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Category: Life Tips

  • Five Lessons of PAX and Burning Man

    My first version of this blog post was to pit PAX West, my favorite conference, versus the simultaneous Burning Man Festival, which I\’ve been curious about but unable to attend. Yet this seems distasteful to me now that there has been a suicide there. I have no desire to take down Burning Man, to kick them when they\’re down. Indeed the more I read, the more I respect it.

    Pax and Burning Man have more in common than I expected and both transcend their surface appeal of video games and sex, respectively. What makes them so special?

    First, some facts:. They are growing, each drawing over 70k people (of course, PAX does this three times a year).  PAX West occurs on Labor Day weekend with \’Man, and both are on the West Coast. They involve the option of dressing up (or down), and both have music tightly integrated into the experience. What is it about these two events that makes them so helpful or valuable to so many? I\’ve found five items…there are probably more.

    1. SELF-EXPRESSION  – There are many installations at Burning Man that are simply astounding, like here, and here. People will paint everything so careful what you search on there, bub. PAX has fantastic costumes as well, encouraging attendees to Cosplay, costume play, as their favorite characters from the entertainment world, like here and here. Astounding effort goes into both, and it\’d be tempting to think that Burning Man, with its enormity, would have the market cornered on this one. The Gentle Reader must understand that video games are a form of expression. Both attendees and vendors are in a symbiotic dance of creation and fandom, amplifying one another ad infinitum. Finally, video games are literally creating new worlds and experiences, sans drugs. During this PAX, I wore the Oculus system and became the Hulk.  It was weird and wonderful and transported me to another place, without going to a desert.  This was my new world, with my huge arms –

    Check out a review of that experience here – but TL;DR – it was amazing.

    At the end of the day, both PAX and Burning Man are tornados of creation and both are bound by time. Like the smoldering remains of over 30 burns in the desert, video games and their millions of lines of code are like sandcastles, cast into the trash bin the next time a great graphics engine comes out.   – – – Lesson 1: Create something new, experience something new, and then let it go

    2. ENTERTAINMENT- Every video game and board game in existence show up at PAX, with Twitch and YouTube live vying for interviews and streaming games. Those in for quieter fare go to the dozens of board game areas, console play areas, PC play areas, vintage video game areas, or…pausing for effect..go to a panel of video game experts to learn how to participate. Burning Man has a program full of events, and, like PAX, you feel almost feel more FOMO for going than not, since you become aware of what you\’re missing out.  I got more steps during PAX than I did at the Seattle Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon. Fun can be exhausting. Speaking of gaming, Drift Hunters can immerse you in the world of racing, providing thrills and excitement.        – – – Lesson 2: Have fun, Let Go, and pace yourself. 

    3. SENSE OF HOME:  On the binding of the PAX conference guide the term – \”Welcome Home\” appears.  This term comes up again, but in a welcome at Burning Man: \”When I told people that it was my first Burn, many of them said, \”\’welcome home\’\”.  Even a conservative got a warm welcome, which is as fantastical as any outfit at either event. It goes without saying that at both conferences there\’s plenty of geek and nerds. A good chunk of both populations were in the AV Club, Computer Club, chess club, or played Dungeons and Dragons. I\’d gamble many of them had a heck of a time surviving the Darwinian grinder we call school. I know I did. These folks are survivors. They are creating, building, working, and showing their stuff for all to see (in more way than one). They\’re creatives, through and through, and have brought their uniqueness home, a home that they too created.  – – –  Lesson 3: Find and make your home

    4. VALUE:  Both of these events cost a TON of money. PAX tickets are spendy, but not nearly as spendy as the \’Man, who will run you over $400 just to get your vehicle in. People work hard to build a city for a week with no resources and then leave zero footprint on the place. I agree with the aforementioned conservative- he wishes all cities were run with Burning Man principles shown below. In PAX, people are constantly giving you merch, discounts on computer gear, hats, and mouse pads, but like going to Costco, it\’s hard to leave without dropping several hundred bucks before you know it.   – – – Lesson 4: Save your money and spend it where it counts most

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    5. SELF-DISCOVERY: Being with strangers, completely dependent on their generosity, and facing a week without electronics and connection to the world seeps of self-discovery. Burning Man has the temple, where you put names of loved ones you\’ve lost, messages you want to send to them or to the world.  This whole thing is built around self-discovery and I would go just for that one reason. Now, PAX is a bit more of a stretch. There is little quiet, since the days are packed with people and activities. And yet there are many moments in the five years I\’ve attended PAX where I wondered about the future. Where is all of this going? How do I, as a techie and story teller, work in this new medium? What ethical/moral challenges does this new age present to society? How will VR change the world? You have to make time for the self-discovery or it won\’t happen, even in a desert.   – – – Lesson 5: Make the time and space for self-discovery

    WRAP-UP –   Nearly 200,000 people go to these two events combined, celebrating life, who they are, and what they\’ve created, together. What works for them should work for you.

    The point – By saving your time and money to seek out self-expression and a sense of home, mixed with some fun and self-discovery, you are sure to find strength for the real world, giving yourself fuel for expression and engagement.

    What is your PAX? What is your Burning Man? What is that thing that you do to challenge yourself, revive, and reinspire?

  • It\’s Okay to Suck if You\’re a Team Player – My Lessons from Rocket League

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    Happy Week 21! How\’s your Summer? It just got started, so of course, when the sun comes out, I close the blinds and do the same thing I always do (when not writing) – play a team-based car soccer video game with my sons, aka Rocket League!

    For those not familiar with this video game, first off, shame on you. It\’s amazing, and if I\’m going to be obsessed with it, you should be too. If you decide to try it, know that initially, you\’re going to suck at this game. It\’s  compared mostly to soccer with cars (football for everyone not in USA) but those in the know would say it\’s gameplay is more similar to hockey. It\’s cars hitting a giant ball trying to score goals. Very special cars.

    There are no guns, no shooting, very little more than soccer with cars that have rockets. The cars are invulnerable save the opponents supersonic demolition attack. They can be endlessly customized with items that are earned or purchased. The most fun is flying. It\’s very difficult to do effectively, but some can fly across the soccer field and handle the ball with astonishing grace. Gentle Readers, this sort of game is the future, if not this game specifically. Check out this trailer and tell me it doesn\’t give you chills.

