reading review - the last skin

The Last Skin by Barbara Ras (May 2019)

My most recent foray into poetry led me to this short collection. I didn’t pull much in the usual style of TOA (though I did note that ‘stupidity is the gravest authority’, which I like) but I do have some notes on certain poems that I’ll share below.

‘Now All The Fears’

I liked this one for its good rhythm from couplet to couplet.

‘Blue Door’

Reading this poem brought to mind the word ‘saudade’, a nostalgia for what never was that I highlighted way back in the earliest days of this TOA project.

‘Dear C’

I liked the last stanza.

‘Once The Ocean Takes You’

My favorite poem in the book (but not one for which I have any particular explanation).

‘Washing The Elephant’

I believe this is the most well known poem from this collection. I thought it contained a good lesson – it can take a long time to figure out what matters if we wait for everything else to fall away.

reading review - the goal (money, money, money)

In my first post about The Goal, I described the general process of elevating the production capacity of bottleneck resources to help an organization reach its full operating potential. Today, I’ll take a brief look into the back room and go over ways to measure the progress of these techniques.

Goldratt measures an organization’s money using three simple measurements – inventory, throughput, and operating expense. He helps the reader understand these measurements by defining each in the context of money. Inventory is the money invested in what the organization will sell, throughput is the rate of money generated by sales, and operating expense is the money spent turning inventory into throughput. If we return to the pizza restaurant analogy from my prior post, inventory is the cost of every ingredient in a pizza, throughput is the amount of money generated by pizza sales, and operating expense is the cost of cooking and delivering a pizza to a paying customer.

Armed with these three measurements, anyone can understand where an organization’s money is going – the amount of money entering the organization is throughput, the amount of money leaving the organization is operating expense, and the money ‘stuck’ inside the organization is inventory. And since money is usually a reliable measure for the health of the organization, understanding changes in money can make simple yet powerful insights into the health of the organization – productivity is up if inventories go down, operating expense goes down, or throughput goes up.

Understanding an organization isn’t always so simple, of course, because it is rare for one of these measurements to fluctuate while the other two remain fixed in place (if all I know is that one measurement went up and another went down, the best I can say about the effect on the entire organization is that it is ambiguous). The value of these measurements is significant, however, because they provide global context that can illuminate the truth hidden by local metrics. Our pizza restaurant from above might boast of ‘cost efficiencies’ such as cutting down on delivery times or using less energy to run the oven – however, if the amount of pizza ingredients (inventory) measured at the end of each day continues to rise, an astute observer will know that finding a way to turn inventory into throughput is critical so that the reduction in operating expense is not offset by the rising inventory cost.

One up: As Goldratt reminds us readers a number of times in The Goal, a vaguely defined measurement is a step shy of useless. A good number cruncher will always keep this fact in mind. If a colleague comes forward seeking help with understanding a suspicious figure, a good approach is to ignore studying the calculations until all the underlying assumptions baked into the figure are understood.

The thought also links nicely to the old adage about the wizened hammer seeing a world full of nails. Just as the hammer knows it has only one song and tries to sing it whenever possible, a highly trained number cruncher is always tempted to crunch the numbers – this is what a number cruncher knows best! There is always going to be a time, though, when validating the assumptions is going to be more productive than redoing the calculations for a twenty-third time.

One down: I wrote a few posts ages ago after reading Hillbilly Elegy about cash flow so I will not harp too much more on the topic today. I’ll simply mention that no matter how strong a company’s books are from the points of view detailed above, there is usually only one solution for an organization suffering a cash flow crisis – more cash. Whenever an organization with a strong financial profile begins making strange financial moves, it is a good bet that a cash flow concern is lurking somewhere in the background.

Returns on investment are all well and good but if the cash on hand is insufficient then a business learns quickly that bankruptcy is a trump card against even the healthiest calculations of thse measurements discussed above. Cash for an organization is like air for a swimmer - even a gold medalist will lose a long enough race to any amateur if the champion is not allowed a breath.

Just saying: In my first post, I mentioned how an organization should change its decision making process based on whether its operating constraints were inside the organization (production capacity of its key resources) or outside of the organization (demand from the market). If the organization’s production capacity was causing a failure to meet demand, decisions should be made to maximize bottleneck resources. If the market was not generating enough demand, a traditional efficiency measure such as sales less material divided by man-hours was perhaps a better option in order to free up raw resources for marketing or product development.

In terms of measurements, what this idea does is take the three productivity measures outlined above and shift the focus of their metrics from revenue generation to cost reduction whenever the operational bottleneck is maximized. The organization is no longer concerned about whether throughput meets demand because, by definition, throughput is equal to demand whenever the bottleneck resource is maximized. A similar thought process applies to inventory because the amount of inventory needed to maintain throughput should become increasingly stable whenever demand is a consistent leading indicator of upcoming throughput. And if the underlying rates associated with operating expenses do not change, the fall in inventory should naturally lead to a reduction in operating expense.

leftovers #3 - daily rituals – TOA edition (legislative riders)

The ‘legislative rider’ is when a lawmaker adds extra provisions to a popular but essentially finalized bill. The idea is that although the provisions might fail to pass if presented as their own concept, the opposition will not reject the more popular bill on the grounds of these extra provisions being included. It’s a cute concept, I suppose, and speaks to the reality of an otherwise well-intended political process (1)

In terms of routine, I accomplish more by applying this concept because I’ve learned that my least time consuming tasks are often the ones I’m most likely to skip. For example, I used to stretch each morning after waking up but I found that this ten-minute routine was difficult to squeeze into a crowded morning ritual whenever I was in a hurry to get out of the apartment. I eventually rearranged my schedule to include stretching in my pre-bedtime routine. This was a great fit because I never arrive home in such a rush to get to bed – I already take a few minutes to unpack my bag, brush my teeth, and take out my contacts.

I highly recommend adding small but important rituals to more consistent larger routines as a way to ensure these less stable tasks don’t get skipped under unusual or stressful circumstances. Many good candidates for the ‘rider’ concept are so obvious that most of us do them without thinking – I bet the way I shave after showering is a very common example among many routines. Self-reflection is a great way to identify more of these opportunities. A specific technique I use is to ask myself what small tasks I find difficult to initiate or aggravating to complete in order to determine which tasks I should reassign as bookends to a more stable routine.

One good example is how I save a couple minutes on laundry day by the way I pull socks from my drawer (2). It works because I have two sets of dark socks that I consider identical – it doesn’t matter which type I wear on any given day. However, they feel different enough on my feet that I do not want to mix them together. My original approach was to separate these on laundry day but I always considered this a waste of time. I realized that I could save myself the effort on laundry day by simply leaving the socks unorganized and grabbing three at a time whenever I was getting dressed. The math is simple – by grabbing three socks, I’m guaranteed at least one matching pair, and the one extra second it takes me to tell the difference by feel is a much better use of my time than the couple minutes I once wasted on laundry day organizing the socks into pointless piles.

Footnotes / shameless self promotion

1. And there’s always Wikipedia, as well…

I went into the archives and found this post where I mentioned the rider concept - like a dumbass, I called them 'flyers'.

2. No Wikipedia for this one, though…

And here’s a post where I mentioned this trick.

i read speeches that changed the world so you don't have to

Speeches That Changed the World by Simon Sebag Montefiore (April 2019)

This collection of famous speeches was notable mostly for its confirmation of a great Business Bro Truism – people don’t remember what you say, they remember how you made them feel. These speeches, taken out of their moment in the process of being reduced to the inferior form of the print word, seemed to lose quite a bit of the majesty that made them such great works of art at the time of their delivery.

Of course, my nitpicking aside I found plenty of wisdom for my proverbial highlighter. An anti-war message was a common theme throughout these speeches. Some speakers pointed out that losses on both sides mean a war is costly even to victors while others noted that the increasing destructive power of modern weaponry makes war a useless tool for settling disputes. The best idea reframed service to country as doing everything possible to alleviate suffering – from poverty or disease, from ignorance or inequality. Many speeches looked to democracy as a tool for this service. One speech pointed out that democracy never required a wall to keep its people inside (a note that surely referred to the Berlin Wall).

Of course, a democracy unwilling to defend itself or its values is destined for fragility and, eventually, its fall. It does seem like armed combat is inevitable despite the strength of the anti-war message. Many speeches foresaw this conclusion and spoke of ways to alter this destiny. Some noted that indifference was the biggest ally to evil and urged listeners to always respond in the face of visible suffering. Another reminded us that all people are created equal and reinforced the warning that group supremacy constantly undermines this self-evident truth.

Perhaps the most important broad truth from this collection is that genuine goodness is always the biggest threat to those at the very bottom of the moral spectrum. Goodness comes in many forms that these speeches articulated – it could mean refusing to build happiness on the misery of others, for example, or recognizing the humanity in others by refusing to impose definitions on each other. Ultimately, it means refusing to speak differently than how you feel, a fitting insight within a collection of speeches that, in their own unique way, reminded us throughout our history of our shared vision that allowed us to swat aside evil, over and over, in all of its incessant and varying forms.

reading review - managing my life (youth development)

As manager of Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson became well known for bringing youth players into the first team. This is a subtle and underrated skill for managers of all varieties. Given its vital importance for long-term success, I thought I would wrap up my examination of Managing My Life by taking a closer look at this particular aspect of his management.

