tales of two cities, vol 6: oct '16

10/05/2016
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (3:24 pm)
Danehy Park (3:43 pm)

Another person was recently killed while riding a bike. This death - excuse me, accident - occurred in Porter Square. I rumble through there a few times a week on foot or on wheel but, no matter how many times I look at the ghost bike, it is impossible to get used to.

The public memorial services and tokens of remembrance left at the sites of these pointless deaths bring the slimmest silver linings to otherwise impossible clouds. What strikes me is how often those in attendance show up having never met the departed. They come simply out of a shared reliance on a particular mode of transportation.

The automobile industry accepts somewhere north of thirty thousand American deaths as 'the cost' for keeping cars on roads. The cycling community accepts exactly zero deaths. I don't think this is why 'strangers' often attend memorial services for lost cyclists but I'm struck by the thought regardless. Thirty thousand or zero?

Important changes grow out of the friction between those who insist- that's the way it is- and those who counter- that's the way it was. No matter how much room there is in the middle, it'll never be a comfortable space to occupy.

the book this business bro isn't working on

Genre: Business / Colossal bullshit

Title: The Business Bro

Last and certainly least...

I realized I was already writing this book a couple of years ago when I printed out my 'managerial playbook' at work and needed to reload the printer. Since then, I've refined my loose-leaf binder into shorter lists and organized the concepts along tasks or responsibilities. Some of what I used has leaked into TOA and others I've organized into posts over on The BB.

The key question for this book is - what do I know? So far, I've only had the experience of going to work one day and learning that I had accidentally forced myself into a managerial role. On another day, I learned this same role made me surplus to requirements. So, at this moment, the book's focus is helping those who stumble into management - by accident - learn the ropes without hanging themselves - by accident. Manage that long enough, I think, and you'll have the start of a career.

Until then, keep an eye out for free chapters here...

Signed,

The Business Bro

leftovers #2: the case against sugar

It is hard to simply avoid eating sugar. My own sweet tooth is as long as some of these posts; whenever I willfully give up sugar, I notice myself thinking about it all the time.

But is the right approach to give it up entirely? As I alluded to in the post, it does seem like sugar is more of a threshold problem- eat past a point and the health issues start.

I think it is worth sharing that Taubes thought seventy pounds of sugar per year was a rough cutoff point. At this level, societies started to see the incidence of sugar-linked diseases rise. For individuals, perhaps a safe range of annual consumption falls in the sixty to eighty pounds per year range.

reading review: the mythical man-month

A few weeks ago, the Business Bro and I got together to discuss this book. Longtime readers, I’m sure, were not surprised to see this effort go up in smoke. My apologies, reader, for all the time wasted.

It occurred to me recently, though, that our conversation was a microcosm of the book’s larger point. As new members are added to a project team, the communication burden will increase. In these cases, the challenge for leaders is to structure the work so the benefit of added manpower is not offset by the increase in communication cost.

This sounds like a simple enough job, I thought, but there are a number of reasons why software development projects struggle to maintain this balance. One reason is the way management demands a skill set entirely different from programming. Software engineers of any value are perfectionists. Otherwise, the programs they write will never run correctly and all their time will go to debugging!

On the other hand, management is work that does not suit the perfectionist. A good manager must constantly make decisions about trade-offs. By definition, the manager’s job is to choose the best set of decisions from a set of imperfect options. Software project mangers who are promoted into the job after excelling as engineers are at a disadvantage because the perfectionism they relied on to reach maximum performance in the programmer role is going to hurt their performance in the manager role.

A specific area where these ‘perfectionist managers’ struggle is when designing the ‘second system’. Often, the second system is intended to replace a no-frills first version. The idea of a second system is exciting for architects because it is an opportunity to include the many ideas for neat designs, features, or capabilities they stored away during the initial design. (By reducing the complexity of the first design, the project was more likely to come in on time or under budget.)

However, overloading the second system with these features is likely to lead to delays in testing. It will also leave less room for other engineers to contribute their own ideas or follow creative tangents during the design process. In many ways, an architect must exercise more self-restraint in the second system than was exercised in the first system. For managers who were promoted into the wrong role, the second system often reveals how far removed the new job is from the career path they would actually find more rewarding.

One up: I liked the many nuggets Brooks sprinkles throughout this book. These insights drew on repeated themes from the history of computer science to explain common errors or make predictions about the future of the field.

A common idea was how bad managers often revealed their ineptitude through their excitement for The Next Big Thing. One common mistake such managers tend to make is to overestimate the long-term effects of a major work process shift. A transition to a higher-level language might initially bring strong returns. But over time, it becomes evident that the first problems solved after the change were also the ones with the most value. The remaining problems are likely to return less and less value over time. At some point, another big shift will make it possible to pursue more high-value projects. But here, the cycle starts anew. At some point, the practice of making shift after shift will compromise the long-term potential of the team.

The predictions Brooks made about voice technology intrigued me. In the early days of the Alexa Age, it seems to me like there is a lot left to figure out. Brooks, however, came off to me as fairly certain in how he expected voice technology to work with computers. His thoughts were based on simple logic: since the number of objects available to a computer is theoretically infinite while the number of actions a computer can take on a given object is limited to a set of defined functionalities, voice technology will eventually replace functional commands while pointing will remain the norm for identifying objects.

Of course, Brooks’s prediction is likely to apply for either novice or expert users. As he himself points out, most systems are designed with parallel functional features catering to each type of user. In today’s version of Excel, for example, the mouse allows the novice to do everything an expert can do on the keyboard. The future of voice technology might work the same way: a novice user will have the option for voice technology to identify as well as act on objects while the expert will remain content to use the keyboard to more quickly specify objects (examples here including difficult to pronounce objects, those with homonym names, etc).

One down: I got a little lost in some of the technical details here. Brooks seems down on the flowchart concept and suggests that a more reliable way to understand a system is to study the table structures. Why the hate for flowcharts? How else would a lay user know where the data came from?

He also points out how strategic breakthroughs derive almost exclusively from new algorithms and recommends redoing representations of data or tables in order to find these. Huh?

He also makes reference to certain methods for reducing the demands on debugging. Specifically, he suggests using syntax such as IF/THEN/ELSE, LOOP WHILE, or CASE to break up a program into a more easily controlled structure. Again, I could make neither heads nor tails of these ideas.

I was surprised to find such technically detailed writing in a book I was told focused strictly on project management. But then again, I was told these things by The Business Bro - I assume he has no idea what these things mean, either.

Just saying: I got the sense that programmers often worked late at – or perhaps all the way through – the night. Brooks points out how this mentality reflects the efficiency of thinking for a long, unbroken spell. He also notes how programmers generally report that, on average, half a workday is wasted by various non-programming responsibilities such as meetings or documentation.

Putting these two observations together reminded me of what I learned when I studied the various routines of famous writers. Most seemed capable of writing for between two and four hours a day. However, almost all of them did this in one block of time. It wasn’t like Hemingway wrote chapters of The Old Man and The Sea in the five-minutes spaces between his daily errands, you know? He just stood there, had his drink, and went on and on about the Great DiMaggio until he was done…

If the general lesson is true for programming, a good manager would structure the workday so that the administrative demands of the job came at times entirely separate from a daily stretch of long, unbroken time set aside solely for focused programming work.

i read under the 82nd airborne so you don't have to

Under the 82nd Airborne by Deborah Eisenberg (October 2017)

I came back to Eisenberg’s short fiction after enjoying Transactions in a Foreign Currency. I found I did not like Under the 82nd Airborne as much. However, I will recommend ‘The Robbery’ to anyone considering trying at least one story from this collection.

One of my favorite aspects of reading fiction is being exposed to those sweeping generalizations that are rooted in some aspect of reality yet have no real hope of ever being confirmed as fact. These ‘true on average’ (!) commentaries are often delivered by the types of characters I’ve come across in Eisenberg’s work - earnest yet inexperienced, these creations are likely to see the world differently once they realize how wrong they are about one of their core beliefs.

The best such idea in Under the 82nd Airborne was about America: a county full of people who love to talk, a country where the art of conversation is yet to take a foothold. I also thought one character’s editorial on economics fit the idea well: those with specific economic goals are always able to defend indefensible practices.

In one story, a character notes how nature is nothing except self-expression. Perhaps this is the reason why people enjoy doing what they are good at. I'm still looking for an explanation as to why TOA continues on, however - so if you do have a theory, reader, please get in touch.

leftovers: casual weds

I once wrote a short post with two simple tips for running. As a refresher:

1. Keep the back straight.

2. Make sure the feet land under the knee.

There is a third recommendation I want to explore today. This is to relax as much as possible. Let's update the list:

1. Keep the back straight.

2. Make sure the feet land under the knee.

3. Relax as much as possible.

I didn’t include this point in the original post for two reasons. First, it seemed a bit too obvious. Think about a hypothetical runner who keeps his biceps flexed throughout the workout. This person would look like an idiot, right?

