Ben Casnocha: The Blog

Budgeting Time to Think

2009-11-04T16:27:17-08:00

During the campaign Michelle Obama was worried that Barack's schedule allowed him "no time to think."

You hear the expression a lot. But how many people actually budget thinking time on their calendar? You don't often see:

9:45 - 10:00 AM: Meet John Doe
10:05 - 10:20 AM: Conference call with team
10:20 - 11:00 AM: Meeting with client
11:00 - 11:20 AM: Think
11:20 - 12 noon: Meet with direct reports

Even if you had "thinking time" on your calendar, what would you do during that time? Sit in a chair, stare straight ahead, and ponder the world?

Because for some that would feel unacceptably unproductive, people usually do the kind of thinking Michelle was referring to -- synthesis, reflection, processing events and data -- while actively engaged in something else, albeit something that's not too taxing.

Driving is the most popular activity of this sort. Driving requires some level of attention, but you have plenty of cycles to think about other stuff, especially if you're driving a familiar route. "When Joan Didion moved from California to New York, Didion realized that she had done much of her thinking and mental writing during the long drives endogenous to the Californian lifestyle," Steve Dodson notes. I'm the same. I can't tell you how many emails and plans and conclusions I've come to while driving on the 101 or 280 freeways.

Reading is another activity that can be specifically scheduled and invites the kind of reflection and catch-up thinking that we need. It's for this reason I've long been puzzled by those "book summary" services where you buy a two page cheat sheet to a book. After all, it's not just the ideas in a book that matter; it's the time you allocate to reading.

Bottom Line: "Thinking time" usually takes place indirectly during activities such as driving or reading. We should schedule those activities accordingly.

Working Out With Nothing but a Floor

2009-11-03T12:40:56-08:00

When you're on-the-go, finding a gym can be hard and going for a run outside is always fraught with the risk of getting lost.

So I now pack two good exercise tools in my suitcase that allow me to do a workout anywhere, anytime:

1. Jump rope - A jump rope is light, compact, and use-able anywhere. Because you stay in one place, you can simply take one step outside your hotel building and get after it.

2. Ripcords - I discovered these when their CEO, a blog reader, emailed and offered to send me a box. They're awesome. You can do many types of exercises with resistance bands.

Another blog reader, Adam Gilbert who's CEO of MyBodyTutor.com, emailed me a workout plan that requires nothing but a floor:

1. Jumping jacks - Do 4 sets of 50

2. Body Weight Squats - Do 3 sets of 20 (shoulder width)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqj1qjIA6E0 - Great video to watch for form)

3. Wall Sit - 2 sets of 1:30 each
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDjKeOCgisw - Good video to watch for form)

4. Calf Raises - 4 sets of 25 each

5. Push ups (shoulder width) - 3 sets of 20 each (Go slow and steady.)

6. Push ups (close grip) - 3 sets of 20 each (Go slow and steady. Again, own the exercise!)

7. Lying Torso Raise - 3 Sets of 15 each

Directions: Lie face down on the floor and place your hands loosely behind your head. Slowly raise your upper body until your chest is a few inches off the floor. You should feel your lower back muscles contracting as you rise up. Hold the top position for two-seconds then slowly return to the starting position and repeat.

8. Crunch - 3 sets of 15 each
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKg_cdwq9l4 - Good video on how to do them. Most importantly crunch your chin up towards the ceiling. Look up! And hold!)

9. Bicycles - 3 sets of 30 each (Every time you touch a knee it counts as one)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKXFarXbys - Very good video with great form!)

10. Plank (Hold for 2 minutes or as long as you can. 2 minutes is the goal though.)
(Perfect form - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ar2iRusnnc)

Your Customers Lie to You

2009-11-01T14:57:29-08:00

A McDonald's executive, participating in the always-fascinating IamA series on Reddit, writes:

Our customers want mediocre food cheap. Every time we release a higher priced but higher quality product, the people who said they would pay for it... never do.
You say you want more fruits, salads, organic, all natural, etc. well then start buying that stuff and stop buying double cheeseburgers. Our best selling stuff is always whatever we can make taste good, at rock bottom prices.
We've actually learned not to listen to our customers when it comes to a lot of things. Health nuts won't come into McDonald's to eat even when we give them what they want.

As entrepreneurs we cannot blindly listen to our customers. They lie to us. Here's my old post titled Listening to Customers is Harder Than it Seems.

Given that customers lie, sometimes we have to extract information indirectly. Instead of asking customers how much they would pay for a hypothetical product, ask them how much they're currently paying for however it is they're solving the problem that you are trying to solve.

Other times, it can work to ask a direct question but discount the words that come out of their mouth and pay attention to body language. It would be fun to come up with a list of questions that elicit non-useful verbal answers but useful body language answers. In the past I've proposed, "Do you have self-confidence?" Steve Jobs asks employees, "Why are you here?"

Finally, actions speak louder than words. Just as your calendar never lies -- how you spend your time says more about your priorities than your stated priorities -- what customers actually buy and do is more instructive than what they say they'll do.

Book Review: Truman by David McCullough

2009-10-30T12:44:04-07:00

David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Harry Truman is one of the best books I've read in 2009. At over 1,000 pages, it is a complete examination of Harry Truman's life and presidency, including blow-by-blow accounts of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the pivotal meetings with Churchill and Stalin at the finish of WWII, the Marshall Plan, the decision to send troops into the Korean War, his improbable re-election in 1948, and the crafting of America's anti-communist foreign policy.

McCullough is a masterful biographer. His characters become larger than life, he describes historical scenes with gripping detail, and he interweaves just the right amount of subjective analysis with objective facts and events. The result is that you not only get a sense of Harry Truman the man, but you also learn an enormous amount about the period of history in which he led.

Biographies of presidents are portraits of leadership. They are instructive. From Truman I learned about how far decency, straight talk, cheerfulness, and grittiness can take you.

Ambitious by nature, he was never torn by ambition, never tried to appear as something he was not. He stood for common sense, common decency. He spoke the common tongue. As much as any president since Lincoln, he brought to the highest office the language and values of the common American people. He held to the old guidelines: work hard, do your best, speak the truth, assume no airs, trust in God, have no fear.

It is said that George W. Bush read about Truman and his presidency while in office. I now understand why. Both had massive foreign policy decisions thrust upon them early in office; both were war-time presidents; both showed enormous resolve in making difficult decisions in face of criticism; both left office with very low approval ratings. Of course there are differences. On domestic policy, they had little in common. Truman was a common man of Missouri; Bush was born to the silver spoon. And while history has vindicated Truman, I don't think the same will happen to Bush 43.