    The amount of skill and practice that goes into that should forever banish the concept of \”just a video game\”.  Rocket League, like all e-sports games, has a robust ranking system, going from Bronze I to Grand Champion.  Those at the top of the ranks do this professionally, for money, and earn a good amount of fame to boot. I am not one of those people.

    You see, with middle-aged eye-hand coordination and limited practice time, I struggle. I\’m still a bottom-rung Bronze I when I play one-on-one matches.  However, this game gives separate rankings when you\’re in a team, and when I team with my two sons, I become a Silver-tier, currently Silver III.  Silver III\’s would destroy me when I\’m alone.  But with my boys, who are far better than me, I\’m better. But here\’s the surprising part – when my sons team with others who are better than me but terrible teammates, they do worse.

    I heard this the other day: \” I\’d rather play with Dad than that guy any day….\”  This is not the norm. Most days my boys are roasting me for missing a shot or an easy save. Eventually, you\’ll be able to see all the awesomeness on our shared channel, where they\’ll be a segment on older gamers trying to play complex video games. For now, take my word for it – I am not good, and very often my sons have to carry me. Yet, we frequently beat teams with players much higher rank than I. Why?

    We play higher than we should because Rocket League is truly a team sport. Unlike other endeavors, say golf, or even other video games such as Call of Duty, it\’s more about your individual excellence.

    In the modern era, most of our endeavors are team based. We are hopelessly interdependent. At work, we depend on our teammates to do the things we\’re collectively committed to, but we also depend on the support folks, e.g. the accountants in payroll, the security guys blocking the hackers, the sales guys landing that next big account. One of the natural responses to an increasingly complex reality is to gather in groups allowing individuals to specialize. Yet, specialization comes at a cost – it means that we generally suck at most other things.

    \"\"II. We Suck at Most Things

    Now, many of those folks might have the 10k hours and natural disposition for their chosen path ( I, for one, think both play a part). Recognizing specialization and building complementary abilities is a skill that those who aspire to lead should work on developing. I\’ve known many developers that have the most cantankerous personalities you wonder how they\’ve progressed through life without being fitted with cement shoes. There\’s the too-directive project manager, the always-late Larry that misses the daily stand-up, or the forgetful database guy who neglects to load your schema changes during a deployment to production.

    This weakness shows up as well in the family domain, which can be worse. If a parent doesn\’t pay a bill, feed the family healthy food, or a thousand other things that adults do, things break.

    Who is good at all the stuff that adults/parents have to do in our complex world? Nobody. Therefore, since we have to deal with our human weaknesses the best way to do that is to be part of a team with complimentary strengths.

    \"\"In the book Group Genius, Kieth Sawyer talks about the W.L Gore & Associates company, creators of the innovation Gore-Tex that keeps us warm in the winter, who organized the company into small tasks forces that constantly self-organized and regroup in response to changing needs. Morse, the guy who created Morse code, required many iterations, and the Internet itself was the collaboration of many ideas and a confluence of countless people\’s efforts, from creation of computers to  HTML, to the database, fiber-optics, and the foresight of government officials to make way for it to flourish (or to at least get out of the way while it happened).

    Final example – As you might know, I\’m working on my first work of fiction. I am working closely with an editor who sees things I did not and has skills I am still learning. Read any acknowledgments section from any author. Even writing, one of the most solitary tasks out there, requires teaming.

    III. Tips for Sucking Less

    There are many conditions that are required for this to work. One, and the one I use in Rocket league to best my betters is Knowing Your Place. I have a keen understanding of where I am in the food chain as  I play this game. I know I can\’t dribble or juke like these other players. This means I stay back more, play more goalie, and wait for the more open shots. I see myself as a support role for my two sons, who have incredible synergy and teamwork.

    You could say that I\’m just being carried along and I\’m \”dead weight\” – and on certain days my boys would agree!  It is true that they have to play on their own to get better, as do I at my level. I\’m not saying that a better player wouldn\’t make the team better. I am saying that I am better at teamwork than many, which enables me to play above my own station and win.

    Right now our team is nearly Silver III, which is astonishing really considering how low I rank on my own. I have no idea how far we can go. I imagine they\’ll need someone at their own skill level if they want to get serious about it, but that doesn\’t change the fact that with teamwork you can get much farther than individual skill and no teamwork. 

    Knowing Your Role  –  Try to find your place in your team, if it\’s at work or in your family or on your team. Don\’t try to be Tom Brady if you\’re a Big Ben – both excellent, just add different things. They know what they can, and cannot do. Steve Largent knew he was a better route runner than blazingly fast like other wide receivers. Know your place and your unique value.  In Rocket League, I\’m far more willing than my sons to play goalie. This makes us better.

    Find complimentary skills and players – one of my sons is fabulous at passing, the other can score like crazy. I try to enable that interaction with both my passing and defense. They feed off of each other\’s excellence, as do I.

    Grow – if I\’m the guy who does defense, then my job is to get better at that. Yes, we\’ll need to be generalists, but think about the T-shaped person – deep in one area, wide in the rest. And yes, I\’ll need to actually score on occasion.

    IV. Summary

    • You\’re going to suck at a LOT of things, but you have to be good at something or at least have the potential to be so.
    • Think about the 10,000 hours concept, which has not been proven, BTW, but carries a lot of cultural weight.  If we have 10k hours, we will not merely be good, we\’ll be in the top 1%, a master, a virtuoso, world class. Of course, that\’s about five years of nearly constant practice, which means we have to be very selective about what we do in that domain. What we\’re going to be world class at probably can be counted on one hand, but reading this counter position might be useful (TL;DR  – The 10k hours thing is domain specific.)
    • For everything else in your life, you will possess a varying degree of suckiness unless you\’ve got a great team around you. However, if you can sense your position in the system and exploit what you\’re good at, then you can change Bronze into Gold.

     

    Author\’s note: in chatting with my twelve-year-old son about this article, he had several things to say, so instead of just telling me, I had him write his feedback below. Ladies and Gentlemen, my son Ryan, edited only for grammar. 🙂

    Extra notes by Ryan

    So there are a few points I want to make clear.

