the changing climate of the learning process

Every course charted its own unique journey to the final paper, project, or exam, but for the most part I could count on one aspect of each class unfolding in a predictable way - the distribution of the syllabus, an ancient tradition that repeated the same familiar pattern in classrooms and lecture halls throughout my four years at college. The ceremony would start with the professor dividing the neatly stacked papers into piles, then handing each one to a student in the front row (usually to those sitting at the far ends). They would then follow the implied command to take one and pass it to the next, the rustling action snaking up and down the rows like a slow wave tumbling toward me in the bleachers of Fenway Park. When I calculated which of the piles would reach me first, I would casually turn my head toward the general direction of my neighbor in preparation for the coming exchange, my averted gaze acknowledging the possibility that this classmate swiveling in my direction to discover me staring at his or her head might suspect I'd been doing so for up to the last ten minutes. Even if I did avoid this silent scandal, there was no time for celebration because the next challenge was immediate - I would try to take the stack, by then looking more like fanned playing cards than its original arrangement which was akin to a just-unwrapped box of copy paper, attempting to receive this messy pile while also chancing brief eye contact as I muttered my thanks, a feat of dexterity that often did little more than prove the importance of "eye" in the expression "hand-eye coordination"; this is how to get a paper cut on the first day of class. These catastrophes were no match for the final indignity of turning in the other direction to find a student already in possession of my suddenly excess wares - the bubble having burst, I would wave to the professor from my seat like the lone inhabitant of a desert island trying to get the attention of a passing ship; by my senior year I learned it was expedient to simply bring the hot potato to the front of the classroom.

The ritual satisfied, I could finally turn my attention to the syllabus itself, which I would glance at for a few seconds before placing the bloody document into the folder I'd designated specifically for the class, where it would remain untouched for the remainder of the semester.

It's taken me just over ten years but I think I've finally realized that these seemingly useless syllabuses have some value, which I've separated into two components. The first is that they created boundaries for the learning process by defining the relevant knowledge for reference throughout the course. The list of sources, lectures, and assignments in college syllabuses always felt like too much detail, but I wonder in hindsight if I tucked them out of sight upon receipt because I never colored outside the lines; I prepared for exams by studying from the assigned textbooks. The challenge I've discovered since college is how to draw up my own list of learning materials. If I've read one book on a topic, should I read another book? Should I listen to a podcast instead, or watch an informational program? Should I just go outside or even online and start talking to people about the topic? This is where I miss the second valuable feature of a syllabus - it established clear benchmarks for how to define a successful student. The answer to the above questions could be condensed into one of those useless aphorisms favored by those who confuse irrefutability with wisdom - you should keep learning until you've learned enough. But how much is enough? I recently read a book from an author who claimed that he went through over one hundred management books per year, so I know I'm not the only one who could benefit from a little clarity as it relates to how much learning is enough.

This brings me to the larger issue on my mind lately, which has to do with the challenge of continuing to learn once a student leaves the education system. There seems to be an inability in the average person to create a self-directed learning process, which I feel is reflected in our reliance on external markers of learning such as degrees, certificates, or endorsements - we require proof because there is no confidence in the notion that people are continuously educating themselves. I don't blame anyone who feels this way because it's a logical consequence of an education system that leaves little to no time for teaching students how to teach themselves - if we didn't learn how to learn in school, where else would we learn it? The events of the past year seem to shine a spotlight on this problem, evidenced by a few conclusions on topics that I've had no choice but to learn about on my own thanks to their novelty - the necessity of prioritizing action over intent in the context of racial justice, the farce of allowing masks to substitute for distancing in outdoor settings, the facts of mail-in voting; I was expecting something close to universal agreement on these conclusions, but there is plenty of dispute. I'm open to changing my mind but when I listen to someone with a different perspective I invariably discover nothing at the core of the opposition - no evidence of thinking, contemplation, or learning, which means their most significant failures are unintentional; it reminds me of how English-only speakers fake their way through Spanish by adding "-o" to the end of every noun, failing to grasp the subtle misogyny that's being revealed by their linguistic shortcomings.

The problem isn't reaching the wrong conclusion, the problem is never trying to learn. A student who stops learning upon graduation soon loses not just the immediate knowledge of a specific topic, but also the broader sense of the obstacles common to the journey of discovery; the failure to turn on the light is not just darkness, but also the compounding error of stubbing a toe on the coffee table. But trying to discover is hard when we lack the skills for discovery - a college graduate knows how to learn within the context defined by a syllabus and knows how to measure progress against its benchmarks, but the skills for extracting the right knowledge from new territory is an untaught ability. It's like preparing for an Arctic exploration to study glaciers only to find upon arrival that all the ice is gone - the only thing left to do is see what was hidden for all those years, even if you weren't trained for it.

It seems foolish to hope that life is going to start handing us syllabuses anytime soon, so I think those interested in lifelong study must resign themselves wandering beyond the safe borders that were once considered off-limits or out of reach - where unreliable sources sound convincing, opinions serve as facts, and key findings from popular studies cannot be replicated. Most significantly, the lifelong student must learn how to navigate the group inertia that refuses to acknowledge inconvenient truths, and there may be no more inconvenient truth than the fact that most of us have stopped learning. The consolation is that with such a long time horizon, far longer than any semester-length course, the questions of quality or quantity are less relevant than the question of energy - do you have a way to start learning so that you keep learning? Do you have the internal motivation to continue discovering even when those around you prefer to remain stuck in place? Do you have the confidence that you'll know when you've learned enough about a particular topic? There are no grades in this stage of the learning process, only progress - the report card measures whether you continue to learn, or not.

reading review - white fragility

I read this book in September ahead of a workplace discussion that encouraged participants to prepare by reading at least one of two works - How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi was the other option. I arrived at the meeting and discovered I was one of the ten or so participants (and the sole non-facilitator) who had read White Fragility, which placed me in the unexpected role of pseudo-expert on the work; I advocated for DiAngelo's perspective throughout the conversation. It was a challenge, but not an unfamiliar task - TOA reading reviews involve picking out two or three core ideas from a book, and in hindsight I can say that my writing habit had prepared me for this role in the group discussion.

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (September 2020)

There were two aspects of this book that I ignored in order to contribute to the discussion. First, DiAngelo's purpose is introductory and she takes a wide-ranging approach to this goal, but she condenses her examples, experiences, and conclusions into a short book. I suspect brevity created problems, primarily because certain important details were likely left out to keep the work at the desired length; the relevance of lost details will condescend to audiences who know better. For example, readers who accept her thought about a better way to present the narrative of Jackie Robinson's legacy will not be among those who are familiar with the details of his courageous career - spikes from sliding opponents, slurs from bigoted fans, and the lingering reluctance of some teams to sign Black players suggest to me that the idea of whites "allowing" him to play baseball retains the incompleteness she seeks to remedy, albeit from a different perspective. The second challenge for me was more straightforward - I was once told by a colleague, casually and almost endearingly, that I have "chink eyes", so let's just say that I'm not in the target audience.

The crucial lesson of this book is not what I've seen appear in a few reviews around the good old information superhighway - all white people are racist. (Quite frankly, I'm stunned that anyone who has known even one white person would entertain or accept this premise.) However, I think the acknowledgement that our society's systems are implicitly biased against minorities (and especially Black and Brown people) is a highly useful lesson for all audiences. White people, by participating in these systems (which in many cases involves little or no choice) perpetuate and reinforce inequalities through acts that would be openly labeled as racist were it not for the support and protection offered by these systems. I think this book is as simple as that, and should not have been complicated any further, because even though I admire DiAngelo's attempt to start and advance the conversation about the idea, it's an impossible task until those in the discussion have understood and accepted the simple premise of systemic racism.

TOA Rating: Three corporate seminars out of four.

toa rewind - the quota method (may 2019)

The "Hello Ladies" update from 1/19 reminded me of a post I wrote in 2019 exploring quotas in the context of increasing diversity, so today's TOA rewind looks back at that moment.

There are some amusing nuggets from this post:

• I mention going to Colby, which I do twice a year.
• I mention Iceland, which I do once a week.
• I make an offhand remark about settling to "match", which I might write more about - many self-described "world class" organizations don't seem interested in leading their fields as it regards building a diverse team.