Assorted Excerpts:

To Hopkins, he advised using either diplomatic language with Stalin or a baseball bat, whichever would work.
As American as anything about this thoroughly American new President was his fundamental faith that most problems came down to misunderstandings between people, and that even the most complicated problems really weren't as complicated as they were made out to be, once everybody got to know one another.
He is a most charming and a very clever person -- meaning clever in the English not the Kentucky sense.
Dewey, it was cracked, was the only man who could strut sitting down.
There was something in the American character that responded to a fighter, said the Washington Post on its editorial page. "The American people admire a man with courage even though they don't always agree with him."
He ranked NATO with the Marshall Plan, as one of the proudest achievements of his presidency,
For the first time in history, a world organization had voted to use armed force to stop armed force.
In seventeen days of savage fighting, American and ROK forces had fallen back seventy miles. It was, in many respects, one of the darkest chapters in American military history.
that the greatest part of a President's responsibilities was making decisions. A President had to decide. That's his job.
His insistence that the war in Korea be kept in bounds, kept from becoming a nuclear nightmare, would figure more and more clearly as time passed as one of his outstanding achievements.
But Mamma could also observe that "Being too good is apt to be uninteresting" a line they all loved.
Here, he thought, was the eighth natural wonder of the world, a politician who didn't take himself too seriously, a friendly, likable, warmhearted fellow with a lot of common sense hidden under an overpowering inferiority complex.
"You give a good leader very little and he will succeed," he said, looking at the chairman; "you give a mediocrity a great deal and he will fail."
And clearly he delighted in talking about himself. He was his own favorite subject, yet nearly always with a sense of proportion and a sense of humor.

The Best Time to Have Sex (and Do Other Things)

2009-10-28T15:43:34-07:00

Best time to have surgery: Morning (4x less likely to have complications in the morning than between 3-4PM)
Best time to get a human being on the phone when calling a company's customer service line: As early as possible (lowest call volume)
Best day of the week to eat dinner out: Tuesday (freshest food, no crowds)
Best day to fly: Saturday (fewer flights means fewer delays, shorter lines, less stress)
Best time to fly: Noon (varies but pilots say airport rush hours coincide with workday rush hours)
Best time to exercise: 6-8PM (body temp highest, peak time for strength and flexibility)
Best time to have sex: 10PM-1AM (skin sensitivity is highest in late evening)

The nuggets are from Mark Di Vincenzo's Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That and Go There which I expect the fun-facts-at-cocktail-parties crowd is buying by the bucketload. The pointer is from Barking Up the Wrong Tree, via Andy McKenzie.

Note that the worst time to do anything is immediately after lunch.

How to Kill It: Passion and Patience

2009-10-27T10:56:05-07:00

Gary Vaynerchuk delivered a highly entertaining 15 minute "keynote" at last year's Web 2.0 conference which is ostensibly about "how to build a personal brand" but is really about passion, hustle, grit, not making excuses, and wanting to win. His authenticity is what comes through most of all. He's all over the place, but it works. Embed:

(thanks to Rob Montz for sending)

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I'm teaching a free one hour class on entrepreneurship tomorrow (Wednesday) on Edufire. Only 15 spots left.

Impressions and Lessons from Cyprus

2009-10-26T09:04:01-07:00

I spent the last two weeks in North and South Cyprus. It is a beautiful country! I had the opportunity to meet many businesspeople, government officials, journalists, and students. Here's what I learned:

1. A Divided Country. The first thing to say about Cyprus, both because it's the reality and because the locals talk about it constantly, is the political situation. It is a divided country: Turkish Cypriots in the north, Greek Cypriots in the south. A U.N.-controlled "green line" divides the two sides. Like any disputed territory, each side has a different interpretation of history. This I.H.T. op/ed from last week does a good job at briefly describing the two historical narratives.

2. Will There Be Re-Unification? In 2004 citizens of both sides voted on a referendum on the Annan Plan which would have re-unified the country. The north (Turkish) voted yes and the south (Greek) voted no. Why did the Greek Cypriots vote against? Wikipedia offers several reasons. My impression is that there was in general a distrust that the north would fulfill its obligations in the plan and specifically that Turkish troops would ever leave. But the bottom line was economic self-interest: Why absorb a poorer per-capita neighbor? Why would you want your tax dollars to prop up a people who speak a different language and whose history on the island you resent?

Cyprus joined the EU in 2004. This creates even less incentive for the Greek-Cypriots. Had re-unification been a condition of EU membership, the island would have found a way, I think. Cyprus got into the EU as a divided country because Greece threatened to veto the Baltic countries' membership unless Cyprus gained admission. An obvious weakness of the EU is every member country wields veto power over new applicants.

3. Victimhood Narratives. I was impressed with the businesspeople and students I met in North Cyprus. There is so much to say in praise of their resilience. But I worry about one thing: self-pity, no matter how justified, is an unproductive endeavor. And the victimhood narrative seems to run deep in the North Cyprus psyche.

If you see yourself as a victim, by definition there must be a victimizer. For many Turkish-Cypriots, it is the Greek-Cypriots and the international community which recognizes the South. Victims also usually have saviors or protectors. This is Turkey. Thus emerges an easy formula for both excusing and explaining the past (the victimizer) and excusing and blaming failures of the future (the would-be savior). Missing from the equation is a sense of personal responsibility for the present and a spirit of self-determination to create a better future.

4. Leviathan and Santa Claus. ~ 50% of the people in North Cyprus work for the government. The government then, is both Santa Claus and Satan. When good things happen, thank the government. When bad things happen, blame the government. Individuals depend too much on the government. The government in turn depends on Turkey. We need a stronger and more active private sector. We need more entrepreneurs.

5. "We" vs. "I." Victimhood narratives and a bloated state chip away at individuality. If I were facilitating conversations in North Cyprus, I would prohibit anyone, on the topic of politics and national improvement, from starting a sentence with "We." Sweeping diagnoses of society at large fix nothing and distract attention from the one thing an individual can control: his or her own actions and beliefs. In the language of the collective we can forget that a "society" is comprised of individuals, and "society" only changes when each individual first changes himself. "We" proclamations in politics make for stirring rhetoric, but can stymie individual change. The unity sought by collectivist language, absent a foundation of independent individual minds, is rather brittle. Think Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world.

6. Should a Congressman Represent America or His District? It is in the U.S. national interest for Cyprus to be a unified country, not because of Cyprus per se (although a more stable country and larger economy benefits all countries, in the non-zero sum game of economic growth), but because a unified Cyprus is helpful for Turkey's admission to the E.U., and the U.S. wants Turkey in the E.U. Turkey is, after all, a majority Muslim country of 74 million with a secular, democratic government that stands at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East.

