Nice guys do finish last, mostly, but it’s worth it

I don’t always succeed, but I try really hard to be a “nice guy.” And by that I mean, I try really hard to be a good man. 

After many years of struggle, I do think good guys finish last. Maybe not all the time, but I think it’s rare to see a good guy finish first. I find this to be especially true in workplaces that are competitive and aggressive, which unfortunately for me is a lot of places. I don’t always finish last, but I seldom am a champion in any competition, at work or otherwise.

So what? 

The one time, literally, where I feel like good guys do alright is with love and marriage. In my experience, good guys (and good gals) find good partners and good friends, almost all of the time, in the long run.

And even if that doesn’t work out, being a good guy requires no special reward. The inner peace it brings is perhaps the worthiest human aspiration. The world also needs more folks that choose goodness to prevent us all from descending into madness.

By my calculation, being a good guy is still worth it, even if it means finishing last, or at least not first, in every respect except maybe one or two.

In fact, it’s not even close.  

A prayer for the DJ

Every time we’re back here, we’re a little older, grayer. Maybe a little wiser, but at least not too worse for the wear. When I see you, every time, here, I’m still speechless. 

Every time we’re here, the world seems like it’s spinning a little faster. No matter how hard we try, we can’t slow it down. And soon enough, without even noticing it’ll be 66 years later and we’ll be the veterans in the room. God willing that’s us.  

Most days, I pray I could pause the music, so we could just stay in today a little while longer.

But if it can be you in my arms. If we can stay with our noses close enough to where all I can see is you, with all else blurred and out of focus. If our cheeks stay close enough so that the only whispers and songs I hear are yours. 

If we have enough room out here, for each sway, twirl, dip, and sashay. If yours is the beat I’m moving to. 

If it’s you, for ever and always. Let’s pray instead that the DJ keeps it spinning, so we can dance here a little while longer.  

Storytellers and the dinosaur

Bo and I were playing with dinosaur cars this morning. More specifically, we were playing with these dinosaur cars (thanks Aunt Linda!):

As we were playing, I involuntarily started roaring. You know, because dinosaurs roar.

Or do they? 

In that moment I realized, for the first time, that I have no idea if dinosaurs actually roar. I just think they do because of every children’s book about dinos I’ve ever read, and the movie Jurassic Park.  

Who knows, maybe they chirped or yelped. Maybe they even chortled from time to time. Perhaps some paleontologist has a good conjecture about it. But I for damn sure haven’t read a book or scientific paper on dinosaur sounds. 

Without knowing it, the stories I’ve heard about dinosaurs have dramatically influenced how I play with my son.

I learned an important lesson today: it’s really important to have trust in the storytellers to whom we lend our ears. If we are a storyteller - and we all are to someone at some point - we ought to be a trustworthy one, too. 

Advice sought: How to encourage?

I’ve come to a hard-earned conclusion that redirecting what’s praised is not a good way to change the destructive praise-centric culture we live in. Instead, I intend to focus more on encouraging others, and being encourageable. An encouragement-centric culture is one with trade offs that seem more manageable to me.

But I’m a little lost. I never really had a ton of encouragement, nor did I ever really practice it consciously. When it comes to encouragement, I don’t have much practical, explicit knowledge.  

So all y’all out there that do - coaches, teachers, camp counselors, pastors, and more - could you share some practical advice on how to effectively encourage others? What about your reflections on how to be encourageable?

Any good books or videos? Everything I found online is pretty generic. 

“I’m awesome, I’m awesome”

I have a hard time admitting how much embarrassment I feel when I see stories about heroic startup founders, or the stream of notifications about people I know getting new jobs with fancy titles. I feel like because of my upbringing, educational pedigree, and cohort of peers, I should be doing bigger things. More prestigious things. More lucrative things. When I’m scrolling through LinkedIn or Facebook, I feel like a draft bust who had a promising future but never made it in the big leagues.

As much as I try to think my way out of this attitude, my first reaction to these sorts of posts is a mix of jealousy and “I’m awesome too.” My first thought, honestly, after seeing a story about a mobility startup was that I co-founded a startup, with my wife in October 2017 when my son was born. I worked myself up and almost wrote an entire post about how “my startup is my family” to try to earn some perceived-lost-respect back.