TL;DR? I'd say this line sums it up - "The roundabout point here is that if organizations don't bother defining 'diversity', they risk becoming a victim of someone else's bias."

leftovers - the medusa and the snail (business bro musings)

This book describes the Delphi method, which produces group opinions by collecting simultaneous rather than sequential responses to a prompt, event, or meeting. These are circulated and revised until the group reaches a consensus; the method restrains the mimicry and groupthink that can undermine open discussions. I realize in hindsight that I partially incorporated this method while collecting feedback as a hiring manager, but oddly I haven't encountered it in other contexts.

Thomas also notes that lowering costs in medicine means attacking the underlying mechanism of disease at the earliest possible stage, which reminded me of something I remember from The Goal - inventory should be kept at the lowest cost stage of the process. The way he says that most major diseases hinge on a single key mechanism also invoked Eliyahu Goldratt's business bro classic for the way it mirrored The Goal's analysis of bottlenecks.

reading review - toa in 2020, part four (2021 preview)

Hi,

The fourth and final installment of my 2020 reading review.

2021 reading goals

My reading goals for 2021 are no different than they were in 2020 - I'm aiming for between 60 and 72 books, distributed across a wide range of topics, genres, and authors. In terms of each book, the basic idea is to learn two or three things from each read, though of course this may not be an appropriate expectation in all cases.

2021 reading preview

Here are a few books I'm looking forward to reading in 2021:

Manifesto for a Moral Revolution by Jacqueline Novogratz

It's unusual for me to look forward to what's likely a Business Bro special but this book has some hints that it might break my skepticism - it has an unusually high Goodreads rating (I've learned there's a massive difference between 4.2 and 4.4), the book seems to draw significantly from relevant personal experience, and it isn't the author's first book. The most important factor is the likelihood that the book will avoid the most common downfall of the genre - ignoring the reality that most situations are almost entirely constrained by fixed barriers, and are therefore incapable of applying in practice what sounds so good in the theory of slideshows, flowcharts, and multi-step action plans. What I am hoping for from this book, in other words, are a few insights from someone who knows how to work within an existing system in such a way that short-term successes fuel the evolution of that system toward a better future iteration. 

Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin

My hope is that, in addition to being informative about the ways technology can reinforce racist systems, this book will also arm me with additional ways to explain the importance of diversity to the skeptics I encounter on a regular (and disappointing, and alarming, and exhausting) basis. This wish is based on a hunch that the racial problems amplified by certain technologies are explained in part by the homogeneity of its designers, which I suspect represents a cross-section of traditionally powerful demographic groups.

Python for Kids by Jason Briggs

My initial experiences teaching computer programming in the workplace were limited to colleagues with an appropriate academic background, which perhaps inflated self-perceptions of my teaching ability. I'm hoping this book, which breaks down the basics of Python - a language I am familiar with from one college semester - will improve my capacity for relating to students and, in the process, make me a better teacher.

How to Make the World Add Up by Tim Harford

Longtime TOA readers will recall that Tim Harford is one of my favorite writers, podcasters, and economists, a fandom that goes back over a decade. I'm looking forward to this book as an enjoyable way to reinforce my good habits as it comes to interpreting, analyzing, and questioning numbers, though of course I expect to learn a few new things on the way.

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

This is a book for which I have no expectations - I've simply found Arendt's work to be a priceless addition to my reading routine and I've made it a priority to read all of her work.

the moral of the same old story

I clicked "unsubscribe" because it was the worst kind of thing you can say - not because it was offensive, rude, or heretical; not because it was ageist, racist, or sexist; I clicked "unsubscribe" because suggesting that we passed the test of COVID-19 with "flying colors" was false. The first time I read the sentence, it registered just enough for me to stop and think about it for a few seconds. I went back and reread it, then immediately scrolled to the bottom of the page because I don't subscribe to that kind of thinking. Four hundred thousand Americans dead, and counting - if that's the standard for passing the coronavirus test with "flying colors", I'd like to switch to another school.

But my haste to file a transfer application puts me at risk of overlooking a critical point - my grievance with the standard is likely a reflection of the system rather than a complaint specific to one institution; my above protest represents more about how I've had enough of one accepted narrative regarding the COVID-19 response than it does reflect an isolated reaction to one person's perspective. There is a sizable number of people who approved of the national strategy throughout 2020 - among political independents, the rate has hovered around 35% for the past few months - so my assumption is that at least 100 million Americans agree with the "flying colors" statement, or at least find nothing objectionable in it. I may hold a different perspective, but in such a large country I shouldn't be taken by surprise when I encounter someone who feels that future generations will look back on 2020 as another successful year for the USA.

The historian with a broader lens may reach a third conclusion about the past year - not that it was a success or a failure, but that it was consistent. The America I've learned about has completed one glorious accomplishment after another with the barest regard for its most vulnerable people, trampling underfoot anyone who stood in the way as it marched from sea to shining sea; the details of time and place as it relates to COVID-19 fill themselves into the new chapters of history books as if directed by a fresh Mad Lib. Is it the story of the sick and elderly, who suffered disproportionately despite the almost immediate understanding that they were at higher risk for serious consequences of the disease? Or is it about minorities reprising their role at the bottom rung of the ladder? The account of reduced or lost opportunities for working women is yet another example of a familiar American tale refreshing itself with 2020's specifics.

I sympathize with anyone outraged, upset, or aggrieved by these realities, but I remind you that ageism, racism, and sexism are among the consistent themes of the national story; there was nothing novel about how these prejudices influenced the response to the novel coronavirus. However, the pesky fact of certain counter-examples challenge my conviction that 2020's legacy should be defined solely in terms of these "-isms". Every carefully chosen anecdote strips the above generalizations of their explanatory power - the elderly at the front of the vaccine line, the white worker who lost the job, the glass ceiling shattered by Vice-President Harris. Such considerations are not enough for me to think differently about the underlying factors in the story of 2020, but perhaps they matter enough to influence some into thinking we passed the coronavirus test with flying colors; it leaves me searching for a larger connecting thread to strengthen my objection.

It may be an oversimplification, but perhaps the appropriate summary of the COVID-19 response is that it protected anyone who could afford it. This of course isn't strictly true, no such announcement in those terms was made anywhere in the country, but when I think about the reality of a spring lockdown and its ensuing effect on local economies my logical conclusion is that risk reduction became a luxury good, a new product available on the marketplace with the implied caveat - if you can afford it. The phrase has the right feel to me, and even if it's not quite up to the standard of a national slogan it could certainly be the expected addendum - six feet apart, if you can afford it; stay home and stop the spread, if you can afford it; put others at risk, if you can afford it. It's never been so obvious as it is today, when after ten months of the pandemic leaders are still wrapping their heads around the concept of hazard pay for essential workers, but you can see its consistent presence in the history of American life - the land of opportunity, if you can afford it.

For me, the 2020 story will be retold by future generations to impart a simple lesson - human society still felt it could afford poverty. This is based on straightforward observations - the World Bank estimates that COVID-19 containment measures will contribute to as many as 125 million people being pushed into new poverty by the end of 2021; worldwide, extreme poverty will increase for the first time in twenty years. This should be the first line in any calculation regarding the full cost of the pandemic, but I'm not confident that others will do this math. When people today talk about "returning to normal", what they mean is a world free of COVID-19, but such comments seem unaware of how much additional work is required if we use a more inclusive definition of normal - the challenge is not just controlling a respiratory illness but also lifting those 125 million people back out of poverty. In my mind, we could be a full decade from returning to the conditions at the start of 2020, from "returning to normal", at least from the perspective of how many people live in poverty. I think future generations will find something revolting about our current times, and it will be the COVID-19 pandemic response that highlights their disgust - how was poverty allowed to last for so long? The simple answer will be that it continued because enough people believed in it. 

As you can guess, I feel that this mentality will change at some point in the future. I believe that people will eventually talk about poverty in the way we anticipate someday talking about COVID-19: as a recollection about an extinct characteristic of a long-lost past. The difference between COVID-19 and poverty in the current moment, the reason why COVID-19 will end before poverty, is belief. We believe we can eradicate COVID-19, which is evident in the way we've committed every available resource to its immediate eradication. The effort directed against COVID-19, primarily toward the development of a safe, effective, and ubiquitous vaccine, reflects a shared understanding that this disease is wrong, and confirms a collective imagination that can envision a world free of the condition - put the two together and we have all the mutual motivation required to complete the job.

