I don’t know how to handle mistakes - please help.

TOYOHASHI, JAPAN—I’m afraid of making mistakes. I’ve realized this in the past 6 months, beyond the superficial way that everyone knows they are uncomfortable making mistakes. 

And, it’s taken me a minute to think about why I struggle. And I’ve realized that’s it’s not the mistake that’s as hard - that’s but a moment in time - it’s that I don’t know how to react to them without irrational, uncontrollable anxiety.

My whole life I don’t think anyone has ever walked me through how to handle the emotional burden of a mistake. I don’t remember a time in my life where a mistake hasn’t led to a scolding, a punishment, dissapointment or shame. I don’t remember, ever, making a mistake and my heart rate not immediately rising, my stomach not churning, and my teeth not grinding. I never learned (or thought about, frankly) how to react to a mistake.

On the bright side, I think I do know how to own up to a mistake. I know how to learn from a mistake. I do know how to correct a mistake. I’m not saying I do these well, of course.

What I don’t understand is the human, emotional part of it. I ask for your advice. How do I make mistakes, even little ones, without having irrational, uncontrollable anxiety?

Bullies

TAKAYAMA, JAPAN — This is admittedly oversimplified, but a helpful frame I think. 

Something I’ve felt and seen over and over is that humans have a strong desire not to be bullied. It seems to me there are two alternatives to being bullied. 

First, become a bully. This is easy in the short run, but destroys your life in the long run.

Second, have the courage to stand up to a bully (or ignore them). This is really hard in the short run, but much more peaceful in the long run.

There seem to be only two equilibrium states: everyone is a bully or nobody is a bully. What we get is determined by our choices (or lack of choices).

What’s also hard is that it’s easy to fool ourselves — and I’ve done this myself — into thinking we’re a courageous hero, when we’re really just another bully.  

Life is fair, we are not.

TAKAYAMA, JAPAN—Life is fair, we are not.

For me and for you, and for your across the street neighbor. And for your elementary school pen pal, for the CEO, for the pauper, for the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker...

The laws of gravity are consistent. Newton’s law, Murphy’s law, and the Pythagorean theorm treat everyone equally. Natural laws are natural laws.

Nobody chooses their parents, the neighborhood they grow up in, or their genetics. Maybe these aren’t distributed evenly, but at least nobody can “cheat” to get a better set. We are all subject to randomness when God deals us the cards in our hand. Random distributions aren’t fair, but they are random for everyone.

So even if there’s a such thing as good luck, maybe life is fair. We’re all subject to the same natural laws and instances of randomness.

And yet, in the world there are still gross injustices and moments of senseless suffering. I don’t mean the suffering we need to grow more skilled and more moral, but senseless suffering.

I suggest that it’s we humans that make each other’s lives unfair. It’s us who make the non-natural laws that make human societies unfair. We are imperfect, mortal, beings that make even less perfect rules. 

Life is fair, we are not.

I don’t like the phrase “life isn’t fair.” When we are the aggressed, “life” is an easy whipping boy to blame for our misfortune. It seems better to take responsibility and move on to the next challenge.

When we are the aggressor, saying it implies that who we are aggressing should take their complaint of unfairness up with “life”, an obviously preposterous proposal. This is especially frustrating to me because it gives us the aggressor an excuse to avoid the arduous work of becoming more moral, more fair.

I hope that as a father I have the strength of character to one day say to my children something along the lines of, “Life didn’t feel fair to me today. But gravity applies the same way to me as it does to everyone else. Which means I have to lean in harder to make myself and then the people around me more fair. Life is always fair, it is I only I who may not be.”

Profound Gratitude

TOKYO, JAPAN—It seems to me that there’s a special kind of gratitude.

The kind that comes from deep within our hearts. The kind for exceptionally meaningful acts — big or small — that profoundly affect our lives in a moment, or that have lifted us slowly but persistently over the course of a long time. The kind we can only express sincerely in private or in prayer. The kind that is providential and has more gravity than a thank you card can convey.

The special kind of gratitude is what completes sentences that begin with “How did we get so lucky...”

It is the gratitude that stirs something pure within us and within the recipient of our appreciation. Perhaps most importantly, that gratitude is an unsought reward, a glorious blessing of a life consecrated to others.

We may never know, until we return to the embrace of our eternal father, the extent to which we have been a part of inspiring this profound gratitude in others. But even though we may never know in this lifetime if we have done a deed so noble and beautiful, is there a greater human endeavor?