One of the great pleasures of working with the young or inexperienced is how their accomplishments in a given moment can often match those of their better-established colleagues. This challenges the manager to help them establish consistency so that these results can be routinely replicated without relying on an unsustainable effort or inconsistent process. A manager can help accelerate this process by protecting them from overexposure and ensuring that setbacks are quickly overcome. An important step toward establishing consistency is instilling the importance of practice. The manager should teach the team that even the most exceptional creators almost always opt for simple learned actions ahead of demonstrating their extraordinary talent at every turn. The creative act may be personally satisfying but contributors are defined only by how they help the team. Therefore, learning the importance of deliberate practice is a vital step in anyone’s development. The manager’s role in this process is to devise a program that allows for a sustainable way for young people to learn these core skills without discouraging or smothering their natural creative instincts.

Off the field, the manager’s role with youth is to serve as a guide and a mentor. Young people need help to recognize when their priorities become different from those of good friends or family. In the same way that a serious athlete cannot indulge in excessive food or drink as their carousing friends do, a young professional must be wary about work decisions that are based on factors that apply better to peers on different career trajectories. Managers can also help their young charges learn how to recognize an empty promise of instant success by instilling a belief that success is more about how people respond to opportunities rather than a question of sitting in the right seat at the outset of a meticulously planned journey.

As a team develops and its members acquire real skills and honest experience, managers must know how to shift the emphasis of their approach. Instead of finding ways to encourage effort and instill confidence, a manager of a skilled or experienced team should emphasize strengths and look for ways to exploit them for the team’s benefit. At this stage, managers must remember not only to help those in their teams but also peers who are new to the managerial field. Perhaps the most important lesson is that managers are never sacked solely for incompetence and that a willingness to die on every hill makes for the most vulnerable manager. The most valuable mentor for a new manager is someone who serves constant reminders that a manager who can learn to work with friend and foe alike will always live to manage another day. If this skill is not learned early on, the young manger is doomed to learn the importance of this skill the hard way.

tales of two cities - green light indicates bikes are secure, part two

I wrote in this post about the ‘green light’ system that Blue Bikes uses to confirm for a customer that a rental has been closed out. As I wrote (ranted?) in some detail, although the green light is all we customers get, the system doesn’t officially recognize it as a closure. This asymmetry leads to a predictable problem – customers will have trips remain ‘open’ long after the mythical green light and Blue Bikes will treat these open trips like stolen bikes until the matter is resolved.

This problem has come up for me a few times over the years. If I aggregate all the time I’ve spent on the matter, I’d get somewhere around three to four total hours. I’ve had my membership for just over four years so to be even more precise the time I’ve spent is just under an hour or so a year. This time comes in the form of sending emails, calling customer service (and waiting on hold), and sometimes walking from one station to another in a bumbling attempt to solve my own problem.

I’m writing about this topic today because just recently I had my annual encounter with this longtime issue. Historically, I usually don’t find out about the problem until I go to rent a few hours after I’d docked a bike. At this point, I’ll have my key rejected and the familiar thought runs through my head – here we go, I have an 'open rental'. These days, I know the fastest way is to call customer service. Most of the time, I’ll learn that the problem is ‘a system issue’ related to a station not relaying and distributing rental information correctly across all docks. Sometimes, I proactively provide this explanation over the phone and I’m often told that I’m correct – I’ve had this problem so many times I bet I could train the customer service team on its intricacies.

Anyway, after I clarify the problem, a little investigation reveals that a station where I’d recently closed a rental was ‘down’ and therefore all bikes docked in the station have not had their trips closed out. We’ll close it out now, sir! Great, I respond with the enthusiasm of a vegetarian unwrapping a box of cured meats on Christmas morning. I usually stay on the line until I've confirmed the closure processed (by being able to take out a new bike).

My most recent encounter with this issue came just at the start of summer. It was a rare moment for me because I needed to get somewhere. Naturally, my bike key was rejected for the first time in months. I called in and explained the problem – it’s a system issue, you see – but this time, I couldn’t get the trip closed out. My phone call rose prodigiously through the ranks of the customer service hierarchy until I ended up on the phone with The Supervisor. He was knowledgeable and he was eager and he was a patsy. I felt bad for him – his role in this organization was to enforce an inanity and most people have to dumb themselves down quite a bit to carry out such a function with any effectiveness.

His solution to the problem I had explained to him was to have me walk across town, almost twenty minutes away, to see if the bike I rented was in a specific station. I stayed on the line while I walked and he shared a variety of other sources of system trouble to kill the time. I filed these notes away in what I'm sure will someday become an internal Blue Bikes FAQ (including that rodents sometimes ate through the wiring of these docks and caused system outages). He knew so much that apparently there was no room in his brain for any relevant information – like how, as I learned later, there had been a massive system problem that same day which had impacted close to thirty stations.

Of course, at the time I just walked and walked and The Supervisor talked and talked, neither of us coming a step closer to solving the issue. I reached the next station and confirmed that my bike was not there at which point I was able to get my trip ‘paused’ so that I could take a new bike. The Supervisor concluded the call with an unconvincing remark that I should expect to hear again about the ‘next steps’ regarding my now 'lost' rental.

It was too late for my plans so I got on my new bike and rode back home. I had very little going through my mind until a moment of inspiration took me to another station I had used much earlier in the day. Sure enough, I found the ‘missing’ bike I’d just been instructed to look for docked at this station, right where I'd left it much earlier that afternoon. I called back into the customer service line ready for a fight. Alas, the fates connected me to a person who somehow knew even more than me and she informed me of the major issue the system had experienced throughout the day. It was very regrettable, I was told, that I had been asked to walk across North Cambridge when there obviously was – and I mouthed this next part as she said it – a system issue.

reading review - draft no. 4 (structure and leftovers)

Let’s wrap up my thoughts on John McPhee’s Draft No. 4 today with a look at his comments on structure along with a couple of leftovers ideas I want to highlight from his work.

First, by structure McPhee refers to the overall framework that organizes the work. He doesn’t quite get down to the sentence-level (although there are occasional examples, such as when he points out that direct quotations are best used to allow the reader to retain judgment about an idea). His interest in structure is more about how to use it to present a story to a reader in the most interesting possible way. He has a few rules of thumb that help him toward this aim.

One concern is that structure should never become fully visible to the reader. McPhee compares it to a skeleton – the structure should be as visible to the reader as bones are to the eye. He also hates the idea of imposing a structure, preferring instead that it emerge naturally from the material. As most stories work best when the highest point of tension breaks around sixty percent of the way into a piece, his main organizing idea is to look for this climax in the story before finding a way to remain faithful to the story’s chronology in his writing.

This presents a fascinating challenge. McPhee points out that almost all stories struggle with a structural tension between chronology and theme (and that chronology tends to win). Most writers interpret ‘telling the story truthfully to its chronology’ as a dictum to order the events in sequence and describe each in turn. Some stories cooperate with this robotic approach but most require the author to do a little more work to discover the best way to tell the story. It’s this work that McPhee calls structure – where is the tension and how can I show it to the reader? – and it again echoes the last thought I shared in my prior post – writing is selection.

First drafts and feedback

The last thought on structure is that a first draft is anything that has yet to fully form its own skeleton. Therefore, each new sentence affects all the existing sentences. This fact should encourage the writer to move slowly through the first draft in order to understand how these changes are affecting the overall work.

McPhee notes that the best feedback for a first draft should include insight, encouragement, and reassurance, all rolled into an informal conversation. It’s a lot but I think I agree with the strategy. The goal with feedback is to compel the writer to produce a second draft and it doesn’t really matter if it’s better than the first draft – once the cycle of writing and revision is established, the writer will work it out.

One important thought on feedback – as feedback comes from a reader (even if that reader is a writer), it’s important to remember how reader suggestions always reflect the reader’s rather than the writer’s passions. A good approach while delivering feedback might be to first confirm the writer’s intentions, then work out how the draft is meeting those goals.

Last thought

McPhee describes the origin of the expression ‘starboard out, starboard home’, a phrase I’d never heard before, and I was surprised by how it stuck with me. The idea refers to how the most expensive cabins on ships sailing between England and India were placed so that the rich could buy the luxury of staying out of the sun.

It made me wonder which of our present-day expressions or concepts are slated for extinction, and so I made a list of candidates:

-Panel discussions
-Coinsurance
-Poverty line
-Asian fusion
-Unleaded gasoline
-Acoustic set
-Five lane freeway
-Global warming
-True On Average
-Fast casual
-First down
-Think tank
-PowerPoint

Thanks for reading, everyone.

leftovers #2.1 - daily rituals – TOA edition (grocery shopping)

I suppose I should be more precise about my showering decisions since my most recent leftovers post hinted that I might not shower very much at all! Let’s make it explicit – I will shower if it’s been one full calendar day since my last shower. I don’t often use this rule, however, because my ‘shower after a run’ rule of thumb means I almost always shower at least once every two days. At the time of writing (May 11), it’s been over two months since I last went two consecutive days without running, and that means I can say the same about my showering.

I estimate that by not taking a shower every day I save around one total hour per week. Of course, this ‘savings’ is entirely hypothetical because I’m comparing my time to a routine that I haven’t maintained in a long time (one where I do shower every day). This is the danger of using comparisons to think about saving time, I suppose, because a lot of these savings are based on comparisons against hypothetical alternate routines that I’ve never actually done.