    One: that we are just as willing to be goalie as he is. He said that he is much more willing to be goalie than we are. This is false. We have a rotation that we follow to make all of us passing, defending, and shooting equal amounts of time. And we actually tell him to go up to attack if it\’s our turn to defend, and occasionally we bump him up. 

    Two: [Regarding] that my brother is better at passing than me and I\’m better at shooting- this statement is false. The basis for this is that I have a higher percentage of goals than assists. This information is true but only because I play more 1-v-1s than my brother does. This makes it so that I have an inflation of goals and a deflation of assists. My brother is even on goals, saves, and assists because he mainly plays 3-v-3s. 

    That\’s it for my notes. PEACE M8s!

     

  • 6 Tips for Dads of Daughters who Date

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    Gentlemen, it’s not easy what I’m about to tell you. I don’t have any solutions to the fact that our daughters are going to date, and in general, they’re going to date men. For those differently inclined I don’t mean to leave you out, but I must speak from experience, and in mine, it’s boys darkening my doorway in search of my baby girl.

    I know, it’s hard to hear. I live in the West, so we don’t arrange our marriages. The wisdom of the arranged marriage approach is crystal clear to me now, but I’m guessing that’s not something we can retrofit into the culture.

    So what are we to do?

    I have only one daughter and she has been a delight. She wasn’t (and isn’t ) a super girly-girl. She didn’t dream of prince charming or have early crushes, being more about Pokemon than Princesses. As far as I knew, she wasn’t that into boys and didn’t really plan on dealing with them until after college.

    That was the plan. I had time to adjust. So I thought.

    When my baby girl turned fifteen it started. Boys were around, and before I knew it they were lining up like she was Penelope waiting for Odysseus to return. She repelled most advances, but then one got through.

    Then another. And another.

    Now I don’t want you to think I was unrealistic. I knew the day would come where my little girl would meet a boy and, after a careful vetting process, we’d all agree that the boy could proceed to date her. Then, through a series of control gates, we’d review the progress of the relationship, see if it’s worth continuing, have a Go/No Go decision, and sharpen our evaluation criteria for future suitors.

    A completely rational plan that didn’t have a chance in hell of succeeding.

    You see, it’s about random chance as much as anything.

    Tip 1 — Do not allow for random chance

    That’s right. You must structure her engagements so that the surrounding population of boys is either zero (aka all-girls school), gay, or from families so rich it doesn’t matter because even if they get divorced she’ll be set for life.

    You see, as fathers, that’s what we’re all about. We want to keep our daughters clothed, fed, and, as Chris Rock put it, “off the pole”. He had visions of his daughter doing strip club routines on a dance pole. I have a vision of my daughter living under a bridge somewhere in downtown Seattle swatting flies off of a half-eaten bagel she found in a dumpster. I have a strong imagination.

    Tip 2 — Stop Your Imagination — Choose melancholy instead

    There’s nothing there for you, Dad. An imagination of the future brings agita and gallons of Pepto Bismol. Even if the dude is Prince Charming (a two-dimensional cartoon), the idea that someone is even thinking about your daughter in that way should convince you to limit all thoughts of the future. Instead, dig out that box of photos or log into your cloud service you use, and watch time go by, frame by frame, picture after picture of when she wanted to be with you more than anyone else.

    Tip 3. Try to go easy on the guilt trips

    In today’s connected reality we get to stay in touch (bother) our daughters 24×7. This isn’t a terrible idea since obviously, it’s the internet’s fault that your daughter is dating this person. I mean, he’s texting her day and night — no wonder she can’t get a minute to think, to break free of his clutches, the evil spell he’s got her under. So, Dads, text away! However, let’s go over some examples of good and bad texting:

    Don’t: “Hey daughter, it’s fine I haven’t seen you in three days because I’m so old now I barely notice you’re gone. What’s your name again?”

    Do: “It’ll be great to see you when you get home”

    Don’t: “Daughter, I know this is kind of random, but I wanted you to know that if something ever happened to me you can have my laptop and all my Wired magazines.”

    Do: ”It’ll be great to see you when you get home.”

    Don’t: “Little girl, have we ever done a background check on <insert suitors name here> ?”

    Do: “It’ll be great to see you when you get home.”

    Don’t: “Here’s a pic of when we were at Great Wolf Lodge. Remember when you used to like hanging out with me?”

    Do: “Let’s go get a coffee sometime — I’m buying”

    That brings me to the next tip. You see, through a terrible depression of wages and a ridiculous increase in the cost of houses and college, the Millennials and Zers are generally broke. Heck, Gen Xers are broke too, but we have great credit! So break out that plastic and treat your little one to something real nice. Think big here, Dad…

    Tip 4: Buy a ticket to a foreign country for her “spirit journey”.

    You might think this a bad idea, because who knows what she’ll drag home from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka? But you know what? Your luck hasn’t been all that great having her meet boys at the local Starbucks, so what do you have to lose? Especially if it’s a one-way ticket. Just kidding. Mostly.

    You have to understand that your daughter will not understand your misery, and your wife may not understand its depths. They’ve never been fathers of a daughter. They never will be. Instead, they’ll throw in your face the fact that your daughter’s very existence depended on you dating and marrying her mom. Blah blah blah.

    You will, of course, try to convince her that this is not the same, that you followed the rigorous aforementioned gated review process with your future father-in-law. It was all pre-approved, baked in, and certified “good for humanity” before anything progressed. At least in your mind, it was.  It’s all for naught, dear fathers. Your baby won’t listen, and she’ll stick to that boy like flypaper.

    Tip 5 — Develop a nervous tick or a medical condition

    Dad, there will be touching. Kissing even. There’s no preparing you for this in advance and there’s no appropriate response. You just have to experience it, along with an accompanying nervous tick and hives.

    I am told eventually it becomes natural, but until then, I’ve developed a helpful digestion issue that causes me to run at some velocity to the bathroom. You could leverage a spoon and gouge your eyes out, but that’s a bit dramatic. In the age of cellphones, there are options like having your cell phone call you at random intervals. There’s an app for that.

