vision 2020

So… another year.

It’s always the same story right about this time – the holidays come around, I get a year older, and winter gets itself nice and comfortable in Boston. Dated calendars tumble amid visions of reinvention but in the bustle I never feel rushed. The frame of the year is convenient for a slow reflection and it’s no different for me. So, as always, around this time I always ask the same questions – how’d I do, and why?

By many important accounts, 2019 wasn’t too bad. I got up and mostly out of some ruts and this has indeed been a welcome change. Ruts in themselves are never a bad thing but in the pit I was losing touch with my sense of purpose. I’m finding my sense of direction again with my feet on firmer ground and I'm welcoming back my inner compass with open arms. I thought I did a good job of balancing old with new, lifestyle changes ensuring disrupted routines that could have left me in an entirely new hole. I felt I navigated these changes successfully by protecting my most valuable time while adapting decisively when a new direction was inevitable. I even bought some new clothes, and they pretty much fit. Yes, 2019 wasn’t too bad.

On the writing side, though, I’m not as sure. I have a basic framework in mind for TOA and for the most part measuring results along these lines implies a successful year. I wanted to have one post per day without overwhelming the internet with words and (I think) I did so while maintaining a reasonable day over day balance. I wanted to break up some of my routine writing, whether it be proper admin or reading reviews, and I did that while improving the overall organization of my ideas. I wanted a different approach for ‘Tales of Two Cities’ and I feel it moved in the right direction. Speaking generally, I’ve always wanted TOA to be something I used, and each time I referenced it in 2019 was evidence that I remained on course.

These are all important considerations but they are missing a vital angle – how and why? The above is all tangible – who, what, when, where – but as I noted in a recent newsletter, this line of reflection isn’t important to me. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that there is something really vulnerable about people defined by the tangible. They are the cogs in our wheels, spinning dutifully in place until they are worn away, their time grandfathered to keep larger clocks ticking. It’s a noble idea and at some point we all must serve as a cog for a greater good. But it’s dangerous too, terribly so, because if you spin all the time, the more you become your spin, and the more likely you are to lose the uniqueness at your core. The core becomes the thing that holds you in place and you spin and you spin until one day you realize anyone could take your spot.

Isn’t the way we do things more important than their results? Isn’t the reason we do things more important than what we do? I fear that we become replaceable when we define ourselves by what we do, and when, and where; you can’t replace the undefined. Hindsight and its 20-20 vision suggest that TOA drifted a little in 2019. Vision 2020 isn’t about getting back on track but rather reconsidering the track altogether. It’s about thinking clearly regarding the topics I post on TOA and asking myself the right questions. How do I read, and why? How do I think, and why? How do I live, and why?

The most relevant consideration is the most obvious – how do I write, and why? I’m afraid I lost sight of this a little bit in 2019 as tangible distractions forced these questions onto the back burner. Vision 2020 puts it firmly back in sight, how and why taking their rightful seats at the head of the front table. I hope that in a year’s time I have some answers. It should be interesting, and it might even be fun.

Thanks for reading this year, even if just a couple of words.

See you in 2020.

reading review - native country of the heart

Native Country of the Heart by Cherrie Moraga (July 2019)

I’ve struggled over the past few weeks to find the right words to describe Cherrie Moraga’s deeply reflective memoir. This is surely due to my shortcomings when it comes to commenting on personal writing as well the challenge of summarizing a book I feel I failed to fully appreciate during my reading. Native Country of the Heart is unlikely to appear on any of my year-end lists but that doesn’t mean I discourage anyone interested in the author or her story from checking out this work.

The core of this book is about the reality of forgetting and the various ways we all push back against its relentless tide. Moraga’s relationship with her mother is the obvious way this theme comes through in the writing. Moraga traces their history up to her mother’s battle against the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease, the urgency of her writing suggesting that perhaps the illness has made clear how an untold story is always on the cusp of becoming a fleeing memory. She examines this idea through the much broader lens of cultural loss, using her Mexican-American origins to understand questions such as how groups selectively bury the facts of their past in order to move forward despite doubt and uncertainty. It is a question Moraga is prepared to answer given the many examples of her own courage and conviction in finding ways to move on from significant personal trauma.

Moraga notes at one point that the elderly suffer from deep losses that they cannot share for lack of words or confidence. This point resonated with me not just because I recognized its prophetic nature but also for the way I’ve felt the same in my own life. The inability to articulate our suffering is the mother we share, the simple act of observing and naming the things around us the first step to regaining a grip on a slipping world, and the heart always a final reminder that what the mind tries to forget is the most important story left to tell.

Book notes here.

leftovers - ask the business bro (the goal, riffoffs)

Good morning,

As I promised TOA at the end of the ‘Ask The Business Bro’ series about The Goal, here are a few leftover rules of thumb about monitoring the performance of an organization.

Temporary reduction of released material reveals obvious choke points – those whose inventories remain the longest.

We’ll start with the topic from last time’s discussion – how to identify a flow problem. We discussed the theory behind reducing the release of raw material using the river analogy but this thought gets more directly at how the method will work in practice. If a production process has five distinct steps, broadly speaking the choke point is whichever step takes the longest to complete one unit of work.

Longer leads times automatically increase inventory.

This brings a different perspective to the idea that balanced flow comes from a combination of inventory and excess production capacity. If an organization maintains a long lead time, it implies that it requires more time to complete a certain unit of production. This means anything in the production process remains in progress longer than would be the case if the lead time were shorter. The reliable way an organization can reduce lead time is by increasing its excess production capacity.

Instability results from three basic effects. If the product life is short, overproduction might lead to irrelevant inventories and demand is left unsatisfied for a proportionally longer period of a product’s life. If demand is volatile, inventory stock will move in synch with the threat of shortages. If production load fluctuates, due date performance is the first to suffer.

A few weeks ago, we talked about negative fluctuations and how they tend to accumulate over time rather than even out with positive fluctuations. In general, having an appropriate inventory level is a good solution. However, if the organization operates within the instable conditions defined in this thought, it is advisable to opt for greater production capacity ahead of holding inventory.

Setup, process, queue, and wait are the components of how long a part remains in the system. Bottleneck parts spend most of their time in queue (often waiting for another bottleneck part to process) while non-bottleneck parts spend most of their time in wait (often for the bottleneck to finish processing). Bottlenecks dictate inventory levels through this mechanism.

This thought gets into the basic math involved in calculating the system’s performance and highlights the importance of subordinating the measurements to the bottleneck’s capabilities. If the organization is capable of processing one hundred units a day through the bottleneck, the other measurements must work in tandem to have one hundred units ready for processing by the bottleneck each day.

Saving time on setup at a non-bottleneck is an illusory way to save costs. By definition, non-bottlenecks have excess capacity.

This comment extends the above (and also references the most recent post). Let’s suppose we have a simple operation where there are two teams, preparation and production. The first team, preparation, prepares units for the bottleneck and the second team processes these materials through the bottleneck. We can put one hundred units a day through the bottleneck. The first team considers preparation of one hundred units per day as a normal workload.

One day, the team discovers that through a series of efficiencies they are able to prepare two hundred units. Overall, the total cost rises 50%, but on a per-unit basis they save 25% in production cost.

Good, right?

No.

Imagine walking into a pizza restaurant and seeing piles of uncooked pies, stacked all the way to the ceiling – that’s what will happen here. It doesn't matter that each pie was cheaper to produce because the extra parts will simply create added inventory cost. It’s always important to find ways to work smarter but optimize too much on a local level and the organization is harmed because it cannot turn the increased cost of holding inventory into added revenue.

Parts should only be prioritized if there is a shortage downstream to account for. A buffer system helps preemptively identify shortages.

A buffer system is a complicated way of saying that the next batch of work should always arrive at a workstation before the current batch is complete. This way, there is no lost time in the transition from one unit of work to the next.
 
Using a buffer system means many items will finish prior to the due date. If the release date is tracked, a priority system emerges where the oldest parts are worked on first.

The danger of the buffer setup is prioritization. If a team has multiple options regarding what to work on next, the danger is losing certain options within a repeated cycle of prioritization. A good default system is to work on the oldest units of work unless there is an urgent requirement downstream to prioritize newer units based on other factors.

A good starting point for a flow problem is to use half the current lead time as the buffer. This is not likely the optimal move. However, once the change is enacted, the follow up effort will iron out any details missed in the initial step.

This thought gets at the ethos of The Goal. The ideas from this book are far from perfect and following Goldratt’s words to the letter is hardly the formula for success. However, the framework he creates will work for anyone committed to the process of ongoing improvement. An organization trained to attack the follow up effort and iron out the wrinkles in the initial plan will surely find itself positioned for success in the long term.

Just swerved into a passing truck, big business overtaking, without indicating, he passes on the right, been driving through the night, to bring us the best price…

And this thought from TOA favorite Courtney Barnett’s ‘Dead Fox’ brings home a different point. There is always the temptation to solve problems by putting in the extraordinary effort – with perhaps a broken rule or two along the way – but this always introduces needless risk to the process. Sure, we can pass on the right, but a red light ahead forces everyone to stop again. Was that worth the added risk of a crash?

Even if we take all possible measures in the name of lowering costs, we must ask – since risk is always compensated, why would a process that increases risk be a reliable way to lower price?