But that’s pretty childish and only adds to our praise-driven culture instead of changing it. So I pushed myself to dig deeper than that reaction.

My next thought was, if we have a culture among millennials that pushes folks to signal, “I’m awesome, I’m awesome” in any way they can, let’s at least be honest about the days and weeks that aren’t awesome. Because it’s honestly not awesome all the time, at least for me.

Most days, I come home from work exhausted, overwhelmed, or both. There are days when I have cried in the car on my way in or cried in relief because I was so happy to be home with my family. Most days, I feel like I’m average or below average. I do take solace in the fact that being average at an extremely demanding and difficult job is not something to be ashamed of. I also know I’m giving it 100% and leaving my teams in better shape than when I started. But most days are not awesome. Most days, I’m not awesome and have no grounds to make a social media post about how awesome I am.

I bring this self-depreciating vignette up, not because I’m looking for praise (I’m really not), but to try my damndest to create some space for myself and others to be honest about what’s not awesome. Because when you feel like you’re the only person in your peer group that sucks at their job - or relationships, or parenting, or whatever it is - it’s lonely. And not, just lonely, it’s damn lonely.

Talking about being awesome, is great. But it is damaging to us collectively because it’s not the full story. I almost wrote a whole post about how we need to tell the full story, because I thought that I could counter the pervasive narrative of “I’m awesome, I’m awesome.”

But then I thought, is that what we really want? A constant tension between these two ideas? It’s not like replacing the narrative of “I’m awesome, I’m awesome” with one of “I’m not awesome, I’m not awesome” is a world we want either. Both ideas are a trap. Both ideas are pathways that perpetuate a culture of excessive praise*.

Our culture of excessive praise is destroying me, albeit slowly. And I think it’s destroying more than just me. Where I often get stuck is what’s the alternative? If not “I’m awesome” nor “I’m not awesome”, then what?

I realized today that want to create the space for more than vulnerability about struggles. I want to create the space for encouragement.

Instead of hitting the like button that signals “you’re awesome” it’s the message of, “I’m happy for you and am excited to help you grow even more.” When someone shares sad news it’s sharing a “I know you’re going through a hard time, but I know you can get through this problem and I’m here for you if you want to talk about how I’ve gotten through this before” instead of hitting the heart button to affirm the post’s vulnerability.

If you’re someone who shares a lot of positive stories about your career, your kids, or whatever, I’m not busting your chops for seeking praise. Hell, I do it too, even though I try not to. If you’re someone who talks candidly about your struggles, I’m not trying to shower you with affirmations of your vulnerability either.

What I am trying to say is no matter what you say - whether it’s sharing a proud moment or a story of struggle - I’m going to try to best to encourage you through it.

I think we’re damned if we perpetuate a praise-centric culture. I think we’re much better off exchanging in encouragement. That’s the culture that I want to live in, so that’s what I’m going to try to practice.

---

*There a great podcast that touches on how praise and other concepts impact parenting, here. Barbara’s book is also fantastic.

Parenting as an only child

Being the youngest and only child of my parents, I had never really seen my parents parent another person. I also haven’t seen older siblings parent another person. Additionally, because my closest extended family lives 600 miles away, I never really saw anyone in action as a parent until my friends started having kids. 

Turns out, that made it a lot harder to get my bearings. But I was also coming in with fewer bad habits (I hope).

An interesting consequence of smaller family sizes and geographically distributed families will be that more of us learn to parent from our peers rather than our families. Not sure whether that’s good or bad. 

Where does meaning come from?

The yearn for meaning seems like a reaction to suffering. For me at least, I don’t want the suffering I go through to be meaningless.  

And even though I’m not worried about being chased by a lion or my family going hungry, the suffering of chronic stress and mounting performance pressure is still real. 

So what can make the suffering worth it? For me it comes down to four things: making a contribution to other people’s lives, having love and intimacy with others, having special experiences that touch the essence of my humanity, and being a person of good character. Not necessarily in that order, of course.

It’s also possible to try to minimize suffering or its impact, which makes sense because less suffering overall leads to less suffering that can be meaningless. This could be through detachment, as eastern philosophy suggests. A more western idea is expressing gratitude for the blessings in our lives.