The poverty question, however, is a little different - we do not believe it can be eradicated. We've known poverty is wrong for a long time, evidenced by past support for large-scale interventions, and we should all be proud of the various unpublicized ways individuals and collectives have come together throughout history to help the neediest among us. But when it comes to envisioning a poverty-free future I sense that our collective imagination still comes up short - we concede that governments, individual effort, and luck all play a vital role in lifting people out of poverty, but we don't go so far as to prioritize poverty eradication as a national mission; there is no current equivalent to Operation Warp Speed in terms of urgency, goals, or ambition. My fear is that the average person considers poverty an unwelcome but inevitable side effect of civilization, as inseparable from progress as the salt is from ocean water, and about which little can be done at a societal level to affect permanent change. I wondered a few months ago why Bernie Sanders in particular and politicians more generally refused to run on a basic platform of poverty eradication - the honest answer may reveal a fear that no one would care enough to support such a candidate, with voters citing either pragmatism or incomprehension at the polls as they cast their ballots for the more sensible opponent.

I ask myself if the conversation around poverty would change with the introduction of certain vocabulary, analogies, or mental models. For example, what if an idea like universal basic income was presented as a crude attempt at developing a vaccine against poverty? It's hard to know exactly what must happen to change the poverty conversation, but I am sure this is an absolutely necessary step. At the crux of the issue is the way policy proposals aimed at alleviating poverty often get bogged down by the particulars, which leads to the kind of discourse that first made me suspect the fundamental issue - most people who don't believe in the possibility of eradication will confound an expression of their worldview with an argument about logistical challenges. Quite frankly, I don't know a single person who thinks poverty is eradicable, but rather than say so these people instead express themselves in the language of affordability, citing various reasons why such a goal is unrealistic; they are not cruel people, but a lack of creativity comes off as the same thing if it prevents them from considering the possibility of solving a crucial issue. It's almost as if they are using concerns about feasibility as a way to disguise bad faith as good reason. 

The biggest obstacle in the battle against poverty, then, is the lack of imagination in the average person - the failure to imagine a world where everyone has enough, the failure to imagine policy as a form of economic vaccine, the failure to imagine solutions for today's urgent issues that protect our most vulnerable from losing the hard-won progress of recent years and decades. It's the failure to see that policies which offer risk protection only to those who can afford it is hardly an example of passing a test with flying colors. It's the failure to see that history repeats itself only when we ignore the morals of its stories. What's the moral of the story of 2020? It's the same as before because its the same old story, but only louder this time, more urgent - a society that limits itself to those who can afford it risks becoming the society that can't afford anything at all.

So what can be done? Everything we can, I suspect, but the first thing is to consider the consensus, which is the worst kind there is - not offensive, rude, or heretical; not racist, sexist, or bigoted; it's the worst kind of consensus because it's false. It's this consensus that repeats the same old story - sure, it's a great idea to eradicate poverty, if you can afford it. Can we afford not to? The reason why we rose to the challenge of COVID-19 is because a collective mindset enabled us to see that the disease has no place in this world, and that with commitment and investment it could be defeated; we are turning the tide. But if we viewed COVID-19 with the same lens we viewed poverty, we'd be forever stuck in 2020 - the possibility of inventing protection would never occur to us. Am I supposed to believe that the richest country in the world, and world history, can do no more than stand aside and wring its hands while almost ten percent of the world's population lives in poverty, and welcomes even more into its swelling ranks? Would you say we are passing the test of global poverty with flying colors? I don't subscribe to that kind of thinking, and neither should anybody else.

reading review - wandering

I've learned since reading Hermann Hesse's short collection of sketches, musings, and poetry that he's a quite well-known figure; he once won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1946). My unfamiliarity with the author was no obstacle to enjoying this work, but perhaps those with a better sense of the writer will find more to love about Wandering. The one piece I reread, "Rainy Weather", is highly recommended, a meditation on clouds, depression, and the cycle of life that is in some ways a microcosm of the entire book.

Wandering by Hermann Hesse (October 2020)

My book notes being far shorter than usual speaks to the length rather than the depth of this work. The main thought I've taken with me from reading is how everything that comes to us in life is paid for - as Hesse notes, drink means hangover, heroism is the other half of terror, and sunlight reveals filth. The full weight of this understanding is what Hesse carries with him throughout these pages, and in some ways it becomes both cause and cure of the anxiety, doubt, and depression that darken his days like a cloud lingering over a gray landscape. The power of Wandering is the way it comes together to remind us that if we can get through the dark moment, there is always another day of wonder and beauty. 

TOA Rating: Three Malbecs out of four.

leftovers - the united state of denial (protesting comparisons)

There seems to be an urge to compare the storming of the US capitol to this summer's Black Lives Matter protests. I can see the point - one is a protest, the other is a protest, so the common denominator is there - but I disagree with the connection. As I wrote on Sunday, the January 6 attack was based on a fiction, but the BLM protests were based on real crimes committed on America's streets.

reading review - the medusa and the snail

The best thing I can say about this collection is what I consider the highest praise for any author's book - I'm going to read another one, specifically The Lives of a Cell, which based on the order of publication may have been more appropriate to read before The Medusa and the Snail; I won't lose sleep over it.

The Medusa and The Snail by Lewis Thomas (October 2020)

These are short essays based on an observation or meditation regarding an aspect of science -  particularly biology, healthcare, or human nature. My favorites among these illuminating reads included "The Scrambler in the Mind" and "How to Fix the Premedical Curriculum", though the latter suffered slightly for lacking the exclusivity assumed by the author - the issue of early specialization is hardly a problem specific to medical students. My book notes contain a handful of observations that borrow from the perfect balance of brevity and insight achieved throughout this collection.

I've noticed that certain middling reviews of this work point out that these essays were perhaps too short, and that with a little additional effort Thomas could have expanded a few pages of work into book-length masterpieces. I understand these assertions and can speak to the value of the approach from experience, as my recent decision to focus longer writing into my Sunday posts has led me to new, unanticipated territory in my writing. However, to these reviewers I ask - doesn't the spirit of The Medusa and the Snail suggest you pick up where Thomas left off and dive deeper into these questions on your own, perhaps by exploring a specialist's work? I've said that studying economics taught me to ask "then what?", and I suspect the wonder of science summons the same inquiry, but as Thomas notes humans tend to be ignorant about nature, which I suspect is in part due to human nature, and its preference to preserve the status quo rather than explore the unknown.

One of my favorite ideas from the book was Thomas's comment that the fatal flaw of designing a human would be its perfection; humans exist to make mistakes, we evolved by screwing up, and as he puts it the consistent feature of any person is inconsistency. This serves as a loose theme across a number of the essays, including one where he notes that the value of linking healthy habits to preventing death is not in its strict truth, which is always questionable in such science, but rather in the way it encourages the incentive-driven person to find a reason to live well; the false drive toward living "perfectly" leads a person to prefer activity with immediate reward (like watching helmet football) ahead of critical habits that deliver the tiniest reward (like writing TOA reading reviews). The ultimate manifestation of this reality is that although we all know we will die someday, instead of building society to make the most of life within this constraint we have instead become collectively obsessed with spotless health, a focus that is to the detriment of living a full life. Thomas highlights his point by joking that one day we will all become doctors, spending our days giving each other constant screenings for the always-approaching disease.

The most important lesson of The Medusa and the Snail is that for all we know, we generally know all of nothing, including what to do with the little we happen to know. It smacks of a scholar's mission statement - the correct approach is to learn as much as possible in preparation for the unseen moment when the information can finally be put to its intended use. It's with this in mind that I've kept a few nuggets from this collection tucked away for later - that we are still honing the skill of worrying, that perhaps pain disappears the moment it become irrelevant for preventing death, or that problems caused by meddlers tinkering with complex problems are solved by removing the interveners. Of course, I must remember that all of this could have no value - Thomas asserts that the most important discovery in the history of medicine was the realization that all knowledge accumulated up until around 1850 was complete nonsense, which is a gentle reminder that when someone says we don't know what we don't know, perhaps we should also point out that we also often don't really know what we do know.