Beats me, reader.

Thanks for your time.

Signed,

The Business Bro

proper admin – daily reminders update (additions, part seven)

Hi,

Finally, the last new reminder! Thanks for reading, and we’ll be back sometime next year to review any of the wisdom I accumulate in 2020.

-It fails because of you

This one came about one day while I was reflecting on the consequences for being myself. One insight I had during this reflection was how the nature of failure changed the more I was being true to myself. If I made a mistake when I was doing something unnatural to my personality, I could write it off as a fluke, something not representative of my true self. But I screwed up doing something native to me, there was a finality to it, and an inevitability that if the chance came up again I would probably repeat the mistake.

We’ve all heard the expression ‘learn from your mistakes’. I used to think this was a process-oriented concept, one where we learn how to do something better for next time. But there is a lot more learning involved when we learn about ourselves. In many ways, a mistake is a mirror held up to our nature - look long enough and it becomes hard to distinguish reflection from destiny. Newly armed with the knowledge of the inevitable, perhaps we should settle for learning how to avoid the same situation next time.

It may come as a surprise that I found this thought to be soothing. That’s the truth, though. All I can really do is be myself but that’s no guarantee of a problem-free life. If anything, being myself is going to ensure particular screw-ups unique to my personal blend of skills, personality, and shortcomings. This reminder helps me keep the fact in my mind whenever I feel pressure to abandon my convictions or ideals for the sake of a short-term success. If it doesn’t work because of me, that’s OK, because the price of getting it to work is too high.

reading review - tell me how it ends

Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli (October 2019)

Tell Me How It Ends is an attempt to tell the story about child migration across the USA’s southern border. Valeria Luiselli’s experience helping lawyers prepare legal defenses for child deportation cases gives her a unique perspective on the issue. Her account is loosely structured around the forty questions she asks child migrants as they prepare for immigration court. These straightforward questions – about family history, potential living arrangements, the possible dangers back home, and more – drift in and out of the work, helping Luiselli paint the fullest possible picture about the crisis and the individuals caught in its grip.

The fact of these questions is an example of how various political forces can interact over time to place unbearable pressure on our most vulnerable people. The story can be traced back to any and all US interventions in Central America that created dangerous living conditions and crippled the infrastructure necessary for families to build stable futures. As threatened children have done instinctively throughout history, kids from these regions have challenged the odds and fled for safer ground. Those who reach Luiselli and her questionnaire play out roles defined by Obama-era legislation that severely limited the amount of time granted a Central American child to find legal support and build a case against deportation. Each of these forty questions – how did you get here, who did you flee from, who will take care of you in America – looks closely at the symptoms caused by these politics without addressing the disease our policies continue to spread throughout poor regions.

In addition to its references to these larger forces, this book also details much about child migration that I didn’t know prior to reading. I learned that children often seek out border patrol as soon as they cross because these officials offer migrants the best chance of contacting future guardians who live in faraway states. I also learned that one of the major challenges in the aforementioned legal cases is how migrant children might need to call in undocumented relatives to help make their case, a dilemma that Luiselli explains usually weighs most heavily of all on the children. Finally, although the question of the border remains very far away from the daily concerns of most Americans, this book explains that the patterns of migration will demand most communities to do more in the very near future to help integration efforts.

I mentioned at the top that this book was an attempt. I don’t use this word in a snide or dismissive way. As Luiselli herself notes, the lack of a beginning, middle, or end creates major challenges for a storyteller. Like it is the case with many ongoing crises, the story of child migration is being written into some unidentifiable chapter tucked between the front and back covers of an immigration story that spans many generations. The just-visible frame of her forty questions brings the clarity a storyteller needs to draw order out of these chaotic lives and help her readers understand why she feels that the next chapter for these kids should be written on American soil.

For some additional thoughts on this book, please see my notes.

leftovers – the shell game

One aspect of The Shell Game that dragged me into the world of unfounded speculation is the way the various pieces commented on relationships. I’ve decided to return to today to stretch these insights and briefly consider them in the context of how a written work’s structure has a relationship with the underlying material. For example, the question of when a writer should give up on an innovative form and return to a standard structure could be thought of in terms of the origins of the relationship. If the new structure grew out of a need for support, the partnership of structure and material should end as soon as the material no longer requires support.

Another rule of thumb might be to consider the level of effort. Although most relationships require a certain level of maintenance work, there does come a point in any relationship where the question of why so much effort is required becomes a relevant concern. A relationship is supposed to... just work, right? A writer who begins stretching, compromising, or distorting the vision of the work for the sake of meeting a certain structural concern should give this note some thought.

To close with an unrelated note, one of the authors noted in The Shell Game that algebra is the gatekeeper for higher levels of math. This is a truth I likely recognized back when I studied math in college. I was reminded of it once more when I recently tutored a college student for a couple of hours. I suspect most subjects operate with a similar construction – the ‘lower level’ concepts are easy enough to dismiss in the classroom because as students we failed to understand the importance these building blocks would have later on in our studies.

For my notes on this book, please follow this link.

replica krakatoa

After five mostly uneventful years, early December saw my first official apartment crisis. The problem was the radiator, a broken control knob preventing me from playing God with the hot air. With shut off shut down, the radiator spent ten days spewing heat into my unit like it was a replica Krakatoa. Good thing it didn’t erupt, though I pretty much did.

How hot was it? I don’t own a thermometer so let’s say it wasn’t just hot, it was Hot. How Hot? It was Hot enough to sweat through any and all outfits. It was a fever's dream. In fact, let’s say it wasn’t just Hot, it was HOT. I’ll put it this way – I had a formal event on a Friday night and it was HOT enough that I had to dress in the hallway. It was HOT enough that I was putting towels soaked in cold water on my burning forehead, as a nurse would do for a defeated soldier, lethally wounded, lying in a frozen forest of fleeing feet. Little tricks like this solved the problem – well, I shouldn’t say that, since the problem was the radiator, and I didn't solve the radiator. Let’s try again – little tricks like this solved the HOT problem caused by the problem radiator. Overall, it wasn't one solution but a combination, half-successful remedies coming together to pass the time, like drinking wine while venting about your Tuesday.

My first remedy was pretty obvious – I opened the windows and invited winter over. Anytime's good, but come around soon. Seasonal air has always been my most reluctant guest. I remember how in summer it could take hours after I shut off the AC before the heat lingering on the windowsill would make itself at home. The winter chill likewise took some time to warm up, at first tentatively poking around at my feet before carefully working its way past my knee until it finally settled in at my hip. The idea sort of worked, I knew from high school science how heat rises and cold air falls, and my apartment proved loyal to the textbooks as it segregated itself into a top and bottom half.

The window was the line and everything below it was now a crisp thirty-five degrees, everything above it burning to a crisp. I could lie on the brittle floor, nearly frozen, wrapped in a blanket and clueless about what to do next like an Iditarod racer whose dogs had vanished. I was cold and the heat remained an issue. When I stood up, my torso would protest against the invasion from the busted radiator until I sank down again, defeated, sweating bullets. I decided to enlist my old ally, the AC, dormant since fall. This was clever like a dead fox, the radiator overpowered the cooling effect, the tropical air marching into my territory to the beat of the fan. Radiator 1, AC 0. I didn’t even stand up to turn the thing off, I just belly-skated across the hardwood and snapped off the plug.

The fan fluttered to a stop and the quiet aftermath calmed the air. It wasn't so bad on the floor but I knew it was only refuge. I felt the high ground staring down at me. I waited until it was time. It ticked steadily forward, leading the way into the future, to the inevitable, forever unable to melt, unable to freeze. It was unchecked by any obstacle, Napoleon’s soldier who made it home first from Russia, for Christmas, each second presenting the next, each second the present. Time’s present for me was bedtime and I waited until I had to open it. My bed was the no man's land, where the border is always on the line, every useless thing pointlessly contested. The pillow was lukewarm like a glass of milk kissed by the microwave, the bedsheets a Zamboni turnpike, the blankets blowing in the wind. My third solution was really something special, an idea only I could come up with – I went sledding. My floors are a little slanted in certain places, you see, but I put up with things if I can sleep well. The bed tobogganed into the corner, I stacked books underneath the box spring for balance, and I laid down to sleep in my trench, a log sloom lumbering beneath the heat, longing for home.

Everything starts downhill. I had my success, the battle was won, the war went on. The sled dragged up the hill again. The air migrated freely around a moving line and the arrows pointed through the quiver. I laid still and floated down to the sleepy shoreline. The flood of dreams receded from memory and I rocked through the hours like I was in a canoe on a cloudy spring day, waiting for low tide. The magma swam with the lava and my forehead was warm under the cool cloth. It was all the same and I was there. I cut another window in the wood to plug the leak and I lay on my back in the water, out of habit, out of necessity, out of ideas. I stayed perfectly still, floating on books, frozen in time as it melted away, tempted to sit up and see where I'd crash, and touch the air again.

proper admin - december 2019

Hi folks,

Remember when this used to happen right at the start of the month? Yeah, the good old days. But better late than never, right? Maybe my New Year’s Resolution will be to complete these a little earlier.

Anyway, everything below is the usual rubble bucket of stuff I couldn’t fit into its own post.