Congresspeople don't necessarily hear this story, though. There are about three million Greek-Americans in the U.S. and they comprise a formidable lobby. They oppose unification and regard the Turkish presence in Cyprus as an illegal occupation. This muddies U.S. foreign policy and raises a question about democracy: Should a congressman put the desires and needs of the country ahead of the desires and needs of his particular district? If they conflict, should the national interest trump those of the district whose voters elected you?

7. The Physical and Psychological. It's easier to be a small island, economically speaking, in a globalized world: air travel is easy and cheap, and technology sends bits and bytes over the air regardless of whether it's land or sea below. But I still believe psychological boundaries erect when freedom of movement on your own two feet is limited. The American west worked so well an an idea because it lay physically far away. When the frontier opened, it was possible to get in your car in the east and drive for hours and hours into desert and red clay and canyons and forest. The west lured easterners who wanted to re-invent themselves. The new physical geography sparked new identities and modes of thinking. A small island cannot offer this as easily.

8. Good Food, Good Weather, Good People. There's so much pleasantness on the island. A stroll down Lidra street in Nicosia feels like the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, except more hip. The October weather I experienced was extraordinary. It's too hot in the summer, but fall and winter delight. The local food is delicious, if Mediterranean / middle eastern cuisine is your thing. For spicy girliemen like myself, the mildness of the cuisine meant I faced none of the "will this food burn my mouth?" anxiety that I faced in China in August. Don't forget baklava for dessert. Cypriot people are hospitable, friendly, interested.

9. Tourist Suggestions. 50% of tourists to Cyprus are Brits. It's a hot spot in Europe. I've never been to Turkey or Greece, but I've heard more enchanting stories about Turkey than Greece; so, if you wanted to stick to a single currency and language, a terrific itinerary would be a two week trip to Turkey and Northern Cyprus. In Cyprus, spend most of your time lounging around the harbor in Kyrenia and sitting on the stunning beaches. Devote a day or two to Nicosia, the last divided capital in the world, and soak up the history and observe the U.N. peacekeepers. Eat kebabs, drink Turkish yogurt, and if ancient history is your thing, marvel at relics of a 9,000 year old place.

10. Students Thinking Differently. I had the opportunity to address over 1,000 people on the island, and I have been touched by some of the emails and relationships I have struck up. It is inspiring to see people there thinking big things.

(The views above are mine, expressed as a private citizen, and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government.)

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On-the-ground lessons and impressions from:

My travel blog has over 250 on-the-ground dispatches from 25 countries.

Creativity: Loving, Knowing, Doing

2009-10-23T08:48:23-07:00

‘…the most useful definition of creativity is the following: people are artistically creative when they love what they are doing, know what they are doing, and actively engage in art-making. The three elements of creativity are thus loving, knowing and doing; or heart, mind and hands; or, as Zen Buddhist teaching has it, great faith, great question, and great courage.’
Loving, knowing, doing. The secret behind becoming excellent at anything is loving one thing deep and hard enough to do it for a very long time. To continue to learn and know it.

That's Eric Maisel via Justine Musk, in her epic post on why you have to read like a maniac to develop a writer's intuition. Later she says:

Don’t just read because it will make you a better writer – although it will. Read because you love to read, you love stories of all shapes and sizes, you love the flow and rhythms and innovations of language, you love to learn stuff about people, you love to learn stuff about the world, you love to form relationships with individuals who don’t exist. Read because you love to write. Read because you love fiction and nonfiction and their pirate chests of treasures.

I can't imagine being interested in writing and not subscribing to Justine's blog.

Obtaining Honest Feedback

2009-10-22T13:50:29-07:00

Earlier this year I was lucky to participate in a group dinner with five accomplished, interesting people.

One guy at the table you've probably heard of -- let's call him Unaware Big Man -- began dominating the dinner conversation. He kept bringing the conversation back to his own experiences. He made great points -- he is an exceptionally smart person -- so at first we all went along with him playing professor. But soon enough people wanted to hear from others.

Unaware Big Man didn't get this. He did not possess, for example, the social awareness to notice the body language of someone "getting in line" to speak next. Halfway through the dinner, an older gentleman semi-forcefully interrupted Unaware Big Man: "I want to hear what John has to say," pointing to John across the table. Unaware Big Man had no idea he was being asked to simmer it down; he let John speak for 30 seconds and then jumped in with a friendly rebuttal.

I was astonished to witness someone so successful be so oblivious to the social dynamics of the dinner.

Here's the kicker: everyone knew what was going on but none of us gave him feedback afterwards. None of us knew him well enough to say, "Hey man, you really talked a lot at dinner -- let's hear what other people have to say next time." That might seem like easy feedback to give, but not when it's to a high status person. I have no vested interest in his personal growth, but I do have an interest in him not thinking ill of me. It's possible he takes the feedback the wrong way, or takes personal offense. The potential upside vs. potential downside calculation doesn't compel me to deliver honest feedback.

Here's the second kicker, a more general point: I'm sure all of us at one point or another have been the Unaware Big Man or Woman. Undoubtedly there have been times when one or more other people I've interacted with, in their heads, thought: "Gosh, Ben is annoying right now." And yet, they don't give me the feedback. The feedback loop breaks down.

Obtaining honest feedback is hard. Some CEOs tell me it's the hardest part of their job. Without feedback you can't improve. But as you acquire more power and status, people sugarcoat and are reticent to volunteer constructive criticism.

Four thoughts on this topic jump to mind:

1. For feedback on specifics -- such as your participation at a dinner or a piece of writing -- I think you have to proactively ask for it. It still might not come, honestly anyways, but if you don't ask it almost definitely will not come. The rub, of course, is that you don't know what you don't know. It didn't cross Unaware Big Man's mind to ask me for my feedback on his dinner participation. I suppose the solution is to solicit feedback even when you think you did a good job and to do so without seeming needy or insecure.

2. It's harder to get feedback on more permanent personality traits or long-standing habits. My friends Maria and Colin have solicited this type of feedback via the Nohari and Johari exercises, but it's awfully hard to ask someone to assess your character in the abstract. If you're looking for this kind of what-do-you-think-of-me-as-a-person commentary, here's an idea from a friend. Tell someone: "I'm having a hard time dating. Why do you think people are not that into me?" This will prompt a range of "ideas" about what might be unattractive about any and every aspect of your being.