    Tip 6 — Chase two rabbits and they both get away

    This is the most important tip of all.

    You try to both pursue to advance your relationship with your daughter AND chase every suitor away, you’ll accomplish neither. So don’t be a fool. You’re her Dad, and this is one position that cannot be challenged. She can have 1-n number of boys and even husbands in her life — but only one dad. You sit on a seat that no one else can, you alone have the Iron Throne, and you cannot be usurped.

    It is, unfortunately, true that you’re more of a figurehead now. However, your daughter will eventually seek you out when she’s exhausted the (stupid) ideas and/or capabilities of her mate. When they have trouble installing that garbage disposal, or when their computer doesn’t boot, or when they need to complain about the boy to someone, you’re there. You’ve got her back, always, through everything. Bonus points: eventually the boy will even come to appreciate your help (I sure did!).

    Hopefully, you’ve retained some common interests. Is it fishing? Video games? Camping? Mine is geekdom, particularly around conferences like ComicCon or PAX. We’re huge nerds in this space, and it’s completely authentic.

    Whatever it is, keep it. Feed the link between you and her and be nice to the boy, as nice as you can. You don’t want to lose her completely and she doesn’t want to lose you either. It’s the way of the world, this mating thing, and we are simply screaming into the wind when we protest.

    Keep your thing with her, and when your little girl comes back, she may be accompanied by smaller versions of herself called grandkids. Grandparents report a high level of happiness and satisfaction from these small humans. Will it be enough to set back the clock, to re-balance the scales after losing your baby girl? I don’t know; only time will tell.

    I imagine that this topic will arise again when my granddaughters come of age. Then the question will morph into something like “how can we prevent our granddaughter from dating?”

    The ultimate irony will be that both your daughter and your son-in-law will be asking that same question with you.

  • Use SCARF This Summer – Making Change Work for You using Brain Science

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    Happy Week 20, Dear Readers!

    Despite the name of this blog, sometimes I do get unhappy and rarely do I feel that wisdom is going to help me when I am indeed unhappy.  The last thing I want is some schmuck trying to spout wisdom when all I want to do is punch someone in the face. Of course, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, so…sorry not sorry. 🙂   What makes us unhappy? I submit that change is a major source of unhappiness. Dr. Spencer Johnson created a career out of his smash hit book Who Moved My Cheese, selling a gazillion copies attempting to answer this very question. 

    But what about change makes it so awful? Occasionally change is thrust upon us, like an illness, or a bad boss. Some change you bring by your actions, directly or indirectly. This article discusses how to ensure that change that you’re bringing to yourself, your team, or your company is closer to the change you intended, rather than the change you caused inadvertently.  

    Now, the SCARF in Summer!

     

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    So, what is this scarf that I speak of? No, it\’s not a piece of clothing, but a book, namely David Rock’s excellent work Your Brain at Work. In this work, he presents the SCARF Model, a popular neuroscience tool for determining how certain actions will cause fear responses or other undesirable outcomes.

    Status – Importance in relation with others, e.g. Is my personal status in this group going to take a hit, or go up?

    Certainty – Ability to predict the future. To some extent, we need to know what’s going to happen or our brains start doing crazy things.

    Autonomy – Perception that I can ( or cannot) change my environment.  Do I have a say over what happens to me? If I don’t have choices, I’m going to start feeling stressed.

    Relatedness – Feeling of security in relation to others.  Do I belong in this group? Are they sharing information with me and collaborating? Or is this a dog eat dog situation?

    Fairness – Transparency and clear expectations on rewards and recognition.  Who’s winning here? Do I know the rules? Are they fair enough for me to feel that I have a chance in seeing rewards if I participate?

    The way to use this model, in short, is to review the items you\’re doing as a leader and ask yourself if this action would affect one of the SCARF parameters? Think of SCARF like a divining rod, finding trouble underneath the ground of change.  Here are three areas where I see immediate applicability: 

    I. When we lead – we should ask ourselves each of these questions when we intend on introducing a change. For example, in my field of agile software development, when we say that the Project Manager is no longer assigning tasks but facilitating meetings, how does that affect the PM’s perception of their status? Can we position the PM as the Agile Champion for the team?

    II. For ourselves – This model is also very powerful to probe why we’re upset. I get into funks on occasion where I can’t figure out why I’m in the funk in the first place. I have used this list to see if any of the five dimensions have been recently impacted.

    Some time ago I had this happen. At the time, my mood at work varied more than the weather in Seattle, and I had hit a very low point. By going over the SCARF model I was able to center on what was bothering me so. I had lost Status, Autonomy, Relatedness, AND Fairness! (it was a rough time). The only thing I had was the certainty that our efforts would struggle greatly. It was clear that I had to move, and I did, and it made all the difference. 

    III. Parenting – Parents need all the tools we can get, especially with the almost-adult crowd we call teens. While a parent should not be able to affect their Status (unless we\’re trying to embarrass them), the dimensions of Certainty and Fairness are ground we can have in common with our teens. At least with my teens, they have a keen sense of fairness, and if you can explicitly establish the SCARF model of understanding with them, you will have a more powerful vocabulary to work with.  

    I strongly recommend that you check out the SCARF model and give it a wearing, even this week.

    That’s it for now, Dear Readers! Until next time! 

  • How to Build Courage – Week 18 Update

    You will never do anything \"\"

    In this world without courage

    It is the greatest quality

    in the mind next to honor – Aristotle

     

     

     

     

    I\’ve been thinking a lot recently about courage. There\’s a good deal of life-changing going on around me. New job opportunities, kids graduating into the world, traveling the world, and finding their way. Elders getting older, and fading. There\’s no stopping it – I sometimes feel like a cat trying to find purchase on a slippery incline, or these cars trying to stop on an icy turn.