Since I posted my two recommendations, though, I’ve noticed a lot of stiff runners zipping past me. Some of these joggers hold their arms stiffly to the sides while others appear determined to run on their tippy-toes all the way home. My favorite example comes from the runners who arc their backs so that their chests point skyward - it's almost like they are balancing an invisible soccer ball on their tailbones.

What all this stiffness has in common is the way it creates unnecessary muscular tension throughout the workout. Tight muscles are a problem because they tend to forewarn of injuries. If I need to suddenly stop or change direction while running, a loose and relaxed muscle will respond to my movement while a tight muscle might tear under the strain. The analogy to a rubber band pulled taught is not a perfect comparison but I think it relates the general concept pretty well.

The second reason why I didn't include this point in the original post was because I was not quite sure myself how to explain it. At the time of writing, I thought sag was the right word. A runner who allows his or her muscles to saaaaag after accounting for the straight back and foot-under-hip landing motion will achieve the desired effect of maintaining relaxed muscles throughout the run.

I like relaxed a little better, though, because this word also covers the mental challenge of running. A runner who is constantly thinking of more, more, more during the run will soon have a lot of time to think while recovering from injury. It might be appropriate at times, of course, to pick up the pace or run an extra mile. But for the most part, the healthy runner’s mentality is to have the best possible run without being too hurried to wait at a red light, too fast to slow down in response to discomfort, or too tough to cut the run short in the event of pain.

The injury prevention mentality is the biggest benefit of this third rule of thumb. The most common running injuries derive from some degree of the runner’s insatiable desire to run faster, farther, or more frequently. A runner going past the limit often loses one of the first two rules of thumb and knows to stop. But it is possible to maintain the straight back and feet under the knees by keeping the rest of the body under constant strain. By keeping in mind the requirement to run with a relaxed stride, the mind buzzing to do more, more, more is finally settled and the big picture comes back into view.

i've never noticed how noisy it is here

I think we've all had the experience of suddenly noticing how noisy a household appliance is. For me, the refrigerator is the main culprit. One minute I'm just sitting on the couch, reading a book or staring blankly at the wall, and before I know it I can't get the humming of the appliance out of my ears.

City streets seem to work the same way. I realized while making a phone call back in the summer how noisy it is outside. The key, though, was not just to make any call - I've made plenty outside in the past without really worrying about it. The realization came when I made a phone call outdoors that I usually make indoors. The contrast was enough for me to realize how loud the street was.

I've tried to remember this lesson anytime I'm tempted to make a call outside. Things are much better from my apartment where it is much quieter...unless it's one of those weird moments where I've just noticed the refrigerator humming...

You know what, reader? Just text me.

the bb wonders: why aren’t wages rising?

Every once in a while, I pull open a newspaper or log onto a website and read an article about the ‘stagnant’ wages of the middle class. When I read these articles, I expect to see stories about hard working Americans being unfairly or even illegally denied the compensation they are due for their hard work.

But instead, I usually end up reading an article where the built-in assumption is if an employee shows up to work every day for a year or so and doesn’t get fired, he or she should automatically received some sort of raise.

Huh? Just get in on time, don’t screw up for a while, and get a raise? Where do I sign up for these jobs???

I remember learning about this mentality when I first started working. A lot of people asked me a year into my job about a raise. Not if I got a raise, mind, just about it, if I'd gotten a raise - yet - because the assumption was I would get a raise a year into my tenure.

This was interesting. I hadn’t been promised anything and thus wasn’t expecting anything. But about a week after my second year started, I did get a raise despite doing nothing better than I had done it a month ago.

I feel this mentality needs an update. What happened to earning a raise by becoming better at the job? Was this ever a thing to begin with? Another thing I learned when I first started working was that if there was 'nothing to do', an employee should 'do nothing'. Paid to do nothing! I could hardly believe my eyes.

Instead of sitting around because there is nothing to do, go talk to someone and find out what problems the organization needs solved. If you can solve any of those problems, you are on your way to a raise. To put it more bluntly, the way to increase wages is to earn a raise.

This was more or less my approach over five and a half years. I didn't get five and a half raises (editor's note: he got fewer than five and a half raises) but each time I got a raise, it was based on doing the new things I’d discovered needed doing. And when the terms were finalized in these cases, I did not have a long list of new tasks or responsibilities to undertake in order to justify my new wage - the things I was being paid for were the things I was already doing.

Signed,

The Business Bro

Footnotes / a rebuttal

0. Sure, let's play devil's advocate...

Now, I can identify a couple of reasons for the pervasiveness of this mentality. Inflation is the obvious one - if prices rise but wages don't, employees are basically being paid less in terms of what their wages are worth in terms of goods and services. But inflation doesn't happen once a year so I'm not sure why 'inflation-adjustments' need to happen once a year.

And it's not like the organization isn't impacted by inflation, either - in order to pay YOU, hotshot employee, a wage consistent with inflation, they will need to cut back in other areas! To put it another way, if everyone in an organization demanded a 1% annual raise, no matter what, then the organization with an otherwise unchanged cost structure will have to lay-off 1% of its workforce in order to keep everyone else happy.

Another reason for this mentality is that some employers do make promises to new hires about reviews, bonuses, or raises. Often, these promises correlate perfectly to the word ‘annual’. Well, reader, do you need this blog to remind you that it's a bad sign if someone breaks a promise to you? A broken promise is a far bigger problem than stagnant wages, I assure you.

the memoir i'm not working on

Genre: Memoir

Title: No working title

I started writing a journal the night my mom decided to stop cancer treatment and go on hospice care. I wrote daily entries at first, tapered off briefly, and resumed again until a few days after she passed. My last entry was on July 31, about a month after I started.

When I reread the journal a few months later, I was pleasantly surprised with what I'd written. There was nothing book-like about the journal, I suppose, but I thought there was a possibility that I could riff on the entries someday and add some new insights about illness, loss, or hospice.

Reading a number of Maggie Nelson's books in the months afterward opened my thinking further. I considered ways to reprint my entries and add new comments to each. Another possibility was to separate my entries with short essay chapters unrestricted by the forward-moving flow of a journal.

This went from being 'an idea in my head' to 'an idea I'm officially not working on' when I started hospice volunteering. Each shift added nuance to my understanding of the philosophy and my service over the past two years has led to more thoughtful reflections on the experiences I wrote about in the journal.

Starting this blog was another big step forward. I admit, a number of my posts so far are rough drafts of chapters to one day include in the book. Still others imitate the style of writing I would include in the book. And every post, whether it relates to hospice or not, enhances my writing skills.

One consideration for this idea is competition. There is a lot out of great writing already out there about illness and loss. However, I've noticed most of the published work in this area comes directly from the sick. I also commonly come across accounts from close family and friends serving as primary caregivers or medical proxies. In contrast, books about hospice volunteering are relatively rare. If this is going to work for me, I need to consider ways to adjust the angle of my approach and stand out by being noticeably different from (instead of relatively better than) my competitors.

leftovers: just say no

This post grew out of my reaction to Fishman's piece, 'The Loner' (which I've written about a couple of times on TOA). I started with an idea about 'just saying no' to her supervisor's initial request - the way I saw it, a hospice shift was no time for volunteers to work out their own unresolved feelings about death.

But as I wrote, I understood the two ideas did not fit together. The analogy comparing the anti-drug campaign with the hospice situation was no longer clear to me. So, like with any situation where two problems were coalescing into one, I separated the parts and wrote this stand-alone post about the 'just say no' campaign.

The ability to separate problems into component parts and attack each one in turn is among the underrated skills in any problem solver's arsenal. And perhaps a failure to separate problems appropriately and attack each one in turn was the underlying failure in the anti-drug campaign. Rather than address the underlying conditions of poverty driving many into the illegal trade or addressing the lack of viable treatment options for helping the addicted get back on their feet, the 'Just Say No' campaign pointed its condescending finger at the poor for running out of options and at drug users for initially exercising bad judgment. Two problems are rarely solved with one solution.

Footnotes / I mean, you can send me money, but...

0. If each person who read this donated $1...

This article from The Guardian summarizes the line of thinking with more professionalism (and more requests for money) than is ever seen here on TOA.

reading review: fifty inventions that shaped the modern economy - part two

In part one of my review for Fifty Inventions That Shaped The Modern Economy, I promised to cover some of the general themes in greater detail. Those thoughts are below.

Before we begin, however, let’s take care of a couple of admin details. First, in my ‘part one’, I mentioned how much information was packed into this book. I was not the only one who felt this way. In a recent episode of EconTalk, host Russ Roberts brought Tim Harford onto his show and mentioned the same thing. The hour-long conversation was almost as enjoyable as the book. For those interested, the link is here.

I also mentioned the BBC podcast series which accompanied the release of this book. The link to those episodes is here.

Thanks for reading,

Tim

*********

Most humans perform at their peak productivity when the temperature is between sixty-five and seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.

