think, based on all the different types of diet available to the average consumer. There is the paleo thing, or the Mediterranean thing, or maybe just eat at Subway only...the list goes on and on.  Anyone with no knowledge of the subject could, just from generalizing the problem based on the sheer number of solutions available, conclude that there is no real solution out at the moment.

The only method that will actually work is to eat less.  The problem with that as 'advice' is that it comes off as naive, or at least indifferent, to anyone who knows that already (and this applies to just about everyone).  It would be like suggesting to someone with sleeping problems that all they have to do is 'sleep more'.

life changing books (pre 2011, pt1)- 'eat this, not that' + 'the seven habits of highly effective people'

Hi folks,

Back at it today with a look at some books I read prior to 2011 which, in hindsight, led me into life changes (1).

*Eat This, Not That

Note: Eat This, Not That is actually a book series. Its inclusion here is based on two books I read in late 2010.  

As I alluded to in a post about 2011 books, I spent a significant amount of time in my first full year out of college reading about nutrition. What I learned from all of that reading forced me to challenge assumptions about what I considered to be healthy food, taught me a great deal about grocery store design, and better enabled me to understand the challenges that many faced in trying to live healthy lives (*).

*And made me recognize that, unless I kept up my exact college basketball training regimen to maintain my muscle mass, I would soon need to concede that I was twenty pounds overweight.

These two books started my journey to those discoveries.  The first book was a supermarket guide that compared the nutritional content of similar products.  It was eye opening to see the difference in sugar content between, say, Edy's and Friendly's ice cream or to find out that one beer has three times as many calories as another (*).

*Three pints of Guinness = One pint of Boddingtons

The second book did the same comparison among recipes.  The end result was a cookbook where thoughtful substitutions dramatically reduced the high calorie count of many well known dishes.  One example that I still use today to great effect is substituting Greek yogurt for any ingredient that makes the end product 'fluffier' (think pancakes).  I also recall that using crushed blueberries with hot water and a small dash of sugar makes a terrific maple syrup substitute, as well (*).

*I made more than pancakes from this cookbook- those were just the two best examples I could come up with.

I give these books my highest recommendation to anyone interested in learning more about basic nutrition facts who lacks the time to dive into several hundred pages of dull, dull syllables a more rigorously researched book.  This series is easy to read and even easier to digest- I am sure everyone will learn at least one nutritional fact that comes as a total shock. And we can all benefit from the occasional reminder of just how much broccoli you need to eat before you match the caloric intake of a Hershey's kiss.

These books are also a terrific place for someone ready to explore dieting but lacking the time and mental resources to make wholesale changes to their eating pattern.  Just get started by switching to a similar brand with better nutrition or substituting one high-calorie recipe for a lower-calorie one and see where it goes from there.

*The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

I read this book in late 2010 and I would return to it a couple of times over the next few years to refresh my understanding of its many observations and underlying wisdom.

The initial change grew from an observation the book made about how people tend to approach tasks.  The author placed tasks into four categories, which he called quadrants, based on how they measured along two continua- urgency and importance.

Quadrant One- urgent and important
Quadrant Two- not urgent but important
Quadrant Three- urgent but not important
Quadrant Four- not urgent and not important

Most people handle quadrant one and four appropriately, leaving quadrants two and three for deeper analysis. What I took away from reading was that the balance of these two quadrants is crucial for productivity. The author's insight was that urgent but generally unimportant tasks, such as answering the phone, often acted as interruptions that curtailed the concentration required for completing not urgent but generally important tasks (*).

*If you are considering why we tend to handle quadrant three tasks 'on demand', it probably has a lot to do with how quadrant three tasks sometime lead directly to a quadrant one task.  Unfortunately, you cannot truly be sure that a phone call is not a 'quadrant one' task until you attend to it.  Since most phone calls or emails turn out to not be important enough to deal with right away, it could be said that it is 'true on average' (**) that these are quadrant three tasks.