    I always go back to my library in times like this, which is stacked with half-read books, especially the texts from my OSR days. One such book is Leading from Within, where I found this wonderful poem:

    Courage –
    Courage is the price which life extracts for granting peace.
    The soul that knows it not, knows no release
    From little things
    Knows not the livid loneliness of fear
    nor mountain heights, where bitter joy can hear
    The sound of wings.
    How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
    For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
    Unless we dare
    The soul\’s dominion? Each time we make a choice we pay
    With courage to behold resistless day
    And count it fair
    -Amelia Earhart

    Finally, there\’s an excellent article via Inc magazine by Andrew Thomas.  In it he has ten tips about building self confidence. Let\’s see a few:

    2. Avoid comparing yourself with others.

    In almost every case, when you compare yourself with someone else, it takes the form of negative self-talk about how you\’re not good enough. Doing this weakens self-confidence. The only person you need to compare yourself with is the version of yourself that you want to become. That\’s it.

    6. Take action.

    Fear can be paralyzing. Ignore the voice in your head telling you that you can\’t do something, and take action anyway. The more you let fear hold you back, the stronger the negative voice will become. It works in the other direction too: The more you take action, the quieter the negative voice will become.

    8. Focus on the positive.

    Negative self-talk and pessimism are a vicious cycle, and a drain on your confidence. Focus on your positive attributes instead of perceived weaknesses; focus on your accomplishments rather than on your perceived failures. Keep focused on what is working instead of what is not working.

    If you want to see all of his ten, check him out here.

    Summary:

    Risk something! This is the way to practice. Get a real sense of the risk, of course, and ensure that it does not result in catastrophic loss if you fail. The idea is to extend yourself into discomfort on occasion because that\’s where the growth happens. These are calculated risks, but risks nonetheless, and taking them with courage is key to a fulfilling life.

    What will you have courage about in the find month of May?

     

  • Feedback – The Four Types of Feedback and How To Deal with Each

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    Happy Week 12!  Say goodbye to March and its Madness. For this week\’s update, we discuss the importance of feedback. Without high quality feedback a person will simply not grow. Adaptation cannot occur in its absence, regardless if you\’re a person or an ecosystem. For people trying to improve themselves it is a must understand the types of feedback that exists so that they can leverage it to their highest effect.

    The problem often isn\’t a lack of feedback. Anyone can give advice and people often do so even without prodding, so the challenge is to be able to filter the advice so it helps you. This does not mean that feedback needs to be unicorns and rainbows, but it does mean that it has to be constructive. We\’ve all heard of constructive criticism, so why is it so rare? From whom should we be seeking feedback? How do we choose the feedback we get?  I heard a story from my wife about a piano student who did not get great feedback on exam that she was taking to move up a level in the studio. This was an advanced student who loved music, and the feedback was awful. The cretin questioned her fundamental abilities, and provided nothing she could launch from. Nothing to build on. It was devastating.

    Let\’s evaluate the four types of feedback and some advice on how to deal with it when it comes:

    \"\"

    Type I – Strangers Feedback

    This could be a comment on a website, a snide remark in a school cafeteria about your clothing, or something about your physical characteristics.  If these are negative, they can be very impactful. Even if it\’s positive feedback, you can\’t hang your hat on it too much, especially if they\’ve seen your face. There was a test to see if people could judge who would win elections based on just a picture of their faces and the folks were accurate more than 70% of the time.

    Strengths:  We need the scale of strangers.  It is from the masses that we identify our tribe in the Internet age. We all need strangers, because we\’d eventually like strangers to become friends. If we\’re creators, we want our fans to love us, since they are our source of power/income. If your competitors provide more payment flexibility, you risk losing customers to businesses that offer merchant services. Explore the comprehensive offerings of the Top 20 merchant accounts.

    Weakness: You can\’t take what a random stranger says too seriously since they might just like your eyes.  Fandom is a fickle beast that can turn on a dime if you do something true to your heart but too far outside of their expectations.

    Advice:  Look for patterns. If there are a bunch of people saying the same thing over time, you should check it out to see if it\’s real.  Secondly, limit your diet of this sort of feedback. That is, spend maybe an hour a week reading comments on YouTube or your blog, etc. Do this session with the right mindset, when you\’re confident, well rested and ready to search through a lot of mud to find the gold nuggets. Finally, always thank people when they do feedback right.  It\’ll encourage others to follow suit.

    \"\"

    Type II – Family Feedback

    Families are the best. I mean, allow me to get sad for a minute here.  I\’ve lost both of my parents already.  They were in their early 50s and 60s, and so I know what it\’s like to not have Mom and Dad around.

    Things may not be perfect with your family, but understand it is here that you have your strongest advocates. They have your back and are excellent counterbalances to other Types of feedback. They know your story and have seen your growth as an artist, mathematician, or athlete.

    Type II Strengths: Family and close friends are the type, as Brene Brown says, that \”will help you hide a body.\” They will tell you their truth, unvarnished, from their perspective.  This is where your core strength can come from.

    Type II Weakness: Families carry baggage.  Mom and Dad may not give critical feedback that is needed for growth.  If you can\’t draw that well, the odds are that Mom and Dad aren\’t going to be the first to crush your Artist dreams. Family feedback could easily lead to the American Idol complex if the right voices aren\’t present.

    Advice: Understand that even if this source of feedback is critical, it almost certainly comes out of a place of love. Consider leveraging this invariably positive source of feedback against other Types that tend to be more negative and less constructive.  You know your parents and friends – are they critical? Are you hearing the truth from them?  Only you can decide in the end what you retain.

    \"\"

    Type III –  Expert Feedback:

     This could be a football coach, a judge on American Idol, a Life Coach, or a panel of billionaires on Shark Tank. They know your domain better than you, and have possibly done it all. They could even have been a CEO, an angel investor, or a head of a venture capital fund.

    This is the type we mostly associate with feedback. It\’s borne of the concept of the gatekeepers, those who hold the key to our future. It\’s Bill Belichick on the sidelines scowling at his near-perfect Patriots, or Pete Carroll beaming like sunshine at his often-imperfect Seahawks.

    You might think this the very best level of feedback. They know this stuff, right? If the five gagillionaires on Shark Tank don\’t think you have a hit, well, you probably don\’t.

    Of course, believing in The Expert is a terrible strategy. In his recent book Outsiders, Adam Grant claims that experts are often blind to truly original ideas. Grant tells of the famous show Seinfeld, considered by many as one of the most important shows ever.  Yet, did you know it almost never made it past its first season?  It had a very, very poor review from the experts and had a horrible showing in front of test audiences (Type I feedback).  I don\’t want to spoil the story for you. Suffice it to say, the guy who saved it didn\’t even work in TV comedy but had an eye for new ideas.

