the point of seeking advice

A few days ago I posted my thoughts on some advice I'd seen recently about hosting dinner parties. However, I think there is also something long-winded about all of those details. I wonder if simply understanding the goal would make the specifics obvious to most planners. Would a host committed to the guest experience need a reminder regarding the danger of making everyone wait several hours for food? The suggestion regarding wine, which is meant to protect against the possibility of running out of alcohol, is the kind of detail that is second nature to partying college students. Speaking more generally, part of me always suspects that relying on specific recommendations betrays a failure to understand the broader objective. If so much of any advice might occur naturally to those who understand the larger goal, then it raises the question - instead of getting into the details, why not just help people learn the main goal?

I think one possibility is that helping people understand the goal doesn't mean they can create a plan for executing the goal. It would be like telling someone to climb a mountain without giving them any instruction for locating the right trail. To return to the context of the dinner party, I think some hosts already know that they are supposed to offer a good guest experience yet can't translate that goal into concrete ways to improve the guest experience. For them, understanding the larger goal doesn't help because they can't define all the little steps that are necessary for reaching the goal. When I think about not just dinner parties but any situation where a host had some responsibility for creating a good guest experience, I struggle to come up with examples of someone acting in bad faith - that is, a host who didn't accept the responsibility of creating a good experience. From my perspective, pretty much every host tries to make a good experience for the guests. However, I also know that merely trying was no guarantee of a good outcome - the hosts with bad outcomes tried, too. My conclusion is that a lot of people are out there hosting with a bit of a blind spot in terms of understanding what it means to create a good guest experience.

I guess that leads me to my real advice for hosting dinner parties, which despite my prior post is in some ways the only thing I actually consider good advice regarding this topic:

Don't assume you are good at hosting dinner parties, or for that matter good at anything

I'll remind you again that I have no experience at hosting. Despite that shortcoming, I'm more than comfortable offering this advice. Something I've noticed about people who do things well is that they are always trying to get better at the things they already do well. Why would hosting a dinner party be an exception? One way to get better is demonstrated by the existence of the previous post - find strong reading materials and write down the stuff you want to remember. I've read a lot of books over the years with this exact idea in mind, building my knowledge and wisdom through each new reading experience. 

But another way that I've found helpful is to ask people what they know about the skill. My perspective on this method has shifted over time. When I was younger, I felt that research, studying, and reading were the best ways to improve my abilities. As one example, when I first became a manager at work I taught myself the job by reading dozens of books. But a few months ago when I started onboarding our first new team member since the transition to remote work, I decided to contact around twenty or thirty people and ask them for advice. I don't think I would have considered this approach in the past - instead, I would have looked for reading materials from the experts. I think if I had to host a dinner party tonight I would do something along those lines, perhaps contacting my guests and asking them what would make for a good party. In my mind this speaks to what differentiates inexperience from experience. The inexperienced person seeks out expert materials because they have no idea what constitutes good advice, so expertise reassures them regarding the quality of the advice. The experienced person trusts themselves to evaluate the quality of all advice, so they are comfortable collecting input from a wide range of sources before identifying the best and most relevant of that advice. 

This approach tends to produce a couple of interesting results. First, you get some useful advice in the form of reminders, which helps you improve your consistency in considering all the obvious details. You also get some input into process adjustments, which generally means small corrections at a detail level about the things you already know or do. The most helpful type of response might be the surprises, since these tend to be the things you would never have considered on your own. Some may surprise you with their definition of a good dinner party, helping you incorporate their different perspectives into your planning, while others may offer useful personal details such as certain dietary restrictions or preferences. In fact, surprise might be the most underrated feature of good advice - unsurprising advice seems redundant because you might have thought of it on your own, but surprising advice is priceless because you could have gone the rest of your life without considering it.