**BLOG NAME!!!

It also delved informally into the difficulty of repeatedly using our willpower to steer us away from tasks with quick, short term gains (*) and toward tasks with long term gains that offered no immediate reward (**).  The more we use our willpower in a given day or the more time we spend bouncing from one trivial yet urgent task to the next, the more likely we are to become fatigued and put off for tomorrow the quadrant two projects that could be done today (***) (2).

*Such as eating a cupcake, to the extent that such a thing is a 'task'.

**Such as exercising, although I like running.  My examples in this paragraph, so far, have been poor.

***Several books since this books publication have explicitly focused on willpower and its depletion in the manner summarized above, including one book which I believe is actually called 'Willpower'.

The facts of my life at the time, though, meant that I could not do much with those insights.  I had yet to take any formal leadership roles at work, was not dissatisfied with my approach to my personal life, and exercised regularly (even if I tended to distract myself beforehand with a box of cupcakes).

However, I did decide to pay off my student loans as quickly as possible and I think understanding that above quadrant two concept helped push me in that direction.  Instead of merely keeping up with the minimum loan payment, I tried to minimize spending and ignored building up savings in favor of pouring all of my extra cash into paying off the student loan debt as quickly as possible. The effort cut down the term of the loan from 10+ years down to around one and a half years and saved a good deal of money in the future through the form of not accumulating additional interest (*).

*Having now been laid off, I do not fully recommend the above approach- I suggest savings to cover expenses for some number of weeks to cover minor emergencies stemming from temporary loss of income- but broadly speaking, I still advocate the 'pay off debt' as the required first step for anyone seeking direction on their personal finances since the return of not paying future interest is fixed while the return of most investment vehicles is hypothetical.

The reason I highlight that one example is because I think this is the basic idea of a quadrant two action- instead of taking the simple default action, you instead make the time or effort to do something a little differently in the present that comes around to pay off in the future.

My return to this book over the ensuing years saw me gather new insights that I missed on my initial 2010 reading.  There are, in particular, two insights that I recall which made quite an impact on how I approached my ever-evolving workplace management philosophy.

One of these insights is how a good manager creates the capacity to handle quadrant two issues on her own through delegation and teaching to lower levels of a company.  The idea is to push quadrant one (and quadrant three, I suppose) activity down the hierarchy so the top decision makers were able to devote uninterrupted concentration to important, non-urgent matters.

This one was a difficult one for me to grasp intuitively when I began managing. I think the difficulty is universal if you earn such a role by promotion from a lesser role.  This is because the mentality of high-quality execution on workload is a difficult one to shake off. Instead of relying on what succeeded for you in the past- producing strong final results solely through your direct involvement in the production process- you instead have to learn to take responsibility for final results while reducing your involvement in the production process to an indirect role.

Meeting the challenge presented by this mentality shift is a significant one but there is a general insight I have that might help. It is critical to know the difference between doing something at a high level and doing something at the minimum acceptable level.  The tendency for managers who worked their way up to the role will be to have their team emulate their own high level of performance.

These high standards are all well and good. But a managers who cannot say 'good enough' tend to constantly meddle with final products and stunt the development of both manager and subordinate in the process.

Knowing the minimum for acceptable work is vital because it does two things.  First, it makes the manager responsible for determining if it is time to step in and take direct involvement in the production process.  All that is required is setting up a tracking system to determine when quality falls below the standard.

Second, it creates a safe environment of failure for the subordinate to experiment and develop her own skills.  One of the benefits of moving a high performer into a managerial role is that the replacement will possess a different set of capabilities from the predecessor. These capabilities might not immediately be applicable to the current needs of the business but it is vital to allow the replacement to play to her strengths and try to apply those to the business.

This is because even if there is no immediate payoff, the problems and opportunities that might arise in the future are unpredictable and these previously unnecessary capabilities might be just what is required.  If the environment discourages failure through inconsistent standards or the manager is micromanaging due to a lack of clarity on what an acceptable rate of failure is, the culture begins to value conformity and the diversity of a team's skillset becomes endangered.  Those capable of using their skills in new situations end up being overlooked or are discouraged from making the initial effort.