    I found Grant\’s other story even more surprising. It was about the Segway and how Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and other powerful men gathered around the invention and thought it to be potentially \”bigger than the Personal Computer.\” Bezos went onto say, \”You have a product so revolutionary, you\’ll have no problem selling it. The question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?\”  Paradoxically, experts in technology were too far askew from transportation to see the problems, but those who evaluated Seinfeld were too close to their domain. 

    Oh, and those Shark Tank guys – they\’ve missed plenty, including these four ideas and these thirteen ideas that couldn\’t get to a good deal, and are all million-dollar businesses now.

    Even Tom Brady, the current GOAT of NFL Quarterbacks, had a very challenging career, and struggled to get any playtime in college and the NFL early on. He is considered the greatest steal in the history of the NFL draft, aka, another miss by the experts.

    Type III Strengths:  They have domain knowledge and if they like your stuff, you could be set. Ultimately, it is their positional authority that will get you on the field, so if you can impress them, do so.

    Type III Weaknesses: If taken too much to heart, Type III feedback can really take out your mojo.  It was told that Brady had to have therapy because he wasn\’t getting enough playtime in the NFL before he became the starter for the Patriots.  It takes a lot of psychic energy and some intestinal fortitude to push against overly critical feedback from this crowd, despite evidence that shows that they\’re as often wrong as they are right.

    Advice: If you\’re doing creative, cutting-edge stuff, don\’t pay this group too much heed.  Take what they say as another group of strangers, perhaps important strangers, but nothing more. Experts are an incredibly useful source of feedback, but guard your heart – negatives hit as hard as ten positives from this group.  Don\’t ever give up after getting hit by a Type III.

    Type \"\"IV – Peer Feedback

    Peers are those in your career path, those who are around you and are generally at your level.  Surprisingly, Adam Grant claims that this form of review can be the most accurate in the terms of predicting success. This type of feedback has components of family- since they truly are with you in a shared career- plus a different perspective, without the Expert mindset Type III influences.  This type of feedback can be seen as the true porridge of feedback – not too hot, not too cold.

    Type IV Strengths:  People who aren\’t putting on the hat of critic tend to view your craft with a more open mind. This will often be more generative feedback since those who are peers are likely feeling empathy for your position because they\’re so close to it.

    Type IV Weakness: They\’re peers – this means they haven\’t been there. They don\’t have the wisdom of being there and do not hold the keys to the kingdom like Type IIIers do. Finally, if they\’re friends, they could be a bit too easy on you if you don\’t prod them.

    Advice: Grant tells us that we should be looking for peers with some diversity of experience. Pick those folks who have traveled a bit, or even lived abroad, or have done work in other industries. A diverse mind will mean that your peer will be more apt to pick out good work that doesn\’t quite fit the mold. Finally, there are courses online that teach how to give feedback constructively. This could be an excellent team-level growth exercise.

    Conclusion

    Feedback is a big issue. Humans are social animals and crave the acceptance of their peers and seniors. This post covered the uses of feedback by considering the types that you might see out in the world. Knowing these types before you go into a critical situation will allow you to position your heart and mind to gain from the feedback.  Seek feedback from all four types, and you should start seeing patterns among them.  By choosing different types of feedback you\’ll ensure that you\’re not falling into the American Idol syndrome, or worse, thinking you can\’t sing when you can.

  • Why is March Madness so Compelling (and why should it matter to you)?

    I have to admit it – I\’m not a big basketball guy.  Where I grew up, there wasn\’t a lot of fandom, since most of us were Yankee fans, and then maybe Giants or Jets ( eventually resolving to Steelers for me), and the NBA was a distant concern. That is until I discovered March Madness.  When this tournament starts, I\’m all in, rooting for young men I\’ve never heard of like they were my own children, and weeping over my broken bracket. Why?

    Well, its incredibly popular, so there\’s that. There are millions of brackets picked every year. Obama famously picks a bracket and does a good job at it. And then there\’s the wonderful, inherent difficulty of picking a perfect bracket. Indeed, its nearly impossible. NCAA.com puts it this way:

    \”It is incredibly difficult to pick a Final Four correctly. In the past six years of Bracket Challenge Game, the percentage of perfect Final Fours has ranged from zero to 1.36 percent.\”

    From that same article, check out the last few years:

    YEAR  FINAL FOUR (SEEDS) PCT CORRECT
    2016 (1) North Carolina, (2) Villanova, (2) Oklahoma, (10) Syracuse .0093%
    2015 (1) Kentucky, (1) Wisconsin, (1) Duke, (7) Michigan State 1.36%
    2014 (1) Florida, (2) Wisconsin, (7) Connecticut, (8) Kentucky .0063%
    2013 (1) Louisville, (4) Michigan, (4) Syracuse, (9) Wichita State 0%
    2012 (1) Kentucky, (2) Ohio State, (2) Kansas, (4) Louisville, .22%
    2011 (3) Connecticut, (4) Kentucky, (8) Butler, (11) Florida 0%

    What\’s the point? I think we live our lives like we\’re able to predict our own championship. That is, since we are the heroes of our own story, and we wall want to be cutting down the net at the end.  We see ourselves as a doctor, president, famous actor, and plan accordingly. The trouble is, its impossible to predict our lives for some of the same reasons we cannot predict the winner of March Madness.

    One would think that with all of the super computers and experience we have with the tournament that we\’d be better at picking which teams would land in the Final Four, but why can\’t we? March Madness is compelling, frustrating, entertaining mostly due to the nature of this complexity, but when it comes to our lives, it aint so funny.  What can we learn about life through the lens of college basketball and prevent unnecessary misery? 

