What is my Good Work
September 25, 2024
Work that I care about. Work that I feel ownership over. Work that plays to my strengths. I care about brining peace and joy to others. I want to influence the entire experience journey people have when they interact with me and my company. My strengths are empathy, communication, and synthesis.
I enjoyed Paul Millerd’s book, “Good Work”. It inspires me to pursue a life that is my own.
Do (the Right) Hard Things
September 24, 2024
Do hard things with fun people. I heard this said at Running Man. I like this idea. This sounds like what life should be about. I enjoy doing hard things, and when my mind feels like mush and I spend too much time looking at a screen and feeling unproductive, the root of the problem is I usually I haven’t done anything hard lately. Doing something hard is easy when we peg the hard thing to something physical. Running a long distance is an easy hard thing to do - the goal and process is straightforward. Waking up early and going to the gym can be hard, and is pretty easy to do. Alarm goes off, get dressed and go to the gym. Doing these hard things one-off is a challenge, but doing these hard things consistently is another level of hard. This level I try to stick with, but inevitably something in my schedule throws me off and I don’t wake up early for the gym or I don’t go for a long run. I’ve learned to not beat myself up when this happens. And I’m pretty good at flipping the switch back to hard things when I catch myself getting soft and mushy-brained.
Doing hard things is good. And it’s important to know what hard things are worth doing. This is an area I’ve always struggled in, and it’s why I’ve spent time thinking about what good pain is versus bad pain. For example, it’s hard to work every day feeling disconnected to our work. I got dinner with a partner at my firm who said out loud, “make no mistake, I am doing all of this for the paycheck”. I appreciated his honesty and suggested that we start each meeting with, “I pledge allegiance, to the paycheck…” Ironically, the meeting I had with my partner earlier that day was about a potential incentive compensation project for a client, where the entire concept of the project hinges on the fact that employees’ behaviors can be modified by adjusting how they get paid. “Change the incentives, change the behavior” is very true. Which makes me question my incentives, my bi-monthly paycheck. Is being disconnected and disinterested in my work 40 hours a week worth my salary? It’s hard to spend my time on work I feel alienated from, but isn’t it good to do hard things?
This is where I apply my filter of good pain versus bad pain. Good pain is a signal of growth where I am acquiring new capabilities. Bad pain is a sign of shrinkage where I am losing capabilities. Money does not equate capabilities, I think that is an important distinction. So what I’m doing is increasing the money I have, but it is not increasing my capabilities. If anything, I am growing old and not acquiring new skills by continuing this work. The pain of my work is therefore bad pain.
I would prefer to grow my capabilities through hard work, not keep them stagnant or shrink them from inaction. The next question, therefore, is what capabilities do I want, and how do I expand them?
Work
September 23, 2024
I ran an experiment earlier this year where eI committed to writing one LinkedIn post a day for 30 days. I stuck with it, including weekends, and found it mostly easy. I set a reminder on my phone and when I had spare time I’d pop open LinkedIn and write a nugget of wisdom gleaned from my experience in my industry. To my surprise, my LinkedIn profile got a lot of attention. I was getting hundreds of profile views and engagements on my posts, and people were messaging me with personal notes of thanks and professional opportunities. Frankly, writing consistently on LinkedIn with thoughtful content is an easy way to boost professional capital and position oneself as a thought leader. I also found it a bit soul sucking. Sure, it felt nice to get validation that I had some valuable perspectives about my profession, but I also found it performative and personally pointless. A few things I learned from that exercise was: 1) committing to do something daily is an effective way of trying something out, partly because it’s a very simple schedule to keep, and partly because it forces the topic to stay top of mind for a long enough time to determine how you feel about it, 2) I do enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts, 3) I don’t like pigeon-holing my thoughts to what I think my professional network would enjoy, and 4) I actually don’t care much about my professional network.
I’ve been thinking about my relationship to my work for a very long time. Mostly it’s me wondering why I can’t find a job that feels like a good fit. In 10 years I’ve worked for 6 different companies, the shortest being 1 year stint (my first job at an angel-funded start up) and my longest so far being 3 years (at a large consulting firm). In every role, at every company, I find myself wondering how I ended up there and trying my best to fit in while feeling like a complete outsider. I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t me who’s doing something wrong, but instead the modern work world that’s not right. Could that be possible? Or am I stuck in a patten, or mindset, that is keeping me from feeling a sense of connectedness to the work I’ve been doing?
I’m reading Paul Millerd’s new book, “Good Work”, which is about Paul’s relationship to work and his journey away from the corporate world and one into the life of a creator and writer. He shares a thought process he went through that is similar to mine. He writes: “You might be able to keep the costs of your dissatisfaction at bay for years, but eventually your efforts to do so will wreak havoc on your life. To me, this is the greatest risk in the world. I know how hard it was to "recover" from years of cynical disinterest in my work.”
