Well Scripted Life

Can you see the elephant in the room? It really depends if you are an insider or an outsider. To an insider, the little things matter. The dirty laundry is everywhere, and selection bias is rampant. Twenty plus years ago I worked in a service garage selling repairs to Chrysler car owners. To this day, I have trouble believing in Chrysler quality. My belief has nothing to do with the truth. It's a selection bias.  I only saw the Chrysler cars with problems, so I mistakenly thought Chryslers have more problems than other cars. Crazy; I know.

Have you ever heard of the curse of knowledge? You can't unlearn something. You can't unring a bell.

Here's where I go wrong. Being a self-proclaimed smart and ethical person, I feel compelled to share my knowledge. I feel like I need to be honest with clients and let them in on the secret that new cars due have problems. And Chrysler might have more than its fair share. I hesitate to be that "sales" guy that shouts about how great Chrysler is without considering the reality of my selection bias.

Fast forward to today’s information flow. The stream of information is designed to interest you, to keep you watching. The advertisers are the client, not you. You are the product being sold. I too trade my attention for free email, curated videos, and seeing pictures from friends. What I need to remember is selection bias is worse than ever. I’m not seeing a reasonable representation of the truth. I’m seeing more and more of what I want to see. If I want to see problems, I will. I don’t think we can change this as long as companies are buying our attention. I do think we need to aware of what’s happening.

Never forget you are an insider and try to remember what it was like to be new, to be from the outside. You’ll be able to see the elephant in the room, and you might have more friends from other walks of life.

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.”William James

Attitude is a choice. Attitude takes practice. Start to think about all you have to be grateful for and your attitude can improve.

How close is attitude to belief? I mean unless you are a fake person you must believe there’s a reason for a good attitude. You must believe in the possibility of improvement. I know my attitude can impact my performance. I know that if I have a better attitude the chances of winning go up. I also know my mental attitude follows my physical attitude, so it’s important to hold yourself correctly, stand straight, sit up, look ahead. Have you tried the superhero pose? Stand for 2 minutes with your hands on your hips and your chin out. Look like a superhero with a cape. Your attitude will begin to match your stance. Your blood chemistry will actually change to match.

I’m a fan of the movie, Matrix (at least the first one). Morpheus from Matrix has a great view of attitude, "Do you believe that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles, in this place?" Paraphrasing Morpheus, "Do you believe that you sounding like typical, callous, inattentive salesperson has anything to do with the car you are selling?"

I think it was Zig Ziglar that taught me selling is a transfer of emotion not information. In order to be contagious, you must infect yourself first. You must believe your offer is genuinely good for the person. You must believe the person you are going to talk to will be better off if they buy what you are selling.

Think of the scene from Groundhog Day where Phil runs into Ned, an insurance salesman. Ned is over the top. He's everything we hate about sales. I love the scene and sadly it isn't completely fiction. Again, thinking of the Matrix movie, "Do you believe it has anything to do with the insurance you are selling?"

My Dad died when I was 6, and the small life insurance policy saved us, and I sure do wish a better salesperson would have met my parents and got them better coverage.

I live in a house built in the 20's and the original garage had to be somewhere close to the same time frame. It had seen better days. We had a snowstorm last spring that caved in the roof. I was about the replace the garage when someone mentioned it might be under insurance. I called and we have replacement insurance. Great! When the insurance adjuster told me you can't replace the roof until code upgrades were done, I thought that made sense. Can't put lipstick on a pig, so I asked for quotes. He called back asking if I knew we had code upgrade insurance -- and a premium rider to double the benefit. I did not and was pleased to be educated. We ended up getting the brand-new garage because we had known a salesperson about 15 years ago that listened to us and sold us all the insurance we might ever need.

There are so many bad examples in sales it isn't really worth reviewing, but life is about growth, and sales is the engine that drives growth. Salespeople are the economy’s first responders. Believe in your product or service. Understand how it makes your clients lives better. Always remember it's got nothing to do with the product you are selling. It's all you.

“There is more to life than increasing its speed” – Mahatma Gandhi

Forbes Magazine interview with Peter Drucker, 'Successful leaders don’t start out asking, “What do I want to do?” They ask, “What needs to be done?” '

Or better yet also by Drucker, “There is nothing more useless than doing efficiently what doesn’t need to be done at all.”

I need to take a hard look at what’s being done and do less. I believe we should take away as much as possible and when the process breaks add back the last step.

