Mental health vs. mental fitness

Treating mental illness is obviously important. But what about training regularly to maintain mental fitness?

I’ve been thinking of this since I bumped into Ray, and he off-handedly contrasted mental health and mental fitness in the few minutes we took to catch up a few weeks ago.

By this I don’t mean doing crossword puzzles and brain teasers to stay sharp cognitively. I mean doing daily “exercises” to stay fit emotionally.

Just like there are lots of options for physical fitness (weights, running, swimming, team sports, aerobics classes, Pilates, etc.), there are lots of options for staying emotionally fit. For example, here are some of the ones that I’ve tried: writing daily gratitudes, journaling, making an “enough” list, meditation, prayer, calling an old friend once a week, talking with Robyn about how my day really  was, sleeping, playing with Riley in the yard, spending Sunday with our immediate family, reading literature, avoiding email after work hours, and more.

What I think is hard is that there’s no set structure for a mental fitness regimen - you kind of have to figure it out on your own. More than that, I don’t think Americans generally think of our emotional state as something we should take regular action to maintain. Rather, we think of receiving treatment when we’re already ill or in crisis, if we consider mental health at all.

Dont get me wrong, treating mental illness is really important and the stigma around it needs to fade away. But that’s only part of the story. Maintaining mental fitness on a daily basis - just like physical fitness - is really important, too.

And after trying to do exercises to maintain my own mental fitness pretty seriously over the past 2 years, I’d argue that it’s essential. Shifting from treating mental health to training for mental fitness, is a pretty tough change in perspective, but doing so has changed my life. And maybe even saved it.

Meaning of life

If we assume our human lives have some deeper meaning, I think it’s not only reasonable but important to be curious about what that meaning is.

The short answer is, I don’t know. And by that I mean, I really don’t know. 

But I’m damn sure it’s not anything like these: 

• Treat others poorly
• Put my own needs over others
• Try to be better than everybody else
• Hurt others or the natural environment
• Take more than you need
• Lie if it is convenient

If my assertions are true, and the meaning of life definitely is not one of those, how much more do we need to know?

Discomfort With Ambiguity

When I worked as a management consultant, one of the recruiting buzzwords was "ambiguity."

The idea was, consulting firms wanted people who were able to manage ambiguity and were comfortable operating in environments where there was a lot of it.  Dealing with ambiguity was an indispensable skill.

But now, I think I'd rather hire someone (and more importantly, be someone) who's uncomfortable with ambiguity. Someone who encounters ambiguity, and wants to solve the underlying problem causing it. Someone who takes ambiguity, and strives to make it clearer, simpler, and more actionable.

In retrospect, I think it's probably better to have teams that are so annoyed by ambiguity that they try to do something about it.

To be sure, I'm not naive enough to think ambiguity can be completely eliminated from enterprises. What I'm saying is that it might be better to build a team with people who will do something about ambiguity, rather than build a team who people who will have a high tolerance for it.

I pray this letter finds you

Papa,

I wanted to write you a letter to thank you for something I never understood until I became a father. I figure that wherever you are now, you'd probably be reading my blog (if there's WiFi). And I don't really have any other options, though I suppose there's prayer, to get a message to you, so I figured I'd try this.

I am also sorry for putting this on a blog, because I know you never really liked discussing personal matters widely. I hope you'll forgive me, though, because I hope Bo and any other kids we have someday are able to stumble upon it, in case I'm able to write something that does justice to how I'm feeling today, and the love that you ladled onto me throughout your life.

When I was growing up, Ma always said - usually when I was being scolded about something - that one day I would understand when I had kids of my own. Although this is something you never said to me, I think you must've felt it, at least to some degree. And she was right.

I did not understand, until I became a father, the extent to which parents can love their children. When Bo was born, my heart didn't just expand, it became infinite. In the weeks after his birth day, my ability and willingness to make sacrifices exceeded beyond what I thought it's theoretical limit was. I suppose what I'm describing is something I suspected would happen, but only intellectually. I didn't expect how it would feel.

Sometimes, I think, God speaks to me through the books I pick up and gives me just what I need at the exact right time. Many of my favorite and most important books - The Namesake and East of Eden, in particular - have found me at a providential time, and have been about fathers and sons. And now Gilead, which has eluded me at the library for months and I picked up at the bookstore yesterday, on a weekend where we were homebound and celebrating our second wedding anniversary and although we aren't formally celebrating it, Bo's half-birthday. A book, once again, has found me right when I needed it.

This morning, on page 52, it all clicked and I couldn't put off writing this letter to you any longer. It is written:

“I’d never have believed I’d see a wife of mine doting on a child of mine. It still amazes me every time I think of it. I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

— Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

And when I read that, all I could think about was you and a thought that has been brewing in my heart and mind since the day you went ahead. How grateful I am for how much you loved me, and cared for me. And how you told me that you did. I just never understood exactly how special and tremendous your love for me was until I could give it to our own child.

And now, thinking about it, and writing this to you I am overwhelmed with it. Even just your love, or Ma's, or Robyn's, or Bo's would have made my life many times over. And I am lucky enough to have all four of you, and then some.