Home front…

I’m back tomorrow with a post about a radiator problem that ran too long for today. Not the problem, the post.

The short version is that after five full years in the same apartment, I’m still here only because of the high sleep quality, and willing to leave if problems put that quality in jeopardy.

Wait, but it's the last Wednesday of the month, so...

Look, nobody wants a Christmas - er, holiday - 'tales of two cities', trust me.

It'll be back, I promise.

Home plate…

After ignoring all neighborhood takeout for five years, I’ve finally started trying some of the local eateries. Early returns suggest the food is edible.

Next is Upper Crust, having caught my attention with a sign on their window – New management. Apparently, new management had the following bright ideas:

Pizza
Wings
Meatballs

Three meatballs cost $11, or the price of a Guinness at Harvard Gardens if you tip like an adult. Now, I thought somebody should explain to me why that’s a good idea, the $11 meatballs I mean, but I guess the easiest way is to just pony up and pray I don’t get food poisoning. I will let you know how it goes, reader.

Home plate, part two

Upper Crust continues an odd tradition of establishments on its block posting strange signs in their windows. On the other corner is a café that once posted this on its door – try our new gazpacho soup. They have a new sign now – come in for a hot beef stew. Spoiler alert, I never tried the gazpacho soup and I’m not trying the beef stew. Like, why would I? I used to go in there because its ratings were so low on Yelp that I figured I’d be the only person on the WiFi (and I was right). No chance I try anything they cook.

They do serve good gelato, though.

Last, but not least…

Longtime readers will recall that December is a time I reserve for rereading books. I recommend rereading periods for everybody (and especially if you are in a reading rut of some kind). However, I think the specifics are less important, and doing it in December is just my preference.

This is my list for 2019:

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
The Oblivion Seekers by Isabelle Eberhardt
The Wave in the Mind by Ursula LeGuin
U2 by U2 (edited by Neil McCormick)
Sum by David Eagleman
Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Sanders
The Illustrated Book of Sayings by Ella Frances Sanders
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

It’s a long list but most of those books are short.

I also tried a new thing this year where I reread certain portions of select books (longtime readers will recall how I point out such chapters or essays in my reading reviews). If it goes well, I’ll try it on a larger scale next December. This year’s selections were stories from the following two books:

Raised in Captivity by Chuck Klosterman
The Moth Presents All These Wonders edited by Catherine Burns

As usual, please look forward to hearing my thoughts on these rereads as soon as I get around to writing them – based on recent history, this means sometime next fall.

Happy holidays to the PC crowd!

Thanks for reading.

Next time… in True On Average…

1. Four digits!

2. Is there really a goal?

3. Vision 2020.

reading review - the fire next time

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (September 2018)

The Fire Next Time was written in 1963 for the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. It closely examines the history of race relations in the USA and indirectly outlines the feeling underlying the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The clearest idea that emerges from Baldwin’s writing is the way he identifies inertia as one of racism’s ongoing enablers. He makes this point in many ways throughout the work. At a societal level, he notes that the biggest obstacle to large-scale change is the sloth of those who benefit by maintaining the status quo. This can come in the form of voters refusing to pass (or bolster) laws that are strong enough to overcome built-in discrimination or by organizations failing to protect individuals whose commitment to social causes leaves them exposed to risk or danger. He clearly sees strong individuals as vital to the process of overcoming widespread racism, noting that people who trust their own reactions can accept and carry the burdens of reality, but laments the various ways social norms pressure individuals to adhere to outside standards rather than an internal sense of right or wrong. He observes that civilizations fall apart not due to the wicked but because of the spineless; playing with those words, I wonder if a strong civilization means a place where people help each other find their spines and stand straight-backed against the legacy of injustice.

On a bit of a side note, I read an edition of this book that came with a section called ‘Connections’. This portion collected various thoughts about Baldwin or The Fire Next Time from various writers. Although I appreciated the expanded perspective resulting from this idea, the thing I will always remember about it is how much the quality of writing in the ‘Connections’ paled in comparison to Baldwin’s prose.

Book notes here.

reading review - 12 rules for life (riff offs)

Hi all,

Let’s wrap up my ten part review of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life with a classic TOA riff off.

People seek to optimize rather than minimize risk.

Achieving competence often involves an element of danger or risk – by overcoming it, we develop the skills needed for truly being safe.

The Dutch build dikes to withstand the worst storm in the last ten thousand years.

The naturally tendency we have to avoid risk forgets the fundamental role of risk in the calculation of any return. Simply put, nothing is gained without some risk, and petty clashes among groups of people are often explainable by the way the groups differ in their desire to optimize rather than minimize risk. It’s why most people fall off a bike before learning to ride and why so many major cities are built in areas commonly afflicted by earthquakes, hurricanes, or flooding.

People tend to put up with things for too long. The willingness of individuals to stand up for themselves protects the majority from the petty authoritarians that foster corruption in society.

Our basic neurochemistry wires us to respond to losses as if our position in a dominance hierarchy were under threat.

The great tolerance people have of being pushed around is probably partly explained by the neurochemistry insight – by making some form of protest, they acknowledge a loss of some kind that activates the brain’s threat signal.

One of the great traits of children is how they assume that if they find something interesting then surely so might others.

Research suggests our central nervous system responds to novel environments by turning on new genes and proteins. In a way, without a baseline ability to explore, we remain incomplete.

This so-called ‘childhood trait’ is probably more like an example of a repressed instinct, one that we smother as we reach adulthood for the sake of new priorities.

Anyone can choose a frame of time in which nothing matters.

There is very little in a marriage – or any arrangement intended to last for decades – that is too trivial to fight over.

There are many benefits to tolerance but one of its downsides is how it has made it difficult for adults to pass along advice – ‘practical wisdom’ – to the young about how to live.

Traditionally, sins of action were considered worse than those allowed to happen through inaction, but perhaps we have this wrong.

The mystery of patience is how it prevents us from taking obvious action. One contributing factor is the rationalization made possible by time frames – most people will put off for later what they could deal with today. Another is the marginal effect – if the impact of almost any given moment is negligible, there is no urgency to take action. The patient must take great care to avoid putting off what might one day prove too late or too much to take care of with a last-ditch effort.

The problems of new institutions emerge in the aftermath of more pressing or significant problems being solved – often by these same institutions.

Today’s oppression of patriarchy was yesterday’s solution for many more significant problems – poverty, disease, and illiteracy.

Opiates exist because they work.

The desire to enslave and dominate does not require explanation yet we still seek it.

The mystery of why certain problems exist is often explainable by looking into history and recognizing how yesterday’s challenges were much different from our own. Good solutions to today’s problems weigh this history into the calculation and ensure that we move forward into a better future rather than step backward into the unstudied past.

Western intellectuals maintained a positive attitude toward communism despite significant evidence of its problems, failures, and atrocities.

Socialism fails when it focuses more on hatred of the rich than regard for the poor.

Socialism’s peculiar problem is that its adherents do not like the poor (as they claim) but simply hate the rich instead.

Every hierarchy means winners and losers. However, a shared pursuit towards common goals will always produce hierarchy due to differences in ability to contribute to the goal.

If democracy and capitalism were listed on the stock market, the recent price trend would likely point downward. The question ignored in the talk about large systems of organization is how to address the inevitable question of inequality that emerges whenever a group of people aims toward a common outcome. The solution to inequality isn’t to eliminate it entirely because this would necessitate the elimination of goals, targets, and ideals. A better first step might be to reach some agreement on our common goals so that we can all accept that some will justifiably reap a larger reward for their outsized contributions to those targets.

Placing all of human corruption at society’s feet is the worst kind of explanation – it explains nothing, solves no problems, and disempowers anyone who might have been interested in taking action.

The stories we tell lose their value if it becomes impossible to connect today’s problems to tomorrow’s solutions. A person disgusted by human corruption might have a case against society but the only way to motivate action is to reframe the story so that the next chapter can be written through individual actions within a personal sphere of influence.

The truth is not told with deceit, sarcasm, contempt, or self-congratulation. It is told with carefully chosen words that convey exactly your thoughts or feelings and why those have influenced your actions and decisions.

The truth is often associated with being right. I wonder if this relationship explains why people sometimes tell the truth in a way that alienates the target audience.

Single cause interpretations should be handled with great care.

I would probably rewrite this to say ‘single cause interpretations of multiple results’ but I agree with the broad premise. The simple answer to any complex question often does little more than change the question.

If you’ve got a spare half million, you could knock it down and start rebuilding.

There is a danger in thinking that change requires a big investment, one on an order of magnitude beyond the means of the average person. But change can come incrementally too, one based on daily adherence to a set of principles, and in 12 Rules For Life we see a version of such principles that can prove the catalyst for such a transformation.

Huh?

What?

Fine – that last thought’s from Courtney Barnett’s ‘Depreston’. But who better to end a riff off, right?

Thanks for reading.

reading review - shell game

The Shell Game by Kim Adrian (October 2019)

The Shell Game is a collection of essays… sort of. Let’s say 'essays' loosely as each one here is more an experiment with structure and form, the goal to explore a topic without having to resort to the standard essay construction. I found my way to this book after an initial interest in reading ‘The Body’, Jenny Boully's ‘essay’ written entirely as a series of footnotes referencing another essay (that may or may not actually exist). As it turned out, the excerpt from ‘The Body’ featured in this collection didn’t meet my high expectations, but I found plenty else about The Shell Game that captured my interest.