Measuring a Life

WINDSOR, CA - Something I intend to reflect on during this vacation is how I want to measure my life. I don’t mean to do this for evaluative reasons - or to do it in a way that is compulsive or dogmatic - but rather so that I can stick to “true north.”

Some warm up reflections: 

• I will measure my life, what’s undetermined is whether that measurement is intentional or unintentional.
• What I measure will affect my behavior.
• Money probably isn’t an inherently immoral measurement, assuming it’s authentic and framed appropriately. It just happens to be really easy  to measure.
• I can’t succomb to thinking “life can’t be measured.” It certainly isn’t easy, but if I don’t have intentions about what to measure, I will default to the easiest measurements.
• I have to look inward about what to measure. It will be easy to fool myself but I must not.
• I must keep it simple.

The first, and maybe only challenge is to how to ask myself the question.  

The best words (of my life, so far)

 “Good morning.”

“I do.”

 ”Welcome.”

”I forgive you.” 

”I love you.” 

“Om, shanti, shanti, shanti...” 

”You are a very capable person (son).” 

“Sweet dreams.” 

”See you soon.” 

“We’re home.” 

”...amen.” 

 “You make me wanna roll my windows down, and cruise.”

”Kush raho.” 

And for the first time, as of yesterday, “Mum mum mumma.”

These have been some of the best words of my life, so far.  

What if it’s not “the system” that’s broken?

In 2018 America, it’s not uncommon to hear that our politics are broken. Our political system, the logic goes, is what causes our national ailments, such as: income inequality, climate, diminishing productivity growth, the opioid crisis, depression, mass shootings, and the like. 

Only, if only, we fixed our political system our problems would go away. What makes me skeptical is that people say this about systems all the time, and it doesn’t prove out.

People in corporations say their computer is broken, but it’s often user error. People often say, “if we had a better database or better software we could operate better”, but the real issue is often bad processes or management. People often try different diets (which are in effect systems) and blame the diet if it doesn’t work.

Sometimes the issue really is the system, I’m definitely not denying that. I’m just suggesting that being skeptical of the “its the system” argument is reasonable because humans are notorious for blaming systems when the problem is really their own behavior.

So what if the only reason for all our national ailments isn’t the broken system? What if part of it is us? It seems to me that it could be.

What if we weren’t so greedy - would we have an opioid crisis? What if we weren’t so self-centered, might we see that paying a wage could be about more than market rates? If we spent more time getting to know our neighbors might we be able to make a future trigger puller less isolated and lonely? If we were better managers at work, might everyone be less stressed and able to take more vacation? If we chose to carpool and consume only what we needed, might we have a greener planet? If managers treated their employees more humanely might they create more impact and  bring less stress home to their families?

Systems matter, but no system I’ve ever seen works well if people aren’t at least somewhat civil and decent toward each other. On the bright side, how we treat others is largely in our own control - we don’t need anyone else to fix it for us.

Maybe, to heal our national ailments it’s not the system that needs to change. Maybe, just maybe, at least in part, it’s us.

The questions we should and shouldn’t be asking when the path forward is unclear

The questions I should be asking when the path forward is unclear:

• What matters in this situation? (Or its variants, like - what result are we trying to create, or for what purpose are we here)?
• Why does it really, really matter? 

The mistake I usually make is jumping to these two questions, first:

• What’s the problem?
• What’s the solution? 

The consequences of this mistake became very clear to me as I ready Dr. Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. In its pages Gawande shares many stories about the decisions families make when a loved one is choosing treatment options at the end of their life.

If we jump to problems and solutions, for example, we choose based on what the default mindset is (fight the disease until our last breath, damn it). The problem is, the patient might not want the pain, suffering, and loss of mental faculty that comes with aggressive treatments. 

I find this a difficult thought experiment, but bear with me. Imagine you are terminally ill with a tumor in your abdomen somewhere. You can’t eat and constantly feel nausea and intense bouts of pain. It’s hard to walk around. You have uncertain amount of time left, maybe a few months or a year. 

The first default scenario is you try aggressive treatment and it doesn’t work. You’ve just gone through hell and you have terrible quality of life for your remaining days. That’s bad.  

What’s maybe worse is if the aggressive treatment actually does work. You’ve gone through hell, extended your time only to have worse quality of life than before. This scenario is great if extending time on Earth at all costs is your preference. That’s just not usually the case. For a lot of people, maybe most, more suffering for more time is actually a worse outcome than less time.

The questions of what matters and why, helps ensure that whatever course of action we take, we’re trying to pursue the outcome that really matters. This prevents everyone from spending time wondering if we’re going the right direction and distracting from actually getting there.

