stop interrupting - this is just my opinion

I know I’m not allowed to write about certain ideas. I’m not referring to some top-secret list of banned topics here or admitting that there are certain sentences I’ve decided to never put into print. No, I’m talking about YOU, reader, and how there are certain limits to what you are willing to read that I remain mindful of whenever I sketch out an idea for a post.

What kinds of topics are these? I think any topic where the reader was more interested in my position rather than my thinking would qualify. To put it another way, if I thought a reader would only skim to see my conclusion, then I'm probably not going to write the piece. Topics about which a reader already has an opinion are good candidates for this consideration. I imagine a reader who starts reading about such a topic will stop reading at some point and think – wait… I don’t care about Tim’s thinking because I already know my conclusion... but does he agree with me? Fully distracted, I imagine this reader would immediately start scrolling up and down the post until my stance was identified.

The attitude I’m describing reflects a simple mentality – who cares about the thinking when all it leads to is a position? I consider such a response to a written idea as the reading equivalent of an interruption (and a loud one, at that). Instead of hearing the writer out or doing the hard work necessary to follow the line of thinking, we as readers start skimming along until we determine whether the writer is on our team. There is so little point in writing about a topic I expect the reader to skim rather than read that I think I would be better off just publishing a list in these cases.

How can you identify these topics for yourself, reader? I’d start by thinking about the topics you respond to by saying - that’s interesting, but only because the way I do it is a little different. There’s nothing wrong about this approach, of course – everyone is entitled to an opinion. But it’s hard to get better at almost anything when thinking in this way. I didn’t get better at running by hearing about someone’s technique and saying – oh wow, well, the way I do it is different – and I certainty didn’t get any better at eating healthy by explaining my meal planning to someone who ate better than me.

I guess the main idea here is that an obsession over positions can distract us from learning. This usually manifests through an interruption, often because of an insistence on knowing the ending before hearing the story. As readers, we cripple ourselves when we cut writing down to a list of conclusions. And we writers enable sloppy reading whenever we strip our work bare of all traces of thinking. We are all entitled to our opinions, of course, and it is important not to forget this. But in what other context excepting holding opinions is ‘entitled’ used with any positive connotation? Instead of feeling entitled to a position, a better way might be to earn our positions through the hard work of challenging our own thinking, understanding the thinking of others, and being open to whatever that means about the opinions we’ve hold so dear.

i’m still no scientist

One of the hallmarks of science is the counter-example. The search for it powers the entire field. A researcher with a new idea, theory, or hypothesis builds a strong case for how the world works. However, at any point a single observation of the world working in another way will force the researcher back to the proverbial drawing board.

I think a lot of people like this style of thinking. I notice the approach pop up in many different contexts. I might be in the process of explaining a new idea or thought to someone and I’ll hear in response – well, what about this? The really clever ones will continue on and ask... and what about that? And usually, I’ll think about this (or even that) and conclude – you know what, you are right, this is a counter-example to my hypothesis!

And so I slink back to the proverbial drawing board and ask myself - what next? As science goes, I would need to return to the lab and come up with a new idea. But in real life, I usually just walk on. This isn’t because of my self-belief or my sense of superiority or even my immense stubborn insistence on always being right (hold your counter-examples, reader) – I think this is because most of what I talk about isn’t very scientific. I think what most people talk about isn’t very scientific. And yet, I often find myself held to the lofty standards of the scientific method (and observe the same phenomenon in even the most casual conversations among others).

I’m not really complaining, reader, of course not. I’m honored, in fact, when someone considers my scattered ranting and raving as the equivalent of a well-honed null hypothesis. And it makes sense that even the most casual conversation is littered with over-application of the counter-example. The scientific method isn’t just some thing taught in school – it is a simple application of basic logic. I rail against many things, reader, but basic logic isn’t one of them.

The problem is that an automatic instinct to refute a new idea might become an obstacle to understanding a new idea. These are two sides of the same coin to me – a refuted idea is similar to a fully understood idea in how neither one requires additional comprehension or brainpower. The former is obviously a much easier approach. But how many counter-examples must be explained away before the idea is understood?

Of course, this presents the true problem with the casual pseudo-science we are bombarded with (or bombard others with, really) on a daily basis – since the starting idea isn’t particularly scientific, the attempts to apply the scientific method will create skewed results. To put it another way, I think the instinct to refute only reveals that a decision about the idea has already been made. In a casual conversation that turns on a pseudo-scientific point, it really isn’t that hard to overload the other with endless counter-examples. And the other can refute these points, or not, but in the end it really doesn’t matter because no one is budging from their initial position since the initial position isn’t defined well enough to budge from.

I think the best approach to these situations is to demand detailed explanation of the idea. If someone like me comes around and says something like – you know, in the future I bet overweight people will think of weight gain as an allergic reaction to certain foods – then I would suggest asking me countless questions until I fully explained myself. And I’m not talking about assumption-laden questions that I could dismiss with yes-no responses; I’m talking real questions like – how did you come up with that? – or – why do you believe in this? – or – surely, you didn’t waste the last week coming up with this idea (1)?

Eventually, what will happen is one of two things. One possibility is that my nonsensical point will crumble under the weight of my own explanation. This is the reason to ask those open-ended ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions (can you describe… is also a good opener for such a question) – by challenging the speaker to sort out all the little details and overlooked inconsistencies, the possibility of the speaker refuting his or her own point becomes much more likely.

The second possibility is in a way even better – you might help the speaker build the argument to such a place that the point is essentially scientific. This might not sound so good right away, of course, but remember – if the point is scientific, all it takes is one counter-example to bring the whole house down.

Ask carefully, skeptical reader.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Footnotes / analysis of my questionable logic

0. I know, I’m no scientist...

When presented with a new idea you do not understand, there are two options. If you try to understand it, you might be in for a long mental struggle. If you instead try to refute it, you might no longer need to understand the idea since if you successfully discredit the idea, it won't matter much whether you understand it or not. I think this is another good explanation for why people immediately try to discredit new ideas.

Again, when the two options are understanding or discrediting, it's important to remember how the latter is much easier – all you need is a counter example! Most people pass off presenting counter-examples as a way of ‘trying to understand’ - this isn’t the same thing! There is a fine line between trying to understand an idea versus trying to refute it.

1. But a yes/no question IS a question…right?

You could come the other way, dear reader, and point out the realities of calories and nutritionists. You could even frame it in question form – how come you think this when you know most allergic reactions don’t lead to permanent physical changes? Don’t fool yourself, reader, into thinking such a retort is an example of an open question because open question do not have any built-in assumptions (in the above, the assumptions is revealed by the phrase '...when you know...').

proving yourself wrong

I mentioned in the November newsletter that I was thinking about the value of being able to prove yourself wrong. This was a thought I had as I watched helmet football this past fall. The more I thought about it, the more there seemed to be two types of head coaches – those who were constantly trying to prove themselves wrong and those who were constantly trying to prove themselves right.