Back in high school, our basketball coach thought turning up the heat in the gym was a major tactical innovation. We would therefore practice in the hot gym so we could handle the conditions better than our opponents (and their sane coaches). I’m not sure about his ingenuity but I couldn’t disagree with the results: we only lost one home game during my junior season. What this suggests to me is that, although the peak performance range is likely room temperature, anyone can overcome this basic limitation through training.

I wonder if my former coach would be surprised to learn ‘turning up the heat’ did not make Harford’s list of fifty important inventions.

*********

Some speculate that without air conditioning, Ronald Reagan could not have won the presidency.

TOA: This ‘fact’ takes into account how US migration patterns changed as innovations like the air conditioner made living in warmer climates a more reasonable option. When people moved, they took their political preferences with them. The resulting changes to the electoral college gave Reagan the support required for his victory.

This, to me, is the worst way to use statistics. It demands we accept anything not obviously false as true. It is a classic case of correlation, not causation (unless Reagan’s opponent was promising to ban air conditioning, which I find so unlikely I’m not going to bother fact-checking).

 *********

The expansion of search capabilities is likely driving down costs. Any customer can now stand in a store, find a cheaper product elsewhere, and use the information to haggle under the threat of leaving.

Shipping containers have made international transport so cheap that economists often assume transport costs to be zero when they make their calculations.

The cold chain introduced global specialization to perishable food. It is cheaper to raise certain animals or crops in one area of the world and ship than it is to raise these same goods locally.

Product design often creates significant opportunities for cost saving through increased transportation efficiency.

Shipping products as parts to assemble rather than entirely finished goods saves on transportation costs. If the change is significant, the customer can decide to spend the difference on hiring additional help for the assembly step.

TOA: Cost reduction was an unsurprising theme throughout this book – Harford is an economist by training, after all. In the context of cost reduction, it seemed like for most producers getting a product into a shipping box was the critical step. Anything in a box can be easily stacked on a container ship and floated across the ocean – an almost zero-cost method of transport I suspect the economy will not improve on for a long, long time.

The way shipping costs have changed over the years has set the stage for today’s economy. The classic mom-and-pop or brick-and-mortar local shop struggles whenever a big-box retailer moves in down the street; the rise of the online retailer is like having every big-box retailer moving in, all at once, next to every local establishment in the country.

The final quote reminded me of Lego. I’m not sure how much benefit the toy company has gained from leaving the assembly step to its customers. I do know that (a) selling the unassembled product makes it easier to ship in a box and (b) having kids put the toy together at home - for fun - is a clever way to get around child labor laws.

*********

An IOU from a reliable source is basically the same thing as having cash. A system of such IOUs is the start of a cash-like system where debt is freely traded.

Paper money grew out of IOUs being used as tradable debt. For people with sterling reputations, it became possible to write endless IOUs without ever being asked to pay up. Governments, naturally, thought perhaps they should be taking advantage of this phenomenon and established today’s system of fiat money.

Low and predictable inflation is a good safeguard against the possibility of deflation. And relying on central bankers to print the right amount of new money is probably safer than relying on miners to dig up just the right amount of new gold.

Though inflation statistics suggest a unit of money is worth less today than ever before, the variety of products available for purchase imply it is much more valuable.

TOA: Like the passport, the unit of currency was established as a threat: if you ask us to repay you, we will. I guess as far as threats go, it’s a friendly one (though perhaps only among individuals, since nations use the threat of war as a way to get out of bad debt).

The tricky bit these days is that the fiat money system looks a lot like the gold-backed system of yesteryear yet is no longer based on a pile of reserves earmarked for repayments. Someone could – and does, almost everyday, in places like Econ 101, the local bar, or Congress – point out that since money is no longer based on anything, it is doomed to crash spectacularly someday in the not too distant future.

Based on my understanding, this is a technically accurate but entirely incorrect conclusion. Again, the similarity in appearance to gold-backed currency is confusing. But if the analogy must be maintained, I would suggest today’s money system is backed by a belief in our fellow humans to create value rather than our belief in our fellow humans to dig up more gold.

In the hands of the right human, an empty field can be cultivated to feed generations, words can be rearranged to lift the sunken spirit, and chemicals can be mixed to create cures for the dreaded disease. The work of rearranging trees into a house, ingredients into a meal, or sounds into a song is the very essence of human creation. The modern money system incorporates all of this. Societies no longer enrich themselves solely through what comes out of the gold mine; they invent, create, and cooperate to create value. It is the trust required of each other to keep this value-creating cycle going that has replaced gold as the backbone of the paper money system.

i read hue and cry so you don't have to

Hue and Cry by James Allen McPherson (October 2017)

McPherson’s collection was among the best I read in 2017. Two of his works, ‘Gold Coast’ and the title story, are often cited as being examples of great short fiction (1). In addition to this pair, I thought ‘On Trains’ and ‘All The Lonely People’ were very enjoyable. My favorite story was ‘A Solo Song’.

I noted a number of the insights made throughout these stories. One of McPherson’s narrators points out the importance of learning how to handle ‘stupidity in the intelligent’ while another defines people who are bad with money as those who ‘buy what they should have for free’.

The most thought-provoking idea seemed to come straight from the author, though. For McPherson, as people become emotionally empty they find it harder and harder to spend time in places important to others. It also becomes challenging for them to participate in activities that mean nothing to them, especially if those activities are important to other people.

Footnotes / who is this, this...Updike? He doesn't even have a blog!

1. How many of the century’s stories did John Updike read? Or write, for that matter?

‘Gold Coast’ was selected by John Updike for The Best American Short Stories of the Century. It’s a nice honor, I suppose, one better to win than not, but I do wonder what separated the last story that made Updike’s list from the next one he would have included.

leftovers: the 2017 toa awards - music

I went to fewer concerts in 2017 than I did in 2016. By my current unofficial count, I actually think I only made it to two shows during the year.

The first was in September for Celtic Social Club at the Norwood Theater. This band includes members from Scotland and France and plays most of their shows on the European continent. For the last two years, they’ve gone on the strangest US tour I’ve seen by any band: Buffalo, Rochester…NORWOOD, MA (???)…and New York City. I don’t understand, really, but if they do come back next year, look for me in the audience (1).

A couple months later, I got to see Courtney Barnett perform at the Orpheum Theater with Kurt Vile. The two were touring together after collaborating on a recent album. I suspect most of the audience arrived with the same mentality I did - there to see Courtney, willing to tolerate Kurt. The result was, like the album, pretty good. Anytime you can get two talented guitarists on the same stage, I think you have to take it.

Those two were it for me this year. As I mentioned in my previous music post, in 2017 I skipped shows from bands I liked more often than I went to them.

My first skip was in January for Rubblebucket, an aptly named big brass mess of a band that I first became aware of when they opened for Lake Street Dive in October 2016. I was just starting up with them at the time and didn’t feel ready to pull the trigger on a show. I guess I didn’t realize they were on the verge of winning ‘band of the year’, or whatever, though I’m not sure if having this knowledge a year ago would have influenced my decision.

I strongly considered going to see Imelda May in the spring. In hindsight, there was just no good reason to go - I’d heard a couple of her songs, really, and that was about it. When another option for the day came up, I took it without reservation. Whether I would have enjoyed the show at all is an open question (but I suspect I would have). In any event, it does seem like I give Irish artists a tad more credit than I probably should and this is perhaps the best example of my favoritism.

Arcade Fire dropped by in September. Earlier in the year, I would have said this was a slam-dunk for me. But by the time the show rolled around, I was almost completely out on the band. Q: Arcade Fire - remember when they were good? A: I do, just. I guess sometimes the best way to learn that I am no longer a fan of a group is to have them play a concert ten minutes from my apartment - if I don’t even consider going, it’s probably no longer a band I’m very interested in.

The last show I decided against was U2 (ever heard of 'em?) Ultimately, the band’s stadium tour commemorating the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree felt a little too nostalgic for me, a relative latecomer into their hardcore fan group. I was born after the album came out! I was also a little skeptical of their ability to carry a stadium show at this stage in their careers. But I think the nail in the coffin came when I considered the logistics of going to Foxboro, a suburb some forty minutes away from Boston and completely inaccessible to me without a car (2).

The good news, reader, is that I am going when U2 comes back to town for an arena show in June! They will be at the TD Garden, just around the block from me, for at least two nights. At the moment, I only have tickets for one show. But who knows, reader, who knows what might happen between now and then? In the age of compulsive credit card purchasing, even I might not know until just seconds before.

Footnotes / fitting in is for things that don’t fit / Irish = Celtic? / obligatory Arrested Development reference

0. The annual shot of LSD

I failed to make it three years in a row for seeing a Lake Street Dive show...boo-hoo!

In other LSD news, I did cause a minor sensation over the summer when I included the group among the two I would bring to a hypothetical ‘desert island’ scenario. Suddenly, a number of others in the group were excitedly sharing their own love for the band and wondering if they could revise their ‘desert island’ picks. Surely, such a reaction speaks volumes to the passion of their fans. There might not be many of us but we all know the group is very good.