The four ‘essays’ I marked down for rereads were ‘Math 1619’, ‘#Miscarriage.exe’, ‘We Regret…’, and ‘The Spectrum’. Of the four, only the latter proved forgettable on the second attempt – the other three were each outstanding in their own way and get my highest recommendation. ‘Math 1619’ details a minority experience in the form of word problems commonly seen on high school math exams while ‘#Miscarriage.exe’ describes the aftermath of loss in a series of instructions written out using a generalized computer programming syntax. My favorite was ‘We Regret…’ an ‘essay’ by Brenda Miller that rewrites her life disappointments in the form of rejection letters.

There was a lot of writing in this book that I could have done without. I’m not trying to be dismissive; it’s more that I’ve done a lot of similar things already on TOA. Why watch the concert on TV if you can go play the songs yourself? This wasn’t an entirely wasted reading experience, however, as in a strange way seeing some of the work highlighted in The Shell Game bolstered my own resolve. It may never have been in doubt but I can assure you, dedicated reader, that I am recommitted to cooking up more of the eye-roll inducing nonsense that has littered TOA over its first four years (with notable examples from 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019).

A collection dedicated to exploring form and structure unsurprisingly left me with a few notes to take down about the topic. Overall, The Shell Game considers the way traditionally organized writing can strangle the life out of unusual or difficult material and explores the various answers writers have come up with for this issue. A new form can also amplify what might get lost in the flow of a standard structure. The thought I will try to keep in mind whenever I explore a new method of expression is that just as a digression loses value whenever it becomes evasive, an innovative structure must clarify and inform the answer where a more generic form would fail. In other words, the purpose of invention in the structural sense is to expose rather than conceal the writer’s message.

proper admin – daily reminders update (additions, part six)

Hi all,

We are down to the last two new reminders I added to my list last year. Each one comes with a longer explanation so I gave them separate posts - one today, and the last one next week.

-Biggest weakness is that when people let me down, I cut them out

Longtime readers may or may not consider me an honest person. The answer doesn’t matter much to me (though I hope I have your support). If I need to make my case here, I’ll point out all the things I’ve lied about… here it comes… just one minute… and…

This list doesn’t exist because I don’t lie... right?

Well...

OK, I do readily admit lying about one thing, one consistent lie from what I hope is the distant past. It was a response to my favorite all-time job interview question: what is your biggest weakness? Each time, I lied. I came up with a slew of passable fibs over the relevant four years. My personal favorite was ‘self-marketing’, a response I recognized smacked a bit of a ‘too cool for school’ vibe given that the very exercise of the job interview was an extended example of self-marketing, but I stuck with this answer because it was the closest lie I could tell without feeling like a liar.

Anyway, I lied for this question because the real answer would have torpedoed my candidacy (1). The real answer is that when someone or something really lets me down, I swiftly cut things off. It's not unreasonable, it's not like "oh, there's an extra ice cube in this glass, I'm never ordering a drink here again". I really try to reserve it for true let downs, betrayals even. A teammate on my college basketball team once called it my 'fuck you streak' and although I’ve mellowed out over the ensuing decade the phrase still captures the basic essence enough for me to reprint it today.

This problem seems like a direct inversion of loyalty, perhaps my greatest strength. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense that if someone betrays my loyalty, I would reciprocate regardless of the consequences. This reminder does seem to contradict my near infinite patience, but again, I don’t bring this characteristic into play just because someone makes a mistake. My tolerance for errors is unnaturally high, particularly if I think the error was a result of an honest effort.

The best summary I could come up with for how I make the distinction is selfishness. If someone harms me because of selfish interests, I’m probably in danger of reinforcing this reminder. And if the selfish behavior is accompanied by a lie, there's no question it’s over. I suppose I’m open to the possibility of becoming more tolerant of lies and selfish behavior; I will need to hear a convincing case first.

Footnotes / blubbering excuses

1. But why would this answer hurt your candidacy?

I think anyone who has held a job will understand that 'betrayal' is far too common in most workplaces for me to gain any value from this particular trait of mine.

the 2019 toa book award - champion

Little Panic by Amanda Stern (November 2018)

I think in some years the eventual winner of the TOA Book Award becomes obvious as soon as I post the reading review. It feels to me like the drama of which book I will eventually anoint 'Book of the Year' is lost whenever my praise is a little too gushing, my insights a little too enthusiastic, or the topic a little too obviously the sort I would keep close to the vest. I thought my posts earlier in the year about Little Panic hit those three considerations and I assume careful readers are therefore not surprised by today's post. Still, it would be unfair to the awards process to just leave things here, so let's take a closer look at how I think about this book just over a year after I read it.

The most interesting thing about Little Panic is how it intersected with a period of time when I elevated my understanding of mental health. I seem to think about this almost every day as I interact with strangers, acquaintances, and those closest to me. It's no coincidence that I've felt this change just as it seems like people around me started discovering new words, phrases, and sentences for articulating their own mental health experiences. Undoubtedly, this has led many to open up to me in ways that would not have been imaginable just a few years ago. These conversations have in turn helped me see and meet others where they are and given me greater patience and empathy regardless of whether someone is in recovery, treatment, or still undiagnosed. In my rare moments of pure honesty, these conversations have helped me see these things in myself and changed the way I reflect on my own life.

It is difficult to pinpoint the role of Little Panic in this shift. On one hand, it’s merely an account of personal experience. The importance of such writing shouldn’t be minimized (especially by me) but the reality is that recounting personal experience alone does not make for an uncommon book. What stood out to me was how I felt this book took it a step further by linking personal experience with the recent history of how society has generally responded to people sharing Stern's struggles. I thought the added context of this approach allowed the book to help me better understand mental health in general and anxiety disorder in particular by not just inviting me to walk in Stern's shoes but also pointing out where I had previously made footprints as I walked alongside the other people portrayed in the book.  It's one thing for an author to describe her anxiety as she tried to understand questions on a test - it's a whole other level when I can also see myself reflected in the proctor. The way Stern holds up mirrors to so much of society helped me recognize the many ways we all continue to fail suffering people and left me with some valuable insights into the small ways I can help chip in to reverse this trend.

The main idea I’ve taken from this book is the way uncertainty stokes and amplifies anxiety. I'm not entirely sure why this is but it rings true from my experience. In fact, I've found that this understanding has helped me recognize the way my mind and body respond to the various uncertainties that pop up during my daily activities. For one reason or another, uncertainty seems to lead most of us to expect the worst and over time I bet our minds wire themselves to associate uncertainty with an eventual bad outcome. It's not always easy to find uses for this knowledge but I have had some opportunities in my volunteer work to reduce uncertainty for our most anxious residents. It's the kind of effect that's hard to measure but I doubt anyone will convince me anytime soon that increasing uncertainty is a good idea for anyone, anxious hospice resident or not.

I've also thought quite a bit about what an education system built on the unquestioned premise of constant testing teaches students about self-worth. A student will feel good about getting an 'A' on any exam but rare is the exam that grades a student on self-worth. Testing in general seems intent on helping students find new ways to hate themselves through the proxy of some easily blamed subject. Of course, the educational system is not going to undo its methods anytime soon so I've had to think a little more about what might work within its confines. One idea I've had is that testing methods could benefit from an overhaul, perhaps by considering how to use examinations to find a student's strengths rather than highlighting shortcomings. I think we've all met enough 'book smart' people to know that top grades don't necessarily mean intelligence, they just mean a student doesn't have any obvious weaknesses within a certain set of learned concepts. If students studied ways to accept themselves, they might be better positioned to make healthy decisions when they start feeling pressured to conform within a report card's boundaries or fit one of society's cookie-cutter definitions.

The way I saw 2019 undoubtedly changed for me once I started seeing events through a lens of anxiety. I understand myself much better today than I did a year ago thanks to how I recognize my own anxiety in the face of uncertainty. I feel that, slowly, I’m understanding others and finding ways of relating to them that would once have been foreign to me. I marvel at what I learn when I get someone to open up and I wonder what the next such conversation will bring. In the meantime, I look out for uncertainty and try to come up with ways I can reduce it, for myself and for others. There was much more to this change than merely reading one book but I don’t feel I can overstate the role of Little Panic in this transformation. Like has been the case with the other books I’ve named Book of the Year, it was the book I needed to read when I didn’t know I needed to read it. I’m happy to acknowledge it, officially, with the Most Irrelevant Prize in World Literature, and wish you the best of luck in finding the next book you don't know you need to read.

the 2019 toa book award – runner up

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (May 2018)

The power of a good book is how it finds words for the sensations, convictions, and intuitions that we’ve yet to articulate into our own sentences. I suspect many readers have shared my reaction to certain phrases and expressions that emerge from a good book – that’s what I’m saying! In a sense, a good book organizes the mess in our brains and cultivates the potential hidden in the clutter.