Hypothetical or not, this hour isn’t irrelevant given that I must use the time for something else. Since I’m always struggling to read, write, or sleep enough, I suppose I could credit my showering routine for creating extra time for those activities. However, like most things I’m not sure the showering decision alone saves me a significant amount of time. Rather, it’s the habit of reconsidering my routines that saves me time. Another good example of this concept is grocery shopping – I used to go once a week, but now I go only when I run out of tofu and eggs. This isn’t a major change because I still go to the grocery store roughly three times a month. However, skipping that one extra trip saves me around forty-five minutes for one week per month. If I went through my entire routine and counted up the time I save due to these little reconsiderations – fifteen minutes here, another half-hour there, and so on – I suspect I would see the origin of a lot of my free time.

it took me ten seconds to write this post

I’ve been kicking around this idea about how long it takes to do almost anything. A recent example came when I visited a friend who bought a house a few miles outside of the city. The house is a short walk from the train and I live a short subway ride from South Station. Easy trip, right?

Door to door, it took ninety minutes. An hour and a half! It was a stunning revelation. A soccer game could have started and ended in about that much time. For some reason, I’d never thought of the distance between our homes in such simple terms before – we live an hour and a half apart – but it made me feel a little better about not seeing each other as much these days. I don’t know about you but I don’t consider someone who lives ninety minutes away as being ‘close by’. I think I finally came around to this point of view because, again, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how long it takes to do things.

It’s possible that I’m simply arriving late to this crowded party. People seem to value speed, especially in terms of how they assess the merit of a product or a service, and maybe this is because everyone else knows how long things take and understands the importance of fast. We don’t have a lot of time on this overheating planet – why waste even a second? But I think there is another side of this coin – broadly speaking, we probably don’t really know how long it takes to do most things. I suspect that when we don't know how long something will take we usually underestimate the time commitment. Therefore, because we tend to underestimate, we end regularly surprised when 'quick' tasks (like riding the train to visit my friend) eat up half an afternoon.

I’m still considering various explanations for this tendency to underestimate the time involved in a particular task or project. My current theory is that our estimates reflect more about the effort involved than the time. The trip to visit my friend involves mostly sitting on trains or walking down the street – almost no effort at all, and thus it might explain my surprise about the length of the trip. The same goes for a lot of the routines in my life. Is it hard to wash the dishes, take a shower, and dress for work? It isn’t, and thus my surprise when I walk out the door five minutes late.

This brings me to a related idea that I don’t think about quite so much but still consider interesting – most of the things we do are pretty easy. In fact, I would say most of the things we do have no degree of difficulty. The rare occasions when I overestimate the time a task will take almost always involve something I don’t do very well. A common variation on this theme is a new task – if I’m involved for the first time, I generally overestimate the time commitment. A friend inadvertently helped me understand this a few weeks ago when we were talking about some computer skills in the context of a job application. It was reasonable that someone with my background and experience would have these skills but I had never used the program in question. My friend said ‘it would take you ten seconds to learn it’ before he corrected himself and said that the actual length of time would probably be an hour. I nodded, thinking as he said this that it would probably take me an entire day to learn the skill. I haven't told him yet that when I got the job, learning the very skill in question took me all of an hour.

If I roll all of today’s nonsense into one big idea, what I end up with is a broad explanation for why life seems to zip by as we get older. Here’s how I suspect the process works. At first, we aren’t good at anything so the simplest things take ages - tying shoes, standing up, doing math, and so on. Early on, everything is new and takes such a long time that I suspect the average kid overestimates how much time is spent doing most things. I remember summer afternoons as a little kid, going swimming long enough to wrinkle my fingertips into little topographic maps of World War I battlefields, and being astonished to come home and find it wasn't quite three o'clock. It was like I had a sixteen hour day filled with an itinerary totaling twelve hours.

Eventually, we get better at things and the endless days don't stretch and drag through the eternity of mid-afternoon quite so often. By the time we reach some semblance of adulthood, our calendars are jam packed with an endless list of simple chores – putting on pants, making coffee, buying groceries – and we start underestimating how long it will take to complete all these inane tasks. In a sense, we expect sixteen hours worth of a day to take twelve hours. Is it any wonder that most evenings we shake our heads and wonder where all the time went? Most of us will do this for five or six decades.

The conclusion to this piece – which has taken up almost all of the last hour – is obvious depending on your goals. If you want the day to seem longer, start doing new or difficult things. If you want to get better at organizing your time, start correcting for the underestimation tendency. My goal is to get more done with my time so what I’m doing is looking for opportunities like the one my friend inadvertently pointed out about learning the job skill – doing easy things that I misperceive as hard things. There is probably a huge list of things out there that I currently estimate would take me all day yet with some focused effort would probably use up closer to an hour. Those opportunities are where I suspect lurk the biggest returns on my time (and the dirtiest corners of my apartment). Doing more of these things might not necessarily make the day move any slower but I’m sure the sense of accomplishment will bring an end to that unsettling sensation of wondering where all the time has gone.

reading review - managing my life (team management)

I wrote last time about the importance role man-management skills played in Sir Alex Ferguson’s success. Of course, this is not to diminish the importance of team management skills. Today, I’d like to take a few moments to examine this other crucial aspect of the role.

Ferguson’s broad approach to team management was to wield his authority selectively so as to not undermine the gains he earned through his man management. He was careful to consistently offer quick and clear answers to all matters. If someone came to him with a difficult question, Ferguson sought to buy time until he had a clear answer rather than risk undermining his own authority with a vague or meandering response. He might buy time by praising the thinking rather than answering the question, perhaps by saying – I’ve never considered that angle, let me think about it a little bit. His goal was to avoid any sense of indecision because he feared weak answers would lead to him losing respect from the team. Along these same lines, he often avoided dealing with any issues that would not benefit from his direct intervention, preferring instead to give time and opportunity for the problem to work itself out. If his intervention was eventually required, he sought to hear all sides of the issue in order to make a fair and informed decision.

This does not mean Ferguson shied away from confrontation. In fact, longtime observers might contend the exact opposite. He simply believed that managers did not need to seek out confrontation – the nature of the role meant confrontations eventually found the manager. This might be especially true when a team was undergoing a cultural change of some kind – his attempts to eliminate bad habits, routines, or influences would invite head-on confrontation while the process of introducing new ideas would take a gradual and therefore smoother process.

His primary goal in team management was to cultivate a type of environment where players could be stimulated by a challenge without feeling pressured by its enormity. Just as he recognized that failed players at other clubs might perform better in his team simply due to a change in scenery, he knew that any great player in his charge could be ruined if he failed to cultivate the right environment in his team. His approach to tactics reflected this mentality. Despite being as tactically astute as any of his rivals, he prioritized ingraining an energizing sense of unity, togetherness, and team spirit into his clubs. Therefore, although he might have had plenty to offer his players in terms of specific tips or advice, once he made his strategy, tactics, and expectations clear for a given match, he opted to leave his team alone so as to not suggest a lack of confidence in the team.

reading review - draft no. 4

Draft No. 4 by John McPhee (April 2019)

My latest foray into the world of ‘writers writing about writing’ brought me to Draft No. 4 by John McPhee. I had no prior experience with his work (though it turned out I knew about a couple of works, including A Sense of Where You Are) but I was impressed enough with this book to add some of his other collections to my reading list.

I immediately applied a number of tips and tactics from this book to my writing (a method McPhee himself encourages when he defines development as reacting to excellence and incorporating certain things into one’s own style). The most notable idea was to use a dictionary instead of a thesaurus to find related words – a thesaurus simply includes too much filler whereas the few synonyms given in the dictionary entry are often directly related to the sentence under construction.

I liked his recommendation to use longhand as a way to unblock the mind. I’ll probably apply this tactic indirectly by working in different locations (I'm not writing anything in longhand) but I hope the broader idea that a new method or routine will bring forth new material proves true without resorting to yesterday’s tools. I had a similar reaction to his belief that writers discover the type of writer they are by trying different genres – I see the wisdom of the insight but I prefer to exhaust variations on form before moving to an entirely new style.

Finally, McPhee reinforces a thought I’ve heard elsewhere about endings. If there is a problem wrapping up, he advises the writer to review the work and look for the ending’s hiding place. If the ending is already there, all the writer can do is find a way to cut off the piece.

One up: McPhee writes briefly about interviewing and it led to a couple of fascinating comments. First, he points out that most people are generally uninteresting but that this is no excuse – in fact, it should free the interviewer to work at a relaxed pace to the degree that no advanced technology (such as a voice recorder) is necessary. Now, he's no dinosaur - he does concede that a voice recorder is useful - but he warns that the interviewer should pay attention to the answer as if it will be lost forever unless memorized. I suppose this approach would help the interviewer notice when the uninteresting subject makes a rare foray into the interesting…

A comment about writing that McPhee makes in an unrelated chapter may apply just as much to interviewing – how long should it take? As long as it takes.

One down: McPhee would hate these reading reviews – he gripes that ‘structural formalism’ is often a hint of a writer who is lacking for better ideas. To be fair to the man, I agree – I’m just not compelled to come up with a better idea.

Just saying: The observation that people rarely discard working products was made in reference to software but I think it applies to writing as well. A good sentence, paragraph, or chapter is a difficult thing to let go in the same way we all cling to our worn-out but trustworthy tools, products, or appliances.