The second insight that I used to build my own management philosophy was the importance of one on one interactions for building relationships.  Since the time needed for such interactions can get lost when there is a consistent pressure to complete quadrant one tasks, it is up to the senior person in the relationship to create one on one time so that everyone is able to have this time to communicate without placing additional stress on the team or on any one of its individuals.

The key to productive one on one time is to cover topics that do not come up in the natural course of a workday.  The focus is on the important topics that never take respond to the pressure of the urgent.  These topics should focus on the subordinate's interests, such as career development, job trajectory, skills growth, company direction, individual concerns, and so on.  In short, the one on one meeting is a discussion of progress on individual quadrant two projects. It benefits the three parties involved- the individual finds time to focus on personal growth, the manager learns about what is going on in the team without wasting time meddling in the day-to-day operations, and the company is less likely to lose employees who value their own development.

As I mentioned above, there is plenty more in the book and I am sure each reader, whether going through this book for the first or one hundredth time, will find something new that proves an immediate catalyst for a new outlook on life.  I will undoubtedly read this book again and look forward to the new discoveries I am sure to make.  I might even post about it...

Thanks again for reading.  Back on Tuesday with a pair of leftover ideas from this post.

Tim

Footnotes!

Postscript... 
Note about the author- Stephen Covey, author of the '7 Habits', did write a separate book about how to apply the concepts to families. I read that edition a couple of years later.  I suppose there is a chance that I have incorrectly attributed observations from that book to the original '7 Habits' book in the above and if I did so, my sincerest apologies.

1. Keeping track of the reading tangent...
The first book I officially logged as having read is marked with a date of (check- early 2011).  This means anything I read prior to 2011 is not formally logged anywhere.  I did the best I could with these books from ancient past but do apologies for a couple of books whose contents I recall but names I have lost over time that I will post about in the future.

2. What does the future hold tangent... 
A concept I took from a business book several years later really drives this idea home- essentially, whenever there is uncertainty about the short term, it is investment that disappears.  Investment is a good 'catch all' term for this quadrant two concept for investment never occurs if there is not a feasible investment project available or if the potential investor requires resources to sort out some short term issue.

more or less about my tb test

Morning,

In the past six weeks, I've taken two TB tests (*).  The tests are really simple- you get a small injection of whatnot and then, 48 to 72 hours later, the injected area is examined by a nurse. If there is a significant reaction, your test is positive, and you have to follow up with a chest X-ray.  If it is negative, you are disease-free and exempt from testing for another year.

*No need to ask why.  And TB stands for tuberculosis, BTW- which stands for 'by the way', FYI- which stands...

The first test went fine- left arm, no reaction.  The second test, just a month later, should not have happened. It went fine, but not as much- right arm, a reaction, but not enough to be 'positive'.  No X-rays for me this year.  Still, the nurse made a note on my form about it before I went on my merry way.

On the way home from my second test, I listened to what is the 'objectively best' podcast I listen to, More Or Less, a BBC produced show that primarily dissects how statistics are presented in the news (1). This particular episode broke down Simpson's Paradox, a statistical phenomenon where trends in subgroups disappear or reverse when combined to form a larger group.

The episode used an example of possible gender discrimination to illustrate the concept. This example was perhaps oversimplified yet made the intended point about how easily this paradox can come about.

The example went like this- suppose you are in charge of a chorus and your next assignment is to fill eighteen open positions.  Twelve of the positions require lower voices, which tend to attract male candidates, while the remaining six require higher voices, which tend to attract female candidates.