So, that’s a good book. But what’s a great book? I think a great book guides us to the hidden corners. It shines a light where we would otherwise never bother to look. In a sense, a great book guides us through the soul and leaves us in awe – how have I never thought about this before? Or to put it another way, a great book molds the sensations, convictions, and intuitions that float within us into the humble but limited expression of language.

Much of what I highlight on TOA fulfills my idea of a good book. In these works, I find what is true and consider the best way to make use of it. The Prophet is a rare find, a great book, and in such works I simply see the truth, worry about how little I know, and go back to look a little more.

reading review - eichmann in jerusalem (lessons about statelessness)

In my first post about Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jersualem, I noted that certain lessons can be learned from events even if they fail to explain the original phenomena. I thought I would wrap up by drawing lessons from her insights into statelessness, a condition that has little direct relationship with Eichmann's guilt yet remains a threat that is as relevant today as it was all those decades ago.

Statelessness was the first weapon the Nazis used against their extermination targets. A stateless person could still flee the regime but safe destinations were all the more difficult to reach for the lack of state affiliation. In the same way that I cannot board an international flight or drive into Canada without my official government documentation, a person fleeing Nazi Germany would have struggled to legally cross borders into safe territory. This fact wouldn’t have prevented escape but the secrecy it demanded of any fleeing refugee undoubtedly increased the danger involved in the journey.

The power of a government to grant statehood to any person is immense almost beyond the point of my comprehension. At the very minimum, my passport introduces the possibility that the USA would consider military action to preserve my safety. The scenes wherever immigrants officially earn their US citizenship are a testament to this power. The official documentation brings so much more than just a new box to check off on the census form. But the government’s power to strip a citizen of this same status goes a step further. It approaches a biblical proportion in the sense that it’s powerful enough to override the basic human desire to protect those in harm’s way. Without this desire – the very instinct that underscores any case of one group intervening on the behalf of another – the likelihood of a political body intervening on the behalf of a stateless person essentially disappears.

Distinctions made among people are never done just for kicks. The lines that separate always delineate a power imbalance. When two groups occupy the same space, the group with local state affiliation always holds the upper hand. Immigrants retain some of their leverage through the knowledge that a foreign government with its own interests considers them part of their citizenry. A stateless person enjoys no such backing. A totalitarian regime such as the Nazis has no rush to attack the stateless because there is no threat of major intervention on the behalf of the victim for whom no state will claim as its own. In fact, totalitarian regimes will play the slowest possible game knowing that allowing victims to disappear into uncertainty ensures their victims do not reach martyrdom.

It is a challenge to draw an applicable lesson from one of humanity’s greatest failures. The reality is that group distinctions and its inherent power imbalances remain ever-present in the state dynamics of the modern age. One possible lesson of statelessness and its considerable role in Nazi atrocities is the importance of fighting the forces that make people disappear. When people go away, the vanishing act remains pending until those left behind forget. Many demonstrate their understanding of this lesson each day through their support of the very people states work tirelessly to put out of sight – the wrongfully incarcerated, the battered protester, the fleeing refugee. Nothing is out of sight until it is out of mind. If we always keep the victims, the marginalized, and the powerless in mind, we’ll always when a so-called leader should be ignored until the world is set back once more on its rightful course.

reading review - 12 rules for life (ideologies and group thinking)

Jordan Peterson covers a few ideas about ideologies in his 12 Rules For Life that I wanted to take a closer look at today. His main point is that ideologies are an attractive proposition for those who demand simple answers from a complex world. Those under the sway of an ideology will filter their experiences through a small set of axioms and explain their world in the context of their beliefs. The ideology discourages further learning and eventually becomes a substitute for the fundamental knowledge required to acknowledge the truth of suffering in life. In short, he considers an ideology much in the way a doctor might think about a contagious disease – once it finds a host, the person living with it becomes hard to distinguish from the invader.

The worst ideas are in another way like the worst diseases – they cultivate the temptation for self-sacrifice. Totalitarian regimes are defined by their willingness to kill their own citizens. Of course, any society can find its own version of dark chaos without resorting to a murderous system of government. It simply happens one person at a time, each one deluded by inauthentic experience until we all forget about the long road we’ve traveled to make the world a healthier and wealthier place.

ask the business bro (the goal, part 5)

TOA: OK folks, welcome back to ‘Ask The Business Bro’, and maybe for the final time, but we’re here for another round of ‘Q and A’ about The Goal. BB, where did we leave off last time?

BB: Let’s see, well, first, I do agree, this should be the final round, because we really are getting into the weeds here, at least in terms of the detail level. Where did we leave off? I think we were talking generally about how to balance flow through a bottleneck. And really, Goldratt says it best, the rule of thumb to follow is always to use bottleneck capacity to determine the right level of inventory and excess capacity. If you know your bottleneck can handle 100 units of raw material per day, then the organization must design itself to prepare at least 100 units of raw material per day.

TOA: So that all sounds simple enough, well sort of anyway, but I think it leaves out the question of how you might monitor all of this once you setup the organization.

BB: Well, if you go back to our first conversation, I actually answered this.

TOA: You did?

BB: I did. I said it was like lowering the water level of a river until the rocks became visible.

TOA: That was the answer?

BB: Still don’t get it?

TOA: Not exactly…

BB: OK, so think of it like this. What the river analogy really means is that in most organizations, merely watching the water flow downstream hides a lot of the things going on under the surface that dictate how fast the water flows. So you need to identify what parts of the process are hiding the realities of your organization, these realities being the rocks and obstacles so to speak, and make the appropriate adjustments.

TOA: OK, well I’ll try this, let’s see, if the moving water represents flow, then one way to lower the water level, so to speak, is by reducing the release of inventory.

BB: Very good, although maybe more so in theory than in practice. Remember, inventory and excess capacity work together to balance flow, and flow balances only when it fully utilizes the bottleneck. So unless you have the excess capacity required to accelerate the flow of water through your river, you might find that the price you pay for learning where your rocks are is idle time for the bottleneck, and that isn’t the goal, so to speak.

TOA: Ha.

BB: I think part of the issue here is that the analogy brings in an unrealistic assumption.

TOA: Which is what?

BB: The river is made of water.

TOA: That’s unrealistic?

BB: It sure is. Let’s try another version of the analogy. Think about the winter. Suppose the river froze. What happens to flow?

TOA: Well, it would become ice.

BB: So it would stop.

TOA: Right.

BB: Right?

TOA: What?

BB: So it would stop flowing.

TOA: So…

BB: But only on the surface.

TOA: Unless it completely froze.

BB: Well, sure, but let’s say it’s partially frozen.

TOA: Why would it be partially frozen?

BB: Well, because my analogy works better that way.

TOA: This is ridiculous.

BB: Now let’s say the river slowly starts melting. What happens?

TOA: I guess you would have some flow.

BB: What about the ice chunks?

TOA: OK, so first you have some ice chunks, but eventually it would flow.

BB: That’s true, eventually, but the ice chunks are important. Let’s think about those.

TOA: The ice chunks? OK, they would flow at first but not as smoothly as the water, is that it?

BB: Go on.

TOA: And then over time those would melt into water, and eventually there would be perfect flow again.

BB: OK, that’s the right idea. Why would the ice chunks move less smoothly at first?

TOA: Because the ice would bump against obstacles, or each other, or maybe freeze again.

BB: Right, but those problems all go away as soon as the ice melts.

TOA: So what’s the point?

BB: Well, it answers your question about monitoring. One way to think about this analogy is that the batch size is important. If you turn water into ice, that’s like increasing the batch size. That’s like a pizza place saying ‘instead of baking one pizza at a time, we’re gonna do six’. So if you think of it in reverse, melting the ice is like shrinking the batch size.

TOA: I'm lost.

BB: If you think about it, the original analogy’s limitation is that a river of just water is like an organization that works on everything in a batch size of one – there’s just no way to break the pieces down any further. But in reality, most organizations produce in batches. Batches are beneficial in many ways, especially because it creates some visible efficiency, but if it prevents the bottleneck from being fully utilized, it is a big problem. If I order one pizza and the restaurant waits until five other orders come in because their oven is optimized at six pizzas, that’s a problem.

TOA: Are these pizzas frozen, too, or partially frozen even? Does the pepperoni flow?

BB: Oh, quiet. Just understand that one way to monitor flow is to keep an eye on batch size and shrink it as needed until the flow is balanced.

TOA: Even if it is less efficient?

BB: Sure, because the only real thing that matters is keeping the bottleneck utilized. Remember, the bottleneck determines your maximum potential. You could have the most efficient operation in history throughout an organization but if nothing is getting through the bottleneck then you’ll go out of business.

TOA: OK, I understand, so by melting the ice, you see whether the river can handle all the water, and if it can, you need to invest more in melting the ice, efficiency be damned, because without water getting downstream the production of the organization is halted?

BB: Exactly. You could also find ways to simply remove the ice from the river and wait, but then the analogy gets a little too complicated.

TOA: So shrink batch sizes… let me write that down… is that all?

BB: No, certainly not, but at some point you just have to stop asking me and just read the book, right?

TOA: Well…

BB: There are some basic rules of thumb I can put together along the lines of ‘shrink batch sizes to identify flow problems’ and maybe I’ll send those over a little later on. But I think we’ve reached the point where this ‘Q and A’ has done all it can to explain the book.