No one shows this better than Masanobu Fukuoka He has a great book, The One-Straw Revolution, and I highly recommend it. He walked away from a corporate bio-engineering job and started to farm. He farmed by his one-straw-revolution principle, do less till it breaks. His farm produces as much or more per acre than any commercial enterprise. His innovated of course. When he finds out what must be done, he looks for ways to do it better. He stopped plowing, and the birds were eating too much of his seed. He put the seed in little clay balls next time. The seeds would germinate without being eaten. Sometimes the process breaks. He stopped pruning his fruit trees, and the fruit production dropped far too low. He had to add that step back.

I do a lot of what I do because that’s the way it has always been done. When I pause to consider each step, I like to stop doing it and see what happens. I’m am frequently surprised at the results.

I live in a world of not enough time, and finding more time isn't a sustainable answer. I have to create not-to-do lists. I can’t always be involved. I must delegate even if it’s painful.

One more great saying, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?” What’s my suggestion? Slow down. Actually, make a list of the tasks you catch yourself doing that aren’t required. Test assumptions and skip some steps to see what happens. Read One-Straw Revolution.

2 rules for progress toward your goals:

1. Again

2. For me

Again:

How long do you allow your child to try to walk before giving up? What advice do you give when learning a new skill? Go again. Try again. Again tomorrow. “Again” is a powerful idea. If we don't quit, if we go again, we'll be moving toward the goal.

What you seek seeks you. When we go again, we continually seek our goal and the goal gets closer to us. If we stop, we have no hope. “Again” is the secret to becoming someone new, someone better. “Again” will get what money can't buy. Money can't buy a 4-hour marathon or a 2-mile swim or a more active healthier lifestyle.

For Me:

How hard do you try? Les Brown answers the question about drinking alcohol like this, "You are a grown man. You want to drink? That's up to you, but where I'm going, I don't have time for it." I think Les Brown avoids drinking for himself. He isn't skipping out on a few beers because it's against a rule. He's doing the "For Me". I drink myself, but I can see where he’s coming from, and I like the idea.

I don't even like going to the gym, but when I'm there, for me. Why do I try one more rep when it's uncomfortable, "For Me". Why do I keep going a little more when I'm tired? "For Me". Who am I cheating when I back off? Is it the coach that loses? Does the gym miss out? No. It's only me, so I chant to myself "For Me".

These two rules, "Again" and "For Me", keep me going when I'm in the valley between the way I was and the way I want to be.

Comparisons are fun and at times informative. Are you a reader or a listener? Do you enjoy the practice or the novelty? Do you believe intelligence is fixed or elastic? Are you a cow or a pig? Maybe you aren't familiar with the last one. I grew up on a hobby farm in Kentucky, and we had cows and pigs. I don't think we always did things the right way, and we used an electric fence at times. If you aren't familiar with an electric fence, it's a simple wire connected to an alternating current. If the animal touches the wire, they'll get a mild shock. I've touched it several times myself and have survived. What I found interesting and informative was the difference between the cows and the pigs.

Pig Test

It was my job to set up the fence and keep it going. I was about 10 years old, and often I might forget to do it correctly. The cows would test the wire the first day or so and then accept the boundary and never try again. Pigs on the other hand tested the wire all the time. Pigs have a very sensitive nose, and they would simply get close to the wire and feel the pulse of electricity without any shock.  If the fence was off, they'd walk right through.

I try to be a pig at work. I don't want to test assumptions so hard as to get shocked, but I never want to accept a boundary and become a cow either. Pig testing is very important. We work very hard to create models and use analytics to make better decisions. As cows we accept the answers given and become surprised when the grass is all gone. As pigs we use the answers and always test to make sure our models are still a close fit to the real world. So often I hear the client will never listen to that message, and as cows we believe we know our clients so well. As pigs, we might mention the message again and find out for ourselves if the fence is still hot.

Toilet Paper

I was fortunate to stumble into being a Cryptologic Linguist for the Air Force, and I would listen to our former bad guys, the East Germans. I had a lot of fancy tools to be snoopy but what proved most useful was the toilet paper. Like any army, the Germans would guard important information closely and attempt to make it difficult to find. Toilet Paper on the other hand was unimportant. Before any troop movement, a large order of toilet paper would show up. I always knew something was about to happen.