3. When I ask people whether they get honest feedback, sometimes they say, "Of course I do. I always give people honest feedback, and they know this is the case -- and so I have no problem receiving it in return." Not only does this not logically follow, but these types of bull-in-china-shop people are exactly the personalities which intimidate potential feedback-givers. My theory: If you give blunt feedback, you are actually less likely to get blunt feedback in return. The law of reciprocity does not apply here.

4. Should we value feedback less when it comes from people who don't know us than feedback that comes from people who do know us well? Intimacy to a person means you are more likely to be forthright but also more biased and invested in a relationship. Also, how much does anonymity increase honesty and is the tradeoff of not being able to contextualize feedback worth the honesty boost that comes from anonymity?

We Like to be Shocked Because It Means We're Innocent

2009-10-21T13:21:22-07:00

The other day, sitting in a cafe here in Nicosia, Cyprus, I glanced at CNN International on the TV as the anchor ran through the headlines. Serious dispatches from Africa, from Europe, from Colombia, and then...from the leader of the free world...balloon boy!

Lee Siegel, on the incident that dominated the headlines, writes:

Along with the primal terror of a threatened child, there is something about the ordeal of innocence that strikes deep in the American soul. We are still shocked by everything, by sex scandals, by marital infidelity, by corruption, by violence, by public displays of anger—not an hour goes by when society is not rocked, briefly, by alarm, and then hysteria over Something That Happened Out There. We like to be shocked because we like to think of ourselves as innocent enough to be shocked. So in the spectacle of a child endangered and of all the country’s law-enforcement, and military, and technological resources used to try to save the child, we perhaps see our innocence put to the test, and our strengths and virtues fully on display in response.

It recalls Robin Hanson's interesting essay on Innocence vs. Insight. Why are we so taken with innocence, an apparently attractive form of ignorance?

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I have yet to find a series of insults and defenses more impressive or hilarious than those that Lee Siegel-in-disguise hurled against his detractors.

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Here's Robin Hanson on why people do not care about inequality of beauty (while we do care about inequalities related to genders or ethnicities). Should we compensate ugly people for their bad luck?

Here's Hanson, in response to David Letterman's forced admission that he slept with female producers on his show, in praise of blackmail.

What I've Been Reading

2009-10-20T10:48:00-07:00

A politics kick:

1. The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy by Joe Mathews

A stupendously researched account of the first years of Schwarzenegger's governorship of California. It is sufficiently detailed as to only probably interest those who follow California politics, but then again, isn't everyone intrigued by The Governator? After reading you feel sympathetic to Arnold's attempt to reform California and newly cynical about the prospect of anyone being able to effect meaningful change. The title of the book refers to Arnold's strategy of governing via ballot initiatives and circumventing the legislature. His success in office has depended on whether the people vote up or down his many ballot initiatives. Voters are influenced by the interest groups which run California. When the teachers' unions came out against his slate of initiatives a few years ago -- spending millions of dollars to flood the state with ads bashing Arnold and his proposed reforms, which included such insane ideas like lengthening the time it would take for teachers to gain tenure from 3 to 5 years -- his initiatives went down, along with his governorship.

2. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough

A good look at TR's childhood and early influences. McCullough is masterful, as ever. Here's Edith Wharton on TR:

...he was so alive at all points, and so gifted with the rare faculty of living intensely and entirely in every moment as it passed...

Living intensely and entirely in every moment as it passes: not a bad goal.

3, 4. Dead Right (1992) and Comeback (2008) by David Frum. Frum is one of the wisest conservative commentators. I support his new project, Newmajority, which (unofficially) stands to rebuke the Sarah Palin wing of the Republican party -- and her talk radio side-kicks -- and instead promote a smarter renewal of a conservative movement. Dead Right is more serious and comprehensive and I recommend it to anyone interested in an insider's take on the conservative scene in the 80's and 90's. Comeback is positioned as a playbook for the Republican Party in the coming years but it struck me as rushed and not terribly persuasive. I am intrigued at Frum's evolving view on the role social issues should play in the Republican Platform. His shift is evident when you read his two books back to back. Myself, I am not at home in the Republican Party because of the social views they espouse and so I am always interested in how GOP commentators position their party on this front for the future, given changing demographics and related views on gay marriage and the like.

My Commonplace Book - Words and Phrases

2009-10-19T10:16:00-07:00

When I come across a new word in a print book I'm reading, and I want to remember it, I write it down in my commonplace book. (Here's the history of commonplace books.) I do the same with cool phrases or sentence constructions.

Here's the link to my commonplace wiki. You can't edit it, but you can view recent words and phrases. In the phrases section, I will sometimes note how it can be used in writing. E.g.:

"fashion a narrative" (fashion = to create)
Splendid, but I part company at the last sentence. (to set up disagreement)

My challenge is I have bits and pieces in various places. For example, my favorite Updike or Wallace lines are not on this wiki.

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Colin Marshall: "I've come to find myself asking only two qualities of a writer: honesty and clarity. The rest is window dressing."

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Justine Musk's latest gem on writing. She echoes other advice I've heard: go out and experience the world, then write about it. Or as Thoreau put it: one ought to "stand up and live before you sit down and write." She hits on other themes and arrives here:

Writing fiction is serious business. It demands nothing less than everything you’ve got to give: your blood, sweat, heart and soul; your time; your ego. You expose yourself in your work and again when you show your work. It deserves to be taken seriously, and yet somehow we have to find a way to treat it lightly, hold it lightly, so it doesn’t slip away from us.

The End is Not Fixed

2009-10-16T12:01:00-07:00

A 20-something friend, uncertain and a little anxious about her life path, emailed an old professor of hers for advice. Here's what he said:

Don't think too much and don't worry (advice from someone who did too much of both). Dewey has a lot to say about being on the road. The most important thing is to give up the idea that the end is already fixed. It is happening in real time. Be in what you are doing, and always remain open -- there are opportunities that will be created that don't even exist yet. Just be there. They'll come.

We are all on the road, and the end is not fixed.

The Evolving Uses of Twitter

2009-10-14T13:00:00-07:00

I've been using Twitter for almost three years. I was an early adopter even by tech industry standards; the only guy I know (personally) who's been using it longer is a seed investor in the company.

So it's been interesting to see how the service has evolved from its original purpose (answering the question "What are you doing?" -- i.e., status updates) to a broader range of uses.

My preferred way to use Twitter is:

Status updates: I enjoy being able to passively keep up with what my friends are thinking and doing. Twitter is excellent at this; Steven Johnson notes the "ambient awareness" that Twitter enables and the "strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines."

Micro-blogging: A self-contained thought or theory. You'd be surprised how much profundity can be conveyed in 140 characters! (From others, of course.) I also tweet quotes I read in the offline world. Online I just tag in delicious.