You post the positions and, as the applications pile up, put in charge the most unbiased hiring manager you find to fill the roles based solely on singing ability. Thanks to the distribution of applicants, you end up with the following results:

12 spots- lower singing voice 

8/16 male applicants hired (50%) 

4/8 female applicants hired (50%)

6 spots- higher singing voice 

4/8 female applicants hired (50%) 

2/4 male applicants hired (50%)

Almost an ideal scenario from the perspective of a meritocracy- each subset of candidates was hired at a 50% rate.

But the next day, you open the newspaper and see- 'Chorus employing discriminatory hiring practices against women' with this breakdown:

18 open positions 

10 men hired = 10/18 = 55.6% 

8 women hired = 8/18 = 44.4%

Oh boy (*).

*Let's try it from another perspective- let's suppose the following represents the racial breakdown-

12 spots- lower singing voice
9/18 white applicants hired (50%)
3/6 non-white applicants hired (50%)

6 spots- higher singing voice
5/10 white applicants hired (50%)
1/2 non-white applicants hired (50%)

So far, so good...

18 open positions
14 white hires = 14/18 = 77.8%
4 non-white hires = 4/18 = 22.2%

I'm sure there is no need for my speculation on the headline those numbers would produce.

So, what went wrong?

Simpson's Paradox, I suspect, is like many formally named phenomena encountered in fields like statistics- a narrowly defined application of a generalized problem.  In this case, the general problem is inconsistent denominators.  The example merely highlights the need to keep denominators consistent when making comparisons or conducting analysis.

The 'damning' statistic presented above uses total open positions as the denominator.  The denominator relevant to the hiring manager is applicants for a given open position so the influence the hiring manager has on the 'open positions' denominator is, at best, indirect. Use of 'open positions' as the denominator fails to accurately reflect decisions made within the hiring process- unless the hiring process takes the status of other open positions into account, which in this example was not the case.

A more accurate reflection, or at least one which fairly represents the approach of the hiring manager, would compare final hires to the total applicants.

18 total hires / 36 total applicants 

10 men hired / 20 male applicants = 50% male applicants hired 

8 women hired / 16 female applicants = 50% female applicants hired

This breakdown might be 'more true' but it doesn't change the ten-eight male-female ratio.  Statistics is tricky in this way because it is never clear which of many interpretations is the most truthful illustration of a given situation.

What role does the posting of positions play in this story?  Is the manner in which more open positions were posted that 'tend' to attract male candidates evidence of bias from those running the chorus?  I suppose it is possible but I don't know for sure (even if it is my hypothetical).

The angle I find more interesting here is to suppose the best, most unbiased intent among the parties involved.  One person posts the positions by looking only at the needs of the chorus.  The other hires solely based on singing ability.  And yet, as we see in the hypothetical, the numbers might come out skewed, hinting at a bias that only emerges when the individual initiatives of two unbiased individuals act in concert (*).

*Pun intended, of course.  The pun is always intended around here.

What I like most about the Simpson's Paradox example is how simply it highlights the possibility of even the best intended individual actions aggregating up to system-level problems.  Understanding the example makes it easier to appreciate both the magnitude our actions have in the world and how little influence we might have over those impacts.

My mini-adventure with TB testing highlights the idea from a different angle.  In this case, the goal of preventing those with TB from further involvement in a certain organization was met imperfectly- those with TB would be caught through multiple screenings at a cost that is likely higher than an alternate method.

In this case, individual units within the organization, each likely tasked with doing its fair share to helping the organization reach this goal, acted in the unit's best interest and ended up overlapping or duplicating the efforts of a parallel unit.  Although the goal was met, the aggregate of the unit actions is a higher overall cost to the organization.

As I stated at the top, the second test should not have happened.  But that is a remark growing entirely out of my own point of view and it is hard to see what changes could prevent unnecessary second tests in the future.  The organization, given how it divides itself into units, is opting through its design to suffer duplication errors rather than risk missing out on testing someone entirely.  The cost, although certainly higher to the organization, is also passed on to me, someone outside the organization, so the decision makers do not feel the true cost of their system's setup (2).

