Author: naterothstein

I tell myself that I want to avoid new year resolutions because they don’t work.  But part of me also thinks I’m avoiding them because I don’t want to put in the discipline to make them work.  Of course things like “lose weight” or “stop drinking” tend to fail when not executed in a systematic way, but there are more practical or workable resolutions that can 100%  be executed if done in a thoughtful way.   The hard part is deciding on what to do prioritize and make the effort.  Decisions.

This past year I kind of made a resolution to do 1 post a month.  I kind of kept it, at least started one post per month if not completed in the  month, but in December, for some reason I didn’t even start. I kept putting it off.  Barely even touched my writing, which was going in a pretty good direction throughout November. Not sure why.  I did enjoy it, and it’s where I want to be long term.

So what’s going on? Some thoughts:

1. Fear of Failure: I feel like this lurks forever in the subconscious.  You can’t fall if you don’t try.  I know consciously that trying and failing is valuable  in itself; I know that if I want to have any sort of professional outcome for writing I need to start somewhere; yes consciously I know exactly what I need to do, how do it,  and why to do it. Yet it doesn’t happen.
2. Fear of Wasted Time: This is less about the failing directly, more about the fact that I know it will hours and days of time to write something that is just crappy.  Let alone any good.  And given the odds of anything material coming out of this, is it worth the time?  This pairs with other career progress and the fact that I could be spending that time working on something else advancing those career interests which I know would have a more direct impact. Or at least a higher likelihood of impact.
3. Laziness: The least subconscious of all. I simply don’t have the willpower or desire to do the work.

Perhaps there are other things as well.  But what is interesting is that I’m fully capable of overcoming those 3 blockers when not in the pursuit of writing: I’m happy to test, fail and learn at work; I waste tons of time in pursuit of things that don’t advance any material objectives for me (and I’m not talking about TV or stuff like that, I mean actually idle time like on twitter or the internet), and I’ve done all sorts of things that require lots of initiative and the opposite of laziness.  So what to conclude?

What”s interesting is that this kind of the opposite of situation as the tragedy we see in Moby Dick: Rather than continuing on a path one knows will lead to bad things; one is avoiding a path that will lead to good things. It’s not about persisting in self-destructive behavior, but avoiding self-improvement behavior.   But is it as simple as why people avoid the gym or eat poorly when they know it’s bad? Is it just a matter of motivation?  Perhaps.  When people pursue self-destructive behavior it’s usually because that behavior is the “easier” path or, in the case of Moby Dick, a strong internal drive pushes them despite what the intellect might say.  In the self-improvement view, it easier to avoid the fear or be lazy, and than do what the intellect says as well. So in both cases effort and the right incentives are required to make progress.   It’s an interesting topic, worthy of further analysis, and perhaps a story.

Decisions. Regardless of all that, perhaps I have not made the formal decisions to spend my time in these pursuits.  Similar to the concept of “affirmations” that Scott Adams talks about, making the decision more concrete, somehow, could lead to more actions.

What’s required is a plan.  And a system. A New Year’s Resolution: not to write more, but to develop a system that works for me to write more.  Even if I don’t finish my stories in 2020, let’s call it a success if I can develop a system that gets me writing or making progress writing on a regular basis.

 

 

I heard Sam Harris use that phrase first on Eric Weinstein’s show.  He was referring to Republican Party in the age of Trump, I believe.  The specific context doesn’t’ matter, the phrasing was perfect and was generally referring to the fact that Politicians often engage hypocrisy, often quite transparently. (Although in the particular case he was talking about the flavor of hypocrisy was indeed quite “Delicious”).

Hypocrisy in politics is interesting; a similar dynamic to the Lying stuff I wrote about last month.  It’s supposed to be a bad thing, yet there are few there a few real consequences to it. Particularly in politics.

However it’s different than lying because there’s much less of a gray area in hypocrisy.  It’s pretty black and white.  The magnitude of hypocrisy can vary, but there’s no concept of “white lies” or anything like that with hypocrisy.   There can be nuance in a position, but at the end of the day you’re either saying one thing and acting another way, or not.