Of course, what I’m describing is the very challenge of writing. As McPhee puts it so expertly – writing is selection. It’s not so much what goes down but what comes out that makes the work and it’s proven a great parting thought for me from Draft No. 4.

leftovers: fresh images, simple vocaulary

What could possibly bring Stephen King, Bono, and wage equality into one incoherent piece of writing? This one, of course.

The broad point I probably should have addressed in the original post was how my out-of-context quote mirrored a common news media technique for describing problems. It works like this - first, take conditions from this very moment, then calculate some metrics far into the future by assuming trends observed over the last few years (or even months) will remain perfectly fixed long into the future. If anyone think this is a poor method, ignore them and their contention that no previous trend in human history ever held up for so long. This is how the piece I found could make a prediction about wage conditions in the year 2234. Sure, there is nothing plainly wrong about the method but forgive me for rolling my eyes. What guarantees we'll even have wages (or jobs!) in the year 2234?

And yet it seems like we have no better predictive methods than making some basic logical extension of current conditions. Perhaps the more important point to ponder is why people insist on making predictions in the first place. The consequences of reckless predictions are often a main theme of dystopian work - Minority Report depicts a future where people are arrested for crimes 'predicted' by three psychics. We aren't there yet in that world yet - all I know is, right now if I accelerate up to the speed limit, no one pulls me over for 'projected speeding' - but I have my fears.

But of course, getting into the details of statistical methodology, the philosophy of news media, and the absurdity of hypothetical Minority Report style traffic violations all distract us from the main point - today’s efforts regarding gender equality are not enough. And although I appreciate the spirit of the 2234 prediction because it makes the point in a roundabout way, I think the best way to make a point about today's problems is to keep the future out of it.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

0. Encore? Sure, Bono's around right?

Here's an outline I found for a post that I've decided belongs in the trash bin - I'll present it here in the 'loose skeleton' way I sometimes sketch out promising but unclear writing ideas:

Idea: Bono winning ‘woman of the year’ seems to make it likely a woman will someday win the magazine’s ‘man of the year’ award.

Research: Does it still seem very unlikely when the magazine doesn’t have a ‘man of the year’ award?

Post: Why does it have a ‘woman of the year’ and ‘person of the year’ award, hmmm...?

Proofreading: Can it.

leftovers #2 - daily rituals – TOA edition (facial skin care)

Item #4 on my list – exercise – can be broken into two intensity categories based on whether I need to shower after the workout or not. My running workouts always lead to a shower whereas my strength routines do not. Given that I run at least four times a week, this means I shower at least once every other day, a sufficient frequency based on my research about showering norms in other cultures. For now, I’ve decided to forgo showering unless it’s after a run (1).

Showering decisions are important for me because my facial skin care regimen is closely linked to this aspect of my routine. I almost always shave after a shower because the warm water on my face eases the razor’s work and limits the irritation that causes cuts, irritation, and breakouts. When I shave independently of showering, I tend to feel the blade a little more than I do after a shower.

My skin has never been what I would describe as ‘ideal’ but in hindsight many of the challenges I experienced when I was younger were self-inflicted. These were the results of poorly considered or ill-informed decisions about razors, shaving frequency, and post-shave maintenance. I switched to Gillette’s two-blade Sensor Excel a few years ago to great results and continue to use Acne.org’s facial cleanser while showering. The final product in my routine is Neutrogena’s Triple Protect Face Lotion which I apply after I’ve cleaned my face of any shaving cream. I don’t think any one product above deserves outsized credit for what I consider an important improvement in my skin health over the past decade. However, if I did need to recommend just one, I would go with the face lotion. It works both as a sunscreen and moisturizer which is critical for me given both the amount of time I spend outside as well as how my skin tends to get dry after a shower (2).

My guess is that the most important changes I’ve made that helped my skin were all related to touching my face. I used to sleep on my front or side, for example, but this would press the pillow against my face. After college, I taught myself to sleep on my back. I also started buzzing my hair very short (every three weeks) for a few years because I heard that longer hair retained more of the oil that eventually made it to my face. I shouldn’t forget that my diet improved a great deal in the past few years as I introduced a lot of raw or simply prepared vegetables into my meals.

Finally – and somewhat fittingly for the topic of this post – I changed my post-shower routine and stopped touching my face with a towel unless it was absolutely necessary. These days, I usually wrap three towels around myself (waist, chest, and over my head) and let myself drip-dry for a few minutes to prevent any needless towel irritation from rubbing, wiping, or patting.

Footnotes / there will be a story about eggs

1. TOA becoming TMI…

I originally had a note here with a more precise description of how I decide to take showers but decided it worked better as its own post.

Spoiler alert: I do shower at least every other day at minimum!

2. The answer is always… no.

I’ve been asked a number of times over the years whether I’ve recently come back from a vacation. This, I realize, is because I tend to tan a little bit during winter because I go outside to run, walk, or ride a bike far more than the average person does during the cold weather months.

reading review - managing my life (man management)

A significant portion of Managing My Life described Sir Alex Ferguson’s approach to man management. Although these skills rarely capture the public’s attention in the same manner of a manager’s on-field antics or tactical acumen, it seems that most managers who maintain long-term success excel in this particular aspect of the role. This is likely because a manager’s ability to interact effective with team members depends greatly on whether he or she understands the personalities in the team.

One of Ferguson’s main beliefs was to favor encouragement ahead of almost all other methods, particularly for error-prone or slumping players. He felt that unless a player had an unusually high self-opinion, dwelling on mistakes or shortcomings could only diminish rather than improve the player. He also took similar care when it came time to inform certain players of bad news (such as not being picked to play in an important game) choosing to speak with individuals privately before revealing the news in a public setting. This method had little to do with trying to make the individual feel better – rather, the idea was that the player was more likely to maintain pride and dignity in public if the news was known to the player in advance.

One thing I perceived as a strength was Ferguson’s intuition about how players received and responded to feedback. As noted above, Ferguson took great care with any negative feedback but he took a less structued approach with positive reinforcement. For the most part, he felt that ‘well done’ or ‘good job’ was more than enough because players were usually the first to know when they had done well. He also recognized the power of the crowd and would find ways to leverage its energy to help his players. One specific tactic I liked was how he would encourage struggling strikers to shoot early and often during home games because the crowd tends to applaud these types of first half efforts regardless whether it resulted in a goal. Ferguson thought hearing the crowd cheer or applaud would spur the player on and help elevate the level of his performance.

Of course, the most important man Ferguson needed to manage was himself. He understood, for example, that he would never have quiet moments for thinking if he didn’t actively carve out such time for himself. His self-awareness is unsurprising (this is an autobiography, after all) because his obvious understanding of others was sure to come first from a deep understanding of himself. One example of such reflection comes when he notes that leaders should only intently observe two or three team members at a time. He felt that focusing on any more people would overextend attention and lead managers to miss key signals that they would otherwise notice when focusing on just a couple players. Although I’m not sure whether the exact number given here applies to everyone, I think it’s important for leaders to know exactly how far their attention can stretch before it comprises their powers of observation.

reading review - the art of seeing (general principles)

Today, let’s wrap up my thoughts on The Art of Seeing by examining some of Aldous Huxley’s general principles for maintaining good vision.

First, as I’ve noted previously Huxley attributes many vision problems to poor usage that causes strain and tension in the eyes. One common culprit in this regard is staring. A person accustomed to staring slowly reduces the eye’s natural mobility and increasingly finds it harder to adjust focus when looking at new objects. A key step here is to simply acknowledge that staring is an unnatural function for the eyes because an abnormal habit is impossible to correct until it is acknowledged that the habit is abnormal.

Another contributing factor to poor usage is an inability to leverage the memory as part of seeing. People routinely make errors and believe they’ve seen what isn’t there – this phenomenon strongly implies that memory plays a much larger role in vision than is commonly recognized. The techniques I mentioned in my last post are not just helpful for reinforcing the mechanical function of vision but also for training short-term memory to work closely with the eyes and help bring greater precision to what is in sight.

Finally, the importance of proper lighting cannot be overstated. I really liked Huxley’s definition for the right amount of lighting – it should be like reading a book on a sunny day. The risk of harm to our vision increases anytime we try to see in dimmer (or brighter) environments.

i read the goal so you don't have to

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt (October 2017)

Ah, finally, I get around to posting this one...

I first read The Goal in the winter of 2012 after having a VP recommend the book to me on a business trip (those were the days). He considered the book ‘an MBA staple’ and he thought I would find it very useful in the context of understanding our organization’s ongoing operational challenges.

I suppose I can’t be entirely sure about the MBA bit (though a great friend did read the book himself as part of his MBA coursework) but the VP was one hundred percent right about the latter – The Goal was filled with immediately applicable ideas for our company and I leaned on many of Goldratt’s insights over the next few years as I grew into my role. I will dig into the specifics over several upcoming posts so that you can have a better idea of how to apply Goldratt’s ideas to the real world.

For today, however, I just want to focus on the main idea of The Goal. It’s a tough concept to distill into one sentence but I’ll give it a shot anyway – the slowest rower determines the speed of the boat. If that thought feels a little too casual for a business concept, let's try this one - an organization's singular focus should be on maximizing utilization of all resources that enable it to meet demand.

The Goal uses the concept of bottleneck resources to drive this point home. A bottleneck is any resource whose capacity is less than the demand placed on it. As an example, suppose you are hosting a breakfast at your home. If your guests collectively demand eight coffees and your coffee maker can only produce two cups at a time, then your coffee maker is a bottleneck for your ability to produce coffee in a timely fashion for breakfasts serving more than two people.