    Reviewing the laws of complexity  I came up with three. Scan it and pick out the tips from complexity science if you\’re in a hurry.

    a) Human Behavior

    Human behavior varies in countless ways. If a player is sick, responds poorly to pressure, or gets distracted by the bright lights of the tournament, you can be assured that his or her performance will be affected. This isn\’t just isolated to the basketball court, as this article shows that almost sport sees serious symptoms arise in their athletes, as discussed here:

    \”Tabloid tales of sportsmen behaving badly often mask deeper psychological problems, she said. \”Alcoholism, gambling and promiscuity are all associated with depression and stress.\”

    Human behavior is something we muse about a lot but don\’t do anything about.  Men will say they don\’t understand women, parents don\’t understand teenagers, and so on.  Complexity tip:  Get educated on the dimensions of human personality. Read books about topics like parenting a teen, and leverage personality tests like Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, or the Big Five, which give us a vocabulary to understand each other. Vocabulary will not make the complexity go away, but it will enable you to design experiments with people that could improve your relationships with them.

    b) Shifting Landscape – This term usually means that the rules change while you\’re doing something. That is, a situation moves from Complicated to Complex when the rules that the system operates on change.  In experiences like the NCAA Tourney, the rules don\’t change, but the experience itself does. Though smaller tourney\’s exist, being in the Big Dance means you\’ll face teams you\’ve never faced, play in places you\’ve never been, and have pressures most haven\’t experienced. Why does this matter?  When you get that new manager at work, are you ready for change? Regular folks run into this stuff all the time and yet proceed as if nothing will change in their jobs, that somehow the way your shop ran yesterday is tied to some immutable law of physics. Better to think of life in the idea of seasons, and seasons change. What is true from summer isn\’t true for winter.  Getting a new manager, or even by getting older, the rules change around you.  Complexity tip: get ahead of the change. Through planning (see Search  sparc cars), brainstorm in advance of such events if you can, or shortly after. That new manager shows up, you better get that mind map out and refactor it with components of finding a new gig.

    c) Computational Complexity (number of nodes)  –  The math on picking a perfect bracket is so challenging that math professors don\’t agree on the odds.  One claims a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance, the other more optimist math dude claims 1 in 128 billion.  Either way, you\’re odds of becoming an Astronaut or President of the United States is better (a mere 1 in 10 million).  The reason for this is that there are 64 teams, so the equations start around 2^63 power. This is a much higher number than the number of stars in the sky.

    Why does this matter to your life?  How many people do you know? I bet its more than 63.  I also bet that while some of your life is predicable, the tough parts are closer to the young folks on the NCAA courts.  The difficult thing for regular life is to recognize when you\’re in a space that\’s new. Complexity tip: use the pause button on decisions if you\’re sensing a new level of complexity. Delayed decisions are typically better ones.

    I think sports are popular because they are inherently unpredictable, despite copious data points.  There\’s no script, but there is plenty of drama. Now, if that doesn\’t sound like life, what does?

     

  • What is the most dangerous word in the English language?

     

    Happy Week 11 folks!  Quick quiz!  How many of these statements have you thought or said this year?

    • I should be making more money
    • I should have chosen a different major in college
    • I should have gotten married sooner/later
    • I should have gotten a dog
    • I should be better at this by now
    • Life shouldn\’t be this hard at my age
    • I should be able to buy a house
    • I should have fewer bills
    • I should have had more children
    • I should have more coffee

    I can say confidently I\’ve thought at least five of these this year, if not this morning.  You might have guessed  it by now – the most dangerous word in the English language is should.  

    Why should? I first was alerted to the dangers of this word by my wonderful life coach Diane Gasal, who I\’ve mentioned before on this blog. When she said it, I thought to myself that it was some woo-woo soft-skills coaching thing that was either silly or beyond me. Slowly, my sensitivity to the word has grown.

    I mean, there\’s this silly \”Shoulda, woulda, coulda\” thing from my childhood, a small rhyme that those who were tired of you complaining about stuff would chant at you when you used one of the terms, but beyond that, the concept seemed mundane. In the context with Diane, I was complaining a lot about a particular manager I was working with and the general state of my career. With the patience of a saint, she\’d listen to me blather on about my the charred remains of a once promising career.  After a few sessions of this, she started to interrupt my weepings when I would say things like \”I should be able to do my work without Manager X over my shoulder…\”  Diane would counter with something like, \”Should is a word we need to be careful with. Try to remove it from your story.\”

    Boom.

    As I pondered this concept, and hearing on the tongues of others around me, I realized that should implies a judgement. You can often say it with a righteous indignation.

    • The world should be fair
    • This project should be better funded
    • These programmers/analysts should be better
    • That person shouldn\’t be elected
    • That person shouldn\’t be my manager
    • That person should be better
    • There shouldn\’t be any poor people

    Regardless if those judgement are incorrect or correct, the effect it has a negative effect on your psyche, especially when you can\’t change it. Should looks backward, into an immutable past. Should removes your power and can damage the imagination and stifle re-framing. After much internal work I became conscious of the using the word and it has helped.

    Fast forward a few years. As I drove into work I was stuck in the perennially horrendous Seattle area traffic (which should be better!)  I came upon Phuc Tran\’s TED talk (NPR Podcast) on the dark side of the subjunctive.  To review, a subjunctive is a form of sentences that do not describe known objective facts, versus the indicative, which is all facts.  \”I am writing this blog\” is indicative.  \”My typing skills should be better\” is subjunctive.

    Phuc says there is no subjunctive in his family\’s native language of Vietnamese.  Some debate rages in the comments about the validity of some of Phuc\’s claims, but I do not want to make this an English lesson. Watch the video, and see if you can grasp the concept.  I trust the spirit of what this guy is saying regardless of the technical details of the language.

     

    As you heard from Phuc, the subjunctive allows us to both see into the future, and imagine great things, or look into the past, and make our hearts ache with what could have been. What should have been. According to Phuc, Vietnamese does not have a subjunctive. The opposite of the subjunctive is the indicative, a perspective of what is, not what should be, is shared. His parents lived in the indicative which provide them with an incredible resilience because they \”didn\’t expend psychic energy on what could have been.\” 

    We worry about what we should have been almost at any age.  At twenty we\’re worried about if we chose the wrong college, should have done better in high school, should have lifted more weights, should have played better, gotten different friends.  At thirty and forty, its the career, which is a never-ending quagmire of should-haves and would-haves. This is mostly due to the complexity of the environment. Very little is directly under your control in life, but we compare to ideals, rumors, and facades of others we know. I realized that the habit to indulge in Shouldism will grow as a person ages. When more of your life is in the past, it becomes evermore tempting to review it with a powerless imagination of \”what would have happened if I did that differently?\” I wonder if this contributes to depression in the elderly as it it did for the young Phuc, driving him to suicidal thoughts. The desire to be someone else as a youth can be seriously debilitating, and his message is to embrace what you are, and who you are. Accept the indicative, and still leverage the subjunctive to grow your creativity and passion for the future.