The biggest surprise of all takes a little longer to come around, usually well after the end of the dinner party - since you asked them for advice, your guests will remember that you are the sort of person who wants to get better. This applies in any situation where you ask someone for their advice - the fact of being asked subtly changes their perception of you. Over time, this new perspective also changes how they interact with you. It might mean that they continue offering you suggestions related to your original question, or maybe they take a generalized approach and simply share interesting information for your benefit. The key is that since they now know you want to get better, there is a higher possibility that they will seek you out when they think of a way for you to get better. It's also possible that they seek you out for advice. The whole thing ends up being a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle, defined by a mutual interest in coaching and learning from each other, and such cycles are among the most significant reasons why certain types of people seem to be constantly improving their skills, capabilities, or knowledge. Establishing this type of relationship with others is unlikely to be the reason why you initially sought out the advice, but I do think it's why you should always seek out advice.

leftovers - reading clearout, may 2022 (hosting a dinner party)

Hi folks, part one of a faux two-parter today, which is how I describe it when each section can stand as its own post. The next post (part two) will immediately follow in a few days. Thanks for reading!

*****

The highest concentration of my notes from Jessica Pan's Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come (a May 2022 read I briefly reviewed in December) came from the few pages where she described hosting a dinner party. This was such a foreign concept to me that the chapter essentially became an unofficial crash-course tutorial on hosting. Recognizing that I might someday need to know some of this, I read carefully while scribbling down as many helpful reminders as possible.

For my fellow hopeless hosts, here are my best insights:

A good playlist is important

I think the idea here is to make sure guests can feel comfortable just relaxing in silence while also offering them something to which they can give their shared attention. If you don't like music, I suppose an alternative is to print out copies of your favorite TOA posts and leave them scattered around your house.

(I'll add as Special Bonus Advice that it would be my recommendation to turn off the TV. It's far too stimulating and some guests may be unable to fully engage with the party while the TV is on. Of course, I remind you that I'm no expert on hosting, or TV for that matter.)

The food should be as prepared as possible 

The thought is to have time for your guests, which is a minor challenge when you spend three hours alone in the kitchen. This obviously doesn't apply in setups where one can be in the kitchen without separating from the guests, such as in an open-concept or a small apartment, but it may still be helpful to have this reminder in mind just so you make yourself engage with guests from your spot in the kitchen area.

Pan's lists specifics that fit her idea of "prepared food" - cold appetizers, a cheese board (one hard, one soft, one blue) and a slow-cooked meal. She adds that dessert shouldn't be too fancy. I'll note that if I ever host a dinner party I'll be sure to walk the tightrope between "dinner party" and "potluck", which by design would increase the availability of fully prepared food.

Some essential preparation for a large number of guests - dishwashing soap, foil, and extra bottles of wine

These items proactively address the shortages that can arise when you suddenly increase the number of people you have over to your house. The specific items that fit this definition might differ by host. If I had to reword this tip in my own words, I would say to stock up on the household items you tend to ignore until they run out because these are the items that won't have the spares you might suddenly need during the party.

Work out connections among guests so that you have ways of introducing unknown people to each other (honorable mention - have some stories ready in case a conversation falls flat)

I think this final point is somewhat obvious, but I wanted to include it at the end because it suggests a connecting thread for today - basically, since your goal as the host is to ensure your guests have the best possible experience you need to do everything you can to create a great experience. Ideally the guests can organically connect with each other, but a host taking on a more active social role can also facilitate a nice experience for everyone. When you reexamine the above with this idea in mind, you can see the way each specific recommendation connects back to the larger goal.

Good luck with your party!

leftovers - recollections of my nonexistence (authentic expression)

Perhaps the most compelling note I took from Rebecca Solnit's Recollections of My Nonexistence (a book I summarized briefly back in December) explained how monstrous people are sometimes nothing more than those who adhere to the norms of the time, never questioning their training in how to think, feel, or notice. I could undoubtedly reflect on this idea and add my own thoughts as it regards the origins of monstrous people, but I'm actually more intrigued by the possibility of considering the inverse - what does it mean when someone who never questions that training ends up becoming not monstrous but average, just another among the scores of acquaintances who pass through the eternal mystery of your life?

A few other notes I took from this book offer an initial (and for today, a final) direction. Solnit comments that language can be protective more so than expressive, especially for those younger or inexperienced people who try out difference voices in the process of finding their own - imitating others is their way of hiding a lack of knowledge or perspective. She makes similar points about busy speech (protects a speaker who has nothing of value to say), cleverness (the speaker sounds so smart it hides their avoidance of self-expression), or anger (the speaker buries feelings such as fear, hurt, or sadness in the process of focusing outside themselves). Her point that it takes great courage to speak from the heart ties together these observations. Our training, imposed on us by the so-called norms of our time and forever reinforcing those norms, embeds the need for protection to such an extent that it almost feels instinctive to keep the locks tight whenever the heart knocks on our door. In these moments only courage allows us to answer the call, but our training doesn't equip us to do so.