And now, thinking about all this I'm so sad. Because when you went ahead I thought it was going to be the beginning of our golden years together, instead of its twilight. I was finally starting to understand everything you taught me about being a good man, that I didn't notice along the way. And there's so much now I want to talk to you about, but I can't. I've been trying anything I can think of to just talk with you about it and tell you how much I love you back, but I just can't. I'm so sorry, Papa. I just can't figure it out.

I wish we had more time. And since you went ahead so early, I'm so scared now that I will too. Even though I know you would tell me that's nothing to be afraid of and probably nonsense. But it's hard. Now that I finally understand more of what you taught me, I want lots of time. More time than I have. More time than we had.

I know a lot of fathers and sons have much less time than we did. And I know it's in God's hands not ours. I just wish there was more time for us to have talked more about everything I began understanding only after Robyn and I were married and after Bo was born.

I don't know what else to say, Papa, except that you would love Bo. And that I'm going to try my best to pay forward the love you had for me and for Ma. I just wanted to tell you that I'm finally starting to understand just how special that love was, and that I'm so thankful to have had it. If only we had a little more time.

Love,
Neil

The Supreme Tradeoff

The tradeoff that exceeds all others in gravity, at least that I have thought of, is that between love and loss. Basically it comes down to this: the deeper we love the more devastating the loss when that love ascends from the earth. And all love ascends, it's just a matter of when.

I have felt the trap of that tradeoff in a bigger way than I ever have when our son was born. The love that you can carry for a child is unique, even relative to a spouse, parent, or friend, I've found. Even only seeing our son sick with a nasty cold (like he was last week) is heartbreaking, which means anything worse would be a worse fate than heartbreaking. But this is the tradeoff we cannot avoid if we love. If we want to feel love deeply, we must also feel loss deeply.

Perhaps this is why it's so hard to let ourselves love deeply - we know devastating loss is part of the deal. And that loss feels like the end of the world when it happens, a fate that makes you question what could possibly be worse. I'm pretty sure I've avoided deep, deep love at times in my life and I wonder if this is why - even though I wasn't explicitly aware of the tradeoff between love and loss.

As a good student of business strategy, though, I know that it is possible to break tradeoffs. In business that's often done through technology, creativity, and innovation. But the difference between this, the supremest of tradeoffs, and say price vs. quality is that half of this tradeoff can't be broken.

Loss is unavoidable. At some point I will die and so will you who is reading this. Everyone you and I love deeply will die. No technology or innovation can cheat death and I think it's foolish to believe otherwise. And that's if we're lucky. Our love may ascend sooner than death if we squander it recklessly sooner, because of an argument, misunderstanding, or act of selfishness.

I suppose it's possible to close ourselves off to love and avoid the tradeoff all together. If we love less, the less we lose. But I think of love as i think of the sun. Though it will eventually burn, living a life in it's shade is no life at all. So to me, avoiding love to avoid loss is not an option at all.

Which leaves only one way forward. We must love more, love longer, and love more fiercely. If we can't innovate our way out of loss, all we can do is make the love that comes with it deeper and sweeter.

Type 2 Work vs. Type 3 Work

I try to simplify the world and put work into one of three categories: Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3.

Type 1 work is the secret sauce. It's the really important, impactful work that we have down pat. It's work that both creates a lot of value and is also fined-tuned and masterfully executed. In its purest form, it looks easy to others and feels effortless. This is where we want to be.

Type 2 work is the chaos. It's the fire drills, the last-minute deadlines, the grind. It's the work that makes you feel like you're in a blender, listening to a yodeling, off-key, death metal band. At it's worst, this work is value-depleting and is extremely time consuming. This is precisely where we don't want to be.

Type 3 work is the gift to our future selves. It's the labor that converts Type 2 work into Type 1 work. It's the sleeves-rolled-up slog where we finally fix what's broken or cut something not worth saving. At its best, it feels like the gleeful soreness of our limbs after an amazing workout. This is where we want to be more than we are.

I don't know exactly what the right or realistic balance between these three modes are. But I've learned two things, the hard way.

First, we never do as much Type 3 work as we want or need to. Second, the only way to find time for Type 3 work is to make it, and then fight like hell to protect it.

Doing Type 3 work requires saying no to Type 2 work, even if there are consequences. On the bright side,  in my experience the consequences usually seem worse in my head than they actually are in real life.

A priority vs. The priority

A priority is different than a task, because in some way or another it’s more important.  

But a priority is also different than the priority. The priority isn’t just more important than other tasks, it’s more important than other priorities. It is special because it’s the first one.

When you put it that way, it makes it hard consider anything a priority beyond the first one. When push comes to shove, a second, third, or fourth priority is less important then the priority.

A mistake I’ve been making for years is spending oodles of time figuring out what all my priorities were and spending time on those. Certainly, that’s better than operating without any thought-about-in-advance priorities (which is what I did for at least the first 20 years of my life).

But lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what the priority is and protecting that from distraction. Of course, nobody in the real world can focus on a single priority all the time, but I try to get as close as I can.

I wish I had changed my approach years ago.

The Magic Moment

One of the times that I feel the most joy as a father is in the quietest parts of the night, when I'm rocking my son to sleep.