Now reader, you may protest – but why can’t I just run the machine four times? And I agree here, in a sense my analogy assume your guests will storm out if they aren't handed the first coffees, but I must note that what works in your kitchen might not be the same thing as what works in the market. An organization’s goal at all times is to ensure the flow of production through a bottleneck resource never falters because each minute lost waiting at a bottleneck is a minute lost to the entire organization. To put it another way, making six customers wait for a coffee risks losing their business.

Let’s think about another example that more closely illustrates the business application – a pizza restaurant. A pizza restaurant with a daily demand for twelve pizzas per day will maximize revenue if it is able to produce twelve pizzas per day. To keep it simple, let's further assume that as long as the pizza is delivered on the same day, it's no problem. If it takes the oven an hour to produce a single pizza, then the pizza oven must work for twelve hours per day to meet demand. If anything happens during the day to cause the oven to work for less than twelve hours, the organization will lose a pizza order at the rate of one pizza per lost hour.

Another way to think about this is that once the oven works for less than twelve hours on a given day, there is absolutely nothing the organization can do to make up the lost time. This is the feature that distinguishes a non-bottleneck resource from a bottleneck. A non-bottleneck has options to make up for lost time because the demand is less than its potential output. A bottleneck, on the other hand, simply must get the job done on time if it wants to meet the demand placed on it. In the above example, the oven is the bottleneck on any day where there are more than twelve orders.

The way bottlenecks are defined in The Goal does not rule out the possibility of there being multiple bottlenecks in any organization. However, there is usually one resource whose capacity shortfall in comparison to demand is the greatest among all the other bottlenecks. This resource becomes a constant target of management attention as it seems to find new ways to prevent the organization from meeting demand. The only way to meet the challenge is to increase the capacity of the bottleneck and to repeat this process for each new bottleneck that emerges (or for each old bottleneck that returns). The nature of how bottlenecks change as an organization elevates the capacity of its resources defines the ongoing improvement process that underlies The Goal. At all times, a capable operations team should ask itself – where is the constraint now and how can we break it?

If the organization is successful in identifying and breaking each new bottleneck, eventually the constraint will move outside the organization when demand for the good or service is less than the organization’s maximum production capacity. At this point, since by definition an organization is able to sell every good or service it provides, it is appropriate for an organization to use traditional efficiency measurements – such as sales less material divided by man-hours – to drive decision-making and increase profits. If demand ever exceeds production capacity again, however, the organization must be ready to subordinate all operational decisions to breaking the next bottleneck.

The simplicity of the main idea covered by The Goal hides the depth of its power. Over the years since I first read this book, I’ve found myself noting its applications in a variety of different environments. In a series of upcoming posts over the next few months, I’ll look into these in more detail. We’ll go to my favorite ramen restaurant, talk about when to ignore a running injury, and consider how the bottleneck concept applies to workplace ergonomics. Before all that, though, I’ll start with a traditional reading review or two and maybe, just maybe, ask The Business Bro for his thoughts on the book.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Tim

leftovers: why aren't wages rising

Here's another post I stumbled across in the old archives - some kind of BB rant about wages. As usual, it's delightful reading, the standard combination of nonfact, fiction, and outright lies that I like to think of these days as the TOA trademark. (Again, as I noted a few days ago - returning to the TOA archives is not recommended).

So, what do I make of this topic a year and a half later? I still think a lot of people stagnate at work because they confuse 'advancement' with 'continuing to do what they are told to do' (1). A little obedience is required every now and then, of course, and for the most part there are certain things that just have to get done in every workplace. I do agree that being a reliable employee is worth a lot to any organization and that somewhere in the concept of a 'cost of living adjustment' is the very idea of The Raise that most people are talking about. But does the man pulling beer bottles out of my recycling get six cents a pop just for being a year into it? At some point, if you haven't created more value, you aren't more valuable... right?

Still, I get it. My post last year essentially responded to an argument that didn't really exist except on maybe the craziest fringes of humanity (which is basically TOA anyhow) and then, after inventing this non-argument, I attacked it with gusto. I think it's like the straw man method, or something like that. Whatever. My point remains the same because I talk to a lot of people who mention some vague interest in 'opportunity for advancement' or 'room to grow' yet they never seem to do anything that demonstrates a capacity for advancement or growth.

It's like my friend Mike from fifth grade who had a comically stupid golden retriever. This dog just had no concept of a glass door. We'd open the door and the dog would just stand there, breathing and blinking at what it thought was a forever sealed threshold. I'm sure at some level this dog wanted to go outside - it always responded to the leash - but really, this dog didn't need a leash because all of the neighborhood knew that no matter how good the opportunity, this dog wasn't going anywhere unless forced.

I think there is something to be said for crashing into all the barriers around you, and crashing hard. It'll be awkward and painful and frustrating but how else do you find your limits? How else do you reach your potential? Businesses don't just get more money for being in business a year, they earn more money by creating value for others through the application of their resources. That's all it is, and that's all it'll ever be. The sooner an employee figures it out, the sooner those elusive raises will find their way into those stagnant paychecks.

Footnotes? Sure, why not, I've already made a fool of myself...

1. Now, to be fair...

It doesn't help that a lot of bosses confuse 'leadership' or 'developing talent' with 'telling subordinates what to do' but that's a different idea for another time.

leftovers - daily rituals – TOA edition (pants digression)

In my original post I included more details about item #4, exercise, because my running workouts were invariably followed by the same set routines including showering, shaving, and facial skin care. I decided while proofreading that these details did not fit the purpose of the original post because they were not priorities in the sense I intended to convey – I was never setting my alarm to shave. Rather, they were more like consequences of my exercise priority since exercise forced me to shower, showers led me to shave, and shaving initiated my skin care routine. Including these details, I feared, would open the proverbial can of worms regarding every tiny task that I prioritized in a literal sense yet would overwhelm the spirit of the post.

It's a priority, for example, for me to put on pants every time I leave the apartment. This is due to reasons related to laws, customs, and personal preferences. It is also a priority for me to use the restroom as required to answer nature’s call. But to rank ‘wearing pants’ or ‘using the restroom’ as priorities ahead of social time would force a pointless expansion of my list to include such vital trivialities like breathing, holding doors, and not crashing into stationary objects. These are ‘priorities’ in the sense that I will prioritize a trip to the restroom ahead of all other consideration in order to avoid peeing in my pants (assuming I wore pants, of course) but it fails to account for the spirit of my priority list – it’s about the value of my time rather than the exact rank order of the way I’ll use it.

I suppose the lesson of this digression is that my priority list isn’t a way to make choices for what to do in the next minute. Rather, it's a two-pronged approach to large blocks of time: the priority list helps me organize how I use the largest open blocks in my schedule and it helps me increase the amount of time I have in those blocks. Although we all have a seemingly endless twenty-four hours available each day, the time can disappear quickly when I’m undisciplined with my priorities. This is the main lesson of Daily Rituals – routines matter because they are the main tool at our disposal for ensuring our time goes to where we assign it its highest value. For me, the way I setup my priority list is the way I assign, apply, and regenerate that value.

reading review - the art of seeing (tactics)

My recent post about Aldous Huxley’s Art of Seeing introduced his basic philosophy about the shortcomings in how we think about vision. Today, I want to explore some of his specific tactics for improving vision.

First, a person must believe in the possibility of improvement. There is simply no substitute for belief when it comes to benefiting from disciplined training. This is a two-fold requirement in that although it is important to complete certain training exercises, it is equally vital to avoid harmful habits that increase strain and damage vision. This is seen in the example of blinking. It helps to undergo blinking exercises every hour or two where a rapid series of blinks is followed by a series of slow blinks. However, it’s also critical to avoid the strain of blinking infrequently for prolonged periods. A modern opponent of blinking is the digital screen because by its very construction the eyes are encouraged to stare unblinkingly for long periods. (I personally recommend reducing screen brightness to the lowest tolerable level, an intervention that I believe has led to noticeable improvement in my own vision of late.)

Huxley describes an exercise called palming to help further reduce strain by relaxing the eye. Palming means simply covering the eyes until all light is blocked out. A strained eye will initially see spots of light so remain patient until these spots give way to uniform darkness. If this doesn’t happen right away, take a break, and then try again a little later. Part of the thinking behind this technique is that excessive light exposure is harmful to vision. On the other hand, Huxley points out that like with all other aspects of human function the eyes respond positively up to a certain dose of sunlight. Huxley recommends learning how to occasionally take quick glances at the sun while rapidly blinking, a skill he built up first by glancing quickly toward the sun with eyes shut, then gradually building up the eye’s response. The idea isn’t to actually look at the sun for more than the briefest moment (editor's note: never look directly at the sun), it’s to develop a healthy response to light so that we are able to enjoy a sunny day without straining uncovered eyes.

There are also a number of recommendations for more specific types of vision problems. For those unable to shift their focus quickly from one object to another, a technique of counting dice and dominoes while moving the eyes from one to the other is described in this book. He also explains flashing, a (fully clothed) technique where you train the eyes to ‘see’ quickly by glancing briefly at something, then trying to recall specific details moments later while the eyes are closed. For myopic eyes, he notes that these training activities should be adapted to incorporate focus transitions from far to near to far again.