What do I mean by a head coach trying to prove himself right? In helmet football, a coach is always making decisions about which players to use during a game. These decisions reveal not just what the coach thinks about what will happen next but also serve as mini-retrospectives on what a coach thinks about his past decisions regarding who should be on the field. In other words, a coach who makes a change sometimes is doing more than just optimizing for the future – the change could also be an admission that he might have made a mistaken decision in the past.

A good way to notice these moments is to track how a player’s reputation relates to a coach’s decisions. Let’s define a player’s reputation as a sum of his accomplishments, salary, and draft position. Initially, players with better reputations should play ahead of those with lesser reputations. However, if a coach never removes poorly performing high-reputation players in favor of those with low reputations, it suggests that a coach is trying to prove himself right, at least in the sense of the initial decision to sign and play the player. On the other hand, a coach who makes such changes suggests he is trying to prove himself wrong, or perhaps allowing the players to do so, because these changes suggest he uses recent performance ahead of reputation to make decisions.

In any field where performance matters, I think a leader willing to be proven wrong is always my preference. Reputation is important, especially early on when there is little performance data, but over time a leader should know who is performing well and who is performing poorly. The leader who gives more responsibility to the highest performer regardless of reputation (which in the real world includes but is not limited to advanced degrees, prior work history, tenure, age, or appearance) should always do better than a leader who makes decisions based on reputation. The worst leaders of all make decisions based on reputation then stick with those decisions regardless of what happens next.

The challenge involved in this task is significant – how many leaders really want to step up and say ‘I got it wrong initially, but now we are making a change’? The answer is not many, but I think that’s the point, because great leaders are rare and would therefore be defined by unusual characteristics.

leftovers – the asian supremacist (the toa asian supremacy test)

In a recent post, I wrote about how I took a certain implicit bias test that concluded I unconsciously associated 'Asian' and 'native'. Since I feel strongly that unconscious bias is a reflection of our accumulated experiences, I decided to come up with a new version of this test intended to assess personal experience and suggest in my rambling, roundabout way how it might contribute to unconscious bias.

Here’s an early version of the test – you can take it at home! It should take about five minutes.

The TOA Innocent Experience Leadership Bias Test

1) Set a timer for one minute and hit start

2) Think of as many examples of great American leaders as you can. These examples do not need to be political leaders or famous people – just write down the names you associate with leadership. If you accidentally name a foreign person, that’s OK, just keep going!

3) After the minute is over, note the race and gender of your leaders. If you aren’t entirely sure, you can guess. Mixed races can count as half, a third, etc – just use your best judgment.

4) Using whatever source you trust, find the demographics of the USA. If you trust me, use the numbers I pulled from this link: 73.3% white, 12.6% black, 5.2% Asian, 8.9% for all other races (including two or more). Let’s split men and women 50/50 within each demographic.

5) Compare your leaders by percentage to those demographics.

6) If your results are discrepant, ask yourself how long it would take for you to think of enough leaders so that your answers in #2 would match the national demographics as determined in #4. For example, if you named twelve white leaders, you probably should have named around two black leaders and one Asian leader. How long would it take to name those extra three leaders?

7) Before sending me an angry email, remind yourself that, like any test, this one is designed to trick you just a little bit...

OK – the results are in! I didn’t take the test myself, and probably could not honestly have done so given my role in its design, but here’s what I think I would have done – I would have named at least 73% white leaders, a result I expect of just about anyone else who dares to take the test.

What I expect my test to tell me is two things. First, the natural baseline in this country for what we consider an example of great leadership would skew heavily toward white people. Second, within each racial subgroup men would form the majority. This view likely surprises no one. I think that’s OK because this result isn’t destiny but merely a prophecy. Like all prophecies, we choose which ones are going to be self-fulfilling. If an analogy is required, my test is far from a disease diagnosis – it’s a lot more like a concerning vital sign such as high blood pressure or a history of eating processed foods. There is time to change the outcome but it will require a concerted effort built on an understanding of where the road leads and an acknowledgement of the pressures that keep us on the path.

How can someone apply the lessons from this kind of test? The answer is to be more conscious. The best opponent for our unconscious thinking is to become a more conscious thinker, and remain so, until we’ve taught ourselves to react the same way that we think. In other words, the only tutor we can hire for our unconscious is our conscious.

A good place to start is to acknowledge that we choose leaders based partly on how they match our existing mental models for leadership. A person who knows that his or her best examples of leadership all fit a certain demographic descriptor might take an extra moment to weigh a decision at the polls, assess candidates after a job interview, or consider if a student’s participation in school government is being weighed equally to peers of another race or gender. It doesn’t have to be a long pause, just a moment is OK, because a moment is all it takes for the conscious to acknowledge, dismiss, and eventually improve the impulses of the unconscious.

the asian supremacist

On a night at the end of last fall, I sat down in a Harvard Square bar with a couple of friends and learned an important truth about myself: I’m an Asian supremacist.

The methodology for my discovery was through the 'Asian IAT' test on Project Implicit. The test measured my bias by asking me to identify a white, Asian, native, or foreign choice from a pair of flashed images. After I completed the test, the scores were aggregated and the result presented – I learned that I was one of around five percent of test takers who strongly associated 'Asian' and 'native'. So, in other words, the test revealed that I was... yup, that rare breed of bigot, an Asian supremacist?

I thought this was a fairly amusing result. The best part was that my result technically cannot be true – anyone with a basic grasp of American history knows Asians are as native to America as Oreo cookies are integral to a healthy diet. Perhaps the test should have recommended remedial history coursework instead of making a declarative statement about my biased worldview (1).

This experience makes me wonder what these tests really measure and whether those measurements have any relevant insight into my nature. The stated purpose of the test is to examine my unconscious bias. It does so by asking that I rapidly associate one image or another to one of the aforementioned categories. After doing this over and over, the test has a good sense of what goes on beneath my deliberate thinking. On the surface, the test conditions replicate an environment where my unconscious bias would guide my associations by stripping my conscious (and overriding) mind of its only advantage - time. I think the design of the test is more or less OK on paper. However, a good thesis never guaranteed a strong conclusion and I suspect something along those lines is what happens in many cases when these kinds of tests are used to measure bias.

I think the trickiest problem to untangle with this test is that a lot of what I do unconsciously is the result of prior thinking, training, and action. It's like how I type these sentences - I've deliberately practiced so much that I can go entire paragraphs without thinking at all about how to hit the keys and punch out nonsense like this very post. It’s hard to know if my preference for Asian associations on this test was due to something untapped in my unconscious or if it merely reflects a worldview I’ve deliberately cultivated over years of absorbing and thinking about the evidence. Consider for example how in the month prior to my flunking this exam Harvard University came under significant public scrutiny for admissions practices that allegedly disadvantaged Asian applicants. The eventual lawsuit suggested that if given two otherwise identical applicants, Harvard systematically chose the white student ahead of the Asian one. I knew this story as I walked in the shadow of the same university on my way to the bar that night. I knew the story had a ring of truth based on my own experiences. Most importantly, I knew this was just another story in a long line of similar tales.