What happens to the majority of us who never question the way we are taught to think, feel, or notice? At best, you'll live someone else's life, and that's not such a bad thing - so many great lives have been lived, are being lived, that aspiring to those standards will be fulfilling in some way or another. But I don't think it's possible to live your own life. I think living your own life starts with the courage to open that door so you can express yourself with the authenticity that is unique to you. I think living your own life means stepping outside so that you can see if the life only you can live is waiting somewhere over the horizon. I think living your own life means recognizing that the only thing you're protecting yourself from is the thing you might say if you let yourself speak, and the thing you might do if you let yourself listen.

reading clearout - july 2022

Hi folks, thoughts below on my reading from July 2022. However, before I get into the books just a quick comment on two small process changes.

First, I'm going to open each clearout post with a note on whether any book from the month made it to my book of the year shortlist. What does that mean? Reader, there is no method to this madness, but I'll try to explain - if a book appears on the shortlist then you'll know it's among my top ten to fifteen books from the year. Although I won't go so far as to say a book on the shortlist is a recommendation, I'll admit that (for now) it's the closest I'll ever get to suggesting reading material.

Second, I'm going to continue tightening up these summary posts. As longtime readers know, the quest for TOA efficiency is an ongoing and never-ending endeavor. I'm not quite at the point where I'm willing to just say "I read it and it was fine" - I still think it's useful for me to come up with some reflection on each reading experience - but the other side of this argument is that each additional word I write about a book is one less word I write for something original. (Stay tuned for more developments on this utterly fascinating situation.)

OK, without further admin - here's my reading from July 2022, none of which made it onto my 2022 book of the year shortlist.

High Risk by Chavi Eve Karkowsky

Karkowsky details the many aspects of pregnancy and childbirth in this wide-ranging book. Many of the chapters are organized around stories from her career as a high-risk pregnancy doctor. I think this book is a good fit for a reader seeking information on the topic, but please note that it doesn't quite read with the same ease which might be anticipated by those whose previous medical reading has centered around popular bestsellers.

Nothing specifically from High Risk has stayed with me over the past few months but I did find a couple of nuggets to highlight from my reading notes. First was the possibility that people who wish to talk about something years later may still be processing the grief, fear, or anger of that incident. The desire to discuss could be partly explained by having been unprepared for the emotions faced during that experience. In some ways this note (which I feel also applies outside the specific context of the book) describes why Karkowsky wrote it - to prepare people for some of the potential complications of pregnancy and to help them from being emotionally blindsided. I also noted the commentary connecting treatment with publicly-funded healthcare - when taxpayer dollars are closely connected to the medical system, the care someone receives can be thought of as a net gain for everyone in the sense that a healthy person is likelier to make a larger contribution to future tax revenue.

Grand Union by Zadie Smith

I believe Grand Union was Smith's first short story collection. Though I didn't think of it as highly as I've done with short fiction by other authors, I suspect I'll still seek out more of her work in the future. I think anyone who has previously enjoyed Smith's work will like Grand Union, but from scanning reviews it doesn't seem like it was anyone's personal favorite. From these twenty or so stories, I marked "For The King" as a reread.

As usual with short fiction, my reading notes are a scattering of one-line insights into the meaning of life. I pulled out two to highlight here - first, that one of the costs of racism is distraction by the way it forces people to stop and justify their existence, over and over again, to those who are free to continue unimpeded with their lives; second, that people can seem brave when they just don't recognize the risk.

The Winter Father by Andre Dubus

At some point during the pandemic I decided I would reread all of Dubus's short fiction, which in hindsight was an excellent yet somewhat time-consuming decision. The Winter Father is the second of three collected volumes spanning his full career, containing work previously published in The Times Are Never So Bad and Finding a Girl in America. I noted the stories "The Winter Father" and "A Father's Story" for future rereads.