Finally, never press, touch, or rub the eyeball. Everything around the eyeball – the brow, the orbital bone, the eyelid, and so on – keep us from needing to touch the eyeball in one way or another. This is by design! Ignoring the natural protective and maintenance structure in place around the eye to make direct contact with it violates our anatomy and risks damaging our vision.

leftovers – the toa april newsletter (inequality, intimidation)

For those wondering what the original was all about – this post was sort of an April fool’s joke. I’m returning to it today because back in March I started writing that newsletter with a serious intention that I discarded for the sake of my (nonsensical) final product. What happened? I just saw the possibility of a joke and I couldn't resist, you know? I’m not ready to give up on my original premise, however, so let’s take a look at it today.

My main idea at the time involved the way I’ve allowed myself to become a target of mockery in the workplace (though considering that I give as well as I take, I suppose calling it ‘healthy banter’ would be a better description). I consider this an important part of my successes over the past few years – it demonstrates that I’m easygoing, that I get along with others, that I can take a joke, and so on. In any event, my point is that I’ve always encouraged a joke (or ten) at my expense, and I think it’s an important part of what I’ve done at work.

This struck me as slightly odd behavior so I thought a little more about it. As I rolled back the years and considered how this thought manifested at various stages of my career, I realized that it wasn’t universally true. The times when I was a target tended to go along with the times I was superior to my peers in some obvious way – skills, responsibilities, or even just experience. In a sense, I encouraged this whenever I sensed the possibility of inequality emerging between my peers and me. By presenting myself as a willing target, I think I kept us all on the same level even while the underlying trend was constantly pulling us apart.

Although I wouldn’t go back in time and do anything differently, I don’t automatically recommend this approach. Encouraging banter in the workplace is a tricky business (even before we consider what I’ll call ‘the HR stuff’). I think my approach worked for me because I have thick skin, a quick sense of humor, and a very intuitive feeling for where The Line is at all times. However, I do recommend the underlying idea of acknowledging an emerging inequality within a peer relationship. Otherwise, when the relationship inevitably changes beyond the point of no return, you’ll have little control over the final transformation.

The most important thing to remember is that inequality breeds intimidation. I feel that this is an especially important consideration in an evolving working relationship. And to be clear, working relationships wage a constant battle against intimidation via inequality because any workplace that has organizational goals will naturally create inequality based on each employee’s ability to contribute to those goals. Equal relationships are, in short, technically impossible whenever there is a goal because everyone’s contribution to the goal has varying value. This doesn’t prevent organizations from promoting a sense of equality across certain measures - a peer group, a salary grade, a job title – but the reality of an overall goal means this equality is under constant pressure as contribution reveals underlying inequality within these measures.

This brings me back to my earlier point about the various signals of superiority across a peer group – skills, responsibilities, or experience. No matter anyone’s good intentions, such signals are often the source of an unavoidable workplace intimidation. Good intentions are important (colleagues shouldn’t intimidate peers, superiors shouldn’t leverage intimidation as a management tool, and so on) but often not enough to prevent the fleeting manifestations of imbalance that I think are inevitable in any workplace. They key isn’t to worry about stamping out inequalities because those are always going to exist whenever there is a larger goal in mind – the key is to remain approachable so that those with lesser skills, responsibilities, or experience come to you for help.

For me, being a target of banter was always a good way to keep myself approachable. This method need not apply to anyone else but everyone should be aware of two things. First, everyone should understand how their superior abilities could intimidate others. Second, everyone should constantly work on ways to become more approachable. Ultimately, a lack of approachability means it becomes impossible to consolidate those raw qualities – skills, responsibilities, experience – into an ongoing contribution towards the overall goal. If new hires and subordinates are coming to you for help, that’s good – if peers are coming to you, that’s great. You’ll be doing your absolute best if you realize colleagues are coming to you for help ahead of those with more skills, responsibilities, or experience. This means your approachability makes you a more valuable help source than an otherwise more qualified colleague and ensures that the first hints of your superiority – your raw qualities – are being translated into a meaningful, lasting, and deserved superiority – an outsized contribution to your organization’s goals.

reading review - managing my life

Managing My Life by Alex Ferguson (February 2019)

A book I was particularly excited to finally read this year was Managing My Life, an ‘autobiography’ (ghost written by Hugh McIllvanney) of former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson. It followed his life up to the peak of his career at the time, winning The Treble in 1999. It is widely regarded as among the best (not helmet) football autobiographies ever (ghost) written. As you may suspect, reader, there is a good deal of insight into ‘Fergie’ and his managerial techniques and I’ll cover those in more detail over three upcoming posts.

Today, I simply wanted to highlight some of the broader life insights I enjoyed in this book. I liked the observation that communities built on a shared industry tend to support each other. In this specific thought, I also see a larger lesson in how empathy (perhaps cultivated by recognition of shared struggles in pursuit of a common goal) is more easily cultivated in such communities. As I noted from Sebastian Junger’s Tribe, strong communities tend to follow whenever its members are assessed by how they contribute to a common effort.

I thought the comment that an excess of common sense often leads to wisdom was an important reflection on the form of insight people most commonly value in their peers and mentors. It may be that common sense is in fact the first form of wisdom. Regardless of the exact relationship, there is great value in simply being able to observe reality in our surroundings and take the appropriate action on the behalf of those we can help. It’s the surest path to becoming a genuine person, one who can admit difficulties as a way to start dealing with them, and such people often have no choice but to point the way for the struggling, overwhelmed, or depressed who benefit so much from blunt, explicit, or direct reinforcement.

One up: Ferguson’s managerial career speaks for itself and the breadth of his accomplishments suggests that perhaps he was extraordinarily gifted among his peers. However, this book demonstrates that he earned his success through a combination of relentless work ethic and unwavering resilience. The story behind massive success so often resembles that of an injured player unexpectedly returning to full fitness – it’s merely the result of a consistent and significant effort, day after day, until one morning it just seems like everything changed overnight.

One down: Honesty and loyalty tend to go together because these characteristics are the bulwarks against one of the great ever-present temptations, selfishness. However, these characteristics alone can sometimes create vulnerability. The honest man, for example, does not always understand that being seen as honest is nearly as important as possessing the characteristic. What good is a positive quality if others remain unaware of it?

In a somewhat related way, loyal people are at-risk for overlooking the significance of someone breaking their word. A loyal person might dismiss an isolated act as an exception and grant forgiveness. However, the type of people who break their word once generally don't turn out to be so loyal and the second chance is likely to be squandered through another (predictable) betrayal.

Just saying: I suppose in a certain way I wasn’t surprised by how much non-football insight there was in this work. As I noted above, wisdom grows naturally out of common sense and there is little doubt that as a manager Ferguson remembered his common roots whenever his knowledge or instincts fell short. We’ll take a closer look at how he applied common sense and its ensuing wisdom in upcoming posts about his managerial techniques.

the anonymous order

I’ve always been quick to dismiss the so-called benefits of anonymity. This feeling has manifested in some truly bizarre personal behavior over the years. I’ve signed my name to anonymous forms in pointless gestures of defiance, for example, or expressed my displeasure when unable to ask clarifying follow up questions due to feedback coming from an anonymous source. My most consistent outburst comes whenever I suspect my ‘anonymity’ will hold up for all of the next ten seconds before something gives it away – my handwriting, my place among a sample size of three, or whatever.

These examples regularly frustrate me because I believe in the importance of individuality. However, this also means the opposite is true – when individuality doesn’t matter, anonymity is crucial. Our democracy was structured with this exact principle in mind. If my preferences are an exact opposite match to someone else, our points of view cancel out at the ballot box regardless of any other facet of our individuality.

I value anonymity at the polls because I feel it ensures another important feature of our democracy – equality. The outcome of any one vote at an individual level is essentially a question of command. If my vote accumulates into the majority, I become the commander; the reverse demands my obedience. Over the course of many votes, I take turns commanding or obeying those around me based on the tally, and this is the process that maintains equality. If this structure were not in place, my role in the community would essentially be one of permanent boss or subordinate to my neighbors, and there’s no equality in such relationships.

daily rituals – TOA edition

I thought I would follow up my recent post about Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals with an examination of my routine. I encountered some challenges that made a replication of Currey’s style impossible so I settled for merely understanding my priorities for scheduling time. In theory, this is as good as the approach Currey used because a careful observer could use my priorities to reconstruct the decisions I made that shaped a given day. This approach fails if my prioritization is imprecise so I’ve tried to consider head-to-head decision as a way of comparing one set of priorities to another. One example of such a comparison is sleep and work – since I set my alarm to wake up for work no matter when I fall asleep, I know work is a priority ahead of sleep.

This approach helped me deal with some of the challenges I’m sure Currey faced in compiling the chapters for Daily Rituals – how to handle the day-to-day variation of a schedule, for example, or whether to settle for a composite description of a series of days rather than simply retelling the events from one ‘average’ day. My set of priorities was the common denominator for all manners of describing my routine because these priorities were my guide for making the many scheduling decisions that structure one day. Therefore, I felt the way I set priorities was more insightful than the actual outcome for any given day.

Here’s what I came up with as my set of priorities for scheduling time:

1. Social time

This is a blanket concept for almost anything I freely choose to do with or for other people. It includes hospice volunteering. My only preference is to avoid any weekend commitments prior to 4pm (but I feel I’ve been reasonably flexible about this preference).

2. Nightly self-care

I stretch every night for between ten and fifteen minutes. I also floss and brush my teeth for about five total minutes. I usually do this right before going to bed.