1. Isn’t Bono Celtic?

No.

Regarding Celtic Social Club, they have altered their sound over the past couple of years to bring a greater emphasis to the Irish-Celtic aspects of their sound. Their final song at the concert I attended was ‘Dirty Old Town’, a song I believe by law is required of every Irish performer to cover at least once during a concert performance. Here’s a link to a recent performance from a show in France.

2. Granted, having U2 in Foxboro did force a minor recalculation...

...but the verdict remains unchanged, reader - I'd rather be dead in Boston than alive in Foxboro.

the business bro's habits are like legislative flyers

Good morning,

There is a lot of terrible advice out there regarding the best way to create a new habit. It should come as no surprise to you, dear reader, that I have my own lard to contribute to this saturated field.

So...ready? OK, reader - for me, the best way to get a new habit going is to borrow the rider tactic from mediocre (or is it pronounced politically savvy) lawmakers.

Now, reader, a 'rider' is what the politicians call a provision in a bill that has little connection to the subject matter of the bill. In most cases, the larger bill is sure to pass while the 'rider' is sure to fail on its own. Therefore, attaching the rider to a larger bill is sometimes the only tactic available to get the provisions detailed within the 'rider' to pass. Thus, by including the new item as part of the existing bill, the lawmakers increases the odds of the 'rider' making its way into law.

I've used the 'principle' behind this idea to start new habits. Instead of trying to initiate a new concept entirely on its own, I attach the new concept to an existing routine or task. This way, I shift the risk of the new habit failing in its early stages to the risk of the already successful routine failing to continue on.

A good example is how I started reading my 'daily reminders' (1). The idea was to have a list of things I would read each morning before I started the workday. The reminders would serve to ground my thinking and allow me to start each day fresh without the distractions of the outside world coming in to throw me off balance.

There was only one problem - I forgot to read these on an almost daily basis. I tried many different methods to change my habit: I kept the reminders in an email draft, I printed them out and put them into my most frequently used folder, I even tried taping them to the wall next to my mouse. These changes would work for a couple of days but my mind would soon remember to forget.

Finally, I figured out the trick. Each morning, I turned on the screen by pressing the small button on the bottom right-hand corner of the monitor. I never failed to do this (unless I was not using the computer that day, which was the case on precisely zero days out of my near fifteen hundred workdays). One day, I realized that if I could somehow make reading the reminders part of the process of turning on the monitor, I would never forget to read these again.

The next day, I taped the reminders onto my monitor so a piece of the paper covered the button. In order to turn on the screen, I had to first lift the reminders. The process of doing this reminded me to read them.

I think this is a pretty easy philosophy to implement. Most people already do a form of it by task-batching laundry, grocery shopping, or household cleaning. Anyone who goes out to 'run errands' does this in a way as well. The key is to minimize the cost of getting started by finding the right set of coattails to ride.

Signed,

The Business Bro

Footnotes / an example

0. Sometimes, these footnotes are like 'riders', just irrelevant quips that would make no sense as their own post yet are not so trivial to derail the point of the original piece...

Editor's note: reintegrating The Business Bro into TOA is yet another example of the rider concept in action.

1. The current set of daily reminders...

Daily reminders- be bigger than you feel...
-> Wake up, decide if I’m tired, then look at the clock...
-> Don’t engage on irrelevant POSITIONS- find common INTERESTS
-> Feedback is about what you did, not who you are; listen to verbs, ignore nouns
-> Nothing good happens after 10pm
-> Nothing is worth doing on the computer within two hours of bedtime…
-> Most urges go away in fifteen minutes
-> No one cares- coach your team
-> Choose courage over comfort
-> Label negative thoughts
-> Be who you needed when you were younger
-> Self talk means ‘I will, I will…’ / for bball: ‘flick, stick’
-> An artist must make time for the long periods of solitude

-Be a good steward to your gifts
-Protect your time
-Feed your inner life
-Avoid too much noise
-Read good books
-Have good sentences in your ears
-Be by yourself as often as you can
-Walk
-Take the phone off the hook
-Work regular hours

now, i’m no scientist, part two

The basic ‘thought pattern’ I referenced in the first post was about how solutions to major problems tend to get applied to problems of decreasing importance. The example I used was hand washing; it first emerged to solve a major problem (doctors first touching deadly germs, then touching vulnerable new mothers as they gave birth) before being applied to increasingly less important problems ('I just got off the Red Line' or "I’m about to each some French fries…better wash those germs off first!"). As increasingly less important problems were ‘solved’ by hand washing, the gains of cleaning up moved closer and closer to being offset by the cost of over-sterilization.

The best personal example for this thought pattern involves stretching. From the first minutes of my athletic life, I was urged to stretch. Every basketball practice of my life - from the most casual youth team all the way through varsity college basketball - started with some kind of stretching routine. During this time, I rarely experienced muscle problems.

At some point, I heard a fairly memorable quip -  runners who do yoga tend to get injured. Who said this or where I heard it are facts lost to the eroding edges of my memory banks. But whatever the source, I responded to the thought and started experimenting a bit with my stretching routine. To my surprise, I found I did not need to stretch quite so much (or in the same way) I always did prior to exercise. I did find it beneficial to stretch post-workout, however, and so I maintained my routine for these cases.

I think my personal experience ties into the history of the activity itself. The first person in human history to stretch was probably unable to move thanks to very tight muscles. I bet he pulled a hamstring anytime he squatted down to go to the bathroom! Once he started stretching, he found himself better able to exercise (hunt), move about (gather), and remain injury free (not get eaten by a tiger). Others likely observed the success of this stretching routine and began stretching themselves. The infinite wisdom of - you ever see a cheetah stretch? - gave way to - you ever see a man outrun a cheetah without stretching? Soon, every athlete was stretching before exercise and every coach was urging the next generation to do the same.

I suspect stretching reached a critical moment when it became associated with successful exercise (perhaps sometime in the last twenty years when any yo-yo could ‘go online’, start a crap blog, and write knowledgeably about anything). People with no exercise experience saw fitter people doing it and concluded that they too required A Good Stretch to warm up the muscles before exercise. People who exercise would know best about exercise, right? Eventually, people started to over-stretch, onlookers were prompted to comment on the ‘negatives’ of stretching, and I overheard a quip about runners doing yoga.

Now, I’m no exercise expert. I’m sure your local village/town/city has a physical trainer with a far better answer than anything I've ever written here. When I was struggling with yet another running injury a year ago, I surprisingly heeded my own advice and sought out the wisdom of a local trainer (albeit second-hand through my younger brother). In the same way proper medical professionals say ‘wash your hands’, the physical trainer’s advice was simply ‘make sure to stretch’. So, I started stretching again and, miracle of miracles, started to feel better while running.

What’s really going on when there is a backlash of false information against an obvious and widely agreed upon best practice? Part of it is due to the creep effect I described above. As powerful solutions are applied to increasingly less important problems, the cost-effectiveness ratio moves slowly toward zero. Those who recognize when the costs exceed the benefits must remember this invalidates only the fringe applications and not the original case.

Another explanation to consider is how examples tend to self-select. A person who chooses to regularly wash hands might be the sort of person who is already germ-conscious and is cleaner to begin with when compared to the average person. Such people will suffer the costs of excessive hand-washing before someone who washes up just once a week (on Sunday, whether they need to or not).

The same applies for stretching. Those who stretch are more likely to be flexible than those who do not stretch. These people are likely closer to the threshold for being ‘overstretched’ than those who’ve never stretched. Measuring the effects of stretching without distinguishing these groups is like studying the effects of an extra beer without first separating those who’ve been drinking since noon from those who are stone-sober.

The best recommendation I can give for stretching is the same I would give for hand washing. First, establish some basic rules of thumb for when to definitely do it. Second, do the same for when to definitely NOT do it (1). And for the cases that fall in between, well, try not to stress out too much - as long as the major cases are taken care of, the little stuff isn't worth sweating over.

Footnotes / public health announcement

0. Now, I'm no scientist, part three...

Reader, wash your hands during flu season.

1. What about these rules, then?

Third, save these rules for a future blog post.

I should clarify my position on the 'in-between' cases, however. Since the cases in-between are those where the cost-benefit balance is close to equal, I would recommend not doing much thinking - just flip a coin if you want. I'm sure there is a good case for learning to make the right decisions in those examples, of course, but I find life is much simpler when I make those decisions, quickly, on a case-by-case basis and move on to something more productive rather than worrying about getting each one exactly right through some overcooked analysis.

the children's book i'm not working on

Genre: Children's book

Title: The Porridge Clause

Estimated publication date: Once I find an illustrator, I'll get going.

This idea has actually made a prior appearance on TOA (my post last January about fake book titles included it).

My intent is a rewrite of the classic fairy tale, Goldilocks. Though most of the details will be familiar to the average reader, the story will be told from the point of view of the three bears and it will be set a little later in the timeline of the original. It is possible this book will be interpreted as a sequel or a parody rather than a rewrite (which I'm fine with).