The argument for the US government continuing to increase its role in health care (and join most of the rest of the developed world in the process) invokes examples like mine to highlight the easy cost reductions a streamlined system could achieve- instead of testing twice, test once, and cut costs in half.  Simple.

But health care, or perhaps the financing of health care bills, tends to find much more complex examples.  Decisions about research, insurance, end of life care, and much more will increasingly rely on statistical analysis to state their premise and sway the undecided. Having studied the subject as my college major (3), I am very much aware of its appeal and will even concede its occasional usefulness.

But, I think statistics is much more frequently used to manipulate, confuse, or distort.  It is a tool often wielded by those with no educational or practical background in the subject.  The beauty sometimes found in mathematical proofs and theorems is double-edged in the way a figure can seduce someone looking for a simple answer to a complex problem.

What I have always liked most about the More Or Less podcast is its trust of the listener.  The process of un-crunching the numbers leaves only the facts.  At this point, the listener must decide what is true. It is both educational, even for someone like me who has some grounding in statistical concepts, and refreshing in the way that it strips the sensationalism out of the newsworthy to bring the discussion back to its basic truths.

And sometimes they talk about soccer, too, which I appreciate.

Back on Friday with a quick look back at a couple of life changing books.

Tim

Footnotes???

1. 'More Or Less' tangent...

'Objectively best' is essentially a meaningless term, so I'll clarify- I think this podcast consistently produces the most useful information per episode among the podcasts I listen to.  It does not necessarily always entertain, though it usually does, and it does not strike me as over-produced, which I admit for some reason I consider a plus.

It doesn't hurt that, being a UK based show, the shows often have enough clever little puns to keep me interested, either.

2. When the cost is passed along tangent...

One way to manage a system is to track the costs closely and take action when the value generated by a component of the system is offset by the cost.  Sounds almost like a perfect approach, no?

One problem with the approach is the underlying assumption that tracking costs is done accurately.  Another way to look at the same problem is the assumption that value generated is correctly attributed to the merits of the successful system.

The government's system to addressing income inequality is an easy example to pick on and allows me to highlight both of the above ideas at once.  US history is filled with countless examples of various government initiated programs and policies with the explicit aim of reducing income inequality by addressing both ends of the equation (reducing poverty and redistributing compensation earned in excess of the wealth created).  But on the other hand, the government continues to allow state sponsored lotteries, an institution whose consistent outcome (*) seems to be increasing income inequality.

*Inconsistent outcomes might include development of or preying on gambling addictions.  Help is available, though, according to the scrolling text at the bottom of Keno screens.

If you believe, as I do, that government does genuinely wish to reduce income inequality, the existence of state-run lotteries is a constant challenge to that conviction. I imagine the counter-argument from someone adopting the opposite point of view would contend that such lotteries are entirely unrelated to policies addressing income inequality.

It is hard for me to accept this hypothetical argument because a lottery that distributes massive payouts to a few individuals at the cost of dollars to many is the exact opposite of how I understand the concept of addressing inequality.  It also ignores the interconnected nature of government programs- lottery tax revenues fund policies which redistribute wealth and treating gambling addictions comes at a cost to government-funded programs.

3. Mathematical sciences tangent...

Sort of.  At Colby, Mathematical Sciences is a major that was identical to Mathematics with one exception- instead of a 400-level (pure) math class, the math-science major could instead take a 200-level statistics class.  This makes it the closest thing to a statistics major I could have done, if memory serves me correctly, but does not actually make it a pure statistics major.

Postscript? Cost or downside tangent...

When the light turns green (*), we go, because on average, it is safe more than 99% of the time.  If everyone stopped, got out of their cars, looked both ways...(**)

*Or blue? 

**The world would be much safer but we would have more traffic?

At some point, we proceed with less than full information because the cost of acquiring additional units of information becomes too high. Without this ability to act in uncertain circumstances, many of us would become paralyzed in the face of a decision with too many options.