3. Earning income for meeting expenses

I show up to work on time and leave after at least eight hours.

4. Exercise

I exercise once a day, alternating between easy and hard workouts. My weekday workouts happen right after I wake up but my weekend workout schedule varies based on social commitments. Basketball games happen on weekday nights and I count them as hard workouts. A perfect week would see hard running workouts on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, an easy jog on Sunday, and simple body-weight strength training exercises in my apartment for between ten and twenty minutes on the other three days. If I’m exhausted, injured, or taking a running break, I will substitute a long bike ride for a running workout.

5. Sports on TV

I’ll watch soccer or the NFL using my antenna to access free TV. Streaming is not an option due to my lack of internet access. I will go to a bar for certain soccer or NBA playoff games.

6. Sleep

My goal is to sleep for between seven and eight hours. Ideally, I go to bed between 10 and 11 and wake up around 6. If I sleep less than seven hours on a given night, I’ll try to make up for lost sleep the next day.

7. Grocery shopping and laundry

A tie! I go to Haymarket late Saturday morning for vegetables and salmon. Laundry is every other week, usually on a weekend morning.

8. Writing

My goal is to average at least ninety minutes of writing per day. Writing includes writing (glad I can clear this up) as well as proofreading, taking notes from books, and computer admin associated with TOA. I do most of this before I start the rest of the day but I will make an effort to squeeze in writing time elsewhere if my average falls below ninety minutes per day.

9. Reading

My monthly reading goal is six books. I suspect my books average around 250 pages but I’ve never counted words. I read while on transit, when I’m home for the night, and in public whenever I’m killing time between commitments. If I’m off the pace, I’ll block additional time to catch up, including changing my traveling decisions to use transit instead of biking to my various destinations.

10. Eating

I generally eat small snacks right after I wake up and in the late morning before having proper meals in mid afternoon and the evening. I eat as many vegetables as possible and cook these in big batches that I draw from over the ensuing few days. If I ever eat way too much at one sitting, I try to fast for at least the next sixteen to twenty hours.

11. Internet admin

I use work or library computers to complete internet-dependent tasks such as answering email, completing life admin, and entertaining myself. I schedule most of this to prevent myself from overindulging (news websites once a week, for example). I schedule using target start dates (‘track spending on the 12th’) but include wiggle room to account for busyness. I limit internet admin to around two hours per day and probably average about one hour per day.

Final thoughts

I wrote some extended insights into my exercise and internet routines that I will revisit in upcoming leftover posts. I also wrote down exactly what I did for a given one week period – April 5 through April 11 – and I will share that in another leftover post as a way to test the principles I’ve described today.

I’d like to wrap up by stressing the important role sleep played in this project. It was very easy to categorize my priorities by whether I would wake up early for them or not. Simply put, what I set alarm clocks for were obviously higher priority than sleep while whatever I skipped in order to sleep in was a clear lower priority. Once I split the list into those two groups, I could compare the items among each other and determine how I prioritized my time.

leftovers - where the walls don't talk

I heard a lot of nice feedback about this post (thanks for reading). I thought I would return today with some leftover thoughts about the post.

First, in response to a common question – this post took a long time. This means something different than when I talk about how the extended process of my reading reviews also takes a long time (it can be over a year after I identify the book before I publish the post). What I mean by a long time is that this post required a condensed effort over a few days in early July. My guess is that my first draft got about 80% of the way, then I followed up with some long editing and proofreading sessions. It was a little unusual for me to focus on one piece for so long over such a short period but the result was well worth it. My experience with this post reinforces my belief that big chunks of uninterrupted time are only way to consistently produce high-quality work.

In terms of the post itself, I thought I weaved in almost all of the Big Ideas I considered at one point or another. The only one I had to cut was based on an online I review I read about Sapporo Ramen that justified its low rating for, among other things, having a 'Mexican' behind the counter. I had (and have) a lot to say about a review like that but I don't think I’m going to get around to a full post about it so I’ll distill my reaction into a quick remark – it doesn’t matter who cooks the food. If you don’t agree with that, you probably won’t agree with what I post here on TOA, and I kindly suggest you divert your reading energies.

Finally, I had to wonder after this post went up – did I peak? I’m fascinated by the possibility. It’s simply a mathematical fact that in any measurable pursuit there will be a lifetime best accomplishment. What do you when you’ve climbed higher than ever before? I imagine this is always a challenging moment regardless of the specific circumstances. I suppose one line of thinking suggests finding a new summit. There’s a certain logic to that and perhaps being at the peak means having the best view of the surrounding possibilities. But such a line of thought forgets that our best work was probably at one time beyond our horizons and therefore completely out of sight. It's probably not really a question of the next effort but simply waiting until I understand where to go next. In the meantime, I'll keep in mind that the way down from the peak is probably not much different than the way up – one foot goes in front of the other, over and over, with the only guide along the path a commitment to giving every journey my best effort.

reading review - the art of seeing

The Art of Seeing by Aldous Huxley (January 2019)

The conventional wisdom regarding vision explains our eyesight as a result of an entirely mechanical process. Aldous Huxley suggests there are more factors that influence our sight in The Art of Seeing, a short work that challenges many ubiquitous understandings about vision (1). Huxley's main idea is that vision works much like any other bodily process in that although we are limited in a certain way by our biology, we often fail to maximize our natural ability.

One method Huxley relies on to introduce his idea is one of my favorite advances devices - The Analogy. He compares a person with poor vision to someone with injured legs. If we allow an injured person to use crutches only for a limited initial period before turning the focus toward rehabilitation, why don’t we adopt a similar approach to vision problems? It’s a compelling thought but raises the question of what an eyesight rehabilitation program would entail (I’ll examine some of Huxley’s specific ideas that might comprise such a program in an upcoming post).

Huxley extends his initial analogy when he explains how we learn to see in the same way we learn many other motor skills – through trial and error. Over time, we refine our skill via a repeated process of mimicry and intuition. In this sense, we never learn to see ‘correctly’ but rather try our best to see a little better today than we did yesterday. Therefore, we are unable to recognize when we are seeing incorrectly and as a result bring unintended damage through a combination of poor habits and harmful practices. A person interested in making the most out of his or her vision must take an approach similar to how we build any skill – learn the proper methods, understand the general principles, and remember that past failures are no guarantee of continued poor results in the future.

The realization I had that really made this book memorable for me was how it explained a certain weird paradox about natural selection. My vision is very poor without corrective lenses but my prescription isn’t exactly uncommon. If my genes and those of so many other vision-impaired are the result of a long selection process favoring survival fitness, surely my functional blindness would have ruled my DNA out of the genetic pool many generations ago. I mean, if my ancestors could barely see each other, how did they manage to plant my family tree, right? In reflecting on The Art of Seeing, I wondered if to some extent our vision problems are the result of learned, repetitive, or modern behavior. This explanation at least provides a reasonable answer for the question of how so many people survived in the past despite having such a significant shortcoming.

One up: I liked the suggestion that daydreaming should be done with eyes closed. Huxley’s reasoning was that we should avoid using our eyes for anything except seeing (and sensing) lest we establish bad habits and dissociate the mind from the eye’s proper use. This is a perfectly sensible explanation. Of course, I must add that from experience daydreaming is also better when done with eyes closed and that this fact alone is sufficient reason for the recommendation.

One down: Huxley notes that vision testing is biased against nervous test takers and that making a patient comfortable should be a prerequisite before the doctor administers an eye exam. His suggestion is that instead of using the soulless Snellen chart (it’s the one with the huge E at the top) the test should incorporate more familiar sights to help ease the patient’s nerves.

Just saying: The general insight that a combination of relaxation and activity is often the best recipe for learning applies far more broadly than to improving vision. People learn skills when they practice without strain.

Footnotes / bad puns

1. What…?

Fine, I’ll say it – this was an eye-opening book.

Happy?

rereading review - daily rituals

Daily Rituals by Mason Currey (December 2018)

My second read of Daily Rituals proved a crash course on routines and their many intricacies. Throughout the book – a series of chapters describing the work schedules and creative routines of selected artists – Mason Currey intersperses insights and observations to connect the shared behaviors among his subjects’ varied schedules and point out the larger truths that might lay hidden behind a specific oddball’s eccentricities.

The definition of routine I liked from Daily Rituals is that it is a series of choices that help take advantage of limited resources. Currey’s subjects interpreted this definition in all manners of ways. The most common approach was to structure a day to enable two to three hours of uninterrupted time. It seemed like many artists felt this method helped them retain the thread of their work during time away from their project. It was also a commonly cited approach among those who struggled for inspiration – rather than struggle in vain all day to come up with an idea, these artists cut themselves off when their allotted daily time was up.

Others found that routines kept their moods in check and enabled them to harness the volatility of their creative energy around a consistent framework. In some cases, such artists took regular jobs regardless of financial need simply for the structure imposed by employment. These were also good examples of an applied definition for creativity – variation within repetition – and the artists Currey profiled in this group often seemed to think the time spent ‘on the clock’ was invaluable to finding their next source of creative inspiration.

The most interesting descriptions were about the artists who seemed to benefit more from constantly tweaking a routine rather than merely sticking to the original plan. These artists found that subtle adjustments in the routine were a reliable way to inspire creativity. Such artists might also have benefited from this approach by building greater resiliency against the challenges of ever-changing schedules, demands, or life circumstances. For them, a habit of constant tinkering meant unexpected events did not paralyze their creative momentum.