The lasting legacy of The Porridge Clause will be its exploration into why a blond haired, blue-eyed white girl breaking into a house of hard-working minorities is allowed to eat, sit, and sleep however she pleases in someone else's house without seeming to suffer any consequences. If I'm allowed by society to write a foreword for my own children's book (editor's note: he should not be) I will use this space to openly question why Goldilocks is glorified as a literary classic when it so clearly...well, let's not make the classic mistake of writing the book on the blog, shall we, little reader?

The main obstacle at the moment is one I alluded to above: I'm no illustrator. And unfortunately, I fear doing this with cats instead of bears will diminish the force of my point (so the skills I boasted about a few weeks ago will be of no help). Once I find an illustrator (preferably someone with a basic understanding of copyright law, as well, just in case I can be sued for this by whoever the racist inventor of Goldilocks was) I will probably think a little more seriously about this one.

leftovers: the case against sugar

Early on in this book, Taubes quoted an industry executive who refused to feed sugary products to his own children. I believe the line was something like 'I would need to give them an insulin shot' if he allowed one of his kids to eat so much sugar in one sitting.

The line reminded me of investing wisdom from a friend. My friend's job was with a firm whose products included actively managed portfolios. His role was to research companies and make recommendations to improve these portfolios. When I asked him if he actively managed his own investments, he laughed and said 'of course not - index funds, man'.

rereading review: december 2017, part one

Hi all,

Longtime readers – or anyone who read the December newsletter – will recall my intention to devote the final month of the year to re-reading. I’m sure the world is just dying to find out how it went…

Luckily for you, reader, so is The Business Bro. He has graciously agreed to stop in today and interview me on what transpired in December.

And as always, thanks for rereading.

Tim

TOA: Hi, thanks for-

BB: Right, so, what’s happening?

TOA: Well, I thought you were here to interview me about what I read in December.

BB: Sounds boring, why would I do that?

TOA: Well, for one, you said you would-

BB: Huh? When was this?

TOA: Yesterday, after I sent you that email.

BB: What email?

TOA: I sent it in the morning, asking if you’d drop by today and interview me about-

BB: I didn’t get that email.

TOA: What are you talking about? You replied to it.

BB: No, that can’t be. I must have been hacked.

TOA: Why would anyone ever hack your email?

BB: How should I understand the criminal mind? Maybe if you asked-

TOA: It doesn’t matter, just ask me some questions about what happened and you’ll be fine.

BB: OK, sure, whatever, so what did Hillary have to say?

TOA: What?

BB: Didn’t she write What Happened?

TOA: No, goodness, I meant ask about what happened in December.

BB: What? It's February.

TOA: Oh boy...

BB: Why ask, anyway? Aren’t you going to write those little ready reviews or whatever?

TOA: Yeah, sure, I’ll probably write them at some point-

BB: So why a separate interview? Am I gonna have to interview you for every book now?

TOA: No, it’s just that for this block I thought there were some interesting connections among the books I read that you might-

BB: What books?

TOA: Did you read the December newsletter?

BB: Uhh…

TOA: What the hell!

BB: I mean, did you email it?

TOA: Yeah, the emails go out every day-

BB: I told you already, I was hacked, I couldn’t read the emails.

TOA: It doesn’t matter. So what I said was, in December I only wanted to re-read old books-

BB: How old?

TOA: Can you stop interrupting?

BB: Interrupting? I thought I was interviewing you? I’m just asking the questions, here, if you need me to go I have a data breach to-

TOA: OK, fine, ask whatever you like, the books weren’t old, they were just books I’ve read before. It’s kind of like the book club idea you abandoned after re-reading just one book-

BB: Hey, that isn’t abandoned, I’m just taking my time, you have a hare mentality, what it takes in business these days is to think like a tortoise, one step-

TOA: Sure, sure, I’ll be here when you finally read Plain Talk again, anyway, the point is, I just wanted to limit December to re-reading, I just wanted to see how it went, and if it went well, I would make it into a tradition of sorts, because by the time the end of the year rolls-

BB: That’s a stupid idea.

TOA: What’s stupid about it?

BB: Well, the way you have it set up, if everyone did that in December, no one would read any of your December posts, since they wouldn’t have read it yet, so they couldn’t re-read it, you see, because they would have to wait a year to read it…clever, right? That’s why I didn’t read your stupid newsletter! How do you like your own medicine?

TOA: That’s an all-time load of bull from you, plus, you just told me you got hacked, so now you’re obviously lying, clever my foot, clever like a dumb-

BB: Hey hey hey! No profanity.

TOA: What’s this, no profanity? You trying to get into HR now? I wasn’t going to say anything, anyway.

BB: You never say anything. Anyway, refresh my memory, please, and remind me what you were going to do in December?

TOA: Right. So I wanted to exclusively read books I’d already read. There wasn’t any special criteria beyond my just wanting to read them once more. I ended up with this shortlist:

*Bluets by Maggie Nelson
*The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
*Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson
*M Train by Patti Smith
*High Output Management by Andy Grove
*The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
*Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
*Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

BB: Oh, Andy, I’ve read him.

TOA: Right, like you're on a first name basis with him, well, I almost got there, I ended up finishing everything in December except for that one and Eureka Street.

BB: What happened? You gonna write a book called Low Output Reading?

TOA: Please.

BB: Or maybe you can make it a book you are not writing? Honestly, this blog, it gives me a headache some-

TOA: Look, it was just bad admin, for some reason I couldn’t renew High Output Management at the library when it came due at the end of the month. Some loser put it on reserve! So I had to return it. I’ll get it again soon.

BB: Who are you calling a loser?

TOA: Huh?

BB: Er, never mind. How in the world is it possible for someone to want to read that book?

TOA: Who knows? Maybe a lot of budding business bros made it a New Year’s resolution to stop managing like shi-

BB: Hey! Watch it! I’m not finishing this interview if you keep cussing!

TOA: Right, sorry. Wait, when did you start the interview?

BB: Right when I walked in, if you knew how to answer a question we’d be done. Plus, I’ll ask the questions around here, thank you very much!

TOA: Let’s just move on, shall we?

BB: Suit yourself. So you’ll read High Output Management again soon and write twenty-five hundred words of nonsense about it for us shortly. I’m sure your three readers are all looking forward to it!

TOA: Well, based on your recent revelations, apparently it’s been two-

BB: Quiet! I’m talking here! And what happened to Eureka Street?

TOA: Oh, I read it, I just finished it on New Year’s Day.

BB: You liar!

TOA: What? So I didn’t finish it in December, you see, and that’s the point, but you can ask me about it anyway.

BB: My only question is, why does the book have such a stupid title?

TOA: Stupid title? Like The Hard Thing About Hard Things? At least Eureka Street doesn’t sound like some low-budget porno. Next question.

BB: So you are counting Eureka Street in Reading Year 2018?

TOA: What is Reading Year 2018? Is that what the IRS calls it?

BB: I see it was written by a 'Robert'...not a good start to your ‘Hello Ladies’ index, is it?

TOA: Hey look, the numbers are what they are, and I’m not interested in using my re-reading month to fudge anything. Unlike you, I wasn’t in the kitchen the day we learned how to cook the books. And if my reading selections make me a sexist, then so be it, the only recommendations I get from you are all written by dudes wearing ill-fitting suits, plus if someone reads three books a year and two of them were by women, well, sure, the percentages work out, but that’s still like forty books less than-

BB: OK, OK, settle down!

TOA: What? I wasn’t going to curse!

BB: You were starting to sound like a business bro there...or, or...or...

TOA: Or what?

BB: Or Moya.

TOA: Oh, no.

BB: Oh no what? Who doesn't like a little-

TOA: No way.

BB: OK, whatever.

TOA: Well, I guess I wouldn’t know, since someone took High Output Management away from me before I got a chance to read it.

BB: Why didn’t you just read it before you had to return it?

TOA: Ah, well, that’s a good question, I basically just ran out of time.

BB: Pitiful. Time isn’t something you get from a benefactor, time is just the decisions you make. So you decided not to read the book, correct? So you hadn’t even opened it when you returned it, correct?

TOA: Right, more or less. It’s not a big deal. It’s sort of true, I mean, but I was busy wrapping up some of my other reading. Wind-Up Bird in particular was a beast, the thing was over six hundred pages and weighed more than all the other books I re-read combined.

BB: Oh, so you didn’t like it?

TOA: What? No, it was great, the book was just a lot bigger than I remembered.

BB: Sounds like this blog.

TOA: Quiet.

BB: So what did you like best about it?

TOA: Well, I’d kind of forgotten pretty much everything about the book. Longtime readers will recall how I used a character from the book, Mr. Honda, as an answer to one of my security questions. Reading this book again-

BB: Wait, what do you mean, security question?