TOA Rating: Three snails out of four.

proper corona admin, vol 95 - criminal incompetence

This seems like a really good year to do the inauguration over Zoom.

reading review - toa in 2020, part three (hello ladies update)

Hi,

Part three of my 2020 reading review, which goes back to that fateful day years ago when a serious analysis of my own reading list revealed the consequences of choosing books without intention. For new readers, the short version is that I discovered certain implicit biases in terms of how I picked out reading material based on the author's gender.

If the concept still isn't clear to you, get up to speed with this TOA rewind.

Hello ladies - 2020 update

My 2020 breakdown, which shows that revelation and acceptance do not suffice when the goal is correcting implicit biases:

• Male authors - 28 books
• Female authors - 18 books

Of course, data analysis doesn't really begin until the disaggregation, and there are a couple of breakdowns I've kept my eye on over the past couple of years. One is the role of rereading:

• Male authors - 28 books
• 9 books reread
• Female authors - 18 books
• 3 books reread

I don't have a huge insight into this subset of the data, but I will acknowledge one possibility - over the course of my lifetime I've read more books by male authors, which means the total number of possible rereads is skewed toward male authors. I don't think this fact is having a significant influence over my decisions, but on the other hand "I don't think" is the unofficial slogan of implicit bias.

The second subset I like to check is gifts and recommendations, which I've made a practice of reading ASAP:

• Male authors - 28 books
• 5 books recommended or gifted
• Female authors - 18 books
• 2 books recommended or gifted

This stat always has the feel of the "annual excuse exercise" but I think it's important to work through the subset in order to understand the truth about the underlying data. The original "Hello Ladies" post grew out of some research about the disparity in the way publishers marketed books written by female authors, so it's no surprise whenever the gifts and recommendations tip toward being 60%-70% male - most people read less than I do, which leads me to suspect that most people are more reliant on traditional marketing sources to find out about books. The solution for my reading, though, isn't to point fingers - I chose a male author almost 60% of the time. What I see in this data set is the importance of keeping a close eye on the metrics in my control, which in this case is the 23/16 split, and using that information to make the right adjustments. Not much is clear even now about 2020, but I can say for sure that I didn't meet my high standard in this particular regard, perhaps by assessing my choices against the benchmarks of good intentions rather than good results. I am confident that keeping a closer eye on this metric in 2021 will be an important first step to a more balanced reading list.

the united state of denial

"Look where you are!"

I pointed at the pickup truck, which was doing its best monorail impression as it idled on the lane line that divided right from center. The driver, a white male in his forties or fifties, had one forearm on the wheel and the other resting on the open window. His gaze never wavered. He looked like someone who had a real job - if he finished the day in clean clothes, he'd probably get fired. He repeated my comment, though without incredulity, like it was just a statement about the weather.

"Look where you are."

I looked. My bike was on the inside of the lane line, closer to left than right but firmly in the center. It was legal. I must have had something to add but I never found out - the light turned green, and so it was that those words became the first and last of our interaction.

I hadn't thought about him for a few months, possibly a year, but I remembered him last Wednesday. I remembered that he was wearing glasses, though I'd never describe him as bespectacled. I remembered his nondescript hat, the kind you wear because the people you spend time with wear hats. I remembered thinking that the irony of him trying to run me off the road in my own neighborhood on Columbus Day would be lost on him, if not an outright provocation. I remember his seeming ignorance of his role in our little holiday parade down Charles Street, which had started a few blocks back at Revere Street with honking, then swerving, and finally tailgating, my fear at the front giving way to an appreciation of self-defense arguments. I remembered him speeding off, cutting across Beacon Street like a stock car driver exiting pit row; he'd get that reference. I remembered just enough to realize that my rough idea of what he looked like wouldn't help me recognize him anywhere - in his truck, on the street, or from FBI footage. But even as my wildest hypothesis threatened to derail the recollection, I remembered how we had arrived at a red light on Beacon Street and we'd both slowed, stopped, obeyed. I remembered a moment of equality between Americans (forgive my assumption) that had allowed us to demonstrate what must pass these days for the wisdom of common sense - agreeing to disagree.

I use equality here in the sense I noted a few years ago when I read Simone Weil's First and Last Notebooks - equality means obeying and commanding one's equals. It was a fresh insight, and the definition has clearly stuck with me, perhaps because thanks to the fluke timing of my reading habit I came across it at just the right time - it's as if fate itself knew I required the definition of equality to help me navigate the next chapter of my life. I encounter the word with increasing regularity these days, whether it be on the pavement, in conversation, or in print, but in these interactions I sometimes suspect that equality is being used by people who have not made much additional effort to define the concept beyond the parameters of its most common applications; the insight from reading Weil has been a foundation in my mind for more challenging thinking on the matter beyond trumpeting equality for equality's sake.

But what does it mean to obey and command one's equals? In surface terms it implies a world where I tell you what to do, and you tell me what to do, and compliance is the secret to happiness, which is shared equally among all. Of course, I don't need to waste your time, reader, explaining why this doesn't quite work - nobody likes being bossed around. What's less obvious is that in modern society the basic structure forces us all to hold up our end of this bargain in one way or another, with the necessity of obedience implied by an escalating chain of command that forever lurks in the shadows of everyday life; they say that everyone is equal before the law. Most Americans, or I should say most combinations of Americans, have no issue respecting the equality of their fellow citizens, and trivial disputes rarely boil over to the extent that the courts must intervene in the situation. It's why every morning we can make the trip from one end of Charles Street to the other using all the hidden examples of obey and command necessary in making modern life possible - we excuse ourselves as we brush past, we drive or bike or walk in compliance with the rules of the road, we cede our claim to the right of way if it spares another from harm. And in those rare incidents when two idiots - yes, that's right, two idiots - can't get down the street without all the honking and fuss, the mutually acknowledged fact of the traffic light is a great equalizer, and everyone stops in respectful obedience of a collective's command.

It's this line of thinking, perhaps, that's made an aspect of the past week and a half difficult for me to understand, or even accept - the catalyst for the storming of the US Capitol was a fiction. I know this because the notion that the election was in some way rigged, compromised, or stolen has come up in courtroom after courtroom all over the country, and the cases have been thrown out one after the other; I'm told judges appointed by President Trump himself have sometimes presided over such proceedings. It's vital to recognize that a persistent myth is at the core of this attack because a society incapable of separating fact from fiction is unable to enforce the obey and command social contract that defines equality within modern civilization, which means that the event was an indirect attack against the institutions that protect, preserve, and promote equality; the fact that no power higher than our courtrooms exist to end such myths is what elevates the current situation from a tragic incident to an urgent crisis. I don't bring up this point as a way to dismiss the real concerns of anyone who openly supported President Trump over the past four years, or voted for him in November, or even showed up in DC on January 6 with only good intentions. I bring it up because it's extraordinary - the spark that formed the violent mob, the cause of what is being called a riot or insurrection, the first domino to fall in the build up to January 6, was a fictional idea about the legitimacy of the election, decisively refuted, and you would know this is a new level of crisis if you thought for three seconds about why we have the judiciary at all; you would know that when the wisdom of common sense eludes us commoners, the courts exist to reinforce the command and obedience of equality.

A country where the people cannot agree on the established facts has no future. This is the missing piece of the commentary since January 6 - which is so fundamental, so obvious to the core of the violence, that it's shocking I haven't heard more about it, though perhaps it bores those who write about this stuff for a living and tempts them to explore far more complex or tangentially related implications; it may indeed be too simple for our heady, hyperlinked times. But the simplicity of the statement belies the complexity of the reality I am trying to describe, which has been looming on the horizon for my entire adulthood - when the facts do not fit our worldview, we discard them for more convenient or consistent interpretations. I don't mean to generalize as a precursor to including other arguments, events, or examples - certain decisions made in isolation by one courtroom should be disputed and appealed if the circumstances allow for it, and my assertion that the rule of law plays an indispensable role in preserving the democracy isn't to be confused with the "law and order" trope that serves as code for excusing extrajudicial or vigilante justice. What I mean is this specific case as it relates to last Wednesday - an allegation of election fraud, a series of court cases, and the unanimous conclusion that should have established, for a change, a set of clear facts from which we can move forward rather than more of the paralyzing nonsense that has proved the immovable obstacle on the path to meaningful progress.