I am not enthusiastic about the following three uses:

Direct communication. It's hard to directly communicate with a person on anything of substance. "Conversations," while the touchstone word in social media, cannot really happen on Twitter. The 140 character limit is limiting and gets tiresome. No threading makes it unmanageable for anyone who gets a lot of replies. Conversations take place in the comments sections of blogs; not on Twitter.

Link dumping: Some people post lots of links on Twitter. I don't like this. If I'm going to follow someone's bookmarks, I'd prefer to read it in delicious or a similar social bookmarking service. I use delicious voraciously. Twitter links are hard to view if you're reading it on your phone; they're not indexed or organized in any coherent way (no tags); they're always shortened so you can not quickly see what the site is before you click it. My friend Steve Silberman prolifically tweets links. I now subscribe to his twitter feed via RSS and I will do this with any other similar user.

Re-publishing RSS feeds into Twitter: This is when bloggers publish the link of a new post into their Twitter feed. If I subscribe to someone's blog via RSS, I don't want to see it on Twitter. For one, it means I'm seeing the same piece of content twice. We need universal, portable read/unread states! Second, it can tempt me to click on the link and read the post, which is inefficient. Batching tasks (such as reading blogs via RSS) is more efficient than randomly clicking links whenever you're scrolling through the timeline. All this being said, I see the argument for re-syndicating it. There are probably a thousand or two people who follow my tweets but not my blog.

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Speaking of RSS, is Twitter killing RSS? Chris Dixon is the latest to jump on this train. He writes:

I’ve used Google Reader religiously since it launched. I’m a few days away from quitting it forever. Pretty much every blog I read tweets the titles of their posts along with a link. Better yet, the people I follow retweet their favorite links, providing a very efficient way for me to discover new articles to read and publishers to follow.

I see Chris's logic as: a) I like Twitter because of the social filter -- my friends link to cool stuff. b) My friends also link to their blog posts on Twitter. c) Thus, whatever shows up in my RSS reader I've already seen on Twitter.

I arrive at a different place than Chris because I don't value (a) as much as he. My RSS reader is itself a social filter. I subscribe to 200 feeds and get all sorts of great content through it. The content comes neatly organized, with longer summaries, categories, and full URLs. By comparison, Twitter is noisy, unorganized, and limited by 140 characters. If you step back and ask, "What's the best way to get content?" I think most would say RSS. The social filter/discovery of Twitter then must be good enough to surpass the inherent advantages of RSS. Not for me.

(thanks to Tyler Willis for conversations on this)

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Three final things:

1. Twitter Inc. will be a fine business. If they wanted to generate millions of revenue immediately, they could.

2. Real time search is the real deal. The Golden Triangle: mobile, real-time, social.

3. When people tell me they've stopped blogging and now only tweet, I want to reply, "So what you're saying is the essence of everything you want to say can be expressed in 140 characters?"

Tragic vs. Utopian View of Human Nature

2009-10-13T12:02:00-07:00

Beliefs cluster. If you find out someone is an environmentalist, she probably also is sympathetic to rehabilitating offenders, affirmative action, generous welfare programs, and gay marriage, is a secularist and a professor or student. If you find out someone favors a strong military, he probably also "supports judicial restraint, laissez-faire economic policy, is more likely to be pragmatic than idealistic, censorious than permissive, meritocratic than egalitarian, and gradualist than revolutionary." If you find out someone is religious, she probably also supports lower taxes.

Here's a game to play while driving. When you see an activist-like bumper sticker on the car in front of you, guess the person's beliefs. For example, if I see a bumper sticker for the National Organization for Women with a pro-choice message, I bet I can accurately predict 95% of their beliefs on political and social issues.

Thomas Sowell has offered an audacious explanation for why beliefs cluster like they do: the collections each reflect a different fundamental view of human nature. Sowell sorts human nature into two camps: the Tragic Vision and the Utopian Vision. Steven Pinker summarizes it in The Blank Slate, which is where the quote in my first paragraph comes from. Excerpt:

In the Tragic Vision, humans are inherently limited in knowledge, wisdom, and virtue, and all social arrangements must acknowledge those limits. "Mortal things suit mortals best," wrote Pindar; "from the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing can be made," wrote Kant. The Tragic Vision is associated with Hobbes, Burke, Smith, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the philosophers Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper, and the legal scholar Richard Posner.
In the Utopian Vision, psychological limitations are artifacts that come from our social arrangements, and we should not allow them to restrict our gaze from what is possible in a better world. Its creed might be "Some people see things as they are and ask 'why?'; I dream things that never were and ask, 'why not?'" The quote is often attributed to the icon of 1960s liberalism, Robert F. Kennedy, but it was originally penned by the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw (who also wrote, "There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough"). ...

In the Tragic Vision, our moral sentiments, no matter how beneficent, overlie a deeper bedrock of selfishness. That selfishness is not the cruelty or aggression of the psychopath, but a concern for our well-being that is so much a part of our makeup that we seldom reflect on it and would waste our time lamenting it or trying to erase it.

The theory is not foolproof in approximating bundles of belief. But it does provide a useful framework to understand certain political perspectives. Usually modern liberals tend to hold the Utopian Vision and modern conservatives tend to hold the Tragic Vision of human nature.

Consider public education in America from this perspective.

Conservatives are generally skeptical of the government monopoly of public schools. The Tragic Vision emphasizes the bedrock of selfishness in human nature, and conservatives see public school teachers and their unions as selfish, greedy economic actors like any other -- no more, no less. The Tragic Vision emphasizes that power corrupts and even very smart people at the top can err; conservatives tend to support decentralized control and competition (through charter schools, vouchers, etc).

The Utopian Vision emphasizes the possibility for great individuals to transcend their darker self-interested temptations and fight for the "greater good." Liberals first see teachers as generous servants fulfilling an important calling, and in political debates give them corresponding deference. The Utopian Vision emphasizes equality, and liberals see government-run public schools as important instruments in this level-playing-field-for-everyone quest.

There are probably better examples of the theory at work, but it's one that jumped to mind as I ponder the state of public education.

Note that Sowell, in his book, actually uses the terms "Constrained Vision" vs. "Unconstrained Vision." The Constrained Vision sees human nature as unchanging and selfish, and the Unconstrained Vision sees human nature as malleable and perfectible.

Feeling Known and Noticed

2009-10-12T15:00:00-07:00

Recently, as I walked to meet a good friend for lunch in New York, I noticed myself feeling unusually relaxed and peaceful. About halfway into our lunch my friend said, "You know, you seem more relaxed than usual." He read my body language well.