And yet again, despite the fact we as society  denote Hypocrisy as a bad thing, we generally don’t treat it that way.   People’s reputations can suffer if they are frequent hypocrites, but there’s a good amount that is generally tolerated, particularly in politics.

In the political context I find this particular interesting: on the one hand they should be the most susceptible to suffering the consequences of hypocrisy. After all, aren’t they elected based on what they say they will do?  I’m not sure any politicians have ever been elected by promising to weigh each decisions based on the specific context and go with the best option available.  On the contrary, they need strong positions and want to be seen holding those position for long amount of time.  When a politician talks about “evolving” their views they are mocked.

Similar to the lying analysis I suggested, where we generally OK if politicians live because the ends justify the means. With hypocrisy, as long as the politician still seems to be promoting the interests of the voter, the particular acts of hypocrisy are not discrediting. To use a concrete example: if a politician runs on a platform of being “Pro-life” and then votes to confirm a judge that is “Pro-choice,” only the voters who cared about abortion strongly would be upset. If people voted for this person based on their position on taxes, and that position remained consistent, the hypocrisy on abortion would not be a big deal.

You might argue that such hypocrisy might cause concern for a voter: couldn’t their issue be next?  That would certainly be a rational approach, but my point is that we already see this happening all the time. Politicians are regularly proven hypocrites, yet get re-elected.  So while some concern should warranted in theory, in practice it doesn’t seem to trigger any changes in elect-ability.

The broader point of both of these posts is that in practice lying and hypocrisy are more of relative negative traits as opposed to absolute negative traits. Yet as a society, we tend to hold them up as absolute flaws. I think the “ends justify the means” explains our treatment our politicians. and people in power generally.  However, I think there is a more charitable explanation when it comes to how we handle regular people in these situations. We all know that “Pobody’s Nerfect.” With hypocrisy, we know intuitively that holding clear positions is way easier said than done. There’s lots of gray in reality, and while it simplifies things to attempt to hold clear moral positions, in practice it is quite challenging. And people change as well. So in practice, we forgive ourselves these hypocrisies.

 

 

In about a year from now we’ll be smack in the middle of the political season. And not just any political season, but a Presidential Season. And not just any Presidential Season, but the TRUMP political season.

And one of the main topics of discussion will be lies: Trump will decried as a liar and it will be offered as a key rationale for why he should not be President. Yet, this was all there in 2016 and he still won.   We’d like to think Lying is a disqualifying action, but the reality is that Politicians lie because it works; people just don’t reject candidates for lying.

In the Trump world, there’s a discussion about the magnitude of lying.  From his book the Art of the Deal:

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

Note how he goes from playing to “people’s fantasies” to an “innocent form of exaggeration.”  And “Truthful Hyperbole” …a newspeak classic.  It kind sounds coherent, but breaks down once you think about it.  It is an illogical concept, to be both truthful and hyperbolic at the same time.  But people would like to believe that there can be a type of truth in exaggeration. In reality, it’s just, as Trump himself notes, playing to people’s fantasies.  People often want to believe exaggerated versions of things, and therein lies an opening for folks like Trump.

But to my first point, we’re not talking about exaggeration, we’re talking about lies. And there is a distinction.  There’s a spectrum of deception and at some point hyperbole or little “white lies” crosses a line and becomes something society deems really bad.   My Hebrew School teacher once told us that when the 10 Commandments said, “thou shalt not lie,” it wasn’t referring to telling someone politely that you liked their cooking or a new jacket they just bought when it wasn’t in fact true.  Where those acceptable lies turn to bad lies is unclear, but I think it has something to do with intent: intentionally misleading people, causing harm–this is all wrapped up in the unacceptable type lying.  Yet Politicians still lie with intent to deceive almost exclusively, and they’re not not rejected by the people for it.

I believe the answer is pretty simple: as Machiavelli observed, if people desire the ends, they will ignore the means.  And at the end of the day people value the end goals of their politicians way more than principles of honesty.  Perhaps this is obvious.  Yet we hear constant criticisms of lying politicians as if their lies themselves are enough to discredit them.  You’d think people would realize lying doesn’t matter…

There’s two takeaways I have from this: I think we need to change the way we criticize Politicians when they lie.  If we want to be effective against lying, we need to change the critique from “you’re lying, therefore you should be disqualified” to something like “you’re lying to make your point, why can you use just use the real facts?.”  The narrative needs to move past the lie, treat is a OK, but the lowest form of argument.