I’m questioning if I’m willing to keep paying the price for cynical disinterest in my work. What could I do if I stopped?
Tension, Curiosity, Optimism
September 21, 2024
“Curiosity is the active engagement of the unknown.” I heard this from Esther Perel, a psychotherapist who focuses on relationships. Her teachings include the acknowledgment that people in relationships are constantly threading a needle between 2 opposing forces; A longing for commitment and freedom, togetherness and separateness, consistency and mystery. She defines intimacy as getting close to your partner without losing sight of yourself, and getting close to yourself without losing sight of your partner. I find this tension in relationships to be extremely interesting, and I think this understanding of relationships can be extrapolated to many areas of life, especially to the idea of growth.
A relationship grows by changing in a positive way, and I believe the driving force of change is the reconciliation of tension through creativity. When tension arises in a relationship, something has to change in order to resolve it - perhaps a conversation needs to happen, expectations need to be reset, or routines need to be adjusted. Something new must be created to resolve tension in order for a relationship to grow. The alternative is the tension will fester and behaviors will adjust to seek relief outside of the relationship, which will starve the relationship and eventually kill it. Curiosity plays a critical role in growing relationships because it’s how we expand our imagination, and we create from our imagination. In other words, we must first believe a successful relationship is possible in order to be curious enough to explore a solution.
Time and time I hear relationships are the most important thing in the world, and I believe this. I’ve heard the best predictor of our life expectancy is how many quality relationships we have. Here’s my definition of a healthy relationship: A healthy relationship in a constant creative resolution of tension within and between individuals. This definition imbues within it the concepts of growth, creativity, and curiosity.
As a closing remark, I’ll point out that tension, curiosity, and optimism are precursors for growth (and coincidentally fits the arc of my own personal development).
Uncertainty, Applying What You Know, Two Truths
September 16, 2024
“You don’t need any more knowledge - you know enough - you just need to apply what you already know.” This was said during a speaker session I attended in the context of some health and wellness protocol, like sleep or diet, but I don’t remember. Regardless, the core message rings true in almost all domains of life. I don’t need more facts about nutrition in order to eat better. I don’t need all the science behind sleeping to get better sleep. I don’t need to know exactly how my life is going to unfold in order to take risks. This is something I’ve struggled with, being trapped in thinking I need more information before I can take next steps. I don’t know, I tell myself. I don’t know how this will go. I don’t know if I’m doing this the right way. I don’t know if this will make me happy. This hesitation is learned. It’s easy to use uncertainty as an excuse not to grow, especially if we’re taught that uncertainty is dangerous.
I think it’s common to be taught uncertainty is dangerous, unfortunately, because a lot of Egos wield uncertainty as a weapon of protection. What kind of person does this? The person who is where we want to be but is afraid that our growth will diminish their capabilities. I’ll phrase it another way: Incumbents with fixed mindsets weaponize uncertainty to keep us from growing.
There is good news. Even without all the answers we can ignore the bark of uncertainty and continue to create our life. This brings me to another gem I learned from Dr. Becky Kennedy’s book, “Good Inside”: two things can be true. It can be true that I don’t know the best path forward AND it can be true that I can still move forward.
Uncertainty is a constant fact of life, but it is not the only fact of life. We can acknowledge that we don’t have all information and still take steps forward using the knowledge we have. We will receive all the information we need through the pursuit of growth.
Growth, Creativity, Pain, Suffering
September 15, 2024
Dr. Martha Beck wrote a book called “The Way of Integrity”, with the goal of helping people get in touch with their True Self and express it to the world. As far as I know, she’s borrowing concepts first described by Carl Jung, the founder of psychoanalysis, who writes about the ideas of the Self and Ego. A quick summary of these concepts:
- Self: our internal blueprint that we’re born with and is unique to us. This is the source of our intuition, dreams, and vision.
- Ego: our outward appearance to the outside world, which is modulated by our conscious thinking.
The teachers argue that our culture socializes us away from our inner self, meaning we modify our behavior according to the expectations of those around us. We learn to do this at an early age when we’re vulnerable and depend on others to meet our basic needs. This behavior modification is smart when we’re young but can be problematic if it chronically stunts the expression of our inner self as we age. Chronically stunting our inner self manifests as mental suffering, and the only way out of the suffering is through growth.
A lot can be said on growth. To me, growth means learning to express our inner self to the outside world, in any circumstance, using creativity. I’d like to focus on growth through the lens of pain. Growth and suffering are connected to each other through pain and are easy to confuse, yet they are extremely different and their distinction is worth noting.