It is an observation that draws upon a historical data set, as "relaxed" is a relative term. It made sense: I've known him for seven years. I do not have many close friends who I have known for more than 4-5 years.

Later the next night, at a burrito place, he mentioned I always order steak or pork when I select a meat option in restaurants. This is true. I ate so much chicken growing up that I never order it as my meat of choice. Meanwhile, I noticed he was wearing a new shirt, and we both noticed our mutual friend of seven years was wearing new shoes.

These are trivial examples, but the point is this: noticing slight changes in a person's behavior, appearance, or state-of-mind requires knowing the person well and over a long period of time.

And it is very satisfying to feel known and noticed.

Time. It heals all wounds, wounds all heels, and more than anything else drives intimacy in relationships.

"What Is That?" A Short Story on Film

2009-10-11T20:15:38-07:00

A beautiful five minute clip in Greek with English subtitles, especially for parents:

(thanks to Noorin Fazal for sending)

A Mind Capable of Not Thinking

2009-10-10T21:43:06-07:00

On achieving a quiet mind, from British philosopher Alan Watts:

One cannot act creatively, except on the basis of stillness. Of having a mind that is capable from time to time of stopping thinking. And so this practice of sitting may seem very difficult at first, because if you sit in the Buddhist way, it makes your legs ache. Most Westerners start to fidget; they find it very boring to sit for a long time, but the reason they find it boring is that they're still thinking. If you weren't thinking, you wouldn't notice the passage of time, and as a matter of fact, far from being boring, the world when looked at without chatter becomes amazingly interesting. The most ordinary sights and sounds and smells, the texture of shadows on the floor in front of you. All these things, without being named, and saying 'that's a shadow, that's red, that's brown, that's somebody's foot.' When you don't name things anymore, you start seeing them.

To turn off the mind and observe things without naming them -- to really observe them. To smell the roses instead of analyzing them: I aspire to the level of mind control which I hear enables such present moment living.

Oh, silent meditation retreat, where art thou?

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Here's my post on self-consciousness and one on the art of self-overhearing. Thanks to Colin Marshall for the pointer.

Book Review: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

2009-10-09T16:53:32-07:00

I think a lot about the intersection of globalization and identity. I have lived my whole life in big cities in America where the name of the game is fusion: a bit of this, a bit of that, across the entire cultural spectrum. From art to cuisine to people, big city life in the U.S. is the non-stop sampling of different cultures. A life diet of hybridity is fundamentally American.

I have also traveled to big, cosmopolitan cities around the world, where a similar fusion game takes place. The people of Zurich, Hong Kong, or Buenos Aires practice similar types of cultural consumption (which includes their media/information diet) and therefore maintain mongrelized identities as well.

It's safe to say that I feel a stronger connection to place and people when I'm in a cosmopolitan metropolis overseas than when I am in a small town in America.

Yet, my passport says "USA," and I resist the label, increasingly claimed by fellow big-city dwellers and international travelers, of "citizen of the world." They are usually oblivious to the many ways their country of origin has shaped their worldview.

Plus, to be a "citizen of the world" comes with its own set of obligations to "the world," right? Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher who thinks about the ethical questions that accompany a cosmopolitan identity. His book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers is a relatively academic treatment on this topic.

Here's a sketch of the book:

Our ancestors lived in small tribes where they interacted with a small set of people who they knew. Others were of rival tribes and to be viewed with suspicion. Information about other ways of life didn't really flow into the village. That's changing:

The challenge is to take minds and hearts formed over the long millennia of living in local troops and equip them with ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together as the global tribe we have become.

Appiah's chosen word to describe this task is "cosmopolitanism." He finds it superior to "globalization" (an overused word that can mean everything from a marketing strategy to an economic thesis) or "multiculturalism" (which he says is "another shape shifter, which so often designates the disease it purports to cure"). He admits that cosmopolitanism can have elitist connotations. But it's actually a term rooted more in the idea of cosmos -- the universe: "Talk of cosmopolitanism originally signaled a rejection of the conventional view that every civilized person belonged to a community among communities."

He describes two strands that intertwine in the notion of cosmopolitanism:

One is the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of shared citizenship. The other is that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance. People are different, the cosmopolitan knows, and there is much to learn from our differences.

This raises some tricky philosophical questions about whether we are supposed to, then, be as loyal to the vast abstraction "humanity" as to our neighbor who looks and talks like us. Appiah claims middle ground:

We need take sides neither with the nationalist who abandons all foreigners nor with the hard-core cosmopolitan who regards her friends and fellow citizens with icy impartiality. The position worth defending might be called (in both senses) a partial cosmopolitanism.

But rather than clarify this middle ground by putting forth a prescriptive framework -- i.e, what exactly is our philosophical obligation toward strangers? -- Appiah instead just offers questions:

How real are values? What do we talk about when we talk about difference? Is any form of relativism right? When do morals and manners clash? Can culture be "owned"? What do we owe strangers by virtue of our shared humanity?

He does work through these questions. He rejects cultural relativism; not everything is local custom. He rejects arguments that tie globalization to cultural imperialism or increased homogeneity. (Tyler Cowen wrote a whole book on this; my notes.) He exposes the failings of the "Golden Rule" as a principle to live by. And to his colleague Peter Singer -- who I say is the most overrated living philosopher -- he delivers a very satisfying take-down of Singer's shallow pond theory of saving children.

So he stakes out his middle ground of partial cosmopolitanism more by talking about what it's not. On the positive side, we get a lot of generalities: it's important to talk with people from other cultures, to maintain mutual respect, to learn about other ways of life, and most of all -- his favorite phrase, which captures the modesty of his proposals -- we need the curiosity inherent in a partial cosmopolitan outlook so that we can "get used to one another" and live peacefully together. We do not, he stresses, need to share underlying values or agree on everything.

It feels unsatisfying -- a bit too flexible. But this doesn't mean the book is not worthwhile on the whole. There are many interesting discussions of philosophy throughout, and Appiah's personal story as a Ghanaian immigrant endows his discussion with a passion rarely found in these types of books.

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Here are all my posts on globalization. Here are my posts on Americanism. G. Pascal Zachary makes a related case in The Global Me: New Cosmopolitans and the Competitive Edge. Here's my old post titled "Conflicted Identity as Commonality in America." Here's an excerpt from Yi-Fu Tuan on this topic.

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Other choice sentences from Appiah's book:

"A cosmopolitan openness to the world is perfectly consistent with picking and choosing among the options you find in your search."

"We've identified three kinds of disagreement about values: we can fail to share a vocabulary of evaluation; we can give the same vocabulary different interpretations; and we can give the same values different weights."