TOA: You know, like when you log into a bank account online and it asks you some stupid fu-

BB: Hey hey hey! I just got hacked and you’re out here yelling out the passwords-

TOA: What! Pipe down, I’m talking here! Mr. Honda isn’t a password, you fool, it’s the answer to a question, and the only one I’ve been allowed to answer thus far, so listen up, Business Brick, I’m talking about those stupid security questions that ask you easily identifiable things like what school you went to or what your dad’s middle name is, it's ridiculous, and then the news goes on and on with wide-eyed surprise about data breaches, give me a break, like I’m supposed to believe these websites are secure because a hacker would never figure out what street I grew up on, morons, all of them, morons I say-

BB: Goodness, do I need to get Moya?

TOA: Who? His name’s Mamiya.

BB: What?

TOA: From Wind-Up Bird, that’s Honda’s buddy, Mamiya.

BB: I haven’t read the book yet, you see-

TOA: I figured, you don’t read anything, anyway-

BB: I got hacked, and even if I didn’t, I have better shit to do than read a six hundred page book.

TOA: What happened to the no-cussing rule?

BB: Oops.

TOA: Don’t sweat it, Business Butthead, anyway I did read the book again and realized why I liked Mr. Honda so much, the way Murakami describes the guy is really something else, equal parts hilarious and mythical.

BB: Equal parts hilarious and mythical? What does that mean?

TOA: Yeah, see, this is why I don’t review these books, because people who don’t read can’t figure it out, look, if you don’t watch the sunset, don’t question the colors I use in the description of it, OK?

BB: That’s why you never succeed, you watch sunsets instead of getting to work, right, well, OK, so you liked Honda, was he your favorite character from the month?

TOA: Oh, now we’re talking, let’s see, well, I liked Roche from Eureka Street, I liked the Colonel from Hard-Boiled Wonderland, I liked Jake’s cat…

BB: Jake’s cat?

TOA: Yeah, that one was from Eureka Street as well. The Shadow from Hard-Boiled Wonderland was pretty good, too, though hard to say for sure if I’m allowed to describe him as a character.

BB: No one from Bluets? And what was the cat’s name?

TOA: Well, see, the thing with that, I don’t think the cat had a name, and as for Bluets and The Argonauts and M Train, well, those books were memoir-like substances, so it’s hard to say one character or another was a favorite, it's hard to say there were any characters in those books at all, in fact. I suppose I could say Maggie Nelson was a favorite character, but that would be ridiculous, and quite frankly, also untrue, though it wasn’t like she was unlikable, just saying-

BB: I’m sure Patti Smith’s been described as a character at some point in her life.

TOA: Right, well, I’m not joining that club today.

BB: So, wait, memoir-like substance.

TOA: Is that a question?

BB: Yeah, well, what do you mean?

TOA: Well, I don’t really know, I mean, but since the books are about each author’s experiences and nothing in them is really made up, I’m sure they qualify as memoir. I just don’t think these books fit my working definition for ‘memoir’.

BB: What are you talking about? A memoir is just like you said, about the author.

TOA: Possibly, and it’s a fair definition, but in these books it’s less the author telling us readers, well, telling me, I should say, since I read, but anyway, in these books it’s not like the author is telling me what happened and how she felt about it, there is simultaneously more and less than that. It’s more like the pieces are put on the page and they are being constantly rearranged.

BB: You know, I started to worry when you said ‘simultaneously more and less’, but-

TOA: Why would you worry, you aren’t gonna read this, anyway-

BB: Stop interrupting!

TOA: You stop interrupting, anyway, when I started the month I kind of remembered this as a feature of Bluets and The Argonauts, that both of these books were not so linear as a reader might expect from a memoir, but I’d also forgotten how the book was organized to make this clear. No paragraphs, nothing traditional in the formatting, just blocks of text separated from each other. Sometimes a block would relate directly to a neighbor and sometimes the narrative would just jump a little bit. I really enjoyed the fluidity of the books.

BB: So M Train was also like this?

TOA: No, see, M Train, I’d forgotten, was written more like a standard old memoir, but the timing jumps just the same. And I think since I first read M Train a couple of years ago, my view has changed a little bit on the style. In a way, I was impressed as I read the book in a way I wasn’t the first time because the skill needed for Patti Smith to go from the present to the past and back again is something I recognize now as a massively difficult technique for any writer to master.

BB: The challenge, you mean, being the process of writing about different periods of time within the structure of a genre that, by definition, doesn’t allow for leaps in time?

TOA: Sort of, in a way, I guess I agree with that, and there’s more to it. Now, I don’t want to take anything away from the Nelson books by what I'm about to say...but...I came away more impressed with M Train than I expected because the structure doesn’t help the author in the way it does for Bluets or The Argonauts.

BB: Or Proper Admin?

TOA: Huh?

BB: Never mind.

TOA: Right, well, anyway, I mean it’s hard to write a memoir that doesn’t follow a linear narrative progression, so in a way these books are similar, it’s just that M Train does it without strictly defining leaps in time by explicitly separating blocks of text and I’m more impressed by that now than I was the first time I read it.

BB: So did you see connections among the fiction-

TOA: Hold up, also, regarding Proper Admin, yeah, I hear ya, I think it’s right, the setup helped early on but these days it’s easier to write the blocks separately.

BB: Not for everyone.

TOA: What do you mean?

BB: Well, where’s Moya been? I mean, he used to get his monthly piece in on time when we were going full guns on Proper Admin, but I haven’t seen a post of his in months.

TOA: I thought you got hacked?

BB: Umm, well, until then, obviously.

TOA: Yeah.

BB: Well?

TOA: I’m not sure, he’s usually around and ranting and drinking whiskey, but he hasn’t really-

Moya: Who needs me?

TOA: Oh no, it’s him!

BB: Oh good, just the man-

TOA: Moya, you gotta go-

BB: What? I want to catch up a bit-

TOA: Well, go for a walk then-

Moya: A walk, a walk, you say, on these streets, where parked cars are given more room than the pedestrians, on Charles Street, maybe-

TOA: Here we go...

Moya: -a three lane street with two lanes for parking, that’s five lanes by my count, five lanes of metal and rubber and gasoline, the environment itself on four wheels, eight wheels, wheels up and down, nowhere to walk, nowhere to talk, nowhere to sit with a whiskey-

BB: Actually, this isn’t good-

Moya: -and the bikes, the bikes, who are these bikes, riding around, no helmets, no courtesy, no hope, sit, sit Moya, sit and have a whiskey-

TOA: Maybe we should-

Moya: -the bikes go up and down, it’s one-way for us all, it’s a red light for us all, but the bikes, oh the bikes, they go zippidy-dee-dah on through-

BB: I’m going to take him outside-

Moya: -and Beacon Street, four lanes, plus two parking lanes, six lanes, SIX lanes, duck boats and tour buses and crazed cabs, all zipping around Boston, going where, going nowhere, where to go when all I see is cars-

BB: I’ll come back next week, and we’ll finish up-

Moya: -and the width of these people, each bike almost wider than the car, do they even get exercise on those bikes-

TOA: Good idea, I’ll catch you soon.

Moya: -does anyone even care, it's the future in the present, for goodness sake-

BB: Come on Moya, out we go-

(THE BB grabs MOYA, who is still ranting on about who knows what. The pair exit, leaving TOA in the empty room, as the shouts disappear down the hallway…)

i read only the lover sings so you don't have to

Only The Lover Sings by Josef Pieper (October 2017)

Pieper’s book was short even for my standards – Only The Lover Sings checks in at around seventy-five pages and just about fit into the palm of my hand. It’s a book about using free time to contemplate being (and this admittedly half-effort at a summary will have to do, reader, because I’m not very sure the essays were related enough to say it was about anything more specific).

A pattern I noticed from this book was the importance of filtering. Without filtering out the negative, a positive influence is diluted or a personal strength becomes difficult to apply. This concept is expressed through a number of metaphors. One example is losing the ability to ‘see’ the meaning or value in something. The best explanation might be having too many other things to look at. This logic is well understood by museum curators and Super Bowl advertisers.

Another metaphor looks at this idea in the context of artistic inspiration. Some artists find it difficult to create because they take in too many negative inputs. The impulse might be to reverse this effect by ceasing to accept inputs altogether (I thought of this as the ‘move to a secluded hut in the woods’ approach).

But perhaps, Pieper suggests, the better move is to take in more of a positive input to crowd out the spaces previously occupied by the negative inputs. I suppose this is the logic of eating salad before dessert. When faced with lifting a heavy object, the options are to find a lighter weight or to become a stronger person.

fresh images, simple vocabulary

In On Writing, Stephen King shares his rule for description: ‘fresh images, simple vocabulary’ (1). It seemed like a great rule, one possibly applicable to more than writing, and since I've read his book I've found myself looking for ways this rule applies in contexts outside of written description.

One time I couldn’t help but think of this rule came when I watched Bono’s acceptance speech for winning Glamour magazine's 'Woman of the Year' award. Quoting his daughter, Jordan, U2’s frontman remarks that ‘there is no place in the world right now where a woman has the same opportunity as a man’.