And, more interestingly, I’m struggling with the question of: maybe it’s not so bad that Politicians lie.  The results of elections have major impacts on our lives, life and death in some cases, shouldn’t we use any means possible to succeed?   Because it’s not just politics where lies are acceptable, it’s throughout all life.  I’d rather fight the battle with lies than violence.  If the people can’t see reality for what it is, then truth won’t do much anyway.  More to think on this last one.

Back when the Internet was becoming a major part of society, there was a common concern that  it would usher in an era of ephemera: that the continuous flow of information and entertainment would provide us endless distractions and take away our ability to focus on things for extended periods of time; that our capability to remember things would decay as we google away for forgotten facts–memory becomes a second class need.

However, in an odd twist, the age of ephemera has also led to an age where the past is never really forgotten. In analog days, things said or written years in the past would often stay there: written words lost in the piles and files of ever increasing physical documents.  Things said would remain within a smaller circle of people and be difficult to really break through to the whole of society.  To be clear, it wasn’t so much that past dissolved or ceased to be, but that the effort required to bring things from the past to present in a meaningful way was extremely high.  As result, in Analog days, the past generally stayed the past.

That’s changed. The effort to find a few words in massive of pile of documents has been reduced to a few keystrokes; and the spreading of tales of one’s past can instantly be shared with the entire world with the tap of button.  So we have to reckon with questions we’ve never really had to reckon with before as society: what from the past can be forgiven? And what must be a permanent scar? And, and much more difficult question: do we have different standards for different people?

For this post I’m more interested in that last question: Regardless of what society deems forgivable or not, should there be different standards for people given things like their backgrounds or their contributions to society?

I think we’ve implicitly answered “Yes” in general to Different Standards, however we haven’t defined the different thresholds. A figure like Harvey Weinstein was shunned for his abuses of power while Michael Jackson is still generally accepted.  Arguably Jackson did much worse than Weisnten, but Jackson has given society way  more gifts, and his talents way more clear, than Weinstein.  Or take a figure like Bill Clinton, John. F Kennedy, even Martin Luther King Jr. all figures that are generally lauded for their political / social contributions, yet in private have done things that would of us would consider unacceptable had our close friends or family committed them.

I won’t do a deep dive in this post of all the recent folks who’s pasts have been exposed and how society has dealt with them (A good idea for a follow up though, note to self self). Yet I will say that I’m not sure of the answer whether society should give folks that contribute so much, more slack for the past (or even present) sins.  It’s a new world for sure though, that should be considered.

I recently moved into the suburbs. I was filled with lots of anxiety as we drew closer to the the move date: I had been living in New York for almost 20 years from college through work..  I had a good, convenient situation in my apartment in Brooklyn.  Things were going pretty well.

On the other hand, the apartment was small, the schools are questionable in the city and the end state was always to be some type of house.  My wife and I always wanted to space that comes with a house.  So we made the decision, and bought a house.  It’s pretty much got everything you could ask for: a lot of space, great location for commuting and general walking in the town, small quiet block. Yet, I was filled anxiety and sadness as got closer to the move date.  And even after we moved in.  Did they we make the right decision? Did we move too soon?

The grass is always greener, big life changes are always hard and emotional.  But I wonder if there is something else going on.  It’s not just the change that causes anxiety, but what this move means from a life perspective:  it’s highlighting that perhaps the first part of my life, the individual part, the youthful part, is coming to a close as the second part, the family-raising and middle age towards old age part is now here.  I have passed a certain life milestone and there is perhaps a unconscious notion that I am closer to death than life.

This doesn’t have to be a negative thing.  One can few the overarching arc as having peaked and continuing on a descent. OR one can view the arc as having reached a bottom and starting now on the path up: there’s way more opportunity ahead of me than behind me.  Much more to accomplish; much more to experience with family.  The transition is always hard, but if you’re going to shift to a brighter future, than a transition must be made.   It always comes back to the Dostoevsky quote about a “kernal of wheat” dying to allow for growth and change.  But the death of anything is hard, which comes back to that Jack Bogle quote in my book “Press on Regardless.”  It’s an age-old truth that improvement only come from suffering and pain and fear, not through continuous stream of happy, un-stressful activities.