"When it comes to change, what moves people is often not an argument from a principle, not a long discussion about values, but just a gradually acquired new way of seeing things."

"We can live in harmony without agreeing on underlying values (except, perhaps, the cosmopolitan value of living together). It works the other way, too: we can find ourselves in conflict when we do agree on values. Warring parties are seldom at odds because they have clashing conceptions of "the good." On the contrary, conflict arises most often when two people have identified the same thing as good.

"Our moral intuitions are often more secure than the principles we appeal to in explaining them."

Say to Critics: Watch and See

2009-10-08T16:26:10-07:00

In 2005, U.N. Secretary General Koffi Annan was struggling with a series of scandals and other challenges in his administration. I read this short quote in a magazine interview with him and wrote it down in my notebook:
Question: Senator Coleman says you are ‘damaged goods.’ What do you say to him?
Answer: Watch and see.
***
I loved the calm, measured, determined response.
You don’t have to defend yourself, or prove yourself to anyone. Just tell them, “Watch and see.” Then go and do whatever you need to do.
Koffi Annan was able to successfully complete his term. Senator Coleman lost his race for re-election last year.

That's from Chris G. I love Annan's answer, too. Actions always speak louder than words.

Can Incremental Reform Hurt Your Chances at Comprehensive Reform?

2009-10-06T14:21:16-07:00

I am excited to see entrepreneurs and venture capitalists lead the Start-Up Visa movement, which seeks to "help raise awareness and change policy around the EB-5 visa, which enables investors from other countries to get a visa in exchange for starting a business in the US with $1M in investment capital and creating 10 US jobs."

Immigrants are an essential part of the Silicon Valley story; they have founded some of our most cherished companies like Google and Intel. And yet, every year the United States turns away educated and talented entrepreneurs who want to start companies in our country; or worse, forces already-in-progress start-up CEOs to leave. The Start-Up Visa aims to make that less common.

Kirk Wylie has posted some criticisms of the Start-Up Visa movement. Among other things, he says:

Because when I hear about things like a Founder Visa program, what I really hear is a general denunciation of US immigration policies and procedures. What I really hear is "We can't hire the people that are necessary for the industries that are important to the country, and we're picking the edge case that we understand the most." That's not good enough. The edge case isn't the problem, the system is the problem.

Kirk argues that we need larger-scale immigration reform and that the proposed Start-Up Visa doesn't solve the bigger problem. VCs Fred Wilson and Dave McClure both comment on the post saying, in essence, "baby steps."

Dave comments:

i'm in support of long-term change to broad-reaching immigration policy in favor of more open borders. HOWEVER, that issue will take time & energy to achieve. OTOH, there is EXISTING legislation that addresses the "edge case" for investor visas that we can quickly modify with a very simple change to make an incremental step forward.

thus, while i'm not AGAINST making the world safe & wonderful for rainbows & unicorns & everyone else, i'm also not a patient person... and i sure as hell don't feel like making this step forward is AGAINST the larger goal -- in fact, it's probably helpful in making incremental change happen sooner, and paving the way for more to come.

Fred comments:

the US immigration system is wrong on so many levels. the startup visa idea is about addressing something we can fix quickly because there isn't much political opposition. i agree that what we should really be fighting for is wholesale overhaul. but perfect is not the enemy of the good. we should do this because we can.

Both Dave and Fred hold the assumption that an improvement on the margins is better than no improvement at all. Dave specifically says that taking a small step does not hurt the chances of taking a large step later on.

This is a logical intuition. But I wonder. In my post titled Symbolic Lip Service in the Form of Small, Ineffective Actions, I argue that sometimes taking a small step in pursuit of large goals -- subscribing to a personal finance blog as a first step toward saving more and spending less -- can actually lower the likelihood of you ever doing the big thing as you can more easily delude yourself into thinking you've taken care of it.

Political strategists grapple with this all the time. Should we settle for incremental health care reform as better than no reform at all? Or if we do that, political capital expended and the attention of the people exhausted for the short and medium term, do we miss our opportunity to pass more comprehensive reform? Health care cannot and will not command the nation's attention every year. "Now or never" is too extreme; but "now or in 7 years, maybe" is probably accurate.

If you obtain a minor victory, your critics will exaggerate the victory and exaggerate their concessions that made it happen. This makes it difficult to return to the well the following year without being branded greedy and unaware.

I don't know where I come down on immigration reform and and I don't know whether the Start-Up Visa represents a strategically smart marginal improvement or whether, if it hits the big stage in Washington, its success will lower the likelihood or at least significantly delay the necessary large scale reform.

Bottom Line: Implementing tough, large-scale changes -- whether in a political system or in an individual life -- usually requires incremental change. But in situations where status quo inertia is most intense and where quid-pro-quo obsessed interest groups are most entrenched, can incremental reform actually hurt your chances at achieving a big win?

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Immigration policy is complicated not least because it awakens people's nationalism. The H-1B visa debate, which has been raging for several years, is in part about whether American companies cannot meet their personnel needs with American workers and therefore need to tap an international pool. Here is my long-ish analysis of the situation. In short, I protest the premise that a worker already in America deserves first dibs on a job offered by an American company and find nothing wrong with a company which would rather hirer an equally qualified worker who will do the job for less pay. By challenging the premise I don't care about all the arguments over whether there is in fact a domestic labor shortage in certain computer science professions, why salaries for engineers hasn't increased at a rate commensurate with a shortage, etc.

The Five Discovery Skills of Innovators

2009-10-04T13:00:00-07:00

In a post on the HBS blog titled How Do Innovators Think?, a pair of professors who interviewed 3,000 creative executives riff on the five skills common to all:

The first skill is what we call "associating." It's a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.

The second skill is questioning — an ability to ask "what if", "why", and "why not" questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture.

The third is the ability to closely observe details, particularly the details of people's behavior.

Another skill is the ability to experiment — the people we studied are always trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds.

And finally, they are really good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.

Later, they talk about inquisitiveness and curiosity being paramount.

(thanks Zoelle Enger for sending)

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Elsewhere in the world of creativity, the always-interesting David Shenk interviews pianist Keith Jarrett who "emphasizes, paradoxically, how critical it is to clear his mind and set himself free from his own knowledge and habits." To unleash new creative bursts, Jarrett tries to not do what comes naturally on the keyboard.

Also, here's a piece on how falling in love can make you more creative. Thinking about love causes us to think more "globally."