My test results suggest I’m no better than Harvard - we stand accused of sharing an underlying bias when we make decisions and our biases become obvious anytime we are systemically presented with a choice of one option or another. However, given that this test suggested I'm biased, I'd say my version is the preferred one. In a country where no one ever accuses anyone of favoring Asians, I don't think it's crazy at all that someone might have learned over time to correct a bit for society's misplaced biases. The world would undoubtedly be a better place if we all became capable of overcoming our biases and seeing each other as equals before making our decisions. However, we can also come close enough to that ideal by acknowledging our hidden biases and making outward corrections until our inner preferences match the deliberate decisions we make in front of the watching world. Until then, I'll accept my ridiculous test results and comfort myself knowing that at the very least I wouldn't get sued if I were the one picking Harvard's next incoming class.

Footnotes / more inflammatory remarks

1. 'Native' in the way Christopher Columbus would describe it...

I understand that the opposite of my results is true – white people (or at least, some subset of white people) are native to the USA. Therefore, my results are likely being framed as the 'opposite' of those who strongly associate white and native. I don't think imposing a continuum on the results is a great excuse for coming up with the historically false association of Asian and native, though.

running into the dark

One of the great delights of last spring was Liverpool’s return to the knockout rounds of the Champions League. In these matches, the sport’s best teams go head-to-head in playoff series until only one club remains. Liverpool’s presence at this stage of the tournament was a given back when I first started following the team in 2006 but in the past ten years the team just hasn’t been good enough to regularly qualify for the knockout rounds. Their return to prominence after a barren decade was a delight for us fans; for me, it brought back a lot of memories from those days when I regularly watched them play important matches against Europe’s biggest clubs.

One of my strongest memories isn’t tied to any one specific moment. Rather, it is a composite recollection of how Anfield – Liverpool’s home ground – always underwent a dramatic transformation during evening matches. The change was due to how the sun set over the course of the match. By the game’s end, the bright sunlight that bathed the pitch at kickoff had given way to full darkness, leaving the field completely illuminated under floodlights. The contrast between the sun-soaked scenes at kickoff and the intense glare of the lights at the end of the match always seemed to ratchet the pressure of the knockout rounds up to an unbearable level. Someone was about to go home, perhaps undeservingly, and the darkness lurking just beyond the reach of the Anfield lights always felt like a reminder - in this cruel tournament, teams were forever just one mistake away from going home (1).

Last spring, I was in the midst of a break from running when this decade-old memory about Anfield’s in-game transformation came back to me. For the most part, I hadn’t missed running at all up to that point during my break. But when I thought about Anfield’s transformation, I was reminded of how much I enjoy running into a sunset and this led me to suddenly recognize how much I missed running.

The ideal time for me to start running is similar to the conditions at kickoff on a big ‘European night’ at Anfield – the sun should be high enough in the sky that it would not cross any driver's mind to turn on the headlights. The direction of the run doesn’t matter as much as the timing. The key is to set it up so that I can turn west just as the sky starts to change color. Sometimes this is possible by just running along the Charles River – ‘chasing the sun’, so to speak. Another good approach is to run north into Somerville until the appropriate moment comes – then, I turn west and follow the fading light into Cambridge. Once the sharp colors of sunset start giving way to the dull shades of purple and blue, I angle toward home, following the just-flickering streetlights all the way.

The thing I like most about these runs is how it feels so dramatic to set out in the daylight and return home in darkness. But what is the drama of running a couple hours just to get back to where I was? It’s not the light or the sunset or the darkness, I’m sure, because I've walked home after watching a sunset without ever once considering it dramatic. No, I think by ‘drama’ I mean the familiar mixture of anxiety, fear, and pressure that comes anytime I sense the safety net that’s always waited below me has been temporarily pulled away. It’s the safety net that comes from being young and fit and confident, ready to run any distance over any terrain, ready to run on forever, and this safety net always feels missing when I run alone outside at night. For some reason, as the darkness closes in everything I've ever relied upon all my life to make it home seems insufficient. Even though it’s been ages since I’ve pulled up injured on a run, the sunset and the ensuing darkness slowly raise the unavoidable, inevitable question – if something goes wrong, how will I make it home?

I don’t have a great sense for why I like this feeling. It’s not just on these ‘sunset runs’ that I enjoy the feeling – this ‘drama’ is the same reason I enjoy running at the start of a snowstorm. The changing conditions of the coming storm serve as a subtle reminder of how I have no choice but to rise to the challenge of the workout. And if I don't have what it takes? I guess I’ll just suffer the consequences that simply do not exist when I run on perfectly sunny afternoons. I’m content with the arrangement and I always give it my all but... I don’t really know why I like it.

Maybe the drama comes from something else entirely – it isn’t the question of whether I’ll rise to the challenge but rather the knowledge that one day, I won’t. One day, no matter how well I’ve prepared, no matter how unfair it is, no matter how much I’ll regret it, I know I simply won’t be able to make it to where I want to go. It’s the same thing that makes the Champions League so dramatic. In this tournament, it’s not so much that a team eventually lifts the trophy, but more like it just avoids being swallowed up by the darkness, round after round after round, until no other team remains. There’s no recipe for success when almost every team gets knocked out. I do know one thing, though – a team unwilling to stare back into the darkness and fight with everything it has will always regret the night it never gave itself a chance.

Footnotes / Rafa, the magician…

1. Liverpool 1, Chelsea 0 (Liverpool advanced, 4-1, on penalties)

The best specific example of this would be the 2007 semifinal against Chelsea. Hosts Liverpool entered the second leg of the two-game series needing one goal to draw level. This goal came early in the match courtesy of Daniel Agger – when the ball hit the net, everyone celebrated wildly in the bright late afternoon sun. At that point, it felt like we were going to win 3-0. By the end of the match, though, the floodlights were on and it just felt like the tiniest misstep would lead to the Chelsea goal that would send Liverpool crashing out of the tournament.

I’d imagine Benitez, Liverpool’s great manager, aged about three years during this game. His response when the game went to a shootout is legendary – he sat on the ground, resembling a tired tourist waiting for his entire family to emerge from a fast food restaurant’s plastic restrooms, and waited patiently for fate to summon him once more to his weary feet.

leftovers - the real reason I’m not running (data edition, part 2)

There were a couple of technical thoughts I cut out of this leftover that I want to share today.

First, an important note about a lifetime of running is that this is an activity with a long tail. A long tail means that the period of decline is more gradual and much longer than the ascent. In the context of running, this means that a runner improves much faster in his or her twenties than he or she declines over the next forty years. Given the reality that for most people this decline begins somewhere between the late twenties and early thirties, I thought it was an ideal time for me as a runner to start making decisions with the next forty years in mind (instead of the next forty miles).