Perhaps more importantly, asking what matters and why prevents the nightmare scenario of achieving precisely the wrong goal.

The questions of problem and solution are important to ask, just not first.

The things I blame

This is a non-exhaustive list of people and things I've blamed - rightly or wrongly - for things like suffering, fear, anger, and failure:

• My upbringing
• "The system"
• My boss or someone at work with a position in the hierarchy higher than me
• The President of the United States
• Other politicians
• Bad luck
• God (e.g., when my father passed)
• The person on the other side (of the table, on the phone, of the cash register)
• The referee
• Myself
• "The "economy"
• The teacher
• American culture
• "Technology"
• Circumstance
• My DNA
• Lack of sleep

I've realized because of a number of blogs / articles, but most recently this interview on the Knowledge Project podcast with poker player Annie Duke, that when I have a failure event I have a tendency to blame something. That was hard to admit.

What's worse, I've realized how cowardly I am if I blame others, even if that blame is accurate and deserved. Blame, regardless of whether it's placed rightly or wrongly, is a digression from taking responsibility to solve the problem or be better.

If our goal is to be better, rather than to be right, blame is a waste of time and a neglect of duty. What's interesting that this is true, even if we blame ourselves. Even if we are blaming ourselves, it is a diversion from taking responsibility.

I hope that by admitting that I do place blame - on myself and others - and naming those things specifically, that I'll stop doing it. I'd rather cut the bullshit and move straight to taking responsibility for making things better or being better myself.

Easier said than done, but it has to start somewhere. And to be honest, even writing this is a liberating moment because I'm feeling my deep-gutted "I'm the victim" muscle start to atrophy a little bit.

Hiring for industry knowledge - why?

I’ve never understood why industry experience is listed as a required qualification for management positions on most job postings. It seems like such a low priority for most roles, especially outside the senior executive ranks, because:

• Compared to leadership and managment skills, industry knowledge is easy to learn
• Compared to technical skills, industry knowledge is easy to learn
• Motivation and a learning disposition has nothing to do with industry knowledge
• In a company, there is likely no shortage of current staff with industry knowledge

I would concede, it’s hard to succeed right out of the gate without industry knowledge. 

But why not treat it as a bonus instead of a qualification? It seems to me that most other qualifications are probably a lot more important, and demanding industry experience seems like it’d be a heavy deterrent to otherwise great candidates. 

Related from Michael Roberto: http://michael-roberto.blogspot.com/2018/07/should-you-hire-for-cultural-fit-or-not.html

Thinking requires stopping

Figuring out hard problems requires thinking. Indeed, one of the odd things I remember from elementary school was a lesson on the STAR method - stop and think before you act and then review. 

The method’s brilliance finally dawned on me yesterday. The key insight is not expressing the need to think as everyone knows that. The need to review is also fairly well understood.  

The key insight is the need to stop first. Stopping is a critical, fundamental skill for thinking. And, it’s a hard one that I’ve never heard talked about or thought about myself. 

Thinking, especially for the hard stuff, requires stopping.  

Good Deeds vs. Good Decisions

I used to think that the key to being a good person was doing good deeds. If that's true, I thought, the hard part is just figuring out the comprehensive list of good deeds and working hard to do them. Simple enough.

What I've been thinking lately is that every conscious or unconscious decision I make ends up leading to an action. And just about all those decisions and all those actions (from how long I spend in the shower to whether I choose to run a red light, or how I choose to talk with Robyn, and on and on) has some sort of moral consequence.

If that's true, no list of good deeds or virtuous qualities is ever enough to cover all bases. Every moment of my life has a moral consequence, there's no list long enough to adequately inform all those moments.

Instead, if every moment of my life has a moral consequence, the key to being a good person is not to focus on doing good deeds. Rather, the key is to focus on making good decisions all the time. By that I don't mean effective decisions or high-utility decisions, I mean decisions that reflect goodness.

The problem is, most decisions I make in a day are not intentional. They are products of convictions, habits, and reflex. So the way I figure it now, I have to shape my convictions, habits, and reflexes in such a way that my decisions (both conscious and unconscious) reflect goodness during every moment of the day.

Here's the big shift. When pursuing good deeds the fundamental question is "what are all the things a good person does?". When pursuing good decisions the fundamental question is "how do I become a better person every day?".

Both are hard, for different reasons. I've abandoned good deeds as an anchor in favor of good decisions because I really believe that every moment has moral consequences. And, I don't think significant good deeds make up for being a selfish jerk between innings, so to speak.