The other angle is downside.  If I am wrong about my action, what is the likely result?  In cases where the downside is minimal, the action is justifiable.

The TB test story is a combination of the opposite of the two above points- the cost of administering additional screenings is very low while the downside of my having TB is very high- so it is not particularly surprising for such a thing to happen nor should there be any expectation that a massive effort to improve this system is coming around the corner.

The only way to ever really know for sure is to gather more information.  Unfortunately (or perhaps not) most questions cannot ever be fully answered- we can only approach the full answer before deliberations become debilitating.

proper admin- may 2016, part three (books)

Hi all,

Welcome back...

The reading I did in April reinforced just how much I rely on outside influence for what I come up with on this blog.  The post from Sunday was written very much in a style that I borrowed, if not outright copied, from Maggie Nelson's Bluets.  The post from the end of April, about Maniac Magee, was something I worked on sporadically for a couple of months before The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit gave me an insight or two that I used to organize my ideas.

I also saw examples of books that reinforced some of my own instincts. David Whyte's Consolations reflects on simple everyday words with a depth and understanding that I try to reach for at least a few syllables when blogging about Lost In Translation.  And in reading Chuck Klosterman's books or working through Shea Serrano's Rap Year Book, I noted even more methods for organizing and presenting the tangents that I tend to (happily) go off on from line to line time to time.

One book that had no influence on my writing...

I thought Excellent Daughters by Katherine Zoepf was a really good example of a book you read to simply gain knowledge.  In this case, Zoepf covers the past, present, and future of the role women play in the Arab world in a way that greatly expanded my understanding of the topic while also keeping the reading interesting and to the point (*).

*This is, now that I consider it, perhaps the entire opposite of this blog!

I would recommend this book to anyone in my exact position a month ago- interested in the topic yet holding almost no knowledge about it.

My author-based reading projects continue...

I'm currently trying to read all the works from Maya Angelou, Haruki Murakami, and Chuck Klosterman.  This month, I made it through Angelou's The Heart of a Woman and Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes. I think if these books make sense for you, you would already have read them, so no need for my attempt at a recommendation.  However, I should note that Murakami's short story collection has one story about a boy who mows a woman's lawn that I really, really liked.

Klosterman's Killing Yourself To Live is a personal memoir intertwined with a cross-country trip to visit sites of various famous deaths in music.  Like with the above, if you like Klosterman, you would be in no need of my recommendation.

His Chuck Klosterman IV might appeal to a broader reading audience. It is a collection of his work for various magazines, some additional essays, and a novella.  There are also some hypothetical questions mixed in, which is notable because I believe he ended up releasing these as an adult card game, perhaps along the lines of 'Cards Against Humanity'.

Maggie Nelson x2...

It might be time to officially add this author to the above list- although Nelson's books are going by so fast I'll probably be done before I can formally consider it a 'reading project'.  If Sunday's post was not a clear recommendation for Bluets (and I'll concede that it is not necessarily a recommendation, except for maybe that last line), I'll note again that the book was less than one hundred pages.

The Red Parts is written in a more traditional style.  I would suggest reading Bluets and The Argonauts first and moving on to The Red Parts if you found those two books worth the time.

Two books about wandering...

Solnit's The Faraway Nearby was terrific.  In short, it was a book written about stories.  It was also a tough one to read straight through because it made me want to stop and think every three paragraphs.

In this book, Solnit points out that we often knew all along the very things we one day realize we believe in, messages we received and clung to long before the moment of revelation.  What an outsider sees as a dramatic shift in direction is to the changed individual a simple acknowledgment of a long-simmering idea.

Reading this book helped me untangle the mess of notes and scribbles I accumulated for my Maniac Magee post at the end of April.  It made me think of U2, a band I knew of long before I started listening to them, and that in turn helped me form a handful of loosely connected ideas into a coherent post (1).