To put it another way, I should avoid overdoing it now because I might feel the consequences for the next forty years. This is a heavy consideration to make as I cruise down the Charles River or jog through Somerville and it was difficult at first for me to put it into practice. I’ve managed a good compromise to get myself to cut short any run where I start to feel pain or discomfort – I always bring my Hubway bike pass with me so that I can switch over from running to biking whenever I decide to give up. This trick has helped me gradually learn to control myself whenever I get that urge to run through the pain, a vestigial survival tactic from my competitive past that is now the biggest threat to my goal of running a marathon in my seventies.

Footnotes / endnote… wait, what’s gonna happen in forty years?

0. What’s the world record for a seventy-year old running a marathon?

That last line isn’t a joke, readers (though it isn’t a plan, either). I recall reading that a seventy-year old runner can do just as well as a seventeen-year old provided the elderly runner managed to avoid major injury in those intervening fifty-three years. It’s quite a qualifier, I admit, but given the recent changes I’ve made to my lifestyle I feel slightly better about my chances. See you at the finish line!

leftovers - the real reason i'm not running (data edition)

Bizarrely - but perhaps not surprisingly to my long-term readers - I have over two years of data to backup the conclusions I made in this post. When I crunched my meticulously tracked mileage, I realized that the regular thirty to thirty-five miles of running per week that I recorded at the start of my tracking in mid-2015 slowly and steadily declined to twenty miles per week at the start of 2018.

Here are the numbers (1):

Most people see a decline in athletic performance as they reach their late twenties. However, this decline is usually in the range of five to ten percent, not fifty percent. Whatever I was doing, it wasn’t working, and I needed to make some changes if I wanted to arrest my decline and bring that rate closer to the generally accepted range.

The good news here is that, all things considered, twenty miles a week is pretty good. For most people, twenty miles a week would be an accomplishment, not the back-end of a massive decline. Was my fitness situation so bad that I needed to make a change and write long blog posts about the switch?

I thought it was worth a try after realizing that although twenty miles a week is a great fitness accomplishment in general, it's OK to acknowledge that my standards for celebration are well above completing twenty miles per week. It speaks to an important truth - if I let the world tell me how good I am, I'll never come anywhere close to being as good as I can be.

Footnotes / methodology

1. The seven-day or thirty-day?

I should note that these numbers were calculated using a thirty-day running (!) average. What I did was add up all the mileage for the preceding thirty day period, divide the total by thirty to get an average mileage per-day, then multiply by seven to create a weekly average for a given day.

Why the thirty day method and not just a simple sum of the last seven days? I actually tried the latter method and concluded the thirty-day style made more sense for me. My running isn’t exactly dependent on the day of the week so having one instance of each named day in a seven day calculation didn’t help reduce any of the natural variation in my running cycle. Using thirty days proved a better methodology for me and helped track the variation created by the unpredictable nature of my running schedule.

i’m going to go listen with a friend

I’ve noticed that a lot of people around me seem to feel that they are better at talking than they are at listening. The other day, I was thinking about why this seemed to be the case.

Eventually, I came up with one of my traditional theories (this meaning it was intriguing, technically true, and useless to just about everyone). My theory is simple – we encourage people to become better at talking through the very way we describe conversation (let's talk, I talked with Joe, etc). In fact, I can’t remember a single instance of a time someone went to have a conversation without first describing it as ‘going to talk with’ the conversation partner.

Is this just a case of an empty phrase being used solely to describe what is going on in a way we all can understand? On one level, of course that’s what this is. But I think the word also primes (1) us to think about what is coming next – by saying ‘talk with’, we set an expectation that we are indeed going to talk, talk, talk with occasional breaks to catch our breath (or, as some weirdos call it, ‘listen’).

I wonder what would change if we instead called it ‘listen with’ – sorry guys, but I have to go listen with my friend X. Would this lead to better listening? I can’t say for sure it would, but it definitely wouldn’t lead to people talking more, right? So how could it hurt?

I bet talking/listening isn’t the only activity that might change with a slightly altered phrasing or wording. Reader, the next time you are struggling to break a bad habit, try this thought exercise: would referring to the same activity by a different name change the behavior? Some possible ideas I have:

-If you struggle to buy only healthy food at the grocery store, call it ‘going to buy vegetables’ instead of ‘going grocery shopping’

-If you struggle to get off the couch once you start watching TV, call it ‘going to watch the specific TV show ___ for ___ minutes’ instead of ‘going to watch TV’

-If you never feel like going to work out, call it ‘doing what I can today to prevent a heart attack tomorrow’ rather than ‘going to the gym’

Let me know if you have any success, reader – I’m ready to listen with anyone who has feedback to share.

Until then, I’ll be watching TV.

Thanks for reading,

Tim

Footnotes / an academic citation?

1. Priming…

I’m using ‘prime’ here in the sense I occasionally come across in an academic context. This use of ‘prime’ means that encountering something changes the way we think about something else. I think a well-known version is a subset of priming known as ‘anchoring’ and it refers to how recent exposures to a number influences a person’s perceptions about unrelated numbers. A good example is sale psychology – a $100 item sells better if it is marked down 50% from an initial $200 list price than it would sell if it were simply priced at $100 all along.

finding your best

I once read an article about dementia caregiving as part of my hospice volunteer team’s annual training program. Initially, I thought it might be interesting to read the piece, take down a few notes, and share my thoughts here in a fashion similar to how I’ve done reading reviews for books.

However, as I read along with pen in hand, I realized this would not work very well. One reason is that the advice in the article wasn’t concrete enough to write specific recommendations about. In fact, in some cases the advice seemed to contradict itself due to the classic ‘do a little of this, but also do a little of that’ construction.

I recall one example that recommended paying close attention to what a dementia patient said in order to get clues about where the person was at the moment. Sentences later, the paragraph concluded with a reminder not to pay too close attention because sometimes a dementia patient will say things entirely disconnected from recent remarks. So, listen closely… except when you don’t (1)? Great advice, thanks!

I was also a little confused because a lot of the recommendations were fairly mundane. Ask questions, be clear, stay calm, and so on. All of these ideas made sense but I failed to see why an article was required just to state these recommendations. Stay calm?? Don’t we all try to do these things by default? Whenever I’m with others, I try to ask questions, be clear, and stay calm. These don’t sound like caregiving skills – they just sound like skills.

After reflecting on the piece for a few weeks, I think I started to understand the article a little better. I realized that a lot of advice existed merely to help a caregiver build confidence in a situation that offered little positive feedback. If caregivers see themselves reflected back in the article’s examples, it would surely boost their confidence and help them become better caregivers.

Another important aspect of the article was how it outlined the many options available in responding in a dynamic, difficult situation. When no obvious best option exists, a caregiver’s biggest asset is to know as many of the options as possible. This way, a caregiver can try a number of things until one option works better than the others. It’s not as important to get it right the first time so long as the willingness and perseverance to try another option remains intact.

However, the most important aspect of the article is the subtle message that what we need to help others is already within us. We are all well aware of the need to listen closely to each other – but we also know the importance of ignoring the corrosive word. We know to ask questions, express ourselves clearly, and remain calm whenever possible – having this reinforced as caregiver advice helps us face the challenge of the new responsibility with the wisdom of prior experience.