In the first month or two after he was born, I definitely didn't feel that way. In the early days, all I was focused on was getting him back to sleep in the middle of the night, because my wife and I were exhausted. Getting him to sleep was the goal, and I was going to attain it when it was my turn to try.

Now, the cadence of rocking him to sleep is such a special, magical moment to me. I love floating my son from his crib to my shoulder. I love the rhythm of bobbing my knees to settle him down. I love the light scent of baby shampoo that wafts from his hair. I love how his tiny breaths intercede with the humming of the humidifier in his room. If I'm lucky, Riley is there laying at my feet and for a few minutes it's just me, my boys, and the quiet of the night. Knowing that Robyn is close by, one room over, makes it even more special.

And while I used to treat the second his right arm drooped slightly below my elbow as a signal that I'd nearly accomplished my goal of getting him to fall asleep, now it's a reminder to savor the moment for as long as I can. After all, these intimate and soulful moments I have with him won't last forever. To be cliche (but truthful), along the way, I've realized that joy comes from the journey and not from reaching the destination.

I suppose why I bring this up is that I feel like so many aspects of my life get wrapped up in results. In accomplishing the goal, in hitting the metric, in getting the task "done." And that's okay, because without the utility that comes with achieving results we can't survive. We need to get to a result when we set out to harvest the wheat, build the car, pump the water, deliver the package, or weave the cloth. I get that.

At the same time though, i think there's something lost in a world where all that matters is results. From the result comes utility, but from the journey comes the meaning, the intimacy, the joy, the friendship, the learning, and everything else magical.

I wonder what would happen if we started treating our work (and our lives) as a set of goals to accomplish and destinations to reach, yes. But also as a magical journey for ourselves, our colleagues, and our customers.

Eating the $1000 Chocolate Bar

For a lot of my life, I've tried to cover a dozen priorities at a time. Recently, I've finally accepted that I can't mind that many priorities, I can only pretend to.

I think I'm capable of minding more than one priority at a time, but not many. Being a husband and father, those are the tops. Being the best son, friend, brother, and neighbor I can with the time that's left. One or two priorities at a time, at work, when I'm there. I can't handle more, and sometimes that's too much.

So what's a millennial, yuppie, papa to do? All the tribes I'm in signal to me that I should be doing more. Prioritizing more. Making more impact. Focusing on more not less.

But in the past few months I've been trying something different - doing less, but being intentional about what that less is. Starting with the assumption that I won't have a lot of priorities. That I'll start with one, and add as few as possible.

The hard part wasn't prioritizing less - focusing more attention on fewer things feels glorious and has obviously worked out better for everyone concerned. The hard part was giving myself permission to carve out the time and space to figure out what was most important and what really wasn't.

I was conducting some interviews for a summer associate position at work this Friday and had a wonderful conversation with a candidate. She starts her week with "big picture time", taking 2-3 hours at the beginning of the week to figure out what to focus on. It's a practice that I've been experimenting with, too.

She said it can sometimes feels like indulging in a $1000 chocolate bar. After all, who can afford to take 2 whole hours to "think" when there are deadlines to make and to-do list items to complete?

Even though it does take some courage to say "no" or "not now" to things that are seemingly high priority, I don't think I'll go back to prioritizing more. Now that I've tried it, it's too hard to function without indulging in that $1000 chocolate bar.

Bad Management Is Immoral

A few weeks ago, the hosts of The Partially Examined Life, my favorite new podcast, were discussing how public perceptions of what's moral change over time. The hosts asked each other what beliefs and practices that are common today future humans would find morally indefensible. For example, today we find slavery morally indefensible but 500 years ago that wasn't the case.

One answer to that question, I think, is how organizations are managed.

By that I don't mean decisions firms make about macro-level topics like sustainability, outsourcing, making their products addictive, or the impact of their operations on local populations. I'm talking about the micro-level interactions between people within an organization. When I say "how organizations are managed" I mean how managers and supervisors treat the people on their teams.

The vast majority of people I've met in my life had at least one job that leads to a dialogue that goes something like this:

Neil: "How's work going?"

Friend: "It's okay. There are a few parts that I like, but I mostly hate it."

Neil: "Why do you mostly hate it?"

Friend: "Well, I have to work a lot of hours and I haven't gotten decent raise or a promotion in forever. And the worst part is, so much of what I do is dumb administrative stuff that is a waste of time that my boss assigns me at the last minute. And now that we're talking about my boss, he's not a nice person and doesn't care about us and our team. To make matters worse, he doesn't know what he's doing and isn't very good at his job. The only reason he became my boss is because he is buddy-buddy with the higher-ups. He yells at me and my teammates and doesn't know what direction we should be going in. 

I never learn anything new and I do the same stuff every day and get yelled at if I don't do it the way my boss likes, even if I could be doing it better. In the rare instance that my boss does tell me I did a good job, he always adds a "but you could've done this better..." to the end of what he says. I feel like I'm going to be stuck here forever, and all I'm going to have for show for it is gray hair.

The higher-ups always change direction and constantly have a new corporate "transformation" or "cost cutting" initiative that some consulting firm that doesn't know anything put them up to. I'm tired of getting a "new system", which never works anyway. The higher-ups don't tell us why we're changing things. They never even come down to see what's going on at the ground level, which is why most of their bright ideas never work.