      \”Embrace the indicativeness of your passions…don\’t be fixed on what isn\’t.  Acceptance of things they way they are.  It takes courage to embrace the indicative. The subjunctive allows us to be creative but also allows us to become mired in regret. The indicative doesn\’t allow us to imagine, but it does allow us to talk about ourselves and our experience in real terms… if we have the courage to embrace that reality.\”

     

  • Week 9 Inspiration – The Best Task Management App To Date

    The smartphone has taken over the world.  According to the Pew institute, 77% of the U.S. Population have smartphones.  I wonder if in the near future we\’ll simply drop the \”smart\” part of that, and the default will be phones with Internet and camera features.  Seems inevitable, and with it, the concept of task management seems to be ripe for innovation.

    So with this, like all older institutions ( public education, church, government, etc.) we need to look at them with a fresh set of eyes and ask ourselves this – \”If I were to build it today, how would I do it?\”

    I started LifeSparcs with the idea that a small memobook would be useful, and I still hold to the idea that writing things down helps you process them.  But the honest truth, my Gentle Reader, is that I vacillate between using the memobook and using computers to help me manage my tasks.  I\’ve tried almost all of them and my favorite reminder/task management app above all of them is one called Due.

    Before I get a head of myself, this is indeed a SparcCard, TC03 to be specific.  Thus, I\’m not really saying you can\’t get gains out of the other computer-based task management systems.  The SparcCard is called The Annoying Robot, since the advantage it has over the inanimate journal is that it\’ll be up in your face every day if you let it.  The Due app is relentless in its reminder feature, allowing an easy push to an hour or even a day into the future. But the endless buzzing of my phone tells me that I\’ve got stuff to do, and Due is letting me have it!  Usability is key, and the soft space between being annoying and being so annoying that I uninstall it was threaded well by the creators of Due App.

    Google reminders seem, contrarily, to be too easily dismissed. It gives you one or two reminders and that\’s it.  Google clearly doesn\’t understand how much I need to be prodded into doing things. Apple is the same way.  I\’ve got one task that I put into the Apple reminder feature and it never actually reminds me beyond the first time it did, three months ago.

    The Due application is slick. Check it out below. The first screen is the backlog and the second screen shows the wonderful time management technique, unique to Due. It makes for a great, one-handed experience, critical since it\’ll be annoying you.  A lot.  In a Good Way. Like Mom or Dad used to do.

     

    \"\"                                     \"\"

    As with all things, it isn\’t ultimately about the tool but the results.  Whatever app you pick, make sure its an annoying one, that will allow you to push the tasks into the near future. Otherwise you\’ll never remember to review your backlog of reminders and it becomes yet another dead list.

    What cool reminder apps have you used?

  • Week 08 – Introducing SparcCards

    \"SPARCCARDS\"

    Hello Gentle Readers to Week 8!  We\’ve got a nice surprise for you this week, another tool to help make the journey a bit more fruitful – SparcCards. SparcCards are the latest tool we\’ve developed to help you connect techniques that are proven to make life more fulfilling in an easy to read synopsis.  Think of them as plays out of a playbook, ideas culled from the best the world has to offer that you can flip through to help you find what you\’re looking for in new, innovative ways, completely free.

    The idea comes from the various readings that myself and others in my network have done, plus experiences we\’ve had.  Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, states that using someone else as your proxy leads to greater results. That is, leveraging folks who\’ve been where you want to go is the best way to determine your path. We\’ve distilled all the learning and awesomeness into snippets that you can print out and read in a few minutes.

    Its super simple to use this system. Just remember any good radar system \”Search, Track, Filter, Engage\”  – or for short, the STEF model.  (Yes, I switched the order of the letters.  You can\’t say STFE…I mean, stiffe? That doesn\’t work, does it?)

    Lets check out an example self-dialog with our friend Beatrice, who is deciding what she wants to do this year:

    ~~~

    Beatrice Questioner Gremlin:  \”What am I going to do with this year?”

    Beatrice Leader Gremlin:  “I leveraged Mind Mapping (SC03) and it uncovered three ideas: donut shop, complete that book, and start my masters degree.”

    Beatrice Questioner Gremlin:  “I don’t know a lot about donut shops, so I’ll do some more investigation by asking a friend who opened a restaurant last year and see what her experiences were like (SC01 – Interviewing Sherpas (SC01).

    Beatrice Leader Gremlin: “I extracted the three items into a list (TR01- Prioritized List). The top two at least for now are the donut shop and the masters degree.

    Beatrice Detail Gremlin: But I need more information!  I’m going to visit some of the sites that I think I might use (TR02 – Check out the Space). And there’s this donut shop in a neighboring town. Maybe I can learn something by going there. Maybe I’ll take a few days off and visit that college I was thinking about.

    Beatrice Leader Gremlin: “I’m choosing the Masters Degree (filtering).  I loved that college! The donut shop sounded tough after talking to my friend, and the site isn’t what I hoped for.  I can work on some aspects of the donut shop, but for Q1 I’ll be focusing on getting into my degree program. The book is just going to have to wait. 

    Beatrice Worry Gremlin: But I’m terrible at follow up.

    Beatrice Leader Gremlin: I better use my cellphone to remind me to register…. (TR03 – Annoying Robot) and I’ll use a memo book to track progress (TR04 –Write Down Weekly Goals).”

    ~~~

    Make sense? SparcCards are best used in combos, as they amplify each other.

    Check out the latest Card, SCO4 – Seek Diversity for Strength. If you go to the SparcCards menu, you\’ll see a few more of them. The intention is to get a nice library of these cards going, so if you have any suggestions for a card (Search or Track), please let us know by commenting below.

    Enjoy!