And as a father, I know with 100% certainty our kids are going to become good people based on the choices they see me making day in and day out, not based on the significant and hopefully good deeds they see as an outcome every once awhile.

Social impact starts with philosophy

If you asked me a question like, “What are some things that would make a positive impact in the world?” I might answer you with some or all of the following: 

Generating electricity with no pollution. Working to have a 100% literacy rate. Persuading other to eat less animal protein. Increasing access to green spaces. Developing a cheaper model for child care. Fostering better managment practices so that work wasn’t stressful for anybody. Fixing and maintaining roads so that potholes don’t cause flat tires or wake up sleeping babies. 

Others might say that colonizing Mars would make a huge positive impact even if most people wouldn’t even consider that even close to the realm of “impact.”

Further still, others might say that providing every family a free copy of the Holy Bible would make a positive impact.  

All these suggestions can be true, because how one answers that question of what creates positive impact is biased by one’s own morals.  

Some might consider positive impact to hinge upon what reduces the most suffering. For others it might be based on what allows people to become self-reliant and pursue their own dreams. For those who support colonizing mars, what drives them might be what prevents the extinction of our species. For others positive impact might be anything that makes us more spiritual creatures.  

None of these are unreasonable stances to hold.  

Why I bring this up, is that we don’t usually discuss the moral underpinnings of our thoughts and how they bias our opinions about social impact.

Fostering collective action to make the world a better place would probably go much smoother if we talked about and tried to understand each other’s philosophies first.  

As for my own philosophy I think it’s something like - what makes the world a better place are things that help people become virtuous and put their time & talents to good use. 

A batch of pancakes, 11 years in the making

There was a big moment in our home today. I made pancakes for our son, for the first time. Doing that has been a dream 11 years in the making.

I first started making scratch pancakes when I was the on-the-ground coordinator for my university's Washington D.C. summer internship program. I would make pancakes on Saturday morning for anyone wanting to get together. I've been doing it ever since.

It was that summer, 2007 in the George Washington University dormitories, that I imagined making pancakes for my future wife and children...someday.

Dozens of batches and thousands of pancakes later, that day was today. The reward was but a moment, but well worth 11 years of buildup.

The sacrifice muscle

The ultimate litmus test for moral goodness, seems to be a simple one. Can I put the needs of others in line with, and sometimes ahead of my own?

If I can, I’m probably a decently moral human being. If I can’t, I’m probably not.

Coming this rule of thumb has been a helpful, practical way to think about morality. It’s not as nuanced as moral philosophy, but useful day-to-day.

I don’t have a persuasive argument for this idea yet, but it fits intuitively. Human relationships, and ultimately larger communities fall apart when selfishness is present.

Sacrifice doesn’t grow on trees. But it seems to me that one can work on training that muscle over time. If that’s true, that’s the tangible goal of a moral life - being more and more capable of making sacrifices. At least mine.

Good friends vs. Bad friends

Good friends let you off the hook for being who you think you’re supposed to be, but really are not. Bad friends do the opposite.

Bad friends let you off the hook for being yourself. Good friends do the opposite.

Even better, good friends don’t let you off the hook for steadily becoming a deeper, more virtuous version of yourself.

The company we keep is a very important choice.

Imminent death

I finished When Breath Becomes Air in less than a day. Paul explores a courageous question - how to live in the face of imminent death. I can’t think of a book that’s more heartbreaking or universally important.

The lesson is simple: live your values. The way to live in the face of imminent death is to live your values.

This lesson has found me many times and in many packages of language in the past 10 years, most recently when Wyman visited Detroit this week.

It can be a hard lesson to put into practice, but that’s what makes Paul’s words gravely important and uncommonly brave - he puts this most uncomfortable truth front and center.

We are all imminently dying. Some of us just have reasons to be more acutely aware of it than others.

Living our values isn’t something we have a choice to put off until tomorrow, or even an hour from now. We are all imminently dying.

I think often about the song Five More Minutes. I know at the end of my life the only thing I will want is five more minutes with Robyn and our family. I know this unquestionably. We will not want - and Robyn and I talk about this often - five more minutes to work, five more minutes of TV, or fifty more dollars in our bank accounts.

What I didn’t quite understand until reading Paul’s words is that we can get those five extra minutes. It’s not that they are lost. But we can only get them up front, if we choose to live our values now, instead of five minutes from now.

Manliness

I don’t pretend that what I’m about to say isn’t an explicit jab at the cage of expectations that many of us feel as men, but can’t really talk about. But this suffocating shroud of manliness is so strong, and I feel it so intensely - even still, after my life has been made with the blessings of family and starting to see God resting in my own soul - I cannot help but try untangling it from my neck with this barbaric yawp.