There is not, it seems, much hope for common ground in a situation devoid of common sense, where verdicts only reinforce worldview - either you are proven correct, or you have proof of a vast conspiracy against you. It's the real world governed by the logic of social media, where the only currency is the digital nicotine of approval - facts remain unpopular, and outright disapproval is the impetus to seek a more like-minded crowd. Those who've ignored all this to make a call for unity in this chaotic time have my respect, but also my skepticism - where is unity possible when established facts come under such fire that it sparks riots in the nation's capital? It seems that the only way to get all Americans to agree on the fact of the election might be to have every voter stand in a line, Biden on the left and Trump on the right, with each participant holding proofs of citizenship and residency in clear sight, so that the skeptics can personally count each legal head until all suspicions are put to rest. But then new allegations of forged papers, or of confusion regarding where to stand for third-party candidates, or of voters sprinting ahead of the counters to be tallied again! It will never end.

I must acknowledge, however, that no matter how bleak the prospects of unity under the current circumstances, there are scattered examples of unity in the national history, and this offers hope in the sense that history is alleged to repeat itself. The past examples of national unity seem to rely heavily on some outside scourge toward which we can direct our collective spirit, though my definition of "outside scourge" may be wider than the standard - the response to the pandemic represents a missed opportunity to me, but perhaps it reflects a difference in the way I define external threats. There are other such challenges on the American doorstep if you follow my thinking - the refugee crisis, the climate emergency, the ongoing question of extreme global poverty - but we can't pretend this nation in its current state has the prerequisite unity to effectively contribute to solutions, in the present or the future, for problems domestic or global. The only shared perspective I see at the moment is that of denial - there is no recognition from either side that the way political views are being expressed these days demonstrates not just disagreement, but a hostility that is reserved for when you think an opponent's view simply should not exist. I fear that the mentality is on the cup of a twisted logical leap - if the opponent's view should not exist, then why should the opponent exist?

This isn't us, we're told, by those who insist on expressing their denial with eloquence, insight, and optimism. But look where we are. The sense of compromise that defines common sense of the highest order - agreeing to disagree, no matter how grudgingly - has been replaced by a conviction that agreement is possible only among the like-minded; we are in denial of the fact that we only meet someone in the middle so that we can drive them off the road. We have an incoming President who calls for unity as if it will happen by decree, in denial of the fact that unity is about as elusive to the American experiment as resting a boulder at the summit was to Sisyphus, and in denial of the fact that the best way to reach his goal of unity is to create, explain, and execute a plan for improving the lives of his opponent's supporters. We are in denial of our refusal to listen to someone with a different perspective to our own, political or otherwise, and we are in denial that we lack the skills to do so in the unlikely event that someday we were to change this attitude. We are in denial that our reactive nature means we create, encourage, and enable the worst of our opponents. This isn't us, we say, but look where we are. This isn't us, we repeat, like the green leaves who watch their neighbors turn into foliage, united by a state of denial that seems to be the only thing we all have in common. This isn't us? It's not you and it's not me, but it's definitely us.

reading review - fly already

It's been a good few months on TOA for Etgar Keret, who I briefly mentioned in October when I reviewed The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God. There was a point not too many years ago when I would have counted him among my favorite authors but a couple of his more recent collections weren't quite up to my tastes. Fly Already was a welcome return to old ways, and in my book notes I've highlighted some ideas alongside my favorite stories - 'One Gram Short', 'Tabula Rasa', and a series of emails exchanged regarding a possible trip to an escape room on Holocaust Remembrance Day. The top honor goes to 'Pineapple Crush', which I consider one of the best stories I've read in the past year, but don't take my word for it, just read it for yourself here.

Fly Already by Etgar Keret (November 2019)

The insight I liked best from this book was about sunsets, and how they can open the heart - I can confirm from experience that making time to see the sunset is a cheap therapeutic, and I still often make an attempt to schedule my running so that I'm outside at this time. I also thought the comment about kids being prescribed certain medicines to solve the parent's problem was an important observation (though of course it's hardly a universal truth). My lasting memory of this book might be the thought about the importance of knowing which people bring out your best qualities - just as it's easy to forget the value of affinity, the quality of bringing out someone's best is sometimes dismissed in favor of other attributes. 

TOA Rating: Three pineapples out of four.

reading review - erosion

I mentioned this collection a couple of weeks ago in this late December post, where I described having a hard time getting myself invested in the early essays. Those who read too much into my comments are advised to think again about this book, which I've seen accurately reviewed as an extended meditation on the theme of erosion. If you are going to make a reading decision based on one or two essays, I recommend "My Beautiful Undoing" or "A Beautiful, Rugged Place" as starting points.

Erosion by Terry Tempest Williams (September 2020)

The challenge I encountered in the initial essays was a space between the author's experience and her writing that I wasn't willing to bridge in my reading. "The Council" is perhaps the best example, where the initial portion that describes how Williams interacted and connected with a community through stories gave way to a description of how a work of art grew from the experience. I don't bring this up as a way to criticize the essay, but it just wasn't what I was hoping for from the piece - I'd have been perfectly content to hear more about the stories rather than the eventual work of art fashioned from the act of listening.

But despite the obstacles created by my own misplaced expectations, as I noted a couple of weeks ago I was glad I stuck with Erosion. The resulting set of book notes is full of insights across a wide range of interrelated topics - activism, community, and national politics. What I liked most about the ideas is the way many of them link to a broader theme of disrupting the status quo. An activist, for example, is someone who uses creative thinking to disrupt the status quo, which threatens those who suffocate change as a way to retain power. After reading this book, it's hard to understate the importance of challenging the status quo whenever it's necessary, as it's often the first step toward bringing people together in the community so that they can share experiences, tell stories, and come together over common concerns - these collective voices are often precursors to vital challenges against politically-favored groups, organizations, and corporations. The stories that Williams shares in Erosion serve as an example of how storytelling creates belonging and purpose in a community that form a conscience of a place and keep the purpose of life in perspective for those living in it.

The idea that has stayed with me since reading Erosion has to do with the necessity of grief in the climate movement, and the effect of ignoring the weight of what is being lost each day. Williams writes that grief means no places are safe, and I think this is what I interpreted in the thought of grieving for a changing climate - the suspicion about the cause of a violent storm is the same as the uneasy delight of a spring-like day in the middle of winter, for in grief even the positives are framed in the context of loss, and what's made possible by it. Most importantly, without grief it is so much more difficult to move from feeling to action, which seems to be a common challenge facing any individual or group in the world who is interested in a green future yet unable to make meaning progress toward the aspiration. As Williams notes, the wide range of human emotions are not contradictions, but siblings; I think accepting the full weight of loss is a necessary step for many, and will eventually free them to leave the right things behind in order to save what is truly indispensable.

TOA Rating: Three pronghorns out of four.

reading review - toa in 2020, part two (totals and analysis)

Hi folks,

Part two of my 2020 reading recap - today's post focuses on understanding the events that impacted the overall year.

Reading in 2020 - just another way to describe a pandemic?

I ended up at 46 books, which despite my reduced expectations is a shockingly low total. For context, in 2019 I read 75 books... actually, let's just look at the whole picture while we're on the subject, and go back to 2011, which was the first year I tracked my reading:

• 2011 - 74 books
• 2012 - 85 books
• 2013 - 68 books
• 2014 - 100 books
• 2015 - 101 books
• 2015 (Animorphs series) - 64 additional books
• 2016 - 129 books
• 2017 - 87 books
• 2018 - 65 books
• 2019 - 75 books
• 2020 - 46 books

For those struggling with the math - it's complicated, maybe, because I don't include my 2015 Animorphs reread - that's 830 books, or 83 per year, which is one way to contextualize 46. I think a reasonable annual goal for me in 2021 and beyond - after I factor in writing book notes, posting TOA reading reviews, and incorporating the information into my daily routine - is somewhere in the range of 60 to 72 books, which is a lower number than above (but still much higher than 46).