I’ve definitely learned one or two things as a volunteer, for sure, and there are some specific tips and skills that helped me in my early days. But for the most part, I’ve just simply shown up and tried my best. I’ve relied, in other words, on identifying my own skills, strengths, and abilities and finding ways to apply those to the situation on the day. The qualities I needed to do well in the hospice environment were basically in me all along. These qualities were bubbling at the surface in some cases and buried deep inside me in other instances but for the most part I’ve found that with a little hard work I could find a way to bring the quality out of me and use it to contribute in some way.

This idea reflects the larger lesson I’ve taken away from my hospice volunteering that I wrote about last month – it’s an easy role for those who already do what a volunteer does. In some cases, it doesn’t seem like I’m doing anything at all simply because I’m just doing what I normally do. I try to pass this lesson along anytime I train or mentor a new volunteer – it’s far easier to learn how to support a sick person outside of hospice and then apply the skill on a shift than it is to do the reverse.

That said, the reverse does apply in certain ways. One change I’ve noticed in myself since I started volunteering is how it has impacted how I live outside of my volunteer shift. I’ve found that the qualities I rely on in hospice cannot be simply tucked into my back pocket when my shift ends. The fusion of my volunteer role and the rest of my life has been a great gift and I find these two versions of myself become increasingly indistinguishable with each week that goes by.

The result of this coming together is that I find myself less tolerant of the way I adjust my personality to fit different environments. I once felt I had all kinds of versions of myself – at work, at home, with a group of friends, with one friend, with strangers, and so on. I don’t think this will ever be true again. Although there is a good argument for selectively compartmentalizing, these days I feel the chameleon approach to life is an exhausting approach. It might work to always change my colors based on a situation – it might even work for a very long time. But how can I ever be my best if I run myself ragged while trying to be really good versions of five different people? I think a better long-term approach is to focus on tackling the lifelong challenge of becoming my best self and developing the confidence to be that one self at all times.

The great gift of coming into an environment that requires I be my best self at all times is that I was forced to identify my best self. I found almost right away that this is a true full-time job – twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There was simply no leftover time for being less than my best. I cannot think of why anyone would not benefit from finding a place that brings out the best self from within. Finding the best self should be one of the urgent tasks for any individual.

How might you do this? You might find it in a hospice-type environment like I did or you might not. The key is to think about where you’ve glimpsed yourself at your best and then find a way to go back. If you can do this, you'll soon realize that you have no choice but to be your best all the time.

Footnotes / ever notice how people who talk about moderation tend not to do so in moderation?

1. What I’m really saying is that ‘all things in moderation’ is arguably the worst advice in world history…

It’s a lot like a financial advisor saying ‘save money for sure, but make sure to splurge from time to time’ or the nutritionist saying ‘make sure to eat vegetables, but it is OK to indulge in cake from time to time’. Huh? Have we lost the plot? The whole POINT of getting expert advice is that this ‘moderation’ concept isn’t working!

volunteer fusion

Hi reader,

An infrequent but very rewarding aspect of my hospice volunteer role is my involvement in orientation for new volunteers. Orientation happens in two parts. First, there are initial training sessions with a group of new volunteers. Then, new volunteers join experienced volunteers for individual mentoring during hospice shifts (we call this ‘shadowing’).

I’ve participated in both parts of orientation and my teaching process tends to be similar no matter what the setting. First, I share my history as a volunteer and talk about some of my experiences. Then, I briefly describe some of the specific details about volunteer responsibilities in the hospice house. Finally, I make it clear that I’m willing to answer any questions.

The final part leads into my favorite aspect of the training role. I enjoy giving a good response to an honest, open question from someone who only wants to know the answer. As an experienced volunteer, I consider answering honest questions a very important responsibility. It allows me the chance to give back to a group that has been very good to me over the past couple of years by helping the team bring new members up to speed as quickly as possible.

However, I also enjoy this aspect of the role for purely selfish reasons. I often find that the process of giving a thoughtful response to an honest question is a great learning opportunity for me. As I consider the question and try to determine the right response, I open up unexpected places within me and find myself understanding a little more about what I’ve learned in my time as a volunteer (1).

The best such question I’ve ever been asked came from a new volunteer who was not sure if the role was the right fit. She asked me – how did I know I should volunteer? I had to think about that one for a short while. Finally, the answer came to me from within, out of nowhere – I knew I should volunteer because I was already doing it.

I explained my answer by pointing out how much of what I did as a volunteer – relating across differences, connecting with strangers, exhibiting endless patience, validating feelings, rejecting assumptions, and so on – were all the same things I tried to do in my life outside of hospice (2). I knew I should come to hospice because the way I wanted to live was a perfect template for the way I would volunteer.

I cut my answer off at this point because I felt I’d answered the question. However, as I think it over now, I realize there is a little more to the point. I think a lot of people who drop out of the hospice volunteer role struggle simply because they are suddenly trying to do something in a hospice environment that they do not regularly try to do outside the hospice environment. A volunteer who does not try to support suffering friends or family in the relatively familiar environment outside of hospice is going to have a very difficult time learning to support strangers and staff in the unfamiliar hospice setting. In short, hospice challenges volunteers to be their very best selves at all times, whether they are on a shift or not. This is an impossible challenge to meet for those who are not already trying to be their best self outside of hospice.

This understanding helps explain why my hospice volunteering is such a difficult idea for the people in my life to relate to. Society encourages us all to have many different versions of ourselves, to don many capes and wear many hats, so to speak. We have one persona for home and another for work. The rudeness we exhibit when behind the wheel or navigating public transit might be entirely unknown to those we interact with exclusively in work groups or living rooms.

There are valid and important reasons for all this compartmentalizing but I suspect our various situational personalities make identifying our best self a very challenging task. It certainly makes it difficult to be our best selves at all times because we are constantly switching from one self to another. How can we be at our best all the time if we aren’t always fully committed to being ourselves? It might be possible, I suppose, but I've learned over the past couple of years that it wouldn't work for me.

The ongoing fusion of self and volunteer has been one of the enriching results of the volunteer role. I’m finding now that after a couple of years as a volunteer, a lot of what I’ve learned at hospice is starting to influence how I live when I’m not on my shift. I think these days most people see the same me whether I’m in the hospice or not. That's just fine with me - the less I compartmentalize, the more time I'll have to work on becoming my best self.

Footnotes / Saturday afternoon

1. An honest question can only return an honest answer…

Another great example of how I learned from an honest question came during one of the first times I participated in a group training session. I had just finished explaining that sometimes the house could be very quiet and that it was possible to go an entire shift without interacting directly with anyone. A volunteer with a great understanding of herself then raised her hand. She explained to me that as a social person she would prefer a more active shift. What times did the house tend to have more reliable activity?

