The shortcut isn’t worth it

If I am happy. If I am thriving, or at peace, what’s the point if it’s just me? What’s the point if my family or my homies aren’t there with me? Or if my neighbors aren’t there, either, in that state of peace and contentment? 

How can I really be satisfied if I’ve left someone behind? On the contrary, it eats at me to see other people, my people, suffer. That feeling, however, brings with it a ton of effort, stress, and responsibility.

That belief requires explanation and defense, but for now, I’ll just own it as my own feeling. 

Admittedly, there is a shortcut. A shortcut to avoid the feeling of guilt and ownership when we’ve made it to a state of peace and our people haven’t. A shortcut around the giving of ourselves to others. A bypass of the sacrifice and hard work for the community. A secret passage that circumvents our responsibility to the world around us. 

That shortcut? Making the tribe around us smaller. Reducing the people we expose ourselves to, and cutting out those that require more from us. Favoring the folks that make us comfortable, cool, and wealthy, and avoiding the others. 

The shortcut is ignorance and exclusion. And that may make our lives easier for awhile because it reduces who and what we are responsible for. But in the long run it costs us love, meaning, and perhaps a bit of our souls. Ignorance and exclusion may shelter us from doing difficult deeds and having difficult feelings, but is that really a life worth living?

I’m not yet at a point where my heart is big enough to wrap it around the whole world. And I’m not suggesting we’re all failures if we don’t become brothers of all humanity.

But our choice is if our ethos will be to expand our hearts wider or close them off. Over the course of a lifetime, that choice makes a very big difference in what we, and our world, become. 

Learning to smell

I didn’t dawn on me until we had Bo, that I didn’t grow up, per se, I was bred. To go to college, to get a job, to get money and status. Bred to get the next thing.

I think a lot of us were.  

That was fine, save for the lonliness. And then I met Robyn, and I had a reason to stop and smell the roses.  

Except, I didn’t know how to stop, nor how to smell them. I think that’s why sometimes the emotions I get when I am with my family, close friends, and extended family are so wonderful, but almost painful. Overwhelming.

But it doesn’t have to be my family, it could be something smaller - a sunrise, a song, a quiet moment, a deep breath. Those are roses too.

The smell of the roses is just so beautiful. It’s so joyful. It’s so special. I never knew.

I don’t know how to handle these very strong emotions because I never started learning how, until we met - I’d say I’m still learning actually.  

Better late than never. Much better late in fact, just hard and lots of tears. 

Finding Nemo, Role Reversal

I went for a run his afternoon. And when I came back, Robyn, Bo, and Riley had Finding Nemo on. It was right at the jellyfish scene as I entered the family room. 

About two minutes ago, right when the pelican tells Nemo how his dad is crossing the ocean to find him, it hit me.

I used to watch this movie from Nemo’s perspective. Now, I can’t help but watching it from his father’s. The roles have reversed, and it’s honestly a very different movie to watch this way. The shape of a father’s heart is different than a son’s.

I guess that’s growing up. 

Do you meditate? I’m becoming a true believer.

In a very short time, meditation has significantly improved my life. As you may have read, the past few years of my life have felt dark. I was lucky Robyn thought of and let me start using her Glo subscription so that I could take app-based meditation classes. 

Now my mind is clearer, I sleep better, and my anxious and depressive tendencies are slowly moderating. I’ve been more responsive and attentive with my family. I even have better digestion.

I was only slightly surprised to find there’s a growing body of research that validates the benefits of meditation I’ve been feeling myself. In the social sciences we often say there’s no “silver bullet”, but meditation is as close to one as I’ve ever found.

My interest in meditation actually started as a job-related pursuit - I’ve been contemplating whether meditation could be an antidote to gun violence. If a community meditated at scale, and had less overall stress, would it reduce shootings? I think it might.

But I want to learn more about meditation and meet more folks first. Do you have a meditation story? Do you know folks who are true believers in meditation? What do you think about meditation?

The 5x rule for leading innovation

During my time working on innovative and transformational projects at DPD, I’ve come to learn something new.  

When doing something innovative in an organization, we have to communicate (and listen) 5 times more, with 5 times as many people, and 5 times more clearly than we originally think we need to.

Bringing people along with something new and different takes much more emotional labor and communication than we think.

I’d add, this is probably also true for marriage, raising kids, and anything else new and difficult that’s worth doing.  

Simple Prayer

Thank you for today. Thank you for Robyn, Robert, and Riley. Thank you for our parents and our siblings. Thank you for our extended family and our friends. Thank you for our home, our neighbors, and the strangers who treat us with kindness.  

Only a simple prayer today. Please, God, watch over us and give us as much time together as you can.  

Radical change requires radical action

When it comes to changing a culture, I often consider depth and magnitude.

To change a culture the magnitude of the intervention we must make is inversely proportional to how deeply ingrained the feature we are changing is to the culture. The closer to the core you are, the less provocative the tweak has to be, and vice versa.

That’s why changing defaults from opt-in to opt out greatly affected rates for organ donation, and why changing behavior with ads often costs a lot of money.

It’s a given that radical change requires radical action - I learned that from Charlie, someone I met recently. A key question for us as change agents is which dimension it’s best to be radical on.  

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.

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*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.