Those tempted to blame the pandemic will have some support from the data. By February 23rd I'd finished 16 books, which felt like a fast pace at the time, but of course in hindsight we know one-eighth of 2020 represented one-third of the year's book count; it's no coincidence that the pandemic reached America just a couple of weeks later. The ensuing nine and a half months were marked by various realities that had mostly negative repercussions for my reading, with perhaps the most notable being the way I fell completely out of established routines that included time dedicated for reading.

The possibility that my annual total decreased because I finished larger books than usual in 2020 is not supported by a cursory glance at my list - in fact, it actually seems like the books were slightly shorter than average, though I should note that I finished 90% of an unusually large book for my standards (Thinking Without a Bannister by Hannah Arendt). While I'm on the subject, the fact of incomplete books is a factor - I'm currently carrying ten half-finished books into 2021, six of which are currently on my bedside table - but when compared against historic standards it becomes clear that this is a small contributor rather than the underlying cause of my year-over-year decline, as I often close the year with three or four unfinished books.

It feels unfashionable to exonerate the pandemic of all blame when assessing my personal failures in 2020, but I'd say that a more important culprit for me to consider is the one I raised on Thursday - distraction. No matter what I say about the pandemic, the reality is that there were still twenty-four hours in each day and I spent one or two of those doing something other than reading. This isn't the first time distraction has had an effect on my book count - the rise in 2014 was partly because I stopped using the internet outside of work; the biggest change to my behavior at home in 2020 was being constantly plugged into the internet. I think some period of adjustment was inevitable, but I also fell for the trap of allowing "quick checks" online to become the digital quicksand of the mind.

It's also important to remember that even if I'm not precisely correct about the role of distraction in this problem, it's perhaps the most appropriate one to consider because having better control over distractions will pay off across a wide range of pursuits for the rest of my life. There is no doubt in my mind that digital distraction is establishing a new normal in many aspects of life - paying attention, staying connected, getting around, even planning ahead or settling small debts - all of these and more are being redefined due to people adjusting their own expectations in a world increasingly polluted with digital "solutions". My reaction in 2014 was clearly a temporary measure, like turning on the air conditioner when the smoke starts creeping in under the door; it's time to learn how to use the fire extinguisher so that I can live safely with the new reality.

toa betting advice

I write often about betting here on TOA, but I rarely offer betting advice. This is why my post back in March was quite extraordinary - I advised readers to bet Washington at +1000 to win the NFC East (you can thank me now).

The reason I don't offer regular betting advice is simple - I'm rarely correct. This doesn't preclude me from occasionally picking a winner (see above) but when you see my reasoning, you see the problem - I said that by hiring Ron Rivera, they were restoring common sense leadership to the locker room. This was true, but the more important factors were Dak Prescott's injury, or Evan Engram's hands, or Nate Sudfeld failing to fake an injury last Sunday night. The line between skill and luck is a fine distinction, but it becomes a little clearer if you make a habit of articulating your reasoning alongside any prediction.

whinging analytics

Last Sunday night was off to a good start, at least in the context of what's appropriate in these disorientating days of pandemics, coups, and the Buffalo Bills winning the AFC East - I ordered eight chicken wings, but they gave me thirteen. Longtime wing connoisseurs will know that sometimes more wings means less wings, in the sense that a higher number for its own sake is meaningless when each piece is its own size, but a spread of thirteen to eight makes this a remote possibility - for eight to be greater than thirteen, you'd need one of those eight to be a quarter chicken. Anyway, my wings meant Sunday night was off to a flying start, and I sensed it was a good omen for the upcoming finale of the NFL season, where Philadelphia and Washington would determine the fate of the NFC East.

My positive mood lasted until around the fourth quarter, when Doug Pederson woke up Nate Sudfeld and sent the Eagles backup into the game for starting quarterback Jalen Hurts. The rest is, at least for helmet football fans, history, and already in the running for 2021's lowlight reel - the Philadelphia Eagles turned a competitive contest into a televised JV-Varsity scrimmage, chickening out for a quarter that ended with Washington winning the division and clinching a playoff berth by process of self-elimination; the losing side comprised not just of the Eagles, but anyone who had tuned in for a good game. Reader, if you need a sense of how bad it was in the moment, please note that NBC's commentary team, who are paid to sell the game to viewers, spent most of the fourth quarter in thinly-veiled disgust - neither Al Michaels or Cris Collinsworth went so far as to say the magic word, but Pederson was tanking (1). The odd thing about the commentary team's restraint was that they weren't so shy about criticizing Pederson just a few minutes earlier regarding a play-calling decision. It was on Hurts's last play before being replaced, and it led to an incomplete pass on 4th and goal from the four-yard line. The reaction was immediate - Collinsworth pointed out that going for it was supported by analytics, with the decision linked to a 5% increase in a team's odds of winning, to which Michaels replied along the lines of "I want to have a look at that math."

I didn't realize it at the time, but perhaps the reaction to the Sudfeld substitution - and its implicit commencement of tanking - should have had the same tone. The unrealistic aspect of my thought is that although I see tanking as the purest manifestation of analytics in sports, most people who follow these games don't see it the same way - analytics, being new, must therefore include only new ways to justify silly risks; tanking has been embedded in the realm of acceptable tactics for so long that experienced viewers miss the obvious. Tanking has all the hallmarks of good analytical thinking - it improves the chances of eventual success without guaranteeing it, leaving the matter of connecting action to outcome in the hands of execution; the doubters often center their objections around this intermediate step, and question whether the right factors are being considered in the calculation. This was evident in the way NBC's commentators questioned the fourth-down decision, essentially suggesting that the odds of scoring on the play were far worse than indicated by the analytics, but you'll never hear this kind of dispute when a team is tanking; protests usually center themselves around a set of high-minded principles, including "the integrity of the competition" or "the right way to play the game", but they never demand a closer look at the math.

I suspect one reason the math of tanking is accepted by most observers is because the concept could not be simplified further simpler - the earlier you pick, the better chance you have of selecting a superior player, so of course you want to do all you can to pick at the top of the draft. To restate it with the phrasing I used above, tanking is the action that improves potential outcomes in future seasons, with drafting being the execution step that connects the two. This is so easy to understand that I think most people accept the premise without asking further questions; if analytics were taught in K-12 education, tanking would be the introductory concept, covered between naptime and recess. An informal examination of draft results suggests the anecdotal evidence is weak but consistent with the practice - in 2017, the Bears selected Mitchell Trubisky ahead of eventual superstars Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, while in the following season future MVP Lamar Jackson was the fifth quarterback selected. Those examples confirm picking early doesn't guarantee getting the best player, but the teams at the top of the draft indisputably had the best chance - the narrative is not a failure of analytics, but a failure of execution.

However, in the paraphrased spirit of Al Michaels - I'd like to have a look at that math - I suspect the tanking equation is missing an important variable, which I'll label with the broad umbrella term of "culture". In essence, what I'd like the analytics of tanking to consider is the effect tanking has within the organization, and whether its negative cultural effects offset any advantages gained from securing a higher draft position. This was on my mind last Sunday night as I texted some fellow helmet football fans that Doug Pederson should be fired immediately, as in on the field when the clock struck 0:00 - I had thought his decision would have a crippling effect on next year's team, and in my mind a new coach gave them the best chance of returning to winning ways.

This kind of winged postgame reaction tends to soften with time, but I've only become more convinced over the past week. There were a lot of players on the field who were giving it their all based on a belief about competition familiar to anyone who has played sports at a high level - Doug Pederson had publicly ridiculed those beliefs in front of a national audience. Some of these players were on the last day of a contract, risking potentially career-altering injury by playing, but were willing to do so because the desire to win superseded selfish considerations - Doug Pederson made a mockery of their team ethos. These players had also just gone through an extraordinary NFL season defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, taking on risks both to themselves and their families that are inherent to any work environment in this moment, all of it for the sake of entertaining me and you by completing a televised helmet football season - Doug Pederson decided to cash in on their professionalism and treat the game like it was part of the preseason, which the NFL had cancelled this year on the grounds of exhibition games being an unnecessary risk.