Longtime TOA readers will know that I've previously had much to say about his work, so perhaps there is nothing I can add today that would influence your interest in reading his stories. But for those unfamiliar to these parts, perhaps a refresher will be helpful. You should know that Dubus tends to write on the long side of short fiction (some of these works are appropriately classified as novellas). His stories generally center isolated, middle-aged men who might defend their worldviews as being "a product of the times", but most of these protagonists recognize deep down that such words walk the fine line between explanation and excuse. Much like how Haruki Murakami's characters inevitably find themselves in a jazz bar, Dubus's subjects regularly cast their shadows over the Merrimack. Somehow, all of these details are the hallmarks of a master at work, whose writing illustrates the world as it is experienced by one person and leaves the reader with a slightly richer understanding of other lives.

The First-Time Manager by Loren B. Belker, Jim McCormick, and Gary S. Topchik

This was the rare book that I checked out of the library after noticing it on a shelf. I almost never make such an impulsive "purchase" - I usually look for a bit of information online to get a sense of the work before placing it on my reserve list. I believe the official reason I chose The First-Time Manager, first published in 1978 and described by Amazon as "a true management classic", was because someone in my team had been recently promoted into a managerial role. I thought this was potentially a good recommendation to help her prepare for the transition, but since I hadn't read it myself I knew I should give it a try first.

Of course, in life there are official reasons and then there are real reasons. The real reason I checked out this book is that I've been toying with the idea of writing a book. My idea is to help people who are taking on managerial responsibilities for the first time. For me, one consideration in this process is to get a sense of the competition, so when I saw this book I also saw it as a good place to start assessing the options currently available in this area. Let's just get straight to the outcomes - I thought overall this was a decent read containing some helpful advice, but I didn't recommend this book to my team member and I think I can write a much better book myself.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Roll your eyes if you must but by now we should know that I'll never pass up a chance to put a title like Then We Came to the End as the final section of a post.

Ferris's 2007 novel intrigued me for the clever gimmick of it being written in the first-person plural, describing the experience of a downsizing office through the collective eyes of its remaining employees. I think I enjoyed this book slightly more than the average reader, which might be more a reflection of how my work experiences made this book relatable to me. I don't think anyone will consider this a literary classic but I can recommend it as a light read for winding down before bedtime.

how to deviate from structure

The point of structure is to enforce the inconvenient option. This is the one conclusion I reached from reading Lisa Zeidner's Who Says?, a book I mentioned in last week's June 2022 summary. There was a note from my reading which made a similar point in the context of writing fiction (it's a lengthy note so hang in there with me) - departures from POV structure should serve a specific purpose, ensuring that the author is responding to the needs of the story rather than merely catering to convenience. I'm sure there is plenty more to be said on this point as it relates to writing fiction, but I figure I'd be better off sticking to my lane and commenting instead on its broader application.

Most of the things we do have at least a semblance of structure, whether that be in a routine, a process, or even just a mentality. There is a simple logic in adding structure - defining the sequence, rhythm, or reasoning for certain steps increases the likelihood of the desired outcome. You'd think this would be enough to ensure a full commitment to the structure but, alas, as inevitably as night follows dusk, those pesky deviations eventually come around to disrupt the structure. One thing I notice whenever I find myself drifting away from structure is echoed in Zeidner's point about fiction - convenience. Structure is constantly challenged by the convenience of doing things another way - you plan your morning around waking up early, but it's convenient to hit the snooze; you designate the time after lunch for working on long-term projects, but it's convenient to check email; you bring back groceries for your meal plan, but it's convenient to order delivery. If you put this idea into reverse, you see that inconvenience drives the necessity of structure. When things are inconvenient there is always the chance that we choose to do something else, so the structure helps us stick to the plan. The things required of us to reach any goal often include a host of inconvenient tasks or responsibilities. With structure, we gain a helping hand in committing to the inconvenient, which we see both initially as well as over time - at first structure commits us to the inconvenient steps, then it serves as a deterrent against the allure of the more convenient alternatives that eventually come along.