When you work in an organization, big or small,  you will inevitably encounter a process that doesn’t make sense.  Maybe it’s inefficient, or uses an old, outdated technology or is simply illogical.  You will wonder why the organization continues in this path when there’s clearly a better way!  The answer is not always straightforward.

The general intuition is that it’s some form of Organizational Inertia:  People have been doing things a certain way for years and its works “good enough”.  Most people in the company recognize there is better way, but the effort to change the process would not be worth the improvements from the new process.   It’s only when there’s major issues, or new leadership with lots of energy, that enough force can be applied to break Organizational Inertia and implement the better way.  This is probably the explanation for the majority of cases.  However there can also be a Strategic Reason for that an organizations to move slowly when considering a change to a seemingly inefficient process: they need time to allow the hidden value in the process to emerge.

Think of a process almost like a tradition.  While one may argue traditions exist because of  cultural inertia, there’s another perspective that would argues traditions carry non-obvious values.  This is generally the driver of the Conservative approach to change: we’re not always aware of the complete value or benefit a tradition delivers, so we should be slow to change it.   You could say there’s a kind of natural selection / evolution for a society with regard to tradition.  If a tradition has accompanied a society’s success, then it will continue to survive.  If a culture adopts a certain adopted a process or institution, it might be because its the best option and time tested, even if there are obvious flaws.

So too with company process. As shitty as one may be, it could be the best option and time tested.  The justification for the process might live be hidden, but material edge cases or non-obvious downstream impacts of a process.  So being slow to make changes provides the organization with time to undercover some of these things. Time for the people involved to raise their hands or time to do research on the potential impact.  Time to understand if the results of the process were delivered as result of or in spite the bad parts.

I finished Moby Dick recently and it wasn’t quite what I was expected.   From popular culture I was expecting an action-packed story about Captain Ahab’s hunt for the white whale coupled with some deep ruminations on human nature.  While there is definitely suspenseful moments and fair share of human nature commentary,  at least half the book is almost like a textbook: a deep dive on whales and the whaling industry.  This serves some literary purpose for sure, but finishing the book left me wondering WHY this has stood the test of time?

I read the intro and got my answer: The book hasn’t stood the test of time.  By that I mean it wasn’t a big hit in its day; it wasn’t until the early/mid 1900s or so (almost a century after is was published) that it started becoming a bigger part of the canon that we know of today.  Furthermore, and a better, deeper answer, is that the book is about more than just the excitement of chasing an almost mythic beast.  Captain Ahab’s monomaniacal focus on Moby Dick is not used to show the danger of taking an idea or obsession to an extreme, but to illustrate a more tragic and mysterious elements of the human condition: that we can continue with our obsessions even when we know we are headed for trouble.  In other words, it’s not that a monomaniacal focus can blind us to the danger, rather we become defenseless to stop ourselves even though we know full well what the danger is.

Ahab is contrasted with Ishmael, the narrator and sole survivor of the doomed voyage.  Ishmael goes with the flow, as it were.   His decision to join the crew of the Pequod is not based on a calculation, but a feeling he has that it’s time for him to go back to sea.   He doesn’t research which ship to go on, but goes to the docks and finds one.   It’s not to say that doesn’t think about his actions, but he employs more of a form of pretty good planning: not trying to focus so much on one goal and a linear path to achieve it, but a general goal with just enough planning to make a good amount of forward progress.

Going with the flow, I happened to pick up a book just at the tail end of reading Moby Dick that’s about finding purpose or focus in one’s life; finding one’s “Life work.” (“Let Your Life Speak”, by Parker Palmer). I’m still in the middle of it, but one of the key ideas is that life’s purpose will not come about from trying to sit and plan it out based on set of criteria like your strengths, interests and goals.  Rather, you’re much more likely to find “the way” by reflecting on past decisions and understanding what is NOT “the way.”  In other words,  you need to sort of allow life to happen somewhat in order to see whether you are going on the right or wrong or path.  You can’t force a path towards something that makes sense on paper if it’s not authentic to who you really are.  Rather, you need to discover the path by gradually recognizing what has been inside you all along.  You can get this point by reflecting your past and see what “way closes” behind you.