As I look over the quote now, I see it as a bit of a stretch to link it directly to King's rule. But I think it shares a similar spirit. What Bono quotes his daughter saying is clear and concise. The image is a dash of cold water for those contented with 'progress' and the vocabulary does not leave room for misunderstanding.

Sometimes, I forget the value of such a description until I am reminded by an opposite example. One crisp November morning (just a year or so after Bono fell through the glass ceiling, I suppose, and opened my mind to the possibility that I, too, could someday become 'Woman of the Year') I sent this out-of-context quote to a couple of friends:

But the global trend now seems to have made a U-turn, especially in workplaces, where full gender equality is not expected to materialize until 2234.

By the end of the day, I’d received two responses (2):

#1: What’s the point?

#2: Extrapolating…

I was a little surprised at first by these responses. Surely, the quote was worth a little more than those replies. But as I looked more at it, I started to see it differently. The quote was a lot like what Bono said, pretty much the same thing in some ways, but in terms of its impact, it fell far short of what I heard a year ago.

I don't know what Stephen King's response to my quote would have been - but I'm sure I could guess.

Footnotes / if it's nice out, I'd say stop reading now and go outside

1. Ah, if only I were...a writer!

I'm sure it's a great rule for writing. I might even give it a try sometime.

I'll let you know how it goes, reader.

2. It's hard to decide which response was better...

I suppose #1 kind of assumes an understanding of #2, which I might need to think about were I committed to ranking these. But I'm not, and I won't. I'm going outside.

the future of linkedin?

I hear an awful lot of talk about the injustice of pay imbalances. In these discussions, the focus inevitably turns toward understanding the factors at play. (What are these factors? Hint: racism, sexism, bigotry it's complicated...)

But although many of the reasons given have merit, to me the biggest obstacle is the most obvious: racism, sexism, bigotry lack of transparency.

An example from a Reply All podcast episode highlights my point. In this episode - 'What Kind of Idiot Gets Phished?' - Matt Lieber, the president of Gimlet (the company that produces the podcast) gets phished. The whole thing starts when he panics after receiving a fake email informing him that his company's salaries are about to become public knowledge (1).

I've pulled the exact quote from the show's transcript:

MATT: Because he sent me an email saying, as though it were from Alex Goldman saying: “One of our producers found this document posted online, which reveals Gimlet’s salary levels. Um. Is this something that you think should be public?” And I was like (gasps). I was like, “Oh my god.” Like cause if everyone’s salaries got out it would be like a nightmare, right? So, I click on it. It’s a PDF and in order to view the PDF I have to log into my–my Gimlet account.

What's never explained is why this is such an issue. More specifically, I never learn why the salaries becoming public would be a nightmare. The show simply assumes listeners will comprehend the problem without further explanation. This assumption is completely reasonable, partly because most salaries are not public information but mostly because not even my closest friends or family ask me about my salary history with looking embarrassed or adding a few qualifiers first (1).

To put it another way, salaries and wages are considered taboo topics for all but the most intimate conversations. I don't know how much money most people make because most people don't discuss how much money they make. This is usually true even for those who work in sectors where pay is posted publicly and the information is only a click away on The Good Ol' Interwebs. When I get into conversations about work, I usually hear about everything except salary - how it aligns with skills, how interesting the job is, how satisfying the work is, how this position fits into a larger plan, and so on. And yet, whenever someone I know takes a new job, the reason I usually hear is that the new job paid better than the old one.

I don't think this is necessarily a problem (or at least, a problem worth writing about on TOA) - it's more like I sense an opportunity. And just the other day, it struck me how LinkedIn (or a competitor) could take this opportunity and run with it.

Currently, websites like LinkedIn exist for people to post their work histories, describe their skills, and share their interests. In other words, the website is a rough approximation of what I hear when people talk about their work.

But what if it became a place to publicly share salaries as well? If this happened, it would become a manifestation of what I hear when people talk about taking new work. This new version of the site would cut right to the chase in terms of what the site tells us it exists for (professional networking, which is the fancy term for finding a new job). It would allow employers to find underpaid candidates and employees to determine if they were being compensated fairly for their work.

It's not a perfect concept - I'm pretty much describing the job market equivalent of Tinder, and if Tinder is anything, it's imperfect - but I'm sure this would work for some people. For those in job markets, industries, or age ranges with higher career mobility, this could be a valuable tool.

Perhaps more importantly, as more information about salaries becomes public, more people will become comfortable with openly discussing income. I wonder if some of the current opacity I suspect leads to pay imbalances would start to work themselves out once the taboo aspect of the topic started to fade away.

Footnotes / how much do you think I get paid for this blog?

1. OK, and before we give you a chance to ask questions, how much...

Even during job interviews, the question about my salary history or wage expectations was posed to me with a strained casualness, my interviewer taking on the air of someone asking me how my weekend was as the words 'How much...' dripped clumsily from the lips...

the bb presents: the risk of competition

This business bro has had the pleasure of playing many different board games over the years. The one I want to briefly discuss today is Risk, the game of global domination.

Pacifist reader, Risk is a war game. The point of the game is to collect troops, deploy them strategically to various outposts around the game board, and battle opponents until only one army is left standing. How does a budding five-star general win a game of Risk? Surely, by building a great army, sending it to Kamchatka, and kicking ass in every territory along the way, right?

Wrong!

The way to win Risk is to get the other armies to fight each other while you sit there and pick your nose. When the dust settles, each side will have suffered significant casualties. This is the perfect time to move in because the territories left vulnerable after the recent battle - this battle being the colossal one you just sat out of - will be the easiest to conquer.

Though the idea of competition in the economy is regularly touted as a positive feature, for most companies a strictly competitive situation is the start to ruin. To put it another way, competition often increases costs without guaranteeing an increase in revenue. When companies choose to compete, they should do so only when assured of victory. To put it another way, business owners will do well to avoid situations where defeat is a realistic possibility and entrepreneurs should avoid industries where the major players are in a daily struggle to simply remain afloat.

In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz suggests a couple of rules of thumb for when a business owner should consider selling a company. First, if a market is fully exploited, consider selling. Second, if there is no chance of becoming the market leader, consider selling. These rules are another way of stating the same idea - despite how we glorify competition, it rarely is the ideal scenario for a company (1).

How will you know when victory is certain? Well, if your company has a better product, it is probably a good idea to get into the arena. In most other situations, competition is not advised and resources would be better allocated to simply building a better product (2).

The lesson here might be to ignore competitors except in the context of the two rules of thumb above. Is your company capable of producing a better product than your competitors? Are the product building decisions made by you and your competitors leading to market expansion? Those answers require you to keep tabs on your competitors and their performance. But outside of those considerations, it is probably best to focus on building better products rather than looking for places to pick fights.

Just because some academic drew a graph once showing how great competition was for everyone isn't a good enough reason to bring an unprepared product to market. Like those who have lost to my rampaging armies during a game of Risk understand all too well, getting into a battle at the wrong time merely depletes valuable resources and leaves you vulnerable to a counter-attack from a waiting foe. It is better to focus on building the best team possible and waiting to strike until the opportunity is right.

Until next time,

The Business Bro

Footnotes / if you aren't sure about selling, sell

1. Sound simplistic...

In the first case, a company is unable to expand revenues without also expanding market share. This means resources are wasted fighting other competitors for talent and existing customers instead of leveraging the organization’s strengths to expand the size of the overall market by creating value for untapped customers.

In the second case, the market is expanding but the company is unable to overtake industry leaders. This means increasing revenues is a red herring of sorts because the others in the market also see their revenues increase as the market expands. In fact, in most cases when the market expands, the market leaders take a greater share of the increased revenues. Inevitably, the leading companies will use their resource advantage to snuff out smaller competitors and consolidate their positions in the market.

2. How will I know, though?

Well, one argument suggest that you will know if your product is selling better than the competitors. And if your product is selling better than the competitors, well, maybe you are already competing, and winning, so there is no need to do anything especially different. In these situations, focus on getting the product into more battlegrounds through competitive tactics like increasing marketing efforts or expanding the sales team.

the photo journal i'm not working on

Genre: Photography collection

Title: You Can't Handle The Pru!

Estimated publication date: 2019

Ever since I started living in Boston, I’ve joked that the Prudential Tower seems to follow me around. I’d make the comment whenever I would look up and see the building looming overhead – from the Public Garden, from Mass Ave in North Cambridge, from Union Square in Somerville, from my bedroom window. Like Dr. Eckleburg's eyes, 'The Pru' is just there, silent, possibly judging, always keeping vigil from its post high above the town.

Lately, I’ve started to think collecting my little observations would make for an interesting project. Instead of boring those around me with my comments, I would just take out a camera and take a picture anytime I noticed the building when I wasn’t expecting to.

Unfortunately, this would require a piece of equipment I currently do not have (editor’s note: a camera). I’ve compromised for 2018, just to see how it goes, and I’ve simply written down these instances when I would otherwise have taken a photo.