I feel like I’m not a man because I’m not tough to cruel words. I can’t feign it and I can’t fake it. I can’t dish them and I can’t take them. I don’t like competitions. I’m not very strong (I’ve never been able enough bench press my own weight, for example). When I played football, I was always afraid of the impact of a tackle, whether I was giving or receiving it.

I like hugs and high fives. And I struggle to take charge of a group full of big personalities. Most movies and books find a way to make me weep. I’m not particularly funny, and the last of my charisma probably faded away after I graduated college. I’m not aggressive or an “alpha”, whatever that means.

I miss my wife about 3 minutes after I say goodbye to her, for any reason, even if I’m just going outside to mow the lawn. I know nothing about fixing anything with a motor. I am scared that I’ll never measure up to the men I look up to. I was never good at drinking lots of alcohol, and I don’t have anything intelligent to say about sports, even though I enjoy them.

I could go on and on, but it comes down to this. The reason that I in particular don’t often feel like a man is because I’m not “macho”.

And I’m honestly not looking for encouragement or pity. I just have to say this stuff out loud to start untangling it.

I’m also not looking for affirmation of the brand of 21st century “manliness” I happen to fit more with, even if I don’t live up to the ideal anyway. I’m talking about the super dads with impressive jobs that make unexpected romantic gestures to their wives (and those acts are validated on instagram) and never miss a birthday party. Or the “sensitive” men who are “in touch with their emotions.” Or the sophisticated gentleman who espouses a cogent view of domestic politics while sipping a beer he brewed in his basement. Or the Ivy Leaguer who writes a best selling novel while starting a technology company in the valley.

The last thing we all want, I think, is to replace the suffocating grip of machismo with a new, imprisoning dogma of enlightened manliness.

Why I write all this is because I just want to be myself and not feel like I have to justify it against some irrational conception of manliness. Which is a critique on my own character, not on “society” by the way (because why do I so badly need external validation?) .

But even moreso, I have to let go of my own judgements. I hope that by writing this it gets me a little bit closer to not propagating these preposterous notions of manliness onto other men, and judging them for it. I want to be able to live and let other men live as they are, regardless of whether they are “macho”, “sensitive”, “bro-y”, or however else them just being them is described in words. 

I hope that someday soon, I’ll be so comfortable with being myself that I won’t have to push back on norms that make me feel insufficient and trapped. But for now, I hope sharing this makes that day of freedom a little bit closer.  

My dream project

Imagine this.

An online MOOC for everyone in Southeast Michigan who wants to take it. The class teaches some basics about managment that damn near everyone is bad at - running a meeting, giving feedback to employees, setting a clear goal and priority for a team, organizing yourself, and maybe a few others. I’m seriously talking basics.

For anyone who wants to, there could be peer-to-peer discussion groups, in the flesh.

The goal is simple - make the middle management of every company in the region, big or small, 1%-5% better.

I dream about what such an approach could do - create more jobs and profitability. Make people less frustrated about the number one demotivator at work - bad management. Build relationships that lead to new opportunities across industries.

There are lots of initiatives to support entrepreneurs, I think it would be interesting to try making existing firms more effective. And I honestly think that working on the basics of managment is more than enough to make a huge difference. 

Man in the Mirror

Changing myself, has been intense and rigorous. Even changing the smallest of my own habits, has been brutal. Seriously, it took me months just to start getting in the habit of not leaving the day's clothes on the floor, on my side of the bed, when I put on my pajamas at night. Months.

Changing my own backyard has also been hard. I mean this literally. I spent almost two hours doing yard work yesterday and our lawn is hardly up to neighborly standards. When speaking figuratively, the timescale of changing even our own little corner of the world is even longer. It takes years, if not decades. 

I don't really care about changing the world, anymore at least. In retrospect, glorifying and evangelizing the idea of being a "world changer" seems silly. First, I believe that all people should have agency over their own lives, which to me is an idea incompatible with the broad intention of changing the world (i.e., other people). Second, changing others doesn't seem to work anyway. Trying to influence and serve others so that they can and do voluntarily change themselves (usually through love, honesty, and compassion) seems to be the only lasting path to "change" there is.

A lot of people seem to have misinterpreted what Gandhiji said about "being the change you wish to see in the world." Regardless of what he actually said, I think the quote is more a call to change ourselves rather than to change the world. If anything, he seemed to suggest - and I agree - that if we change ourselves the world around us also changes.

All in all, I think Michael had it right (and said it best) - I'm starting with the man in the mirror.