One up: I liked the note that the way we collectively exalt creative work often obscures how integral raw effort is to the output of many prolific artists. Books like Daily Rituals sometimes imply that a well-planned routine built around three hours of uninterrupted time is all we need to become The Next Big Deal – this conclusion dismisses all the profiles of the artists who worked eight, ten, or twelve hours a day, every day, to realize their potential and reach the pinnacles of their fields. There is a point where focusing on ‘working smarter, not harder’ becomes an excuse for not working hard at all.

I also liked the observation that people with a lot of energy might remain oblivious when others have less energy. I suppose the exception is after a marathon – most folks seem to slow down alongside anyone wearing those large tinfoil capes.

One down: I’m generally in favor of common sense observations but I wasn’t a big fan of the thought that good routines matter more when things are going poorly. Would anyone suggest that a house’s foundation is irrelevant when the structure is standing upright? I think artists who work within a routine must approach their tasks independent of outcomes so that progression remains on firm footing while also ensuring a reliable safety net for those moments when we slip off the tightrope.

Just saying: Of course, despite the underlying truth in routine, the reality may be as simple as finding what works for us and only us. For every Beethoven – who felt the occasional outdoor break was vital to his productivity – there is a Stavinky – who did headstands to ‘rest the head’. What kind of rest is that? Whether the routine is merely choosing when to do what others normally do or a matter of coming up with a unique ritual to prepare the mind for work, the key lesson of this book is that creative work starts by getting to the desk – the way we get there isn’t as important as knowing how to get there, day after day, ready to resume progress and continue onward with our life’s work.

leftovers: the daily micro-manager

I was poking through the TOA archives (not recommended) when I came across this amusing post. Seems like back in the day I had some big ideas about organizing the ways I was doing nothing...

Of course, sometimes I look at one of my bad ideas and think - was it really so bad? Could there be a good reason for me to bring this unnecessary book into the world? At the very least, it could prop up all those other unnecessary business books on the shelf, right?

Ultimately, I think the best serious argument for this book is the way it will function as my own little insurance policy. This book wouldn't be about cultivating any reader's potential. That's what I would tell people, but that wouldn't be the point of the book. No, this book would exist merely to protect my own desk by cultivating the unsorted mediocrity all around me into clearly defined means, medians, and modes.

Remember this if you remember anything - when you aren't being promoted every ten days, it means one of two things - either your boss is mediocre... or YOU are mediocre! If this unfortunate situation carries on any longer, it seems inevitable that your head is going to be on some kind of chopping block at some point. After all, if you have a bad boss, you'll learn the hard way that bad bosses are known for making dumb decisions. And what could be dumber than sacking a good employee like you?

And if you actually ARE mediocre, well... I'll leave that one for you to work out. But it doesn't matter, really, because one way or another those layoffs are inevitable. Just remember that when heads are rolling, there is nothing more valuable than having incompetent colleagues who share your job title. A book like this one would be a great gift for those folks, right? Follow my crap advice and get fired instead of me. I think this would work, don't you?

Maybe I will write it. Why not? I can see in my head a vision of The Daily Micromanager on bookshelves worldwide. It's sure to be a bestseller - after all, don't we all want to do nothing more than play Peter Principle Roulette to win?

proper admin - laundry day resolutions

Last month’s post (and mid-month follow up) was more or less the official end of this mini-series. However, there remain a couple of extra thoughts related to these reminders that I’ll cover in the next two months.

Today’s topic is what I refer to as my laundry day reminders. It doesn’t require a massive explanation – these are the reminders I read on laundry day while waiting between cycles. (Or at least, in theory, because in practice I don’t think I’ve read them for the last few loads. If this forgetfulness continues into next year, I may reconsider how to best get myself to read these on a regular basis).

These reminders are on my laundry day list because I don’t think I get the same benefit from checking these each day as I do with my daily reminders. This is open to argument and I think I will soon do a full review of both lists to see if I have everything in the right place. My review will be based on this consideration – should I read it everyday or once every other week?

Let’s have a closer look.

Rules of thumb for writing

Writing doesn’t – and shouldn’t – have a set of hard and fast rules. However, there are some basics I like to keep in mind just so I avoid known pitfalls and stumbling blocks. The following list contains some general tips that help me avoid these troublesome situations.

Stuck? Write the most important idea first

I find myself writing without a clear purpose more often than my readers might expect. This reminder helps me refocus through the lens of simple question – what am I trying to say?

No outlines, sketch instead

I’ve discover that 'outline' is another word for ‘not writing’. It also often turns out that once I start writing, I realize new things that render my original outline moot. A sketch is much better because it motivates me to get started without restricting my instincts for exploration within the work.

Verb ‘to’ verb is no good... and nouns!

This note refers to two separate reminders. The first comment came in after I noticed a tendency to link two verbs with a ‘to’ where one verb essentially made the same point as the other. I wish I’d kept a list of these, honestly, partly because I’ve written plenty of stupid phrases I'd love to share and partly because I can’t come up with any good examples at the moment.

Let’s go with 'failure to include'. What does this expression really say? It’s basically the same as 'not include', and we all know what it means to 'not include' - it means exclude. Nice and easy, right?

The second reminder comes at the end because that’s where it goes – the basic point is to end every sentence with a noun (!). I’ve found this very helpful not necessarily for writing a good sentence (because a sentence can be rubbish despite a strong ending) but for flagging a bad sentence – if a sentence ends with a verb, I probably can improve it.

This note also helped me indirectly during job interviews. Specifically, by remembering to end sentences with a strong noun, I was able to convey when I was done speaking to my interviewers. In certain cases, I would linger briefly on strong nouns within my answer to build up the idea that I was most likely to eventually stop my answer on a noun (!!).

Express shock and rage and grief through meticulously detailed observation

For me, this was a rare case of ‘easier done than said’. I found that explaining my feelings piece-by-piece often helped clarify my underlying reaction. This also tended to make for better reading than merely “boo-hoo, I’m sad.”

It’s also a good way to shift the onus on the reader from empathizing to comprehension. I suspect emotional writing demands compassionate understanding while a measured, exhaustive approach compels the reader to fully grasp the elements being described by the author.

When an ending appears, grab it

I’ve put together hundreds of terrible endings on TOA to know the precious value of a good ending. Whenever I’ve written a good ending, it almost always appears on the page before I learn of its existence. It hides out for a little while (sometimes in a clever place like the first paragraph) and waits there until I go back for my belated discovery. I then focus on editing the rest of the piece until the whole thing works within the frame established by the discovered ending.

(Editor's note - if I were any good at this, we would end it here, but ALAS, laundry takes a few more minutes. Onward!)

Rules of thumb for proofreading

These rules are less important now that I have a few years of experience. However, I still find these three concepts helpful from time to time:

-Uhh, adverb?
-Is this pronoun clear?
-A subject must do things!

My guess is that the first and third lines are not so important anymore to have on the list. In general, I’m happy with my adverbs and tend to keep the subject involved in the action. The pronoun one remains a point of emphasis – it’s astonishing to me how often I’ll open a ‘finished’ work only to find myself in total confusion over how my he’s, she’s, and they’s refer back to the various people mentioned in the writing.

The top five regrets of hospice patients...
-The moment you lose your health, you lose the ability to follow your dreams
-Cut out everything you can leave behind so you are not income dependent
-Learn to express your feelings
-Stay in touch with friends and reach back out to those who reach out to you
-Pretending to be someone else defines your happiness on someone else’s terms

I read these every two weeks for no clear reason. It’s not like this is bad advice, it’s more that I don’t get much regular use from these notes. It might also be that I’m simply past the point where I am in clear daily violation of any of these principles. I think I’ll keep it on the sheet for now, but if a better list comes around I’ll probably make the change.

“You don’t judge a civilization by its riches, but by how it treats its vulnerable,” Dr. Green said. “I think this is a mark of our humanity.”

I liked this quote when I read it but I do see some limitations. Like with any high-level quote, it’s hard to make direct use of its main idea. I also hear ‘vulnerable’ used a lot more frequently these days to the point where Dr. Green’s main idea might be getting lost a little bit – let’s say his idea of ‘vulnerable’ doesn’t really apply to any of my neighbors yet those are the people I’m most likely to hear talk about their vulnerability.

Still, overall I’ve found this a very helpful reminder. The challenge is remembering that civilizations are a sum of their individuals' actions. So, for now, I’ll continue doing what I can with the vulnerable around me (yes, even you, good neighbor).

“Fight” is not “fighting.” Fight is never giving up. Gretzky, Orr, Richard, Lemieux, Lafleur — they were great fighters. They fought with their head, hands, legs, will, and need to be special, and rarely with their fists. The toughest players aren’t those who hit but those who are willing to be hit, to fight their way into open ice, to fight their way to the net, to fight expectation and disappointment to score the game-changing goal.

I like to end with this quote. It’s proven a little too true over the years. What does it mean to never give up? I think it means carrying with you every reason you’ve ever had to give up, to accept the huge weight of that, and still managing to fight fighting your way forward. I think it means understanding that although the external factors always conspire to stop obstruct us, the only thing that actually stops us is some combination of our reactions, memories, and fears.

I love the quote in its entirety but the last line really brings it all together – to fight expectation and disappointment to score the game-changing goal. What can be accomplished when you’ve just fallen short? Never giving up means asking that question, over and over, and not until until you’ve found the answer - you keep going until you no longer have the question.