But reducing suffering can also be done more dangerously, by trying to increase control, elevating our status, or moving toward isolation.  

All of these are rational reactions to suffering, but I don’t think they’re all worthy choices. 

Anti-priorities are essential

If a strategy - whether it be for a company, family, team, or an individual life - doesn’t have clear priorities, it’s not a good strategy. That’s obvious. 

What’s less obvious is that a strategy must also clearly specify what’s not a priority, but could easily be confused for one. Why? Because we need boundaries and focus to operate at our best, and, resources are never limitless.

To be executed by real people in the real world, strategies need anti-priorities.

Visioning, Planning, and One Orange at a Time

I’ve found the there are two tricks to visioning our individual lives. The first is basing the vision on an internal scorecard rather than other people’s expectations. The second trick is to vision at the time scale of years (at least 5), rather than months or quarters. 

I’ve also found that there are two tricks to planning. First, the plan has to have clear, simple outcomes (that actually matter). The second trick is to plan at the time scale of a season, because the changing conditions of human life don’t often stick to a calendar. 

But even after adhering to these principles, I still find myself being stressed on a day to day basis.

Theres a concept in dance, during rehearsal time, called “full out.” Basically, when you are rehearsing you have to dance at your fullest, with as much energy as you would have during a performance. You practice how you play.

Dancing full out at rehearsal takes a lot of motivation. It’s hard work, and you don’t have the energy of the audience to draw from. It’s easier to rehearse lazily. 

But it actually feels good to rehearse full out. It feels purposeful and satisfying, much like how a runner might feel after pushing hard on a training run. Rehearsing full out is also the fastest way to get better.

There are times when the minute I’m living in is in an awkward purgatory that’s neither rest, work, reflection, nor leisure. Those purposeless minutes without being “full out” in any direction are when anxiety washes over me against my will.

Visioning and planning are very important. But life is lived in minutes at a time. And it’s stressful when those minutes are unmanaged, because you feel them being wasted as they pass. Each minute is like an orange, rotting unless we squeeze every last bit of juice from them. 

For a long time, I tried to live life day by day or week by week, which is overwhelming because that’s like trying to juice 1440 oranges at a time. Truly living at the time scale of weeks or days is impossible, or at a minimum grueling. It’s too much to focus on at once, we can only manage smaller bites.

What I realized today is that when I am stressed, it’s normally because I’m not focusing on the minute I’m in, and living it full out. Rather, I’m focused on upcoming minutes I have no control over.

What I intend to do now, when I feel the anxiety of purposeless minutes running me over a washboard is to take a second and think about what I want to do with the few minutes I have in my hand. And do my best to squeeze as much juice from those minutes as I can. 

How much talent are we wasting?

Something I think about often is the difference between how much talent individuals in a company (or myself, personally) have, versus how much of that talent is actually utilized. Even if for any individual person that delta is modest (it’s not, but let’s pretend) that’s still a big waste across an entire enterprise.

By waste I mean, a person not being able to fully use his / her skills and capabilities, either because they don’t have an opportunity to or because something about the organization gets in the way.  

The challenge is, how do you (as individual or as a CHRO / CPO of an enterprise) increase talent utilization? How does one create an organization that doesn’t waste its talent?

And it’s not just a matter of leaving money on the table. It’s horribly dissatisfying to feel like your talent (and time) is wasted. Some might even consider it to be immoral (I do).

A post-dream life?

I am lucky that a few of my dreams have come true. I am a husband and father, and am growing into being a decent neighbor. The people I love, love me back. 

I keep thinking, what other dreams do I really need? 

What do I need other than the sight and warmth of rocking my son into his mid-morning nap? Or dancing in the kitchen with my wife, just because we like the song and the cookies have a few minutes to go in the oven? Or trying to keep up with our pup running laps in the newly laid backyard snow? Or Sunday dinners with our family? Or a chat over a beer with good friends?

What do I need other than seeing our globally-reaching family, or taking a modest trip, whenever we can afford it? Or lazy Sunday naps? Or the peace in knowing an “I love you, honey” or “I love you, Papa” is never far away? Or that there is a quiet place to read, write, or pray?