On top of all this, so many people at work are selfish and will do anything to get ahead. I have one or two friends that I think are okay at work, but everyone else is mostly a brown-noser, mean, or uninteresting.

Does that answer your question?"

I'm not suggesting every job is like this, but I think we've all felt parts of this description ourselves (I have) or have close friends who've felt this way. But it's not just anecdotal. There's starting to be actual data that point to how much people in America hate their jobs, and the impact it has.

Consider some of these threads:

• A 2017 report from Gallup stated that 33% of US workers were "engaged".
• "Quite simply, the better the leader, the more engaged the staff...And, as many other studies have shown, there’s a strong correlation between employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and revenue." - How Damaging Is A Bad Boss, Exactly?, from Harvard Business Review
• Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini estimated the drag of burearucracy (don't just think government, think hierarchical management) on the US economy to be $3 Trillion annually.

Think of how far reaching the impact of having a terrible manager can have on our lives, and how many people are affected by terrible managers. It's stress you bring home making us worse partners and parents. Overwork makes us unhealthy and can literally give us heart attacks. Feeling like you aren't doing something useful makes us (and I'll own this one, personally) fall into dangerous territory for mental health.

More indirectly, but perhaps more insidiously, having a bad manager may mean you don't grow, develop, and get better at your job. That squandering of talent is something could be considered immoral (I happen to feel that way, but that's an argument for another post). More tactically, a bad manager not developing an employee takes away future economic opportunity from that employee (and his family) because it limits opportunities for advancement. More broadly, squandering employees' talent also harms the firm and its customers. After all, if employees were better managed, who knows what kind of innovations or quality improvements they might make?

Because it causes direct and indirect harm to individuals and society as a whole, I think it's reasonable to at least debate whether bad management is immoral. Right now, I don't even hear much debate about this topic. Even though macro-level ethical issues in management are important, I wish the micro-level ethical issues in management were more widely discussed.

The moral obligations managers have to their employees, or even considering the morality of hierarchical bureaucracy - the world's dominant organizational form - itself is a topic for another post which I'm still gathering my thoughts on. Moreover, I think using philosophical approaches to explore the morality of management and organizational systems would be refreshing make a big difference in the lives of real people.

I will get to it. I hope real philosophers do more of this work, too. After all, I'm the philosophy equivalent of a dude tinkering in his garage!

For now, even without a concrete exploration of moral management, I offer these thoughts up as an answer to the question asked on The Partially Examined Life podcast. I think future humans will find the way we manage organizations morally indefensible.

I'd love to hear what y'all reading this think. In particular, what you think a manager, morally speaking, owes his or her team. Those of us that are managers, if we want to do better...where do we start?

I Don't Want To Live In Exceptional Times

Before the holidays, I was asking one of my close colleagues about whether she thought we lived in exceptional times. Lately, however, I've started asking a different question - what would it mean if we did live in exceptional times? 

What I've kept coming back to is a riff on an old adage: exceptional times call for exceptional measures. And what scares me is that when folks talk about exceptional measures, it means making exceptions. That may mean doing things that are bolder, riskier, and more creative than the norm. But exceptional measures can also lead to actions that are less moral, just and thoughtful than today's status quo.

I hope I never ever live in a time where it's okay to make exceptions to doing what's right and behaving with decency. I'd rather live in plain, old, normal times. Instead of relishing the rush and excitement of doing "exceptional" things, I'd rather live in a relatively average era where progress never needs to be more than an incremental and steady motion toward goodness.

Speaking more personally, I've started to actively give up the delusion of having and wanting an exceptional life. I would love to live a life where I never have to do anything exceptional, so long as I have the opportunity and energy to be a slightly better man every day.

In a sense, I want to be a boring man living in boring times. But in the way compound interest is boring - unnoticed daily but transformational over the course of a lifetime.

Giving Up Childish Things

For so long, I've had so many vain, selfish, and addictive desires. I suppose I'm writing this post to try to let them go.

I've cared so much about "career", thinking that I must be a failure if I'm not a company CEO, Senator, VC-backed entrepreneur someday. I've had so much angst about being rejected from Ivy League schools, not once, but twice. I've spent so much time worrying about a legacy (yes, it was something even my 10th grade self cared about) and measured my life on whether I would be mentioned in a history book somewhere.

I've spent more mental energy than I like to admit caring about whether I was making it onto a 20 in their 20's or 30 in their 30's list. I've greyed too many hairs comparing myself to my peers or to the famous men and women of history, because "where were they at when they were my age?" Too many times I've fooled myself into thinking I was doing a good deed because it was the right thing to do, when it probably was just a resume builder. I've carried so much fear over failure, competition, and results at work.

I don't want to want these things anymore, or I at least want to want them less. I don't want my son to inherit the curse of these desires from me, either.

I've thought lately - isn't a less powerful life, not only good enough but wonderful? Isn't being a loving husband and father enough? Why don't I start with being a good neighbor before trying to influence larger geographies and policies? Surely, I can work extremely hard at a job and care about the impact it makes in others' lives without obsessing over advancement.