In business we have a lot of fancy tools to explain what's going to happen. I try to remember to look for the toilet paper. One of my favorite IBM Fellows, Brenda Dietrich, talks about data exhaust. The trail left by data transactions that can be as informative as the data itself. The data exhaust left behind by our buying, when we buy; how often we buy; the volume of our purchase content; the mentions on social media; etc... is all toilet paper that is available to interpretation. Much less legal issues about privacy when we search for the toilet paper as compared to the actual transactions themselves.

Ball of String

I've been reading William James' work on habits. He is big on the power of inertia. We continue doing what we've done because it's what we feel comfortable doing. The neural pathways are in place. Takes force to overcome inertia. He has a great metaphor about the early work of changing a habit. You must be very careful to maintain a change in habit. Each day is like winding a small piece of new string around a ball, and if you miss once, it's like dropping the ball and watching it roll across the floor.

Weekly Update Oct 4th, 2020

It’s Sunday. It’s the easy update day.

Mentally tough week. Hasn’t been that easy. I am blessed with several friends who believe in me, and I’m excited about what’s possible. I’m just nervous, and maybe that’s normal.

Today is day 65, and I’m still going strong.

Looks like nearly 850 downloads of the podcast. I have stopped worrying about who’s listening and if the podcast is any good or not. I’m just doing what I can and let the chips fall.

I have kept up with the 100 Day Challenge – haven’t missed a day. I have met the bare minimum more than once. I could have done more, but I have finished what was planned. That’s something to celebrate.

Possible upcoming topics this week:

· When does motivation break?

· Pig test, toilet paper, and a ball of string.

· One straw revolution.

I’ll see where we go from there.

I tell my students that I don’t plan on asking any questions that I wouldn’t expect them to know two years from now. I’m not here to play trivial pursuit. I do, however, cover a lot of material, and I know for a fact most of the material will not stick in long-term memory. Why bother?

I also read all the time, and I'd be surprised if I could even recall a tenth of the total, so why bother?

My kids ask me all the time why they need to learn geometry or chemistry. They see that my wife and I don’t use this knowledge often if at all, and they wonder, “Why bother?”

I don’t think, “Because I said so.” is a good answer.

I didn’t always read. I might have read 3 books before the age of 18. While in the Air Force, Captain Fritz changed everything. Captain Fritz was an Army artillery officer in my class at the military's language school. He heard me mention I didn't read, and he didn't just get angry. He acted. He bought a book and ordered me to read it. If I liked it, I could thank him. If not, he'd drop it. Well, the rest is history as they say. I've lost touch with Captain Fritz, but I still have his gift of reading.

Like I mentioned, I don’t read to remember. I read for the experience and for the change. Books change who I am and how I think. I absorb ideas and concepts even though I won't remember the source or the exact details. The flavor of life changes the more I read. My ability to learn and connect new ideas grows. My flexibility when faced with new opportunities also improves. I read to have a higher quality of life.

A tree sapling will grow stronger when the wind blows. An ornamental tree that’s been supported for too long will break when the wind blows hard. It takes stress to strengthen. Like so many things, too much stress is dangerous. The strongest trees will still fall over in a hurricane or a tornado.

My mind is not different. My mind grows stronger when stressed by new learning, reading, experiencing. And I might not remember, but I am changed. I collect principles that are enforced as I learn more. Many times, I’ll be reading a book with no great insight, and all of a sudden, I stumble upon one really good idea. Was it worth reading 350 pages for the one good idea? Yes. Absolutely yes. Could I have read the good idea in a sentence by itself? I don’t have a specific idea in mind, so maybe, but I don’t think so. I think I need the context of the book to get ready for the idea to be planted in fertile ground. Dish to me cold and by itself I don’t think it would stick.

Scribbling the Cat by Bo Fuller is a good example. I can’t remember much about the book itself. I do remember something from the beginning that has stayed with me for many years. She flew back from Africa, and she felt like part of her soul was still there. She said she should have taken a slow boat and allowed her soul time to catch up. There’s more to life than speeding up.

So why bother? I bother because life is an adventure with many surprises, struggles, and enjoyments. When the moment comes, you will live as the person you are at that moment. You don’t get a do-over. You don’t get to wait and prepare. I read; I learn not to prepare for a certain future but to prepare for any future. I read for the fun of it. I read for the joy of it. I read for the fruit of it.

Teaching is similar. I guide the students through a lot of material to give their souls time to catch up. By the end of the semester, they will have changed. Their opinions on the subject will be influenced by the material. They won’t remember much of the details, at all, but when the moment comes, they will a better sense of what to do. I teach because together we change. I ask them to find a struggle, a mystery the like. We all must work, and it isn’t always fun, but I do hope it’s the type of unfun you enjoy.