What do I need other than this one couch? 

Most of my other dreams have started fading away, especially the ones that I pretended weren’t about being popular or being wealthy (but always were). But what do I need those dreams for anymore?

It is strange to be in a place where I don’t have many dreams left, and only have a desire to breathe life and love into the dreams that are already here.

The emotional nausea of everyday goodbyes

I never have liked leaving Robyn’s side, even to go into another room for an extended period of time. Perhaps it’s because our relationship became a medium-distance one, for two years, after our first three months. Or because my father spent over 10 years of his life working out of state. Probably both.

I didn’t expect it to become exponentially harder when we had Bo. Saying goodbye to them when I head to work, or they are going somewhere, is the worst. The sadness is not acute, it just lingers for a minute. It’s like a bout of emotional nausea, that you have to experience everyday.

It’s odd because I know, cognitively, that it’s incredibly normal and that we won’t be apart for long. I’m not afraid one of us won’t return, though I try not to take that for granted. I just really don’t like how it feels and it doesn’t get easier. It’s a weird emotion, that I’m guessing a lot of people feel, but is probably so forgettable that nobody ever really thinks to talk about it.

I’m grateful, though, that the joy of coming home, is 10x more joyous than saying goodbye is sad.  One of life’s makeup calls, I suppose.

Suffering vs. Sacrifice

The difference between suffering and sacrifice is determined by who it is for. It is a fine line.   

If it is for someone or something we love - whether that be our spouses, our kids, friends, our neighbors, the divine good, or even strangers that mean something to us - those are sacrifices. The suffering is worth something bigger than our pain. 

If it is for a bully - those that merely want more power, our ego, our fears and demons, nefarious intents, toxic culture, or the wicked - that suffering simply feels senseless.

If I am suffering at the hands of a bully, am I doing so because I have no choice? Or have I just not stood up yet?

I agree with the Buddhists (and others) that suggest suffering is an inevitable part of life, and that we must detach from it. But perhaps a philosophy of non-attachment still leaves room to push against suffering that is senseless. 

Maybe social media isn’t the problem, maybe it’s that we lie through our teeth about how happy we are

Social media wouldn’t be so destructive if we didn’t lie about our lives, and make them seem better than they actually are.

Here’s my train of thought.  

Humans are constantly making social comparisons. We scan our environment and mimic the people who seem to be doing well. If someone appears to be happy, healthy, and prosperous we try to do what they do. 

It would be a big problem, if we mimic someone who appeared happy, healthy, and prosperous but actually wasn’t. Why? Because we’d be tricked. We’d be mimicking behaviors that weren’t actually good for us.  

Social media isn’t solely dangerous because it makes it easy to compare ourselves to others, but that’s obviously true. Social media is dangerous because it’s hard to discern if someone is truly happy, healthy, and prosperous or if they’re faking it. Which makes it really easy to emulate the wrong people.

So we end up mimicking behaviors that aren’t actually good for us, and pay for the mistake with our sanity. 

The liberating devotion of having kids is something I didn’t expect

There’s a liberation that happened when we had a child, that I didn’t expect. When I am with him, he takes 100% of my attention. Which doesn’t sound freeing but in a way it is.

When we are together he can’t help but force me to pay attention, in two ways. First, being with him is such a joy, I want to give him my full attention and full self. But also, say I’m distracted.  He cries, he gets into stuff, he waves his arms, he laughs. If I’m not giving him my full attention, he finds way to request it. One way or the other, I’m giving him my full attention. 

Admittedly, that can be draining, because the hours are long and kids (Bo included) has a special type of energy (that I don’t). Robyn and I have had to drastically change our schedule, what we prioritize, and how we socialize. That’s not liberating. 

But when I am with him, and I mean really with him, I don’t have space in my working memory to think about worries. I can’t think about a task list. I can’t multitask. It’s just not possible. When I am with him, I have no choice for mind mind to be 100% there.

Being with my son is liberating, despite the commitment and full devotion it requires, because it frees me from the painful wandering of my own mind. It helps me stay fully, right there, in a moment that I am so grateful to be in, with no other distractions clouding my mind.  