Let's return momentarily to Zeidner's point. For a fiction writer, perhaps an upcoming scene feels too challenging to write in the existing POV. Making the effort to stick with the original POV is inconvenient, so the author craters to convenience and shifts perspective to simplify the work. You may suspect that I believe such a decision is unambiguously poor, but that's not exactly how I see it. What I like about Zeidner's note is her refusal to dismiss such a decision out of hand, and this is also my perspective - absolutes should be avoided (most of the time). The question becomes how to identify those rare moments where we know to break an ironclad rule, a question which is complicated by the tendency to create such rules with a finality that offers no consideration of deviation. In Zeidner's note from Who Says?, she offers "the need of the story" as the prevailing consideration - it's OK to make the shift if it serves the story. What is left unstated here is an assumption obvious to fiction writers - all decisions regarding form and structure are made to serve the need of the story. Translating this example into a broader framework suggests that we can deviate from the structures in our lives so long as we keep in mind what we'd hoped our structures enabled in the first place, evaluating potential deviations to ensure they continue to serve that original need.

Of course, examples tend to fall short of being perfect comparisons to everyday life. With Zeidner's point, the challenge for me is how she refers to a decision which is often made while the original draft is still in progress. By contrast, in the everyday context we rarely work with anything at such an early stage of creation. The main distinction that comes to mind is between creation and replication - the writer in Zeidner's example requires structure to create the draft while in everyday situations structure more likely helps us replicate a previously achieved outcome. This means we must understand that the lessons on structure come with the caveat that using a structure for creation is different from using it for replication. One difference that immediately comes to mind is that for the creator structure discourages shortcuts while for the replicator it protects against incompletion. I suppose it's easy enough to understand the former - for the creator, there's always an opportunity in revision to notice errors and strengthen the final product. The latter is a bit more of a stretch to me. Since structure exists to get something done, why deviate from it in any way given how this puts the outcome at risk?

The fact that abandoning structure puts the outcome at risk sounds alarming enough to ensure commitment to the process, but from both observation as well as personal experience I know this isn't strictly the case. I think what's going on most of the time is that some aspect of the structure, initially unknown to (or unacknowledged by) those involved, makes the entire thing unsustainable. The decision to indulge convenience is the first hint of an unsustainable feature in the structure, implying that it's not strong enough to enforce the inconvenient option on the way to completing a goal. I suspect at this point that most people resort to a natural response - calling on their willpower to bring them back on course. Using willpower might work, but leaving it at willpower alone overlooks the lesson from that first hint. If your workout plan is structured around waking up early and then one morning you decide to skip the workout to sleep in, the logical response would be to analyze the situation and determine that the root cause of the issue was being too tired in the morning to get out of bed. If you instead decide that tomorrow you are going to try twice as hard to get out of bed, then maybe you'll get up or maybe you won't but either way the structure will carry that design flaw for as long as you do nothing about it.

The way to solve the issue would be to improve your rest so that you can wake up in the morning without being tempted to sleep in. This style of thinking is the only truthful way to deviate from structure, using real-life feedback to identify where you are struggling with commitment to the inconvenient steps in the plan and then adjusting appropriately to address the root cause. The reason this is difficult is because it requires a significant degree of honest self-reflection, which I don't think is a quality we possess in abundance. Far too often, we instead remain loyal to our original plan and try to force ourselves to stick with it through sheer willpower. The problem with this approach is that it throws away the moment where you could have learned, regardless of your initial good intent, that your plan remained prone to the temptations of convenience. If you accept my premise that structure exists to enforce the inconvenient steps toward a goal, then you can see why such moments should never be ignored. When it comes to structure, each moment where we consider a convenient alternative is like a drop of water coming through the roof during the rain - nothing about the situation will permanently improve without taking some kind of action.

As usual, writing about any problem makes the difficult sound absurdly simple - analyze the problem! identify the root cause!! make the necessary changes!!! The way we navigate each day, which of course is driven by the sometimes unstoppable force known as human nature, is rarely influenced by such a simple set of rational commands. We are, for better or for worse, creatures of convenience, so perhaps the truth of the matter is that I should just drop it, admitting that no structure can overcome destiny. But I still think it's worth thinking about structure - why we need it, how it fails, and what to do when it requires repair. It's worth thinking about how to make ourselves more likely to do the inconvenient things. The fact is that we don't always have the strength to turn away from convenience, which means we don't have the strength do the things we want to do, to take the steps we need to take, to reach the goals we hope to reach. Structure is one of the things we can use to borrow this strength when it is lacking within us so that we can serve the most important consideration of all - to live the life we wish to live.