The distinction is this: Growth is the expansion of capabilities, whereas suffering is the diminishment of capabilities. Both are painful experiences. Growing pain comes from our inner self expanding outward against the pressure of the world, while suffering pain comes from our inner self contracting from world. Dr. Beck puts it succinctly, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional”.
Suffering comes from the stories we tell ourself, so we can choose to not suffer by telling ourselves a different story. When our inner self does not yet exist in the world, we do not need to suffer for it. We must move through pain, but we can do so through the pain of growth. We do this by choosing creativity over suffering. It’s a choice.
Before and After
September 14, 2024
I’m having a great time at Running Man. Here’s my concise attempt to describe it: a music festival crossed with a marathon hosted at your rich friend’s dad’s house. It has a festival ground with a main stage and food and merch vendors like a music festival, has a race course - a 1 mile field track - looping around the festival grounds with health and fitness food and product vendors, and there’s a ton of free and healthy drinks and snacks you can grab from tables and fridges all while being hosted by the most friendly and outgoing guys you can imagine. Oh yeah, and there’s a massive sauna - like 10 burning stoves - and about 10 cold plunges that are free to use. There’s more to share about this running festival, like what I learned from an interview with a coach that’s done 40+ Ironman races, a panel on summiting mount Everest, the host Jesse Itzler’s opening talk, and Mike Posner’s post-race set (not to mention what might happen tomorrow). I’ll get into more details later.
A thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the idea of the “before and after” of something, which is often overlooked when we discuss things that require physical presence. Take exercise, for example. Infomercials and fitness gurus love saying things like, “my program only requires 20 minutes a day that you can do from home!“ Sure, the exercise class may last 20 minutes, but that doesn’t account for the time it takes to change into your gyms clothes and shower and change after, so including the before and after it’s really closer to double that. In a more positive example, the before and after of run clubs is my favorite part, especially the after. After running is when you get lunch or drinks and wind down with your running partners and chat. That’s why cafes are so great in bookstores and fitness studios, because they capture and amplify the calm of the before and after of shopping or yoga.
Capitalizing on the before and after is an amazing way to expand an experience. For a family vacation that requires a road trip or flight, start the vacation during that travel time and play games or bring snacks. On the way to Running Man I carpooled with attendees I met in a group chat, so I started making friends four hours before the event started (we stopped for breakfast). I’m doing the same when I leave. Experiences are so much more than the principle activity because of the before and after.
I think that’s part of the reason I enjoyed traveling so much - the before and after of being somehwere is usually the solitude of a flight (plus the before and after of a flight). While my draw to, and withdrawal from, travel is a complex evolution, part of that shift is I’m valuing connection over solitude. I’m beginning to view travel as a severence of connection rather than an opportunity for solitude and reconnection.
My proclivity for splitting time between multiple places (i.e. living nomadically) is another topic I’m interested in exploring further.
Cracking Through Walls
September 13, 2024
I’m on my way to Running Man, a 3-day event focused on fitness and wellbeing where the marque event is a choose-your-own-distance race around a 1-mile track the circles the outdoor venue. I’ve committed to running a marathon, my first. It’s scheduled to rain all weekend, which will make for an interesting weekend. Best case it turns the weekend into a massive, muddy, slip-and-slide summer camp vibe session filled with laughter and new friends. Worst case the makeshift venue of stages and vendors and tents can’t withstand the constant rain and the infrastructure crumbles and the air is filled with Fyre-festival vibes. In either case I can personally choose which type of weekend I want, so I’m going for the slip-and-slide version. We’ll see how many other runners choose this option, too. Given the crowd I’ve seen in videos and in the event’s group chat, I think most people will join me.
Turning my attention to the marathon piece, I’m looking forward to pushing myself to the farthest distance I’ve ever run in one go. The longest run I’ve done so far is the Big Sur 21-mile race. During that race I hit a mini wall at mile 15 and a big wall at mile 18. These walls are interesting. They are moments when my body, especially my legs, and my mind said they were done. My pace dropped drastically, my breathing shifted, and my mind started to think about the boring pain of continuing to run, which sapped my will to move on.
Running in that headspace sucks. But getting out of it is amazing.
Getting out of that head space is not a dramatic moment. I initially want to think of that moment as “breaking through” the wall, but the shift out is not an acute, explosive break. It’s more like a “cracking” through the wall. I’ll explain.