TOA: OK, well those rules of thumb would certainly be helpful.

BB: No problem.

TOA: Well, thanks for your time. What’s next?

BB: Not sure, actually. I’ve read a couple more ‘BB’ classics recently and maybe I’ll dig into those. I also have some thoughts about email, and I just got a new treadmill desk that I have some comments about. Stay tuned, I suppose.

TOA: Stay tuned, indeed. Thanks for your time, and we’ll see you next time on ‘Ask The Business Bro’.

the 2019 toa book award – third place

Bring The Noise by Raphael Honigstein (March 2018)

Taking home the bronze medal in this year’s TOA Book Award is Bring The Noise, Raphael Honingstein’s profile of current Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp. Longtime readers will recall that I fell hard for Liverpool Football Club around a decade and a half ago, hard enough to relegate all other sporting interests to secondary status. Over the years, I’ve watched various managers try and fail to bring Liverpool back to the summit of English football. This leads me to the most surprising result of my laser focus on the club and their affairs - the club's managers have proven to be fascinating case examples of how to lead organizational change. And for most of a decade, these examples have been negative, showcases of various strategies and tactics that have proven at best to bring around another false dawn before a hasty return to the cold darkness of the club's Premier League title drought.

Klopp’s appointment in 2016 proved a decisive turning point in the club’s recent history. He arrived with a big reputation, having built Borussia Dortmund into perennial contenders despite limited resources, and he set to work on replicating the same achievements with Liverpool. My expectation was that Klopp would implement a grand vision, his tactics and strategy fortified by experience and wisdom, and over time the club would edge toward an elusive title. In some ways, this is exactly what ensued. However, what I didn’t understand was how much his approach relied on his relationships with people. Klopp seems to understand better than any other manager that his expertise in the sport has no relevance if he has poor relationships with the players, management, or fans. The ideas in this book stress the point over and over again, demonstrating the ways he supports, encourages, and ultimately elevates the performance of his team through a genuine desire to see them succeed.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall: The note that good managers remember how they wanted to be treated when they were players resonated deeply with me. In a sense, this was my first managerial principle. I suspect most people would succeed as managers if they threw out all the other tips, tricks, and techniques espoused by so-called leadership gurus and simply committed to becoming the managers they needed when they were younger.

Organizational change: The big idea in this regard centers on time. A manager cannot inspire change without acknowledging that major adjustments require time (and even more so if the team has certain established methods or tactics). The only way to lead progress is to focus on offering suggestions for improvement rather than giving reasons for failure. Over time, a team thinking in terms of improvement will improve!

And if a blunt message must be delivered, it's helpful to make sure any blunt message is delivered with lightness, humor, and humility. This makes it more likely that similar messages in the future do not unearth any lingering resentment from any prior comment.

Parting thought: There’s a lot here in terms of leadership tactics but the main idea that stayed with me had almost nothing to do with being on the job. Rather, it addressed how to handle someone leaving the team or organization. If someone decides it’s time to change careers and become a florist, the best thing for the leader to do is be first in line for a bouquet. Buying flowers won’t help the team score goals but it does reinforce that support from leadership is unconditional, a feeling most managers are better at talking about rather than demonstrating through action. A leader supports the team in all facets of life, whether it be on the job or not, and any deviations serve only to undermine any job-related messages.

leftovers – ordering fakeout (flu shot)

The way life seems to work for me when I run amok on TOA and post irrelevant life updates is that after I write something assertive like ‘I had problem A, so I applied solution B’, a few days later something comes up that contradicts everything I just finished writing. ‘Ordering Fakeout’ proved no exception to this golden rule.

A few days after the post, I found myself in the lobby of our occupational health center. I was there to get my annual flu shot. I signed in at the front desk and sat down to wait. Just when I was starting to wonder how long it would take, I heard someone call out ‘Timothy!’ and I jerked my head upward. Of course, I had used ‘Tim’ at the sign-in (I’ve only trained myself for takeout food situations) but since I’d grown accustomed to drooling like Pavlov’s (psychologically abused) dog anytime I heard my full name, I stood up like an idiot. There was, of course, someone already standing, a doctor who will probably cure cancer in three months and thus put me out of work again, but the only thing I know for sure right now is that he had signed in using ‘Timothy’.

I supposed I should stop short of assuming we share the same name. After all, I didn’t ask him if he used Timothy because it was his name or if it was just a way to prevent confusion when being called out. I didn’t ask if he was merely a too-clever Bob who had grown frustrated with name confusion anytime he shared public space with a Rob. Who would ever use Timothy, right? I'm guessing that as a doctor in his place of employment he probably did sign his real name... but you never know.

Anyway, Dr. ‘Timothy’ walked around the corner and out of sight. I sat down to mull over the pointless state of my life. Who knew how long this would take? I pulled out a piece of paper, looked for a pen that seemed clean of the flu virus, and wrote ‘Winston’ at the top of the list.

reading review - 12 rules for life (sharing and self-care)

The most interesting thing single fact I learned from Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules of Life was about how a common form of failure for a transferred organ is due to the recipient failing to consistently take anti-rejection medicine. The extreme example hides a simple truth that most people expect others to take better care of themselves than they do in practice. Another way to think of this observation is that most people will take better care of others than they do themselves. Peterson includes a more lighthearted example that hammers home this point – some people are better at taking their pet to the vet than they are at taking themselves to the doctor, a fact that isn’t even good for the pet!

It seems that most people hesitate to treat themselves to the small acts of care they give others without hesitation. Peterson provides some explanations with which I do not fully agree. One such thought was that most people know so much about themselves that they cannot help but hold themselves in contempt. I think there might be some observational truth there but for me the explanation is far simpler – self-care is a skill that we must learn because it goes against our natural instincts. We eat sugar until it threatens our health, we soak up the sun’s life-giving rays until our skin blisters and burns, or we root for Manchester United until we become bitter, broken old men.

The key to building the self-care skill, I believe, is to develop a capacity for sharing. Sharing is the first form of trade. It grows from a belief that the first exchange initiates an ongoing series of mutually beneficial transactions. It reverses what might be a natural instinct to fear that everything we give away will bring us no return. Sharing challenges the wisdom of immediately consuming everything in sight. It encourages saving for later and in the process creates a conceptualization of the future self. This conceptualization serves as an ever-present trade partner with which each of our ‘consume or save’ decisions becomes an opportunity to share with the future self. If I choose to save $100 for retirement instead of buying some pointless gizmo, it’s as close as I’ll ever get to handing my grizzled elderly self a living allowance for his golden years. It is perhaps this ability to imagine a future vulnerability for our self that is the most important development from a social perspective because once we consider our own vulnerabilities, we become capable of seeing the same challenges faced by others.

The sharing muscle can be flexed beyond the simple exchange of goods, favors, or money. Peterson observes that shared belief systems are vital because they introduce predictability among strangers and foster vital social functions such as cooperation, organization, and companionship. Belief systems help us make friends because good friends are those whose lives improve when your life improves – this result, though not impossible, is much more challenging among those with opposing views. The importance of being able to share in the success of others might explain why people tend to be social within their group and anti-social outside of it. In addition to the safety, security, and companionship that comes with group membership, it also rejects those who seek prestige or status, two markers that tend to have no relationship whatsoever with sharing in the success of fellow group members.

reading review - eichmann in jerusalem (criminal justice)

Hannah Arendt makes some insights specific to criminal justice in Eichmann in Jerusalem that I want to highlight today. As a starting point, she comments that the basic assumption of law is that we retain a shared humanity with those we judge and condemn. In some ways, her book is a close examination - and ultimately, a rejection - of this basic premise. What her coverage and analysis of the Eichmann trial suggested to me was that although there is indeed something we all share with even the lowest examples of our species, the way Eichmann allowed it to manifest places him in a very different category from everyone else.

This is a point echoed in the way she notes how most laws fail when they are applied beyond their intended scale. (For example, a community law cannot govern a state crime.) Part of the challenge here may be that on a small enough scale the truism that ‘if everyone is guilty, nobody is guilty’ works pretty well as a governing principle. You can’t pull everyone over for going over the speed limit, right? But in the case of law there are rarely provisions where the guilt of another absolves the accused. The shared humanity that Arendt cites as the law’s basic assumption is in the moment when we must make a decision that goes against the tide, not when we excuse our individual decisions by linking it to mass activity.

Intent is another aspect of the law that works in a similar way. Intent is so regularly a feature of criminal cases that many have become confused about its role in the act. In the most exaggerated cases, some feel that a crime without intent cannot be a crime. This widespread feeling is dangerous because it encourages wrongdoers to seek or create environments that obscure the criminality of an act from the perpetrator.

I wonder if Arendt thought her role covering the trial kept her from fully exploring every interesting aspect of the case. As she notes, a trial exists only to render justice yet criminal proceedings by default must throw out legally irrelevant comments that might be of political or social interest. Is it possible to find justice without these considerations? Essentially, the purpose of the trial is to determine whether the accused should be allowed to share space on the planet with everyone else, a consideration that likely limited Arendt’s ability to dig into every curiosity she had about the underlying nature of evil.