I had never thought about it before and considered all my experiences – even going as far back to when my mom was living in a hospice – before recommending midday Saturday. In the process of answering this question, I learned not just that I knew the answer but also that I’d avoided such shifts, had specifically offered my time before breakfast or in the evening, for reasons I needed to understand better if I was going to continue my growth as a volunteer.

2. And my nonconformity streak, I suppose…

The one thing I can’t quite figure out how to describe about hospice is its counter-cultural element. I didn’t consider signing up to volunteer as a counter-cultural act but the more I think about it, the more rebellious I feel for donating my time to a medical organization whose stated mission runs against the basic assumptions of the medical field.

does boston really understand global warming?

One of the common Boston tropes is about the wildly variable local weather. One day, it might be seventy degrees and lovely – the next week, everyone is bundled up in the face of a sudden snowstorm. And all in the first week of April! Through it all, folks around town put on a brave face and make a variation on the same old remark – New England weather, always unpredictable, you just never know in New England…

I’m of two minds on this one. I think there is definitely a lot of value in saying or doing what is needed to get on with the day. But on the other hand, I worry that the attitude around town will prove an obstacle in understanding the difference between changing weather and changing climate. If everyone expects wild variation in the weather, how bad does the variation need to be before we realize things are beyond the usual scope of traditional New England weather?

This is the fundamental problem with variation. At some point, if variation becomes the norm, people accept it and stop responding to it. When the ‘T’ is late, no one really worries because we are all used to it. But if we order a pizza and two hours later the delivery driver hasn’t pulled up, well, we start to wonder a little bit if someone’s forgotten the order.

I’m actually surprised so many people accept climate change as a reality. Most people I know are completely incapable of dressing properly for today’s weather – how often I’ve had to scurry along because some companion wore a light jacket on a freezing night! How these folks are able to even fathom the implications of a rising degree or two over a decade is beyond me. But no matter, I suppose, in the end – I guess in this case it’s the conclusion, not the method, that really matters.

the political diamond

It didn’t quite make my ‘links’ recommendation in my monthly newsletters but I really enjoyed this podcast Tim Ferriss did with Cory Booker. Booker is, in addition to just being an interesting guy, currently representing New Jersey in the US Senate and is getting a lot of mentions as a possible 2020 Presidential candidate.

At one point in the episode, Booker comments that someone who can piss off both sides of the political aisle is probably doing something right. This reminded me of the joking way I sometimes criticize the left-right model of politics. The problem I have is how the continuum implied by the setup leaves a flat ‘middle ground’ – unfortunately, not all of us who sit in the middle are created equal and this model doesn’t account for those subtle differences in the center.

I think a better representation would be a diamond shape. This leaves the left and right as is while creating two possibilities in the middle. The first possibility (top or bottom, doesn't matter to me) is the centrist who can work both sides. The second is the opposite – the person in the middle who alternates pissing off the left and right. Based on my experiences over the past decade – being mocked as a crazy liberal by Republicans while also being asked with incredulity by Democrats if I’m a Trump supporter – I have to conclude I’m the latter kind of centrist. Although I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing right, I’m glad to at least have Cory Booker’s support.

I guess while I’m rambling on about politics I might as well repeat my joke about my political views (I think I originally wrote this in a ‘Tales of Two Cities’ post). My political views are a lot like my city cycling philosophy – in theory, I’d like to spend more time on the right than I do now, but in practice the reality of the world forces me to the left.

three equals two

I recently bought a few new pairs of socks. These are almost identical to the socks I already have with one exception – instead of being black, they’re dark blue.

This presents a problem in the morning because the socks are similar enough to be indistinguishable when grouped together in my ‘sock box’ yet are a clear enough mismatch to the outside world that I remain interested in getting the correct pairing (1). For a few days after my purchase, I was reaching in, grabbing a pair of socks, and hoping to strike gold (or black, or dark blue). If the pair didn’t match, I would just keep grabbing extra ones until I had the right pair. What a waste of time!

One day, I realized it would be a lot easier if I took three socks at a time instead of two. With three socks, I would be guaranteed a match (and an extra sock). I started doing this for a few days – I’d pull a trio, find the matching pair, and return the extra sock to the box.

I reached peak efficiency when I understood that if I left the extra sock on top of the box, I would actually only have to pull two new socks per morning to get a match. The math is simple – I was guaranteed to either match one of the new socks with the sock from the day before or I would pull a new matching pair.

To put it another way, these days I’m doing exactly what I used to do in the past – pulling two socks out of the sock box each morning.

Footnotes (!) / and other bad puns

1. What is a ‘sock box’?

I keep my socks in an old shoebox. The way I see it, it’s like a sock drawer for cheap-ass people.

leftovers #3: the end of lombardi - categorical violence

I’ve posted a few thoughts lately about categories. My broad point has been that categories often do more harm than good. I think my examples have done well to make this point clear to you, skeptical reader.

But what is really so bad about putting things into categories? If the category is wrong, you just change it, right? A category is a convenient shortcut – with categories, we know a movie is a comedy without having to watch it, for example, or we know that a restaurant will serve pizzas without having to read the menu. Without categories, we all would waste a lot more time figuring out what we already know. Maybe people like me who waste time writing about the dangers of categories should be lumped into one of the most helpful categories of all – the ‘spam email’ section (1)!

Still, I can’t help but harp on about it. The problem I have with categories has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I think categorization is OK if it doesn’t directly involve people. But the benefits of categorizing objects do not apply to the process of categorizing other people. When people are categorized, it always seems unnecessary to me. Surely, there is more to another than their outfit, their background, or their job? And as it always is the case when a process involves violence, the end is never really justified because of the means.

This position grows out of my personal experience. Whenever I am being categorized, I always feel like I am under attack. Being categorized almost always feels violent – it’s like I’m being forced into a space I was never interested in occupying. I bet if I was hooked up to the right medical equipment while being categorized, a doctor would quickly make note of alarming vital signs – a quickened heartbeat, for sure, and maybe a change in breathing as well, surefire signs that my body was responding once more to the familiar pressure of being forced into a box that will never be the right size for me.

These experiences of feeling under attack while being categorized have come up in all kinds of ways over the years. In some cases, the categorization I used to enjoy in my innocent youth has given way to an experienced understanding of how a positive stereotype is the mirror image of the unstated caricature. The margins between someone who thinks I look like a math whiz and someone who sees a slant-eyed sneak are very slim. As I warily noted when I read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, being noted as a ‘good’ representative of any group merely confirms the underlying prejudice always present against the group. After all, how can anyone within a group be ‘good’ unless the group is otherwise comprised of ‘bad’?

In other experiences, the categorization I’ve been subjected has never been a source of pleasure. It’s bad enough to be described as a Japanese-American by strangers who are merely trying their best – what’s astonishing is how often I hear this from those who know my full background. I’ve always thought the hyphen being a minus sign was symbolically appropriate – it certainly doesn't add anything to my experience and I don’t see it as an improvement on being fully accepted as an American or a Japanese. All the hyphen has done for me is erase basic facts about my ancestry and citizenship; all I expect the hyphen to do for me in the future is point me toward groups where nobody really belongs.