I think this is why meditation is so transformative and social media is so scary. Both require the same sort of full attention, one is just freely given attention and the other steals it.

If my working definition of “devotion” is something that I voluntarily or involuntarily allow to take my full focus and attention, asking myself what I’m devoted to is a very interesting question. And further, how is that devotion changing me as I practice it - is it releasing stress, creating loving relationships, helping me express something, or is it just making me into a basket case?

After death, grief. After grief, a gift.

Only after many months and years could I arrive here, finally. After so much time with so much pain, I am grateful to my father for teaching me, even after death.  

I realize now that his going ahead was one of those showstopper kind of things, like a power outage, the pulling of a fire alarm, or a flat tire. It was a no-choice-full-stop. After he died, I shut down and reconsidered everything about how I live. I couldn’t help it.

His death taught me, in the most belligerent way possible, that I cared way to much about my job. He saved me years - maybe decades - of being addicted to work and status.

After three years of suffering and grief, I see his death was, in at least a small way, a gift. And I am grateful.

Paradoxical observations on being my son's hero

I realized this weekend that I have the market cornered of being one of my son’s heroes. Like, unless I do something horrendous and hurtful to him or others, I’ll be someone he really admires and looks up to. In a way, I have a natural monopoly on being a hero to my son.

The conclusion I’ve come to after realizing this is counterintuitive.

My first thought was, “I’d better set a good example”. After all, if I’m his hero he’s going to be watching me.

But my second thought was more skeptical. f I try to set a good example, that’s a contrived way of living unless whatever setting a good example entails is just part of who I am. If I try really hard to set a good example for the sake of setting a good example, I’d be modeling a behavior of basing my thoughts and actions on how I want others to see me.

What I really should be doing is modeling the behavior of “it’s okay to be yourself, and think and act for yourself.” Because all wisdom I’ve ever received points to being yourself as absolutely fundamental to a happy, purposeful, prosperous life. And if being myself is isn’t setting a “good example”, what I should probably be focused on is modeling the behavior of “it’s important to improve myself to become a better, more virtuous person”.

Being a hero to your kids (or to anyone, perhaps) is counterintuitive. It seems the way to be a hero is to be yourself and improve yourself, even when it is hard. And paradoxically, the first step to being yourself and improve yourself is to stop trying to be a hero.

And something even more cosmically humorous, trying to stop “being a hero” is one of the hardest things I’ve ever struggled with.

Being a Keeper of My Brother's Mental Health

I hadn’t thought to look it up using a Google Books Ngram before, but the concept of “mental health” is relatively new. Check out this chart - it plots instances of different words in the Google Books archive over time.

The way I’ve heard the term used is personal. It’s something that’s “owned” by an individual. My mental health is mine, and yours is yours. I might influence your mental health and you might influence mine, but my mental health is still a property of me as an individual. Our mental states are independent, even if they may affect each other.

But maybe that’s not quite right. After all, “mental health” is a relatively new concept. Maybe we don’t understand it fully yet.

I’m starting to see mental health as interdependent. Because speaking personally, it’s really hard for me to have a stable mental state without the love, encouragement, support, and honest feedback from others. It’s possible, perhaps, but just much harder. To a degree, I can’t help but have my mental state be affected by others.

At the same time, I have the same impact on others. My wife, my son, my best friends, my parents, my colleagues - I have a tremendous impact on their mental state. That impact I make, for them, is basically unavoidable. If other people can’t help but have their mental state be impacted by me, I ought to bear some responsibility to have that impact be positive.

I have some responsibility to be loving, encouraging, supportive, and honest. I have some responsibility not to inflict trauma or make threats. I have a responsibility not to make them dependent on my praise or feel like my love is conditional. And those close to me have the same responsibility toward me.

The more I think about it, mental health isn’t a personal health problem, where it’s solely our own responsibility to make healthy choices and “get fixed” if our mental state is unhealthy. it’s something for which we have a reciprocal responsibility with others. When it comes to mental health, maybe it’s better - and more accurate - to think about it as something for which we are our brother’s keeper.