How to believe?

How long does it take to believe?

“A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” I first heard this from Dale Carnegie in his book, Win Friends and Influence People, an excellent book by the way. My question isn’t how well we hold on to beliefs, but it’s is close. How long until we believe something new?

A hint is in the quote itself, “against his will.” I have to will to believe. I have to change my mind. The reason I’m diving into this idea today is parenting. I’m doing my best to parent 6 kids. Each one has their own challenge, and one of the common themes is often self-efficacy. I looked it up to be sure. Efficacy is the ability produce a desired result, so self-efficacy is your own ability to produce a result. The level of this ability is tied to your level of belief. Remember Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”?

I only change my mind when forced. When my ability to produce a result is too small, I must change my beliefs. I must examine my approach. Back to my question, how long does it take?

Like cooking, pressure can speed up the process. Desire can add pressure. If you really want the result, then you’ll be faster to examine your beliefs about what’s possible. Too much pressure and things can blow up. You must be careful to apply just enough but not too much, the Goldilocks conundrum.

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin popularized the notion of extreme ownership in their book by the same title. In a way, they are saying, “No excuses.” If you take the extreme ownership approach to obtaining the desired result, you change your option set. You’ll considered ideas, otherwise, ignored.

How do you teach a teenager extreme ownership? You create a condition that is unfun. You declare if the result is not achieved then you don’t get what you want, and they have to want this very badly. It’s painful as the parent. I don’t want to see my child suffer, but I love them. I love them enough to insist on a little suffering now to be able to celebrate later. One large caution: this must be approach with love and attention. If you apply too much pressure, things can blow up. This an art not a science.

So how long does it take? Depends on how much it hurts. When desperate, you’ll believe very fast in what helps.

My 15-year old son has been passionate about mowing the grass ever since he got a plastic mower at 2 years old and would follow me around the lawn. He mows for me now, and I see he's very quick to notice what I do and copy exactly. He's learned what he knows from experience and watching. He's a true bleeder. A bleeder is someone who has learned the hard way, through experience, as in someone who gets their knees skinned trying to learn, no book knowledge or classroom training at all. As a bleeder he's show great promise, but it is very obvious he doesn't understand why he's doing what he's doing. He can't easily extend his knowledge to new situations. He's very limited. He has more passion than most and works very hard, but like most bleeders, he'll need help if he's going to get much better.

We all know the readers in life. The people with a lot of training and little to no experience. They are highly confident in their schooling and may have something to contribute, but more often than not, they'll need some time in the job to be of much use. This is very common today in the technology fields with the rush to certifications. These certifications are a great way to document your achievement, but a test is a test and not the real world. Don’t misunderstand. I take certifications too. They are a good thing, just don’t judge someone on certifications alone.

The key is to be both a reader and a bleeder. You must apply what you have learned, and you must examine what you practice. The best technical people I've known are very experienced and still go to training all the time. I walked into a help-desk area once where the people were very cold and unfriendly. I asked my friend what was going on, and he told me they had just found out their jobs had been eliminated. He said they had been in those jobs for 20+ years. While it was very sad that anyone would be surprised with a life-challenge like unemployment, I couldn't help but wonder why they hadn't learned any new skills in all the time at the help-desk. You must read and bleed, never let up.

I love aircraft, and I am intrigued by all operations that must be performed correctly to survive. When the stakes are high and tested every day, the process improvements are tangible and applicable.

A simple lesson to take from the professionals, is "Remove before flight". What are the few tasks that must be done before flying? What tasks are important enough that you must remove the red tag before proceeding?

I have an appointment with myself each morning labeled, "Remove before flight." It's a short list of the few things to square away before I begin the day.

Your list will be different, and I warn you to keep it short. I also have a list called “Do or Die List” too. It’s just one more way of saying, “This must be done.” Even if I’ve had a rough day and lost control of my schedule, I can rest easy knowing I got the “Do or Die List” done. This list is very, very short. I do the 100 Day Challenge: podcast, blog, 1 set of exercises. I add or remove from this list based on what I’m trying to get done. So you have two checklist like bookends to your day: “Remove Before Flight” to start and “Do or Die” to end. Good luck.

And remember seatbacks and tray tables should be in their upright and locked position.

thank you, Greg