Aren't life's simplest indulgences - being outside, art so beautiful it makes you weep, quality time with friends and family, meditation and prayer, or even books available at a library - richer and more satisfying than indulgences of power, wealth, and popularity?

What I've been reflecting on this week is how I've come to this point. I don't think we are born with selfish, vain, and addictive desires - so how did I get them? For so long I've blamed others - the media, western culture, wealthy and famous people, my upbringing - everyone but me, really.

But who spends more time with me, than me? If I blame others for having these desires, I must also admit that I've given up control of my own life and my own thoughts. I must admit that I've allowed others to make my decisions for me.

Jeff asked me a very interesting question a few weeks ago - how my organization makes decisions. Do we have any intentional processes or rituals around them? In retrospect, no organization I've ever been a part of makes decisions intentionally (except maybe my marriage).

But that wasn't even the most jarring reflection - I realized that I don't really have any intentional processes or rituals when I make decisions myself. I make so many decisions on autopilot that actually matter a lot, especially over time. When I actually thought about it, most of the decisions I make in a day are on autopilot.

Talking heads in the world of business and management spend a lot of time journalizing about making better decisions. I realized that before I can do that, I have to actually make decisions intentionally, instead of just having them be made on autopilot.

The danger of autopilot is that we rarely program our own autopilots, so to speak. Most of the time, our individual autopilot is a product of the culture we live in, which means it'll be programmed to maximize money, power, popularity, etc.

I desperately want to reprogram my autopilot. I figure being intentional about decisions and starting a decision journal is a good way to start. I actually started the decision journal a few weeks ago and it's been transformative - the link above has a template. I also made my own template and I'm happy to share.

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Note - Writing this post has felt like an attempt to give up childish things. That idea comes from a biblical passage that I first heard in my college fraternity, of all places. It's an idea that's stuck with me.

The Paradox of Becoming a Father

I have only been a father for about three and a half weeks, but I already know enough to tell you that it's really hard. So hard, that'd I think it's fair to say that at least half the time (probably more) it feels impossible.

I feel guilty saying that because fatherhood is supposed to be the most amazing experience, and the day you become a father is the best day of your life, with the exception maybe of the day you got married. No, guilty is the wrong word - I feel like a wuss and a traitor saying this.

By the way, fatherhood is the most amazing, joyous thing I've ever done and becoming a papa was the best moment of my life, with our wedding day as an exception.

Which is the paradox - fatherhood is both the best and most debilitating feeling I've ever had.

It's hard in ways that I didn't expect. I expected to be exhausted, and I expected to feel like I was doing everything wrong. I expected to have a cluttered house. I expected having to cut tremendous amounts of time away from hobbies, exercise, and mindless entertainment.

I didn't expect feeling invisible and dispensable to most people (my wife and a handful of others being an exception to this - Robyn has made me feel indispensable, valued, and loved) and then embarrassed about feeling like my needs were overlooked. I didn't expect how much grief I still had stirring around my heart over the loss of my own father. I didn't expect that I wouldn't have a euphoric moment the moment our son was born and feel an instant connection of unconditional love like in the movies (I didn't). I didn't expect how having a baby immediately changes your relationship with your parents and immediate family. I didn't expect to feel as alone as I did.

And to be honest, I thought our kid wouldn't be one of those that cried inconsolably - he'd be an exception to the rule...obviously. Which luckily, he's not colicky by any means, but he is a newborn and newborns cry fairly often, sometimes for reasons that are not immediately obvious. (Full disclosure: I also didn't expect just how many diapers one sub-ten-pound human could fill in a day. It's unreal).

But I also didn't expect how much more I could love my wife now that she is a mother. I didn't think the outpouring of love we've received from family, medical professionals, friends, colleagues, neighbors we barely know, and even some strangers was possible, but it's real. I didn't expect how natural it feels to be with your own child and how quickly innate instincts take over.

That is the paradox of becoming a father, I suppose. It's so unbelievably trying, while still being better than just about any other season of your life.

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I wanted to share this because I felt blindsided by how impossibly hard the first few weeks of fatherhood would feel. This is my attempt to help any to-be fathers out there be a little more prepared than I was.

If there are any fathers out there than want to chat (or guest post!!), share blogs, or even just lend some advice to others in the comments - let's do it. Fatherhood is so hard and so important, I'll take all the help I can get and I think others would too.

Protective, rehabilitating love

When I have waves of anxiety - usually about debt, my job, death, or other responsibilities I have - it is arresting. Most often, it creeps up when I awake from a dream in the middle of the night or when I first rise in the morning. Sometimes, it's hard to bring my heart rate down even after a few minutes of deliberate meditation.

But lately, I've started to close my eyes and think about a small group - my wife, my dog, my parents (biological and by marriage), my brothers and sisters (biological, by marriage, and from passed time), and the rest of our family...the people who love me and let me love them.

I don't know how to explain what think really, really hard and honestly about them feels like. It's like gentle sunshine permeating through all my limbs and chest, purifying of everything non-biological I am. It is my realest blessing.