Assorted Musings

2009-10-03T10:23:55-07:00

Your monthly edition of quick thoughts, cheap shots, and bon mots:

1. We go to great lengths to be consistent, especially on decisions central to our identity. I think of this when I meet vegetarians who are not morally opposed to eating animals, nor do they dislike the taste of meat, nor do they champion the environmental reasons, nor do they feel especially healthy in their leafy ways. I know a vegetarian of this variety who gets upset to the point of crying if she accidentally eats meat. Why upset? Because it's inconsistent with long-standing behavior that is long-standing because...it's long-standing. This might also explain why I don't see myself smoking marijuana anytime soon -- it has less to do with any moral opposition or health reasons as much as it would be inconsistent with past behavior.

2. When no party is willing to express a preference out of politeness or genuine deference to another party of the decision -- on what type of cuisine to eat for dinner, say -- the decision-making process often gets trapped in a death spiral of deferential indecision. Certain decision-making tricks are needed. One reader taught me the 3-2-1 rule for deciding where to eat. The first person person names three types of cuisine (Chinese, Japanese, and Indian). The next person picks two of those three (Indian and Japanese). The next person picks one of those two (Indian). Done!

3. I know men who are on the fence about whether they should get a prenup before marrying. The prenup question looms in their mind when they date women: Would I want a prenup before marrying this woman instead of that woman? It acts as a good proxy for underlying trust. Myself, I plan to do a prenup with whomever I marry, no matter how much I trust or love her. By declaring this now, I hope she will not take it personally. There's no easy way to have the conversation but I think it will go better if I have a long-planted stake in the ground. It reminds me of how to win a game of chicken.

4. This is the best last line to a blog comment I've read in a long time: "As Pressfield might say, shut up and get back to work. Insert smiley face here, if necessary."

5. Comment of the Day on my post about short bullshit motivational sentences: "You don't hang around with people like this, but there are a lot of folks who need to read this apparently vapid motivational content over and over until they get off their duffs and in fact do something, anything, that expands their horizons just a feather. At least until personality transplant technology advances."

6. Early on in a romantic relationship, in the courting and shameless flirting stage, sarcasm, irony, witticisms, etc. characterize the communications. At some point, the tone shifts to be more earnest. Instead of witty indirect acrobatics to indicate that you miss the person, you might just state simply: "I miss you." The shift to earnestness in communications represents a milestone in a romantic relationship.

7. Speaking of romance, and speaking of being individuals in an individualistic culture, finding romance is harder when the other fish in the sea conceive of themselves as individuals. It's harder, for example, to know what women want. 30 years ago if I met a woman I was interested in I could be pretty sure that if we were to marry I would be the one working and earning the keep, and she would be the one doing the actual keep. Now...who knows? So men spend more time searching. Women, meanwhile, are stuck with a ticking clock....

8. On September 11, 2009, I overheard an elementary school teacher, on a PA system, tell the students, "Eight years ago, some not so nice people knocked down some of our buildings." It reminded me why I could never be an elementary school teacher: the need to dilute and dumb down a message to be age appropriate. And as the saying goes, You are the average of the five people you spend the most time around.

9. Your Facebook profile picture should be of yourself. People who include their friends are trying too hard to signal popularity or that they have close friends at all. People who include their significant other in that small little square picture perhaps are insecure about their relationship. It's like people who have pictures of their family in their office on their desk. If the pictures are facing outward, it's to signal something. If they're facing inward -- toward the owner sitting at desk -- it's to be a comforting reminder.

10. Call bullshit when someone says, "I'm bad at staying in touch." Tactically, it's not hard to stay in touch. Therefore, this is more a statement of priorities -- you don't want to stay in touch. (The same can be said whenever hear, "I'm too busy to do X." Priorities.) A variation on this sentiment that is more honest: "I underestimated my desire to stay in touch, and now it's too late to re-kindle anew." Though I would say: it's never too late to try to re-kindle what once was.

11. Taunter Media is a blog written by a smart dude with an entertaining style. Here he is on why Chicago should be happy they didn't win the Olympics. Here he is in praise of the Polanski arrest.

(thanks to Steve Dodson and Aleksandra K for helping inspire some of these musings.)

Parenting Line of the Day

2009-09-30T21:50:27-07:00

From a review of Edward Kennedy's posthumous memoir:

Kennedy tells us that when he was still a child his father once let him know that he had a choice between living "a serious life" and a "non-serious life."
"I'll still love you whichever choice you make,” his father, the bootlegger, wrote. "But if you decide to have a non-serious life, I won’t have much time for you."

Imagine as a child hearing that from your father! I think the better emphasis is personal happiness and fulfillment. But does the parent's emphasis even matter?

Not as much as most people think. Bryan Caplan, in his now gated article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, writes:

The punch line is that, at least within the normal range of parenting styles, how you raise your children has little effect on how your children turn out. You can be strict or permissive, involved or distant, encouraging or critical, religious or secular. In the long run, your kids will resemble you in many ways; but they would have resembled you about as much if they had never met you.

There is plenty of other work on this topic; twin studies are some of the most interesting. I am not optimistic that it will become mainstream thinking in the near term. The parenting industry -- and it is an industry, all those books and tapes and classes on how to groom the next Einstein -- is large and profit hungry.

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Here are all my links on parenting. Here's why I love my parents. Here is the key to life in one simple flowchart.

Life: Your Adventure in Entrepreneurship

2009-09-29T18:47:10-07:00

David Kelley has a great piece up on The Atlas Society site entitled Life: Your Adventure in Entrepreneurship. You don't have to be an Objectivist or Randian to appreciate it. He discusses the spirit of entrepreneurship and how it applies in all parts of life. Here's the opening graf:

The entrepreneurial spirit is the spirit of enterprise: ambition to succeed, initiative in taking action, alertness to opportunity. It means being proactive rather than reacting to events and opportunities as they come along. It involves a full acceptance of the responsibility for initiating action to achieve one's goals, and for dealing with the consequences that arise as one does so.

I liked this bit on self-ownership:

Not all of us own the businesses we work for. But all of us are self-owners. The concept of self-ownership is a partly metaphorical way of capturing the fact that individuals are ends in themselves. That fact is easier to state in the abstract than it is to embody in the concrete, in one's actual outlook and practice. The sense of self-ownership manifests itself in the kind of total autonomy that leads us to say of someone: "He is his own man." It involves a commitment to one's own happiness as a true end-in-itself—not something one has to apologize for pursuing, not something that one may enjoy only on condition that it serves some other end. It involves the ability to experience happiness without any tendril of guilt at having succeeded. It involves a sense that the only person one answers to, ultimately, is oneself.

Read the whole thing.

Thanks to DaveJ for sending, who also sent me this worthwhile piece on the Myth of Crowdsourcing.