She also talks a little bit about mazes and labyrinths.  Mazes reminds me of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, a book I flipped through from time to time over the past decade before I finally finished it this winter.  This book, or at least the edition I have, was written in an unusual way- Sun Tzu makes a point or comment and the others involved- generals, governors, etc- chime in with their comments which add to or clarify Sun Tzu's point.  Then it repeats.  It is like a maze in the way it wanders, occasionally into dead ends, but always in search of a final goal- mastering war- which justifies the means.

Labyrinths reminds me of Bluets in the way that the wandering was the point.  It sometimes moves toward the goal, it sometimes moves away, and it is difficult to always know exactly where you are.  It reminds us to be present in the journey without needing to reach a goal which justifies it.

And speaking of music...

My inclusion of Eminem in the previous post came out of a mention of that clip from Rap Year Book.  This book highlights one important song per year from 1979 to 2014 and I thought it was pretty good despite not having a major interest in rap myself.

One thought I had while reading was how the work and themes of early rap potentially impacted the way people like me take in the news today.  Now, we have something like what happened a year ago in Ferguson and my response is 'another manifestation of a particular problem in this country'.  Without listening to some of the songs and artists featured in this book and understanding their messages, maybe my reaction is 'hmmm, well sometimes things just happen'.

The way new music is consumed is changing so much now that I wonder which artists or what genre, if any, will provide the next form of widely heard social commentary (2).

Dan Carlin, in a recent Common Sense podcast, discussed an idea that is similar to the above.  His show covered how the changing nature of news media meant people heard the same news as they used to hear in the past- just not simultaneously, as was the case when only a nightly telecast or morning newspaper was delivering the same content to everybody. This means the benefits of group outrage are vastly diminished and the capacity for collective action greatly altered.

As choices for how individuals use their attention expand, the challenge to harness collective energy to power major social shifts will only become more difficult.  I suspect that the music and news industries will not meet this challenge, at least if they continue to apply the same approaches that were successful in the past, but I'm also skeptical of my own attempt to credit one industry or another with influencing social trends that took decades to reach full boil.  It might just 

When I resume the 'Lost In Translation' bracket, I'll talk more about...

Consolations, by David Whyte, since it ties so closely to what I am doing with the bracket.

One last 'Maniac Magee' comment- I promise, the last one...

One of the podcasts I regularly listen to is called The Moth.  This podcast collects stories told at various Moth events from around the world.

Just a couple of months ago, a story a couple of decades old was told about a struggling writer- 'Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia'.  This same Spinelli would eventually go on to write Maniac Magee.  Thought it was a funny coincidence...

Anything else from April?

The podcast Reply All created an idea called 'Email Debt Forgiveness Day' which they 'celebrate' annually on April 30.  The whole concept is that, on this day, you can reply to any email that has been sitting, ignored, in your inbox as if no time has passed at all since you received it.

I thought it was hilarious.  The stories they got from some of the listeners about the emails they responded to covered quite a bit of ground and might be worth a listen.

That's about all from April.  Thanks again for reading.  

No post Friday- back on Tuesday with who knows what.

Tim

Footnotes!

1. One tangent...
I remember the exact moment I started listening to U2 more seriously. It was in 2006, right after the World Cup, and ABC ran a highlights montage with 'One' playing in the background.  Even though I had heard their music countless times over the previous years, it was not until this particular moment that I considered the possibility of this band being one that I might like.

The montage cuts parts of the song so this link might be better if you are looking for just the music (plus a Bono speech about cell phones where he also asks you for your money your voice).

2. Personal music tangent... 
The Suburbs, by the Arcade Fire, might have tried this with their observations of suburban life's role in isolating or disillusioning kids.  Drones, by Muse, might have tried this with their observations about western foreign policy and the automaton-like behavior of the individuals within those societies.

But these are albums I listened to.  They are not exactly what I would describe as 'mainstream' and they don't reflect the views being described by the others who occupy the same musical genre.  In fact, when it comes to albums, I just don't know any that a lot people listen to.