I can't imagine what kind of culture a coach thinks he's building when he demonstrates that the sacrifices players make to win games are a secondary concern to the analytics of tanking. I'm sure there is a spreadsheet somewhere that proves the premise of drafting as high as possible - and I bet the math on it is indisputable - but I wonder how much the spreadsheet will matter next season when he needs to convince these players to lay it on the line. What if the situation with COVID-19 remains unchanged and the NFL once again gives players the option to opt-out of the season? I can't imagine last Sunday will make these players more interested in risking their safety. How will the team respond if they are once again knocked out of playoff contention? My hunch is that the locker room will splinter as it always does when a team becomes a collection of individual contractors, with each one pursuing selfish interests ahead of the collective good because of this evidence that the coach isn't going to offer his best effort to win meaningless games. I wonder what's going to happen next season when Jalen Hurts falters at the end of a close game - will the players remember when the coach benched him instead of giving him a chance to earn valuable experience? I don't think a single free agent turned off his TV last Sunday and said to his family - I want to play for that guy, he'll make a mockery of me and my hard work.

There's no way to know about the true effect of these things - and of course I would know even less in this specific case, given that I've never been in an NFL organization in any capacity - but I think these cultural questions will need to be considered next year if the Eagles have another poor season. There is something about winning in the NFL that, just like any other form of success, seems habitual to me - good teams seem to learn how to win over a period of multiple seasons while losing teams seem to return to the top of the draft, over and over, despite the alleged advantage of picking early. Like any habit, the habit of winning is developed by doing it, which means NFL teams should treat each of their sixteen games like a priceless opportunity to reinforce the behavior while building a culture of winning. I don't think I'd see this kind of thinking represented in the tanking math. I think I'd see what so many others suspect when they question analytics - technical precision, but very little nuance as it relates to the specifics of the decision and the people involved in the situation.

This mentality in analytics is the biggest problem I have with the practice, and why I fear it will fall short of its vast potential - no matter what the calculator says, you can't forget that the way people react to a decision is a massive consideration, and you can't make this reality go away by treating people like interchangeable pieces on a gameboard. You can't, in other words, do any meaningful analytics without factoring in the way people will respond to the decision. Until this shortcoming is corrected, the recommendations of analytics will be no more than expressions of yet another biased perspective, based in a fictional world where intangible qualities such as mutual respect, trust, and confidence - in other words, the key elements of a winning culture - have no place among the decision-making criteria.

Footnotes

1) By tanking, I mean a team deliberately losing games to improve its draft position in the following year. For those new to this topic, the major professional sports in America reward the worst teams in the following season with the first pick of new players. There isn't an explicit rule against the practice, but for the most part tanking teams are regarded with derision, ridicule, and scorn as they accumulate losses while their fans wait in an embarrassed purgatory and count the days until the draft. Some like to cite this as an example of "socialism" in American sports, which isn't strictly true - let's just agree that it's definitely not capitalism.

the nation-state of war and peace

I've been thinking a lot about an idea from Hannah Arendt's Thinking Without a Bannister - the system of nation-states operates with an understanding that war is the last resort. It's an easy idea to understand if you consider how a country would respond if it became unable to trade for a necessary good, like food. What I'm wondering about is what pacifists think about this idea in the context of nonviolent beliefs, as they might contradict with the above if they retain some commitment to a nation-state system.

The end of war is perhaps too lofty of an ambition in the present day, where the most powerful nation on Earth can make a national goal of putting people on the moon yet can't ensure the equality of any two randomly selected members of its citizenry, but I do think someday the human race will turn its attention to this vital task. Those of us who claim to be ahead of the times must commit in the small ways available today - championing open borders, rejecting the free market as a tool for allocating basic necessities, and reserving the use of nationality only for situations where there is no other alternative.

the lesson of becoming bad luck

The most surprising lesson I've ever learned is that people become their bad luck. I mean this lesson literally, in the sense that at some point the outcome of chance defines you better than the trajectory forever altered by unseen circumstance. There is a point in the aftermath of any unfortunate moment where everyone comes together and laments the bad luck, but at some point this detail fades from the memory and the victim is recast into the script of a rewritten life. I thought I'd have a lot more to say about this but it's actually quite straightforward. If you break your leg in a fluke moment on Tuesday, by Friday those circumstances don't really matter anymore; life confronts you with the reality of a staircase, and God knows if you'll make it to the top.

reading review - toa in 2020, part one (book of the year shortlist)

Hi folks,

Today's post is part one of my 2020 reading review.

So, what was the best book?

As longtime TOA readers will recall, I start the formal process of picking a winner only after I post a reading review for everything I finished in the prior year. My target is to post each review within three months of finishing, so this means we'll get started sometime in April with the usual process - a few comments about each book as I eliminate it from final consideration, some more in-depth remarks for the final three or four, then the announcement of the TOA Book of the Year (aka, the most irrelevant prize in world literature) which ideally happens sometime in June.

Here's my shortlist for the 2020 TOA Book of the Year:

The New New Thing by Michael Lewis

The Word Pretty by Elisa Gabbert

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

The Medusa and The Snail by Lewis Thomas

The Cross of Redemption by James Baldwin

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

Monster by Walter Dean Meyers

Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson

The Apology by Eve Ensler

The Game by Ken Dryden

Strangers In Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Cribsheet by Emily Oster

What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

reading review - toa in 2020 (preview)

No, today's post is not about some book called TOA in 2020 (it would be a dystopian horror thriller, with time travel) - today's post sets the stage for my upcoming 2020 reading review.

We'll go with one post per Tuesday for the next four weeks, then close the month with a wrap up:

• Today - preview
• Tomorrow - 2020 TOA Book of the Year shortlist
• 1/12 - Review and Analysis
• 1/19 - "Hello Ladies" update
• 1/26 - 2021 Preview
• 1/30 - Summary

For those wondering what the point is of going through such a comprehensive review, I start by acknowledging the obvious answer - it's almost certainly a pointless exercise, and I am under no illusions that a productive reading year in 2021 is dependent on how much time I dedicate to reviewing 2020. However, I think there are important insights buried in the 2020 reading list that will help me think about the year ahead, and digging these out is the main idea of doing the annual review - the 2020 shortlist, for example, will point the way toward the type of reading I should focus on in 2021, while the analysis steps will help me set realistic goals and make appropriate adjustments for the coming year.

The reason why I post these to TOA is a separate matter. In my mind, I don't publish anything to TOA unless I'm certain there is at least one idea in the post (for example, in this post a candidate for the "one idea" is above - reviewing the past year helps plan ahead for the next year). I think the two analysis posts - 1/12 and 1/19 - are good demonstrations of data analysis in action (particularly in the sense of using disaggregation), while the shortlist and preview posts are effectively my book recommendations.

the business bro's productivity resolutions

Thirteen and a half years ago, Marc Andreessen posted his guide to personal productivity, which is most notable for his recommendation to avoid keeping a schedule. Amusingly, in an interview from May 2020 with The Observer Effect he fully reverses course on his advice, and in this republished transcript of that conversation you'll see what appears to be a screenshot of his detailed schedule appear after a couple hundred words. What changed his mind? Andreessen offers his own explanation, but I think I can add to his response - it's a necessary adjustment made by someone whose contribution has changed from being an individual to being part of a team. A way I think of this goes back to something I remember reading a few years ago - a leader should be efficient with things, but effective with people. A highly efficient way to work from the perspective of an individual's production is to maintain the freedom to work on the most important thing at any given time, but this doesn't quite work as well in the context of effective collaboration - there is no guarantee that a colleague will be available in the moment you suddenly feel like working, so at minimum the schedule serves to protect a period of mutual availability.

In a broad sense, Andreessen's reversal is an important demonstration of the necessity of making adjustments in order to get the most out of our time and effort. It's with this lesson in mind that I recommend both of the above links to anyone interested in personal productivity, regardless of whether or not you feel productive at this moment, because the key to productivity is making the constant adjustments necessary to account for ever-changing circumstances. I think anyone will find at least one new idea in those links that will make them more productive in 2021, which is a great return on around thirty minutes of reading investment.

I pulled three ideas I'll try over the next few months:

1. Keep the schedule but throw out the agenda

I think some people hear advice like "keep a strict schedule" and extend the recommendation until every minute of the day is planned to the tiniest detail, so I present this as a reminder that adding structure is often a premature optimization. Idea #1 has familiar tones to advice I've leaned on for writing (don't make detailed outlines), conversation (it takes a while, maybe a half-hour, before anyone knows what's being discussed), or eating (don't ignore a satiety signal just because you decided ahead of time to have "a big dinner").