I don't know what kind of ideology / opinion / worldview this is, but I want to have that protective, rehabilitating love for my whole life. And I hope we can live in a world where anyone who wants that is able to close their eyes, at the times they are scared and frustrated and defeated, and be able to think of at least one someone that brings them back from dark places.

I hope that I'm able to give that kind of love to at least a few other people, too.

A letter of thanks for all of y'all's wedding invitations

Friends and family who have invited us to celebrate their marriages,

I've been reflecting on the marriages Robyn and I have attended (especially the ones since last year) and before I go any further let me say this - thank you. It has been wonderful to celebrate with you on one of the biggest days of y'all's lives. We are attending one next weekend (yay Liz and Tyler!), which is our last for the foreseeable future. We've only missed a few, mostly because we had family conflicts or other weddings. Thank you all for inviting us, and letting us celebrate with you both in person and in spirit.

Of course, I'm thankful to you all because of all the fun we had. You've hosted us - as guests, travelers, friends, & family and showed us tremendous love and kindness. The food and drink, the music, the dancing, the company, the beautiful places - it has all been a blast.

But I say thank you for a deeper reflection as well, one I've had about weddings we've attended since Robyn and I began planning our own.

On our wedding day, there's a feeling I first felt when I saw the church doors open to Robyn walking down the aisle with her father, that lasted until we walked out of the church sanctuary together, hand in hand. It's not a happiness or a joy, but something just as special. I can think of no other way to describe it, other than calling it a lightness. I felt as if my soul itself was slowly rising, as if it was being lifted upward, levitating from the soles of my shoes to the top of my head.

It wasn't an explosion of emotion (those feelings of happiness and joy came at plenty of other times on our wedding day) but it was just a lightness. I have only felt that lightness one other time since - when we found out the sex of our first child.

It was a feeling I didn't know existed until about a year ago. But ever since our wedding day, I've felt a little bit of that lightness every time we've been to y'all's weddings. I've felt it when we walk into the ceremony venue. I've felt it when I see the groom's face as his bride starts coming down the aisle to marry him. I've felt it at the cocktail hours when old, true, friends embrace after too much time apart. I've felt it during the reciting of vows and during the toasts. I've felt it on the dance floors, regardless of how good or bad the DJs have been. I've felt that lightness in so many different ways at each wedding we've attended.

Feeling just a little bit of that lightness at so many moments - both big and little - helps me to relive the best day of my life and be grateful for all the days since. The privilege of feeling that lightness is a gracious gift you've all given me, and I appreciate it deeply.

So friends and family, thank you for letting me be around on one of the most intimate, special, profound days of your life. Thank you for the fun memories, of course, but thank you even more for sharing a little of your lightness with me. It has been such a blessing to see and feel it at each of your celebrations of marriage.

Love,
Neil

On Signaling Love To Our Children

DENVER, CO - I met a young father (he has two kids under 5) yesterday who is a political science professor at Colorado State University. We were swapping stories and ideas about fatherhood and generally having a good chat over a beer. As one might expect, he was fairly familiar with social science research about parenting. I was surprised to find out that nobody really knows anything, empirically speaking, on what parenting strategies actually work.

The only clear finding, he said, was that being loving and kind to your children matters a lot. Moreover, he said, having loving parents even has observable effects as children age into the 70's and 80's.

As a soon to be father, this was reassuring. One because that's the only real concrete objective I have as a father right now (that I will love our children unconditionally), and two, because it helps me feel less pressured about being a perfect dad / mentor / friend / provider / disciplinarian / chef etc. It's a lot easier to focus on one thing that really matters (being loving and kind) rather than stressing about every single decision I ever make as a father about everything from schools to organic greek yogurt.

But that raises an important, tactical question - how do you show your kids that you love them unconditionally? Because it would seem to me that loving them only matters if they feel loved. If I loved our children fiercely, but they never felt and understood that love, does it really matter?

So, to me, love is an act of signaling, in a way. I as a father, say or do something, and that action (ideally) signals to my children that I love them unconditionally. The signal has two components - the message (I love you unconditionally) and the intended recipient (my children). So there's two challenges here - you have to send a clear, understandable message, and, you have to send that message to the right person.

I suppose I have a few ideas on how to signal to my children that I love them unconditionally, but I won't go into that. Every person, not just every kid, understands love differently. The way you show love is highly dependent on who you are trying to show that love to. I highly recommend the Five Love Languages as a mental model for thinking about how to signal love effectively. So anything I can say probably won't be broadly relevant.

The flash of insight I had is that it's easy to signal to the wrong person, unintentionally.Let's take a child's birthday party as an example (I missed my cousin's / nephew's 1st birthday party this weekend because I was in Denver for a bachelor party, so birthday parties have been on my mind lately).

In theory, as parents Robyn and I would throw a birthday party to celebrate our child's life and make them feel special (i.e., signaling that we love them and that we value their life). This is why we'd invite lots of friends and family, put in effort to have nice food and ambience, eat cake, etc. The effort we put in signals to our kids that we love him or her and that celebrating birthdays is a way to show love to others. Throwing a party is great fun for the child (and everyone else), but the fun matters less (I think) than the signal of love that it sends.