Here are a couple of the highlights so far:

1) I was surprised to see it from the Forest Hills station. It's an interesting view - lots of open space between the southern terminus of the ever-delayed Orange Line and the always-looming tower...

2) I was semi-surprised to realize I was almost directly beneath it one night when I looked out the window of the 39 bus.

3) I was not surprised at all to see it one morning while walking through the Public Garden - I've seen it from there about ten thousand times (approximately).

I’ll chime in from time to time throughout 2018 with more irrelevant updates.

leftovers: now, I’m no scientist

One question the ‘debate club’ rarely addresses is what to do when everyone sees both sides of a given topic.

The Earth is surely round but everywhere I look it’s as flat as can be, you know? It's a hard point to refute, really, since the science doesn't hand me a simple explanation to share with the stranger who is now casually chit-chatting with me while we both watch the sun go down.

Sure, I could say the sun goes out of sight because, I mean, you wouldn't see the ground beneath your feet if you stood on a huge basketball, right? But then my new (and annoying) friend could say, sure, but you wouldn't see a basketball if it was under the table you were standing on, either...

I understand why some respond when the question is raised regarding the optimal level of hand washing. I’m at least willing to listen. It’s a lot like going to a new city. As a tourist, I might be more interested in exploring than the locals. But being a little too open makes me susceptible to wandering down a cul-de-sac everyone in town knows to avoid. I think being a critical thinker must work the same way. It is hard to tell if I’m just starting my journey down an exciting new avenue, or…

I have no idea where the balance is between the benefits of being an outsider who learns for himself and the potential to waste my own time repeating mistakes the insiders know all about.

reading review: daring greatly

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown (September 2017)

Dr. Brene Brown's second of four New York Times #1 bestsellers draws on twelve years of research to examine how embracing the everyday vulnerability in our lives can be the catalyst for a life-changing transformation.

I think this is a good book for me to trot out the old ‘run the rule’ gimmick and compare some of the notes I took down against my own experiences. The main reason for this approach is that this book was not very conducive to reaching concrete conclusions. When it comes to a topic like shame, the most declarative statement possible seems to be - this applies to most people, most of the time, mostly.

Also, I’m feeling a little lazy and this is a much easier way to write a reading review (editor's note: whenever there is a reason, there is always The Real Reason).

Thanks for reading.

Tim

*********

There is no research evidence linking shame to good outcomes. Most researchers feel shame contributes to destructive behavior such as addiction, aggression, or depression.

Guilt suggests we can do better and focuses us on our poor decisions. Shame corrodes the very part of us capable of doing better.

TOA: The most important note I took down when I first read this book in 2015 was shame is not a management technique. The idea made a lot of sense to me because I had plenty of experience working with ‘leaders’ whose primary method for consistently achieving mediocre results was a shame-based leadership style.

*********

If we numb our feelings to protect against shame or vulnerability, joy becomes increasingly more difficult to feel.

Feelings associated with disconnection often lead to numbing mechanisms. The difference between pleasure and numbing is the difference in planning ahead to watch a TV show versus flopping on the couch to flip through channels.

Showing love for someone means your face lights up. The feeling does not automatically convey itself just because of your presence.

We cannot give what we do not have. Thus, who we are in the moment matters far more than what we aim to become.

TOA: These quotes described a pattern I’ve seen too often over the years to be untrue – being unable to cry means the tears of joy don’t come. The better we become at expressing hurt, the better we become at expressing joy.

*********

The opposite of scarcity is enough.

Those whose first thought is ‘I did not get enough sleep’ are setting themselves up for a long day of chasing after 'enough'.

TOA: Seeking abundance as a protection against scarcity is a surefire problem starter. The person who lies in bed all day is never going to get enough sleep.

*********

If shame becomes a management style, engagement suffers. And if failure is no longer an option, learning, creativity, and innovation disappear.

Children act out to get attention when they sense disengagement from the adults around them.

Disengagement results from practicing values in conflict with our expectations.

TOA: I remember reading in another book that children have an innate sense of justice. If this notion is successfully beaten out of them (editor's note: not literally) then it becomes possible for a child to grow up into a properly prejudiced adult.

I suppose the first step in this progression is for the adults in a child’s life to start breaking their word. No fair, the child will protest...at first. But as the little betrayals add up, the child will lose this innate trust. The child who worries less and less about justice is starting to understand that a promise is kept until it is broken. Over time, I suspect the eroding sense of justice makes way for a self of self-reliance. If the child is not prepared to make the exchange or makes this transition too quickly, there might be a period of acting out until the inner turmoil settles.

I think this transition happens because it is far simpler to be self-reliant than it is to seek justice. Self-reliance means meeting the basics and going no further. It does not require engagement with the outside world because the outside world becomes strictly optional. When there is injustice, it doesn't matter to the self-reliant child because the isolating mechanism is fired up and ready to cope. What once manifested through acting out is explained away as 'independence'.

By contrast, to cultivate a high-minded and abstract notion of justice is far more difficult. When I refer to justice in this way, I do not mean the thinly-disguised process of legal revenge that passes for justice today. I am speaking of something more complex, more along the lines of what a child is born with. The child does not demand vengeance, only equality. To cultivate this sense of justice requires creativity and innovation, the two skills that first give way in a disengaged environment.

*********

For women, the primary shame trigger tends to be appearance. The conformity required to be seen as ‘feminine’ makes it more difficult for women to assert their ideas, powers, or gifts.

For men, the primary shame trigger is being perceived as weak. A man who lives up to the attributes associated with masculinity is almost sure to be lonely.

TOA: The only problem with this 'book review' method (or is it book review 'method') is the way it forces me to comment on everything I include, regardless of whether I have anything to add or not. How weak of me.

*********

Connection comes by sharing our vulnerability with those who have earned the right to hear it. It means someone who can bear the weight of the story. If there is trust, mutual empathy, and reciprocal sharing, the other is often capable of hearing the story. Most importantly, it is someone whom we can ask for what we need.

Vulnerability is a mutual process based on boundaries and trust. People should be vulnerable only with others who have earned the right.

Empathy is simply harnessing the power of being present to express to another - ‘you are not alone’.

TOA: The opening comment above uses 'right' in a way different than how it is often used. Rights are generally expressed not as something to earn but rather as something to claim. We talk of rights in the sense of their inalienability and protest when we learn about one human denying another these basic rights. No one should earn a right - and this is true in the context of how it is defined in a public context.

And yet, to me ‘earned the right’ felt like the best way to describe the intersection of vulnerability and empathy. The freshly wounded understand a gash can be widened as easily as it can be sown up. Those who are careless with their words or reckless with their actions should be kept clear of the hurt or suffering regardless of their importance in other aspects of the injured's life. Good intentions only go so far - the stitching needle in the wrong fingers brings little together.

this business bro read half of the visual display of quantitative information so you don't have to

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte (August 2016)

Hi all,

First, full disclosure - I only read the first half of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte. Trust me, it was more than enough. All this book did was describe ways to turn data sets into visually informative representations. The tools involved - graphs, tables, charts - are all old hat for any business bro. I recommend this book to anyone who consistently works with these tools in their day-to-day job function, though, and might suggest it as a refresher for those seeking a quick review of the basics.

What I'm here to do today is share a couple nuggets of information. No thanks needed, reader, I'm happy to oblige.

One common question a report designer will encounter is whether to use a simple table layout or opt for a more visually compelling representation. A good rule of thumb is presented in this work - a table is best for a small data set while a pictorial representation works better as the size of the data set increases. This acknowledges how most people are unable to comprehend differences in large numbers with the same skill they employ in analyzing small figures - therefore, use numbers for small totals and pretty little pictures for larger sums.

There is also a useful note of warning targeted at those involved in the design step - beware of showing design variation, not data variation. A simple example highlights this point. Imagine that you wish to represent the doubling of some annual total - perhaps the color preference for cars purchased at a certain dealership. You might think it is a good idea to use images of different colored cars to represent changes year on year - this year's totals in blue, last year's in green, and so on.

Design this carefully, however. A car one inch tall and one inch wide intuitively 'doubles' to a car two inches tall and two inches wide. But the area of the car on the graph will quadruple!

(One inch wide)     x (one inch tall)         = 1 square inch
(Two inches wide) x (two inches tall)      = 4 square inches

This design feature might mislead a viewer to conclude that the popularity of a car color increased four-fold. To avoid such misrepresentation, you may opt for a bar graph with a fixed width.

Until next time,

The Business Bro

Footnotes / for those who carry Monopoly money around

0. Hint: just make sure the axis doesn't increase proportionally...

Of course, reader, you may wish to mislead your reader! It's a dog eat dog world out there, I've heard. So perhaps you want to know all of these design tricks to help your Machiavellian cause! Well, in this case, give this book a full read, deceptive reader, and don't forget to send your favorite business bro a little tip - in cash, of course - for this helpful recommendation.