At its harmless everyday worst, categorization buries a person’s uniqueness under a frenzied layer of loose associations and reduces the complexity of personal history until it fits easily into a category everyone is accustomed to. In other words, categorization denies individuality and alters history. These run counter to the rights and freedoms so many have died to earn and protect and yet here we are, every single day, undermining our own liberty and democracy because we so casually accept categorization as a normal way of being for a free thinking and open-minded society.

The longer we all go on categorizing each other, the longer we’ll remain divided by our self-righteous suspicions. The longer we all accept categorization as a way to understand those different from us, the longer we’ll all go on categorizing instead of understanding. Recognizing categorization as an inherently violent process is a step forward into a different future where misplaced assumptions have given way to understanding and the false barriers that once separated misplaced groups remain only as historical relics of a time when we all failed to get the very best out of each other.

Footnotes / Google might also be appropriate here

1. TOA, is it really spam? I think it is...

Honestly, if this isn’t already going straight to your spam folder each morning, I recommend contacting your internet service provider and reporting the issue.

leftover #1: the end of lombardi - stratified reading

This post – in which the Business Bro ranted and raved about how premature categorization hurts organizations – made me consider another angle for the problem I was having in February with book previews.

As The BB pointed out, a specific problem with categorization is how it reduces an organization’s ability to take full advantage of new opportunities. If we consider the quality of what I read as a metaphor for an organization’s output, it’s possible to extend The Business Bro’s idea to the issues the preview was causing.

You see, reader, having reading categories meant I was no longer checking out the six best books to read per month. Instead, it meant I was checking out the two best books from each category to read per month. The stratified concept looks similar enough at first to ‘get the six best books strategy’ but when you break it down the results are usually very different. For example, if the six best books available to me in a given month were all ‘light reads’, the system of categories prevented me from reading them all – I would have the two best books from my list plus four more that were outside the top six (two dense reads and two stop-and-go reads).

my first rule of thumb?

One of the topics I often discuss here at TOA is the importance of building on strengths rather than shoring up weaknesses. I believe people tap their own unlimited potential when they focus on cultivating strengths while they merely reduce their own downside risk when they focus on improving deficiencies. This philosophy does not mean that I go through life seeking only the activities I do well. Like with most dualities, I look for the optimal amount of give and take between building on strengths and shoring up weaknesses.

The first book I remember reading that really explained this idea well was a chess book I picked out during my junior year of college. This book (whose author and title I do not remember) went into great detail about Bobby Fisher's training routine. At the time, I (like I imagine is the case for many) considered chess as the ultimate contest of minds. The body's role in chess was purely administrative – outside of moving the pieces, hitting the clock, and farting strategically to break an opponent's concentration, it was almost entirely unrelated to playing the game well.

Well, eh hem, said Mr. Fisher, the great American chess champion. For the grandmaster, the demands of the body limited the mind. He felt that to sit at a table and focus on an eight by eight square for six uninterrupted hours required a body in top condition. Or to put it another way, a body in less than top condition risked lapses in concentration stemming from a host of physical distractions – a headache, a sore shoulder, a tight muscle. Any of these distractions might prove decisive during intense games. Therefore, Fisher prepared for his matches by training his body with the same intensity he brought to his mental preparation. If I recall correctly, his physical training included a careful diet and a couple of hours in the swimming pool each day.

I have no idea if this approach made the difference when Fisher sat at the chessboard and competed at the highest level of the game. It is entirely plausible that this effort was trivial and that his ascent to the top of his profession was inevitable due to his superior mental skills. He would not be the first highly successful person to misattribute his success to an irrelevant but controllable factor.

But on the other hand, his logic is sound and the results speak for themselves. And who would I be to disagree with the logic of a chess grandmaster! If anything, what his story tells me is that although strength-based approaches to training are preferable, weaknesses left unattended will eventually limit potential.

The story about the grandmaster's approach to maintaining superior physical fitness made a major impression on me. Though I vaguely understood the importance of emphasizing strengths at the time, it was not until this introduction to Fisher's methods that I understood when to switch my focus toward building up a weakness. It left me with something resembling perhaps my earliest attempt at a rule of thumb:

Utilize strengths until I hit a plateau, and then build a weakness until upward progress resumes.

I’ll have some more to add in an upcoming post about the ways I apply this rule of thumb today.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Footnotes / you can’t win if you don’t play, but…well…

1. Director’s cut: bad analogy edition…

I cooked up some good analogies for the opener that didn’t quite make the final cut. Here’s one: is it better to try and win the lottery… OR… to clutch onto every dollar you ever come in contact with?

Maybe this one fits better: should you try to run as fast as you can and maybe fall down once or twice… OR… just stand completely still, secure in the knowledge that you’ll never fall down?

The closest one to getting in was this one: what is the best way to learn how to ride a bike? I suppose one way is to simply avoid falling – you could pedal from here to anywhere that way. But that doesn’t quite feel right, either – these days, it always seems like I do better when I just focus on pedaling and maybe the best way to learn is to do it this way right from the start.

and…the biggest word I know

Good morning all,

I originally thought today’s post was going to be a creative twist on the notes I took from Peopleware. It started off that way, for sure. Partway into the post, I stopped for a moment to think over an idea – why did I take notes on certain thoughts while entirely skipping over others?

It was one of those moments where I started down a line of thinking I expected to last for around a minute and found myself still knee-deep in my own gray matter an hour later. I eventually relented and started writing a new post (this one, reader) to track the entire line of thinking I went through in response to my own question.

So – why do I write some things down and not others? It’s an important question, I think. Let’s use my current note taking process as a starting point to explore the idea.

1) First, I seek out books about specific topics and choose the books that I suspect are well written and seem to be an appropriate length.

2) Next, I read the book and try to absorb the hundreds of pages as best as I can. While I read, I mark the specific sentences, paragraphs, or pages I want to return to later.

3) After I finish reading, I return to the book and take down notes from those pages I marked down.

4) Finally, I use my notes to shape my own thinking and writing.

On the surface, it doesn’t look so bad. But if you think about it, the whole process is a little strange. The basic problem is that I make hundreds of tiny decisions as I read a book about whether the given thought is interesting enough for me to return to later. If this doesn’t seem so strange to you, reader, think of it like this - the way I take notes requires that I make snap judgments about ideas from experts who have spent years thinking and writing about a subject I may have spent as little as no time thinking or writing about (1).

I’m not afraid of making these quick decisions, reader, but… well, I guess the question is, what are my criteria? I suppose the way I make most of these little decisions is based on whether I find the given note interesting. This leads naturally to the next thought – what makes a note interesting? For me, it seems like anything I agree with makes the cut. This leads to the next (and hopefully, the last) thought – what do I agree with?

That’s the real question here, I think. What do I agree with? I’m only writing down notes for what I agree with, really, so this feels like an important question to understand. In a way, I think most people spend their entire lives asking themselves this question, over and over again, in slightly varying forms. I wish I could give a simple and important answer like – well, I agree with The Truth – but I don’t think such a high-minded response gets at the point of the question (though it would dovetail nicely with the name of the blog) (2).