But let's say we went a little crazy on the birthday party. Say we went over the top with lavishness. Maybe we invited some parents out of obligation and to make people think we are generous, instead of their connection to our family. Maybe leading up to the event we were obsessed with throwing an awesome party, rather than paying attention to our child and getting him or her excited for the day.

In a hypothetical situation like this, who would we really be signaling to? Our child, or to the party guests?

I don't think we'd be signaling love to our child. Rather, I think we'd be feigning the appearance that we love our child to others, without our child actually feeling that love. Worst, the party might not be about love at all, it might be a signal of our social status to those we invite (or who follow us on Instagram). 

The point of this thought, though, is not to razz on parents that get wrapped up in their community standing to the detriment of their children. The point is that signaling matters. That signaling has two components, the message and who it's supposed to be going to.

Especially when it comes to showing our kids that I love them, I want to be intentional about both. Really, signaling love is the most important thing they need me to get right.

Making an "Enough List"

This weekend, I wrote the first version what I'm calling my "Enough List."

The exercise is simple. I started with a list of things that I believe I need to have a well-rounded life. Then, I asked myself a simple question, "how much is enough?", and wrote down what I thought.

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The "Enough List" from my notebook.

Two surprising things happened. First, it was surprisingly easy to jot some guidelines for how much "enough" really is. Second, I was shocked at how close to "enough" we are already. Granted, we've had a blessed life and that's not a luxury everyone has, but still. I immediately felt a sense of relief because I realized that much of my anxiety about career, money, meaning, etc. is unfounded, because we have enough. I realized that I've been sweating over the cherry on top of a sundae, even though I've got more than enough ice cream in my bowl.

I've been gnawing on the notion of enough for months - when my friend Jeff shared about some reading he had done about personal finance (he enjoys personal finance blogs, and lucky shares the interesting ideas with me). What he suggested was figuring out the number (literally, a dollar amount that could be written on a note card) which accounted for enough money. Most people, he said, don't benchmark how much money they really need. As a result, they're constantly just chasing the next raise, promotion, or job and trying to make more. For most people, he added, research is starting to suggest that number is somewhere around $75,000 / year.

The problem is, when you don't set a benchmark up front, it's likely that the next milestone - whether it be about money, love, respect, food, or whatever - will never feel like enough. Without a benchmark, my default mindset was to maximize how much money I made. In a maximization mindset, I was always falling short because what I had never was what I could theoretically have, and certainly not as much as someone else I knew had.

Once I made this list and realized that I was really lucky to have darn near enough at age 29, I started to wonder - why do I feel so much anxiety about the items on my Enough List? So I made another list of things that make me believe I don't have enough:

• Advertising
• Greedy, exploitative organizations (that are better off when their workers feel compelled to work more)
• People I associate with who are motivated by power, social status, or grandstanding
• The fear of big, cataclysmic events (e.g., Black Swans)
• Economists and MBA types, who are wired to maximize things, who propagate narratives about maximization in other domains
• Being exposed to all of the above on social media exacerbates their effects

I hope that by being more conscious of these polluting influences prevents them from being so destructive.

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If you're an audio person, you can also catch these posts (with a little extra discussion) by subscribing to my podcast via the iTunes store. Happy listening!

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How To Torpedo a Team, Company, or Organization of Any Size

The surest way I know to destroy a team is to obfuscate priorities. Try this exercise:

Take a blank piece of paper and create three columns. Label the columns with these three headers:

• What matters most
• What doesn't matter (at least for right now)
• What some people may think really matters but actually doesn't

If you (or your colleagues) can't complete this exercise in 10 minutes or less, you might have a problem.

If you can't clearly articulate both what matters and what doesn't, your team, company, or organization will have one of three mindsets:

1. Everything matters
2. Nothing matters
3. I know what matters to me, so that's what matters

None of these three mindsets leads to a team that achieves predictable, measurable results, let alone good ones.

If you don't know your priorities, start figuring it out today. And believe me, if you're in this boat I'm in it with you. Setting priorities takes a long time to get easy.

My struggle with protests and other adversarial tactics

When I think about the injuries I could face because of my racial identity, they only falls into two categories: injuries I could receive from injuries and injuries I could receive from other people.

I could be treated poorly, disrespectfully, or unjustly, for example, by institutions like the government, the cable company, a bank, or a large property management company that rents me an apartment. These are parties that conduct business based on policies and standardized procedures. When I am injured by these parties I have a slew of options for recourse available to me like raising a complaint, tweeting about poor service, protesting, "talking to a manager", taking my business elsewhere, and voting, among others.

I could also be treated poorly, disrespectfully, or unjustly by an individual person. These individuals could be the person sitting at a nearby table at a restaurant, another driver on the road, a neighbor, a sales clerk at a small business, a parent at my child's school, or a co-worker. These are parties that conduct themselves in public based on beliefs they have about themselves, the world, other people (i.e., not policies and procedures). When I am injured by these parties my options for recourse are more limited - I mostly can just talk to them, call the cops, file a lawsuit if their behavior happens to be illegal, or retaliate.