The moment I start to climb out of this painful headspace of “my body is cooked” is the moment I gain awareness over some aspect of my body and exert willful control. It’s when I become more aware of my breathing pattern or my running form. Once my awareness takes hold of one of these patterns, I start to experiment with toggling that pattern. I might slow down my breathing, change my inhale-exhale rythym, or I might try lengthen my stride. Inevitably, this mindful physical adjustment creates a different physical experience that lessens the pain and increases pleasantness. The enduring pain corners my awareness to focus on the control I have over my physical experience. Even if the new physical experience remains a challenge, knowing I have the power to make adjustments is invigorating and gives me the energy to continue running. It starts with the crack of awareness.
Awareness is such a powerful tool. Expanding our awareness beyond it’s typical domain is the hallmark of curiousity, learning, and open mindedness. However, expanding our awareness is extremely difficult to do without a mechanism that exposes our minds to the possibility of an experience outside of our awareness. I’ll call this the “outside”.
I’d like to expand on this idea of the “outside”. The outside can be a challenging place to go. I wonder what the psychology is behind open mindedness and willingness to expand one’s awareness. I imagine we are hardwired to be suspicious and fearful of the outside, and that certain conditions must be met in order for us to be comfortable exploring the outside. I expect attachment theory to play a role here. For instance, a child is more likely to engage in an unfamiliar environment if they are securely attached to a nearby caregiver.
I’m looking forward to thinking more about this.
Cynicism & Wicked Learning
September 12, 2024
According to Dr. Jamil Zaki, cynicism is a worldview in which the believer, called a cynic, believes that people are inherently greedy, selfish, and untrustworthy. A cynic believes everyone’s actions are driven by selfishness and that trusting others will lead to being taken advantage of. Cynics start to monitor others’ behavior for untrustworthiness as a form of perverse confirmation bias. In turn, people feel uncomfortable around cynics. It’s no wonder that cynics live more isolated lives and are less connected to friends and loved ones.
Having grown up around cynics, I can attest to the discomfort.
Interestingly, cynicism is a form of “wicked learning”, which is the idea that some negative beliefs become self-reinforcing because they prevent any challenges to the belief. For example, cynics believe people are untrustworthy so they never fully trust anyone. Because they never fully trust anyone, they never give themself the chance to experience trust and reverse their belief. In other words, prior learning prevents future learning. The adopted belief becomes frozen and unthaw-able.
The wicked learning of cynicism is tragic and makes it so hard to reverse. Dr. Zaki offers a few strategies to combat cynicism:
- Adopt a skeptical mindset of your beliefs. If your gut reaction is to not trust somebody, challenge that belief.
- Engage in reciprocity. People tend to reciprocate behaviors - for example polite manners are responded to with polite manners - so if you are proactively trusting with someone it will encourage them to be trusting back.
- Savor social moments of trust. Be mindful of moments in every day life where you witness people acting selfless for one another, and recognize that most people are looking out for one another.
I’ll make a connection to something Dr. Paul Conti, a psychiatrist, says about trauma. He define trauma as something that overwhelms your defense system and changes your behavior. Dr. Conti explains that trauma can be experience acutely (a major event like an accident), chronically (small events repeated over time), or empathically (absorbing someone else’s trauma through long exposure to their experience, like what a therapist might experience). This makes me wonder if cynicism would be considered a form of trauma according to Dr. Conti, as it’s an adopted belief that lodges itself in the believers brain and alters their behavior.
I consider myself a recovering cynic.
Emotional Intelligence
September 11, 2024
According to Dr. Marc Brackett’s, the Director of the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence, Emotional intelligence is how we reason with and about our emotional feelings. Emotional intelligence can also be thought of as a set of skills, summarized by the acronym RULER:
- Recognizing emotions - reading them in yourself and in others
- Understanding emotions - understand where they are coming from and their consequence
- Labeling emotions - being precise with the words we use to describe our feelings
- Expressing emotions - knowing how and when to express emotions to different people
- Regulating emotions - the strategies we use to manage daily emotions
- Be nonjudgmental
- Be an active listener
- Be compassionate
Dr. Kennedy offers this three-step process to regulating our emotions:
- Acknowledge the emotion (Ex. saying out loud, “hello, anxiety”)
- Validate the emotion (Ex. Saying out loud, “I’m feeling anxious, this makes sense given the situation”)
- Permit the emotion (allow yourself to feel it, don’t ignore or suppress it, say “I can cope with it“)
Six Truths
September 10, 2024
- We come from nature and will return to nature. Nature is a creative force that is always growing and seeking balance.
- Integrity is being true to our Self. We are born with our world inside us, and we choose what to express and suppress. Living with integrity means honoring our inner world with our outer world actions.
- Trust is believing that others care for our wellbeing. Trust let's us be vulnerable and connected to others, and is required to feel a sense of belonging.
- The purpose of life is creativity, which is the act of realizing our imagination.
- Growth is the continued pursuit of creativity.
- Everything is in service of creating meaningful relationships.