This is life, right? Life is trying to answer the question - what do I agree with? You grow up, try to do the right thing, find out you were wrong a few times, and then die. This is life: a perpetually repeating sequence of rejecting hypotheses and gaining knowledge that contradicts what you knew yesterday, a process on endless loop until, well, until one day it actually does end. And at the end of every day in this cycle comes the same question, knocking on that bolted shut door at the edge between the mind and the soul – what do I agree with?

It’s a little bit reminiscent of an idea I borrowed from George Saunders that I’ve highlighted around these parts once before – living in the vibrating space between our little contradictions is the big challenge of life (3). It seems like this 'vibrating space' is surrounded on all sides by the things I might possibly agree with. Being here is a task that we aren’t well equipped for – it's the space we occupy whenever we love our pets while we salivate over bacon or when we want to make a change while we master the status quo. Ever time we agree with seemingly deep thinkers on things we’ve never given serious thought to ourselves, we step right back into this space (4).

Why do we feel so poorly equipped for this task? I don’t think it helps when we frame a complex topic as this or that. I also don’t find much value in defining the whole as always equivalent to one (as in, 'the whole' = 1). This kind of thinking frames decisions as negations because it means agreement with one idea causes a disagreement with another. And yet, by accepting a this or that mentality, we make it difficult to think of new ways to grow as human beings.

The key word, I believe, to break this thinking down is and. When we use and, we break down barriers and make the infinite a possibility. And replaces the words that create little divisions and prevents them from expanding into solid borders and warring factions (5). And takes the reservoirs of the past and connects them to the parched hopes for the future.

It shows you that today is the oldest you’ve ever been... and... that today is the youngest you’ll ever be. It reminds you of the people you needed yesterday... and... introduces the possibility of becoming those people tomorrow. And creates the moments that we string together, forever, so that we can safely navigate from our most recent contradiction to the next.

From and, people grow. It is the seed that directs itself toward light, the outlet for the overflowing emotion, the passport that ensures safe passage beyond our limits. And makes it possible to live a life where you find out you are wrong, again and again, about the things you always believed in… and… allows you to enjoy it. And is the shield you stand behind while you tell others just what they need to hear because you believe in it, you believe in your words… and… you aren’t quite ready to heed those words yourself. With and, we can do anything, and anything else, and maybe answer a question or two correctly along the way.

Footnotes / don’t stop me now ‘cuz I’m having a good time…

1. Go ahead, stop me…

Perhaps 'strange' isn’t the right word here – the better word is probably arrogant. I think it takes a certain level of arrogance to do what I do. Who am I to narrow down a highly detailed, meticulously planned, and thoughtfully written book down to twenty bullet points and a couple of proper admins?

2. Longtime readers will argue…

If anything, those of you readers who have been around here long enough would point out that with all the little personas and alter egos I have trotting around here, it is barely plausible that I even agree with myself. Maybe I should consider sorting out the different pieces in my own brain before I start worrying about what the assembled whole is doing.

Or...

Maybe the brain is the ultimate example of the 'vibrating space' among all our contradictions.

3. Well, not quite what he said, there…

I think this link will bring the curious reader to the right quote.

4. This sentence got cut from the original…

The belt holds up the pants but the pant loops hold up the belt…

Sometimes, I take myself too seriously while writing these posts and I end up removing the kind of nonsense that makes the blog worth writing. I regret nothing, but still.

5. Another reject...

Simple possibilities like the bacon-eating dog lover return from the world of impossible contradictions when one set of negating words is suddenly replaced with and.

They do get cut for a reason, though.

leftovers #3 - the toa organizing awards

One detail I did not cover in the previous ‘leftover’ about investing was the tax question in the context of IRAs. Should I opt to save my money pre-tax or post-tax?

I initially struggled with this question. If felt important because money, you know? But the more I looked at the question, the more I started to feel the right answer was never going to involved a complex calculation. There are, after all, too many unpredictable variables that will influence tax rates four decades from now. Crunching the numbers just did not seem possible – or time efficient – to help split the hairs over this decision.

I decided on the following process – I simply ask myself if I can afford to pay the tax now. If the answer is yes, I usually opt to pay now in the form of a Roth IRA (or 401k, etc). If I cannot, I do the pre-tax deduction. My logic is very simple – having money when I need it will matter more than accumulating a few extra dollars when I do not. So, if I don’t need it in the moment, I just pay the tax so I’ll have less tax to worry about paying later (when I might not be able to afford it).

The best part of my approach is how it simplifies the process and keeps my mind free to focus on other things (like this taxing blog). So although I acknowledge how sitting down and thinking through all of these tax implications down to the third decimal place might turn out to be valuable someday, I prefer to spend the time I have today for other activities.

Footnotes / MMM

0. Who is this…Mr. Money Mustache?

My prior leftover opened with a reference to the Mr. Money Mustache blog. But who (or what) is MMM?

The MMM blog, in general, is an informal resource for personal finance. There are a lot of other similar sites out there with similar information. I like MMM due to his combination of directness, humor, and transparency.

A friend who is almost ready to retire early himself introduced me to the blog. He said his first thought when he read MMM was that I’d created an alter ego and started writing my own secret blog. Well…

The big misunderstanding about MMM is that it is focused on investing and saving. This is undoubtedly an important aspect of his writing. But the most value he brings to his readers comes from his relentless effort to cut down on personal expenses. In a certain way, his blog is more about living a green, sustainable lifestyle than it is about the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index fund. In the initial years of his ‘early’ retirement, the blog’s focus has shifted to emphasize these concerns with regular posts about energy conservation, designing green cities, or highlighting alternatives to oil-guzzling car travel.

leftovers #2 - the toa organizing awards

Hi all,

I’m back today for a quick ‘honorable mention’ from my recent unofficial ‘TOA Organizing Awards’ series.

For giving me a simple investment framework

Mr. Money Mustache - 'News Flash: Your Debt is an Emergency!!'

This blog post breaks down investing decisions into a simple framework of guaranteed return against the investing timeframe. The best ‘investment’ is paying down debt because the ‘return’ of not having to pay additional interest is guaranteed. Next is the little old savings account that offers a non-zero (but effectively zero) return because there is a non-zero (but effectively zero) risk. After that comes the safer short-term investment – like a bond fund – for upcoming large purchases that come with a little risk. At the end is the stock fund – the most volatile investment – designed for those able to wait decades before cashing out. This investment’s risk increases as the timeframe shortens.

To put this concept into action, I put my money through the following progression. The money keeps moving down a step until I answer ‘yes’ to a question below – at that point, I simply carry out the action implied in the step:

1) Do I have any interest-generating debt to pay down?
2) Do I have enough cash in savings to cover six months of expenses?
3) Do I have any upcoming large purchases I should save for in a bond fund?
4) Put all remaining dollars into a stock market index fund.