Letter from the Future

This was an exercise I learned from a great coach I had the luck to work with as part of a class during my MBA. Robyn and I have kept up with it every year or two since then. Here are the instructions. You could do it by yourself, but Robyn and I dedicate an hour or so and do the exercise together.

Letter from the Future: Instructions

1. Get a few pieces of paper and a good pen.

2. Find a comfortable place to sit, and try to eliminate distractions like TV, music, etc.

3. Get a watch / timer

4. Write the date at the top of the page that is five years in the future. So if today’s date is January 1, 2019, write the date as January 1, 2024.

   1. You don’t have to do 5 years exactly, but the point is to choose a date a few years into the future.

5. Set a timer

   1. You’re going to go hard, so try for at least 15 or 20 minutes. Robyn and I find that we extend the time to 25-35 minutes most of the time we do this.

6. Write a letter to yourself about the life you are living in 5 years

   1. Rule - don’t ever let your pen stop moving for the whole time. If you can’t think of what to say, just scribble until your brain kicks in with a new idea

   2. Rule - be very specific. If you’re at your desk drinking coffee talk about what kind of coffee. If you’re talking about a new job that you just got, talk about the name of the company and your specific duties. If you just came in from playing in the backyard with kids, be specific about what you were doing. The point of this exercise is to have a vivid image of what your life is like 5 years from now.

   3. Rule - Talk about whatever you want, but try to give a full picture of life. Not just family, not just work, not just leisure, etc.

   4. Rule - Write until the clock stops

7. Talk about your vision with someone you care about. For me, it’s Robyn. If you’re not married you can still do the exercise. Be sure to share it with someone, if you feel comfortable, that really knows you and can ask you probing questions.

8. Do something fun, you’ve earned it!

Temperature Check

I look forward to Erik’s annual e-mail. One year, several years ago, he asked a question about relationships. I wrote him this letter. It’s a tool Robyn and I learned about from our wonderful friends Jeff and Laura. It’s something we’re religious about and it’s worked for us. We’ve missed our weekly temperature check less than 5 times in our whole relationship, I’d estimate.

Hope it’s helpful to you.

June 12, 2014

Robyn and I set aside time every week to talk about our relationship. We setup a structure, called temperature check, that we modified from some great friends of ours - they are married and have a kid. It's worked well for them. This check-in happens every week on Sunday...it's something we have committed to. You don't have to do it weekly, that's just the pace that works for us.

Anyway, we take turns sharing on each of the following topics, in this order. We also alternate who speaks first for each topic on a weekly basis:

1 - Appreciations: We talk about what we've been appreciating about the other recently. These could be small (e.g., I appreciate that you swept the floor) or large (e.g., I appreciate that you stayed up with me all night when my family's dog was sick). We always use "I messages"..."I appreciated it when you..."

2 - Issues: We talk about issues that we're having. It could be a self-issue (e.g., I'm having a hard time staying up so late), an issue about the other (e.g., I'm worried about how stressed you are at work), or mutual (e.g., I think we're not spending enough time with our families). Or it could be anything else. The key is, these issues can't be humongous. When we have bigger issues we say, I have this issue, let's set a time to talk about it. Temperature check is not designed for huge conversations, it's a check-in. Hopefully if you bring up small issues early, you have fewer big blow-ups.

3 - Requests for Change: We talk about small requests for the others. Keyword - small. (e.g., could you please not use metal utensils on teflon pans) That example is smaller than our average, but you get the idea.

4 - Other stuff: It's often easy to forget that your partner has his / her own stuff going on that affects them. We take the end of temperature check to catch up on all the news from other spheres of life outside our marriage. Work, family, ideas we have, societal issues we're thinking about, books we're reading, friend news...whatever. It's nice to know this stuff because it contextualizes where your partner is coming from and what external factors are affecting your relationship.

5 - Logistics: Finally, we discuss logistics for the week. Different meetings, social plans we have, grocery lists, whatever. It makes sure we have time to spend with each other and we both have the right expectations about the other's activity and stress levels. It's a chore, but it prevents us from squabbling about little stuff.

A note: Remember about all this, it's really important to create a safe environment to have this discussion. Listen actively, don't allow distractions, commit to it every week, and empathize with the other person. Temperature check is useless if it's not in a completely open and safe forum.

Hope this helps!