Tying some of these threads together: it took time for Moby Dick to emerge as the iconic American Tale that we know of today.   Was it because we needed more time as a people understand the depth of meaning in the book? That it wasn’t until we spent many years trying to control our destiny only to rebuffed again and again that we  could intuitively grasp the deeper meaning that this was not simply about catching a whale, but the hard truth that everyone and everything has a limit?   But what is the energy, the inertia, that keeps someone chasing a target they know will only end up in their destruction? That is a discussion for another post.

 

I was thinking about 10 years ago. It didn’t seem like a long time from an intuitive / gut perspective, but it’s actually almost 25% of my life. Really more than that when you factor in that I don’t really remember much until some points in elementary school.  So a good chunk of my life has passed over 10 years, yet it feels much less than the time from high school / college.

I think it’s related to life events.  For me, there’s a big distinction pre and post-business school.   Everything post business school seems to have happened relatively recently, even though that was 8 years ago now. While everything before it seems to belong to much younger version of myself.

I imagine other people have different break points depending on certain critical events in their lives.  I’m at a point where I need to have another break point in my Life Time.

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that.” – George Carlin

Along similar lines, a family friend named Alan Fierverker once remarked on the outcome of some political issues of the day by saying: “You know, half the country is below average IQ.”   It’s tongue and cheek, but the point rings true if you’ve ever been baffled by the collective actions of society at large.  However you define intelligence, half the people are by definition below average, so we must set our expectations and act accordingly.  I  now invoke the “Fierverker Rule” as an explanatory axiom whenever friends and colleagues express confusion at the disconnect between logical courses of action and what they observe people to be doing.

This perhaps comes across as elitist bilge.  Who’s to say who’s an idiot?  It’s always a matter of perspective, some might say.  Perhaps.  But ignore that for now because there is a deeper, richer way to consider the Fierverker rule.    Rather than thinking of intelligence generically, as a fixed quantity that you posses, think of it in specific areas: there’s intelligence around things like Math and Science, which is pretty easy to quantify.  But there’s also intelligence around things like Business or Software development, which are tougher to quantify.   And then even more abstract things like Art or music.

What I’m getting is that even you didn’t get straight As in school, there’s probably an area where you’re in the top half of intelligence.  And it’s important to keep in mind that at least half the people will need to some extra help to understand what seems to come easily to you.

Conversely, even if you’re in the top 1% of something, you’re probably in the bottom half of something else.  So wipe the smirk off your face that emerged when  reading the George Carlin quote.  You might have done something this week that someone else thinks is definition of idiocy.

 

 

“Just Do Something” is rarely an effective strategy for solving problems.  When a problem arises, there can be a urge to “just do something” because then at least you’re not just sitting still.  It’s feels like you’re making progress towards a solution, but that’s not always the case.  Hemingway talks about “never mistake motion for progress” and Shane Parrish talks about “velocity vs. speed.”   So rather than jumping into action, you should pause and use your brain to make sure your actions are the best option to make progress against the problem, not just “something”.

HOWEVER, there are situations where “just do something” is the right approach. I think if the below conditions apply, then this is the right strategy.

1. Negligible Information:  When solving a problem it’s best to gather some information on the situation, develop a hypothesis, and think through the impact (what will the side effects be? does this course of action really solve our root issue or just a symptom? Is it worth the costs?).  However, if you have little to no information from which to build a hypothesis, then you cannot do this.  By definition, you would need MORE information in order to form a thoughtful hypotheses.  “Doing something,” without intention or reason, while unlikely to solve your problem,  will at least provide you some feedback and information about the situation Which could then lead to a better solution.
2. Ability to Correct: Even if you do not know whether the proposed solution will solve the problem, you should take care it doesn’t make the problem worse.  You should ask yourself how reversible is this course of action if we move forward. Ideally, you should be able to reverse or mitigate any impacts when moving on a course of action.

So be thoughtful when you “do something.” Be mindful of whether your actions are the result of well-reasoned hypotheses or if you need to act to gain more information.