I fear individuals (strangers, really) much more than I fear institutions. Institutions don't flip their lid as often, their are fewer of them, and there are more options for recourse. On the other hand, all it takes is one loose-screwed individual to see you at a bar, harass you because of your national or ethnic identity, be physically removed from said bar, return with a gun, and shoot you. This sort of thing is something I for real have to think about because I happen to be a man of Indian descent in America (and I have before, it's my "nightmare scenario").

All of that is backdrop. Here's what I've been struggling with.

I think about that guy who shot those Indian immigrants in Kansas. What could have possibly stopped his behavior? A protest against hate? Probably not. Tighter restrictions on guns? Maybe. A non-discrimination law passed in Kansas? Perhaps. A tweet or facebook meme? Doubtful.

All i can think of to change the mind and behavior of someone like this guy is for him to have had more positive interactions with Indian immigrants throughout his life. Enough of those interactions to outweigh the preconceived notions he had from whatever stories he had heard. If anything, I would guess that seeing protests and the like hardened his beliefs about immigrants rather than softened them.

I feel so conflicted when I see so many dissident tactics being used by people whose political views are probably somewhat congruent with my own. On the one hand, if the government or another institution is acting unjustly one surely must protest, vote, write letters, march, organize, etc. On the other hand, are those tactics making individual people who are iffy about me in the first place more likely to hate me or do me harm?

Because at the end of the day, I want to change people's behavior and beliefs in such a way that it makes them less likely to injure me. And it when it comes to changing the behavior and beliefs of free-willed individuals (as opposed to institutions) I don't see adversarial tactics working in the long run. But that's the playbook I see most often on the news these days.

So what would I rather see?

I'd rather see intentional attempts to get people who don't interact much to do so more.

Maybe that's more free street festivals, more programming at parks, or more opportunities for high-schoolers to study abroad. Maybe that's increased investment in public spaces and the creation of equitable residential density so that people of different races rub elbows more. Maybe that's subsidized plane tickets from large metropolises to rural towns and vice versa. Maybe that's money for people to throw backyard barbecues with their neighbors or to take a senior citizen out to lunch. Maybe it's money for bus fares so that urban and suburban churches can attend services in each others' houses of worship. There are truly a lot of possibilities.

I'm not talking about revolutionary ideas (or maybe I am), I'm talking about nudges which make us more likely to interact with someone different than us in some way.

I don't only think we can do more than use adversarial tactics to change others' beliefs and behaviors, I think we have to.

I swear I write this all earnestly. I am really struggling with it.

How to Make Outstanding Pancakes (And Companies)

I love making pancakes, and I'm very serious about it. I've probably made close to 5000 pancakes in my lifetime - crafting my skills over nearly two decades. I can (and often do) literally smell my way through mixing pancake batter from scratch. For years I've maintained (only half jokingly) that making pancakes is the only thing I'm truly exceptional at.

The secret to an outstanding pancake is not in the recipe, it's in the making.

• Always start with the flour. Spend at least 90 seconds stirring it, and it alone, with a whisk. This mixes air into the batter from jump, leaving you with a fluffy texture. A fork or a spoon is insufficient, use only a whisk. Stir slowly. The flour is your base and you have to caress it.
• Next, you must mix in the butter. Melt the butter so it's hot. The liquid you mix in will likely be cold, so if you mix in the liquid prior to the butter, the fats will clump before they spread evenly. You must add the butter before the liquid to ensure the fats are spread evenly throughout the batter. Don't be stingy with your fats either, err on the side of more. It's better to have a little extra than not enough. The fats are what give your pancake softness, so you want to get this right.
• Next, mix in the liquid. Use whole milk as it has a nice balance of fat and viscosity. Buttermilk is okay, but it leaves you with a chewy pancake with a overly rich taste if it's mixed in at the wrong temperature, so I avoid it. It also usually is always has a strange odor when it's not fresh.
• I like to add the sugar and then baking powder next. Adding sugar to the batter once it's liquid helps you smell the sweetness and calibrate the quantity needed.
• Finish with eggs and salt. These are the ingredients that bring the batter back together. If you don't do these last, you'll have to beat the batter harder and it affects mixing of and absorption of the liquid. You must do these last.
• When you cook the batter, don't blindly follow the heating instructions in the recipe. You have to know the intricacies of your cooking surface. I use an electric griddle at home and I keep it at just below 375 degrees for the first 2 batches, until the surface's heat is holding steady. I adjust down from there. My mother's electric griddle runs hotter and heats up faster. There's no way around knowing your own pan.
• Flip once the pancakes start to bubble and they've risen slightly. They'll be golden brown.

Don't get me wrong, recipes do matter (and to be sure, I've tinkered for years to develop a fantastic one). But an outstanding recipe alone won't get you an outstanding pancake. The real amazing stuff happens when you take a great recipe and make the hell out of it.

I've learned the same lesson in management - a great strategy doesn't assure great results. A great strategy (even an okay one) executed well often does lead to great results.

I used to glorify strategy development, strategic planning, strategy consulting, and the like. I no longer do, because the majority of companies I've been exposed to, don't need a monumentally better strategy. They just need to execute the hell out of the strategy they've got. 

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If you're an audio person, you can also catch these posts (with a little extra discussion) by subscribing to my podcast via the iTunes store. Happy listening!