Finally, I was amused by her observation that those who opposed the death penalty in principle did not consider the Eichmann trial a very promising example for making their point. I suppose there is logic to starting closer to the margin and working your way forward. However, this does not change the fact that if you are fundamentally opposed to the death penalty, then it means you are opposed to its application in Eichmann’s case. Perhaps this group should simply echo Arendt’s note that no punishment has ever worked as deterrence for the same crime.

the right debates itself

I’ve been trying to understand why people never seem to improve at talking about politics. The skill of political discussion simply does not seem to grow among the people I've had such conversations with over the years. Although in most areas experience tends to fuel improvement, the ability to Talk Politics seems the exception. I don't think there's a question that improving at this skill would be valuable. Politics, after all, mostly has to do with how our cities, states, and countries are run and anything that might help these entities run better is welcome in my book. The stakes feel high enough to me that I gave this question some extra thought this week.

I’m tempted to accept one of the commonly cited cliches about political discourse as an explanation. The bubble concept is a good candidate. We are all in our own bubbles, right? Given that a bubble is a reliable way to preserve the status quo, it seems like if we all Talk Politics exclusively within bubbles then stagnant skills would be a logical result. If the game doesn't get any harder, no one needs to get better at the game. But this doesn’t explain why politicians seem subject to the same rule of stagnant skills because their jobs are to talk to colleagues with different political views. I can't imagine a politician that could be described as being in a bubble yet it seems like for the most part they also never improve at Talking Politics.

I suspect the importance of being right affects these discussion skills. People tend to behave differently when they feel right, preferring to talk in terms of evidence and explanation rather than engaging in any form of open conversation. This doesn't necessarily have to relate to Talking Politics except that from my experience it's pretty routine for a political discussion to involve people convinced that they are right. (In fact, I think people who aren't sure whether they are right simply hide from such discussions.) This means what passes for a political discussion these days resembles something like what I imagine happens on Judge Judy, each side taking turns to present evidence while accusing the other side of lying (or at least, presenting false evidence). There is a certain skill involved in presenting evidence but I don't think these skills have much value for Talking Politics. For the most part, in these discussions the 'skill' of presenting evidence is merely a matter of knowing how to speak in compound sentences, but compound sentences aren't a prerequisite for Talking Politics. In fact, compound sentences might be a hindrance for Talking Politics because long soliloquies rarely encourage healthy conversation (though of course we all know from watching TV that it isn't Talking Politics until you interrupt someone else by accusing them of trying to interrupt you).

I think the way to become better at Talking Politics is to learn how to talk with someone who you can admit is right even while you continue to believe you are right. Ideally, these 'right' views would essentially be opposites of each other. This might sound slightly ridiculous and I suppose it probably should – how can two sides be right at the same time while holding opposing views? The contradiction goes away when you throw out the assumption that only one side can be right. If you want to become better at talking about something like politics, the challenge isn’t to become better at proving your point, the challenge is learning to find shareable space between two seemingly incompatible views. It's not possible to work together with others unless you can find this space.

proper admin – daily reminders update (additions, part five)

Hi all,

Three more new reminders I added to my list last year.

-Be the better one

The short explanation is that this refers to the mean, median, and mode. Peer pressure, some might call it, or conformity. It’s a simple reminder for me that what happens by default doesn’t need to happen for me. If I have a clear-headed moment when I realize the better person would go against the grain, this reminder bolsters my resolve to cut in a new direction.

-Alleviate and prevent suffering

I think everyone struggles with the occasional existential crisis. What’s the point of it all, we demand, perhaps with fist skyward, raging against the unstoppable, the inevitable…

The answer lies in our own experience. If someone came along who alleviated our suffering, what would we think about that person? It’s a little like that expression about poker, I suppose, that says if you can’t spot the sucker at the table then you are the sucker. If you would hold someone in high regard for helping you through your suffering, then perhaps you should become the person who helps others through their suffering.

-Don't let people do what you will resent

This is an interesting rule of thumb. It means that the people we like best are often saying or doing the very things we dislike about the people we don’t like very much. If such a thing goes on long enough, the people we like best are going to become the people we don’t like very much, right?

We can’t monitor every move our friends make just as we can’t correct every syllable uttered by our closest family. Resentment dictates action. Resentment is the biggest threat to any healthy relationship and we should respond anytime the seeds of resentment are sown. If we know we will dwell on it later, we shouldn’t just roll our eyes and try to move on. When it comes to the way our friends and loved ones behave, we have to challenge ourselves to think about the future rather than the present in order to preserve the relationship.

the 2019 toa book award – the finalists

Hi folks,

It’s time to wrap up everyone’s favorite annual tradition – the TOA Book Award, or as it’s more commonly known, the Most Irrelevant Prize in World Literature.

We’re down to six finalists:

Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
Bring The Noise by Raphael Honigstein
Gridiron Genuis by Michael Lombardi
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Little Panic by Amanda Stern

Today, we'll eliminate three finalists from contention for the final prize. But before proceeding, a note - after years of confusion, I've decided to align the year of the award with the calendar year during which I make the decision. In other words, this is the 2019 award, but it's for a book I read in 2018.

Make sense?

No?

Good!

Daily Rituals by Mason Currey (December 2018)

Longtime readers will surely be exhausted of references to this book, Mason Currey’s investigation into the routines and schedules of various creative types throughout history. The main idea I took from this book was the importance of discovering a personal rhythm for creative work, and then pouring energy into protecting that time. Whether an artist works in structured ninety-minute increments, likes to block out a few hours every morning, or prefers all-night benders fueled by sudden inspiration, the key isn’t really in the details on the calendar. Rather, it’s a deep understanding of the self that is reflected in the way an artist uses his or her most valuable resource – time.

Parting thought: Creativity is variation within repetition.

I liked this thought the most out of many other interesting observations because I feel creativity is a concept all too easy to talk knowingly about without ever stopping to consider what it actually means. The reality is that on a planet of seven billion, someone else has likely come up with all of your good ideas (and even most of your bad ones). Creativity isn’t originality in the sense of pulling some new idea out of the air – rather, it’s a process of connecting existing people, places, and ideas in ways that don’t happen naturally. In a certain sense, creativity is a leadership act, and perhaps the most difficult one. The artist in full control of his or her creative powers is more likely to find new variation in the pattern others take for granted and these often become the moments we look back on as the inspirations that changed the world.

Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (July 2018)

Taleb’s newest book examines the consequences when systems lose the symmetry of their risk transfers. If the person in charge faces no consequences in the event of failure, how does the system change? The answer is in many ways obvious but as readers of his past work know there is much more to it than the simple answer.

Best idea: In a probabilistic sense, volatility and time are equivalent.

I hadn’t thought much about this lately but as I reviewed my notes on this book it was this idea that jumped out to me. The big themes in this work are much easier to understand through this lens. Over a long period, it isn’t so much the size of the risk in one instance but rather the number of instances that determines the likelihood of ruin.

Also a good idea: Investors do not match market gains if losses force a reduced position.

This is Taleb's ‘if-then’ thinking at its best. Most grasp the power of bad luck evening out and will at least pay lip service to riding out a tough time. However, the question isn’t about resolve but rather about resilience. If you know the rain will force you inside, you shouldn't invest in a way that will likely expose you to the occasional market thunderstorm.

Parting thought: An individual with a sufficient level of intolerance can change default preferences for the entire society.

This was an idea I (sort of) explained in this post. I sense a lot of big changes on the horizon and this idea seems to explain just how much power one person has in the equation. The speed of the change is proportional to the cost of changing preferences but this detail is irrelevant when talking about major changes that will happen slowly over the long term.

Gridiron Genuis by Michael Lombardi (November 2018)

Longtime TOA favorite Lombardi makes his writing debut in this work about leadership in NFL football. Like with many of the sports books I highlight on TOA, I felt many of this work’s big ideas translated beyond the helmet football field. Whether it was in his comment about the importance of simplicity as a driver of improved execution via repetition, his definition of growth as discovering new ways to do the same things, or his insistence that leadership starts by expertly defining what everyone in the organization must do, Lombardi’s clear thinking throughout this book shines a light on the basic fundamentals that define strong leadership in any context.

Food for thought: As I regain my Business Bro swagger in a new role, I should remember to keep in mind Lombardi’s point that a great fit for any system is a person whose abilities are maximized in the current scheme while also fueling the evolution of the system.

Parting thought: The coach’s job is to understand how each player retains information, and then tailor the teaching methods accordingly.

Lombardi notes that Bill Belichick’s offseason planning included time for the coaching staff to assess and adjust their teaching methods. This speaks to the broader point about the importance of understanding the way players retain information. Each player learns in both different ways and at different speeds – the best coaches can handle the largest variation in these combinations to get the most out of each player.

reading review - a velocity of being

A Velocity of Being is a collection organized by Maria Popova, founder of the Brain Pickings website that has become one of my most reliable sources for book recommendations over the past few years. This book, her second, features letters written from various writers to young children about the joys and wonders of reading. Alongside each letter is an illustration that captures an important element of the essence in each piece. In this particular collection, I enjoyed Andrew Solomon’s note and reread it a second time. Although none of the other letters stood out to merit a reread, I found plenty of ideas and insights that I’ve collected in my notes.