The main point is that although we should avoid determining the exact details of how to use our time until we're in the moment, it's recommended to have dedicated blocks of time on the calendar at the start of each day for the most important activities. A great example of how to put this into action is in the context of a meeting - the broad objective and a talking point or two should help organize the time, but too much planning will prevent the group from shifting focus if an unanticipated but critical topic comes up halfway into the discussion.

2. Keep four lists: to-do, watch, later, and today

Andreessen presents these across two separate sections without explaining what I consider the most important result - the structure allows us to preserve the purpose of a list, which is to keep us from overlooking, forgetting, or losing track of important things, without succumbing to the temptation of using it throughout the day as a cheap source of endorphins.

This is based on my experiences with the standard to-do list, which tends to start innocently enough but eventually accumulates tasks and projects that can't progress without some external influence (often a person, an event, or just the passage of time). It seems like at this point the list is on its way to becoming an overflowing parking lot of stuck items, which starts to undermine the point of the list - rather than organizing and tracking, it becomes a source of anxiety. The lack of control over stuck items, the sheer volume that makes effective prioritizing impossible, the nagging but growing sense that the list will expand indefinitely - these factors combine to start making the entire exercise seem like a giant waste of time and effort. The common response at this point is a final, desperate attempt to take back control of the list by routinely adding trivial tasks to the top, which allows for the steady satisfaction of crossing off mundane items - the laundry is DONE, the toilet is FLUSHED, and those constantly arriving emails are filed into an inbox subfolder deceptively named READ LATER. This final step always feels great at first, but I've learned that once a list becomes a repository for the daily tasks I don't need to write down, then it's only a matter of time before the to-do list project will be scrapped - it's become too interruption-driven to serve as a useful reference for long-term considerations.

The approach I'm going to try for a few months divides the standard to-do list into four relevant subsections. The to-do section is everything in my control, which means I can prioritize it, while the watch section is pending some external step and will be organized by my best guess regarding completion of that step. The later section is for anything I merely need to remember, which I'll organize as they come to my attention. The final section - today - is a list of the few things I'm going to do on that day. I'm optimistic about using these four subsections because it restricts each of the problems I've highlighted above to one area - prioritization is strictly for the to-do section, lack of control defines instead of undermines the watch section, endless expansion is the point rather than the plague of the later section, and the joy of crossing out completed items is the sole function of the today section. My plan for the start of 2021 is to try and update these lists at the start of each day.

One last thought about the watch section - Andreessen notes how he uses Apple's concept of a "directly responsible individual" to help him keep track of who to check with for project updates. I can confirm from experience that this is a useful detail to include in the watch section. If you keep track of this detail over an extended period of time, you'll also have some data that you can use to spot patterns for common bottlenecks, which can be critical if your colleagues are routinely causing delays or missing deadlines (1).

3. Work on email exactly twice per day

There's nothing new about this one - I shudder to think how many productivity posts would return on a full TOA search for "email" - but it's an important reminder because I often slip from my own standard. The reality of remote work means I'm constantly checking email, so for me the primary emphasis on the above is "work on" - sorting and filing, reading long messages, or sending nonurgent responses would all qualify in this sense. The approach I used for the latter half of 2020 was productive - at the start of each day I got in the habit of clearing out my main inbox, while during the day I learn to leave as "unread" any item that required more action than just filing - so for me Idea #3 is more about a 10% increase in discipline rather than the start of an entirely new approach.

And a little extra advice from the Business Bro...

One additional note about email - there are at least one million different articles, podcasts, and books out there describing the optimal way to file emails. My recommendation is to file them according to the way you look for them, which of course means every person will have a different strategy. But I think this is the best way because for most people their inbox is a living, breathing, and forever changing personal library of information, which means it should follow the ethos of the library in the way you can find what you are looking for without a massive amount of manual effort. The way I organize email will soon mirror the lists I described in #2 - I'll have folders for to-do, watch, and later, with subfolders organizing items by project. If the email exists outside those categories, it means I need it only for future reference, which leads to a separate level of organization under one of the following categories - meetings (individuals, cross-functional groups), completed projects (ordered by start date), ongoing processes (organized by subject) or recurring communication (such as weekly updates, monthly FYIs, procedural memos, etc). I do it this way because, again, that's how I look for things - by project, by meeting, by communication frequency, etc.

Footnotes

1) I used to call my watch list the domino list, a label I used in the sense that one event would allow me to knock off the next item. This was an evolution from the original name, trigger list, which had the same ethos - one event would trigger the next one. The way people started using the word trigger forced me into the change because it turned my list into a possible source of confusion ("what do you mean, my confirmation email triggers you?"). I'd say watch list is a good label, and hopefully it will be the last time I change the name of this list.

Endnote

If you aren't sure about whether you could benefit from improved organization, ask yourself two important questions - do you know where to find everything, and can you find everything in a reasonable amount of time? If either answer is no, you need to be better organized, and a good starting point is to review your organization whenever you don't find something in the first place you look; a logical follow-up step is to adjust your organization so that you are able to find things wherever you initially look for them.

toa rewind - hello ladies (march 2017)

I have some posts lined up for next week that review my 2020 year in reading. The analysis will make a reference to this post from 2017, so I'm posting this TOA Rewind as an opportunity to get caught up in advance of my 2020 review.

the toa newsletter - january 2021

I was flipping through some of my 2020 content when I came to an unexpected realization - until COVID-19 hit, I was averaging around two posts every three days. This was partly because I'd completed an odd but worthwhile goal in 2019 - one post per day - which made it seem like a good time to try a different approach. But, as was the case for so many of us in 2020, the pandemic forced some unanticipated changes. In hindsight, I think reemphasizing a daily schedule was a healthy idea for the balance of 2020, but for the past couple of weeks I've had the feeling 2021 is the right time for a return to a reduced schedule.

I'm expecting some interesting results as a consequence of making December 2020 the final month in TOA history with daily posting. My main goal links closely to yesterday's post, when I noted my concern with the effect of distractions - in the context of TOA, a distraction is anytime I feel pressured into writing something for the next day, which means I waste that day's precious writing time on something with little substance relative to my more invested efforts. I feel this is a universal truth in most situations - a day-to-day busyness, productive in the short-term, eventually becomes an obstacle to long-term achievements. I think returning to a schedule of three to five posts per week (on average) is a good first step toward directing a greater proportion of my energy toward these more challenging essays.

I don't have a set idea at the moment for a 2021 TOA structure. I'd say in the short-term I'll keep an eye on maintaining a three hundred word daily average from Monday to Saturday while keeping Sundays uncapped, but who knows by this time next year. In terms of the daily experience, I will likely post every Sunday, but if there is actually a week-long break I'll fill in the spaces with some TOA rewinds (which I keep track of based on positive feedback, so continue letting me know what you liked or, more importantly, what you thought was good). I may also experiment a little bit with timing, such as by batching posts (for example, by doing reading reviews over a string of consecutive days each month, or cutting down on time between leftovers and their origin post). But let's leave it here before I get too far into the possibilities, as too much talk of what might be can have a paralyzing effect on the opportunity of a new year.

Many thanks to all my readers, new and old, for sticking around in 2020. Happy New Year, and see you in January.

In the next month... of True On Average:

1. Thirty-three

I turned thirty-three on December 28 and (for some reason) I decided the best way to mark the occasion was to write out one thing I learned from each year of my life. Honestly, birthdays were much easier when it sufficed to get drunk and eat late night Chinese takeout.

2. The 2020 TOA Awards - 10 for 10

I threw in the towel last year and condensed my annual review into one post, borrowing Matthew Berry's "ten lists of ten" format; this adjustment was met with widespread approval, as it saved both reader and writer endless hours of otherwise productive time.

3. Website revamp?

I know most readers interact with TOA via email but I may take some time this month to update certain features on the main page. One possibility is implementing the search tool I use on the backend, which might be of significant entertainment value for new and returning readers alike. No need to check the site for this, though - if I make changes, I'll introduce them with a short post.