One up: The idea I liked best stated that information isn’t knowledge. It seems particularly relevant at a time when our collective access to information is increasing at a far faster rate than our collective improvement in knowledge (and this doesn’t even get into those situations where having more knowledge causes people to change otherwise sound decisions like getting vaccines).

One down: There are a lot of “true until it isn’t” insights scattered throughout this book. One example is the idea that if you are reading a book, you aren’t alone. True enough, but I’ve definitely had reading experiences that emphasized rather than alleviated loneliness.

Another letter noted that we read what we are as much as we are what we read. Again, true enough, but what does that mean when the book I’m reading is one I picked out totally at random? “True until it isn’t” is the lifeblood of the half-assed advice industry.

Just saying: I suppose I’ve always liked the construct of people reaching back and giving advice to a younger generation. There is also a particular variant on this theme where the addressee is a past version of the author. I always think about this when I make my arguments against the possibility of time travel – if it ever became possible, one of the most popular activities would be to go back to the past and give advice, but since my ninety-two year old future me isn't here telling me who is going to win the game tomorrow, I have a hunch this time travel thing is nothing but a nice fantasy.

reading review - eichmann in jerusalem (banality of evil)

I thought for today I would pull together some of Hannah Arendt’s comments about the banality of evil, a concept introduced by her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. The short version of the idea is that at the root of an evil person is nothing, an absence of the depth that can only exist as a result of serious and original thinking. Instead, what Arendt saw in her coverage of Eichmann's trial was a person entirely incapable, as she put it, 'to think from the standpoint of someone else'.

One consistent theme throughout this book was the contention that evil people and evil acts are two separate entities. She makes this point by noting how idiots are capable of committing evil acts, particularly if no higher religious, moral, or government authority exists to help them understand what they are actually doing. In the specific context of the actions examined in this book, Arendt points a finger at the conditions of the Third Reich as this sanctioning authority. A key point in this regard is the way such authorities emerge whenever obedience and support are essentially the same, an attribute that many will recognize as a defining factor wherever a strong political structure gives way to an evildoing regime.

Another thought Arendt explores is the premise of evil emerging from calculation. For her, evil has no depth and whatever lives at the source of an evil person is never a result of thinking. Those who study evildoers in an attempt to find its deepest premises, she suggests, will be disappointed when they find nothing beyond cliches. She makes sure to clarify that this thoughtlessness is different from stupidity and is in no way related to the crimes motivated by evil. These clarifications are critical because it suggests that anyone who puts their own mind to use moves away from evil. This point is perhaps at the root of her suggestion that although many comply when sufficiently terrified, some people do not, and it is in this small number that the human race ensures the planet remains fit for our occupation.

reading review - 12 rules for life (resilience and anxiety)

I wrote about ambitions and ideals in my most recent post about this book. One related thought that narrowly missed the cut for that post was Peterson’s suggestion that people should aim to have strength in the face of adversity rather than seeking a life without trouble. I agreed with this ideal because I’ve accepted that the challenges of everyday life continue to pummel us regardless of any ongoing personal catastrophes. A person who has the ability to remain poised throughout a turbulent time will reap the benefits of this balance each time life finds a new way to reacquaint us with fear, loss, or suffering. Resilience is perhaps the most important learned skill because it gives us a practical response to any dangers or threats we come across during the day.

One reason I use ‘learned’ above is because resilience seems like the opposite of anxiety in the sense that anxiety is a practical natural response to what we know, consider, or believe to be a threat. The anxiety response is a basic instinct that leverages memory to protect us in the future. As Peterson points out, we are often mystified by certain things (anxiety, violence, poverty, drug addiction, and so on) because we don’t give enough credit for how difficult and unnatural the opposite behavior is for human beings (resilience, peace, sharing, or sobriety). The core skill at the heart of resilience is calmness but this begs the question – how is it possible to remain calm given all that life does to make us anxious?

Peterson draws on some of his clinical knowledge to provide helpful recommendations. He notes that the mental challenges of anxiety (and depression) are difficult to manage in the midst of unpredictable daily routines. He strongly suggests a consistent wakeup time and recommends a breakfast high in the fat and protein that the body needs to regulate insulin responses against stress. In the midst of a long-term crisis, he suggests setting aside time early in the day to evaluate how you are handling the crisis and considering where new information from the previous day fits into the overall plan. He stresses that early is best because thinking about a crisis late in the day will impact sleep and reinforce a negative mental pattern. He also points out that anxiety is sometimes eased by either having a plan or knowing that there is time set aside for dealing with a new issue, challenge, or crisis. Finally, if new information comes in that worsens the situation, keep in mind that as humans we are not designed to handle bad news while in a fragile mental state. Instead of handling it on your own, try to find the appropriate support to help address the new reality of the crisis.

One observation Peterson makes left me reflecting on the nature of suffering, the role of resilience, and how it all fits into a larger ideal for the good life. He notes that for the most part, people find ways to handle life’s unavoidable tragedies (death, disease, natural disasters, and so on). However, human cruelty presents an entirely different dimension. Although humans are the only species that cause suffering merely for its own sake, we are not naturally predisposed to comprehend why another would mistreat us. This capacity to cause suffering paired with our inability to understand it suggest that the worst sin is to cause suffering. This conclusion applied in reverse, however, points to perhaps an overriding ideal for all of us to aspire to – prevent and alleviate suffering.

ask the business bro (the goal, part 4)

TOA: Hi everyone, we’re here again with The Business Bro, he’s got ice on his pulled hamstring and a beer in hand, not sure about that combination, but he looks ready to go again with more Q and A about The Goal. But first, BB, how are you feeling?

BB: I’m good, thanks for asking.

TOA: Before we start today, any thoughts from last time?

BB: Yes, one thing, I think the comparison of my commute to an organization’s production process reveals something Goldratt doesn't really discuss in his book – morale. If you think about my commute, it’s an example of a lot of components working above and beyond to accomplish a goal – the extra spending on the cab ride, the quick transition at the subway, and the infamous sprint here on the last leg.

TOA: Literally.

BB: Quiet. In a real organization, all the workers who made that level of effort would want some kind of recognition or reward. But we see in the example that although everyone truly gave it their best, the organization still fell short of its goal, and therefore probably doesn’t have the resources required to give out extra rewards in recognition of uncommonly good work.

TOA: Because the equivalent of arriving five minutes late for an organization is a loss of revenue or profit?

BB: Right, something like that. Ultimately, the lesson from my commute invokes an idea I read once in The Hard Thing About Hard Things – a good organization is a place where people working hard know that their efforts mean good things for them and for the organization. If an organization is so poorly run that a delay or setback in one part of the process negates all the hard work from the rest of the team, it probably isn’t the sort of place that meets the definition of a good organization. There just would be no way for anyone to know that good work would lead to good results.

TOA: OK, so I guess the logical question is, how does an organization set itself up so that a negative fluctuation in one part of the process can be overcome without extraordinary effort elsewhere in the team?

BB: Well, let’s break the problem down. What is the result of a negative fluctuation on the bottleneck?

TOA: I guess it means the bottleneck works below capacity?

BB: Right. And what would allow the bottleneck to work at capacity after a negative fluctuation?

TOA: Let’s see, if it was somehow still able to access the raw material it needed. So maybe with inventory?

BB: Exactly.

TOA: But I thought you said before that inventory is a negative?

BB: It isn’t really a negative. I just said ignoring the cost of inventory is a dishonest way to calculate the cost of production. The reality is that without those excess reserves, you are almost certainly dooming the bottleneck resource to idle periods, and that means you reduce the overall productive potential of your organization.

TOA: OK, then what’s the way to hold inventory?

BB: The best way is to store it at the lowest cost stage in the process. Of course, to understand this, you’ll need to accept that holding excess reserves of raw material is OK, but if you understand that negative fluctuations are inevitable then this conclusion should follow easily.

TOA: Right.

BB: The problem is a really easy one to solve if the lowest cost stage is directly before the bottleneck resource. However, it does become more challenging the further away you get from the bottleneck. If there are four process steps between your inventory and your bottleneck, for example, then you need to forecast four steps ahead of time in order to anticipate shortages and keep the flow balanced as it moves through the bottleneck.

TOA: And each step involved is subject to its own fluctuations, I assume?

BB: Without question.

TOA: So how do you account for all of that?

BB: Well, in order to balance the unpredictable nature of converting inventory into the material a bottleneck resource requires, you need to have excess capacity in your organization. There’s no other way, really, because if the problem is not having enough of the right material then the solution is finding a way to produce the right material. And if time is a factor, then the solution is finding a way to produce the right material on demand.

TOA: So in other words, you balance between inventory and excess capacity, then use the combination of those to prepare enough material so that you can balance flow through the bottleneck, even during a negative fluctuation?

BB: Hmmm, you know, I’m surprised that you seem to understand this, but yes, that’s a good way to distill the inventory question into a simplified formula of sorts. Really, I suppose it’s also a question of whether it’s more costly to hold inventory or retain excess production capacity, but I don’t think we need to dig too far into that element of the equation.

TOA: I might need to think this through more thoroughly myself.

BB: OK, so break here? There isn’t much left to discuss, I’m afraid, but maybe one more Q and A will be appropriate.

TOA: Yes, if you are up for it, one final chat would be excellent.

BB: OK, same time next week?

TOA: Yup, see you then.