On rest: https://andreasjames.substack.com/p/on-rest

On my dad: https://andreasjames.substack.com/p/on-my-dad

“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

— Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was a miserable creature. Both parents had died. I’d moved to a new town and lived with a family in a home where I felt unwelcome and a burden.

At my new school, I didn’t fit in.

I hated my circumstances, my home situation, and even looking in the mirror.

At one point, a friend and I were hanging out in my bedroom, which I shared with a family member at my new house. And this friend said to me, “Whenever I start to feel down or sad about my own life, I look at your life and my life doesn’t seem so bad.”

I want to repeat that. Whenever I look at your life, mine doesn’t seem so bad.

I should thank this friend, though I never have.

Because her saying that woke up the life force within me that said, “No. Never again. No one is ever going to look at me again and think that. My life will not be the standard by which everyone else’s life doesn’t seem so bad.”

And I also realized that it was up to me to change that. And so, I turned it around.

But how?

First, I looked around for people I admired. One who immediately stuck out was a senior student at school, Desiree*. She barely knew who I was, and yet I admired her from afar. She was smart, and not apologetic about that fact. She was elected to the student council. More importantly, she had a beautiful smile and warmly said hello in the hallways to everyone she knew. She lit up at the sight of other people.

I wanted to be like her, so I started to do that. And the crazy thing is, I changed my behavior first, and the feeling soon followed. From the depths of my despair, I felt better in mere days. At first, when I’d smile at everyone and express joy at seeing them, I had to draw upon scarce inner resources to do it. Soon however, a deep well of joy and love began to well up within me and overflow to people around me. Also, people began responding to me differently and slowly, it didn’t matter any more that my skin was quite paler than the rest. People felt safe around me when they saw that my affection for them was genuine. I later ran for a student council position, and won.

Second, I acknowledged a harsh truth that I had to face at the time. “Everyone has their own problems,” I told** myself. “Nobody cares about yours. Stop expecting someone to care.”

Before, I’d been sulky and sullen, depressed and irritable, in desperate hope that someone — anyone! — would see me and rescue me, or fold me into their arms, like my mom used to, and let me cry and acknowledge my grief and tell me that I was going to be OK. That strategy wasn’t working. Realizing that I could set my own attitude was life-changing. I discovered within myself a deep well of my own power to create a good and productive life, no matter what happens to me.

My parents died, but I didn’t die, and I owed it to myself and to them, to live.

——
*Desiree is a motivational coach now! I am not surprised!! Check out what she’s up to, here: https://www.evo2gro.com/

**This kind of self talk was not a viable long-term solution. Therapy, grieving, healing and realizing that I needed to receive from other people was the journey of motherhood, and of my early 30s. Many thanks to Dave Lee for the chance to talk a little bit about this recently on his YouTube channel, around the 55 minute mark.

If this post resonates, you might also like:

• You can afford it, you just choose not to (on owning your choices)
• Stoicism > Hysteria: What do you wish to leak?

Eventually, we took the batteries out and then switched to a better brand. Later, a security technician told us that lots of people were disabling their fire detectors because the detectors were too sensitive.

Wow – that’s a huge product failure. In an attempt to keep people safe from fires, the engineers created a product that was actually less effective. The bar to trigger alarm was set too low.

Communication works the same way.

Corporate America relies on executive summaries. The intelligence community taught me the concept of BLUF (bottom-line-up-front). Internet culture uses the concept of TL;DR (too long, didn’t read).

Narrative always has its place. (I started this post in narrative form.) But there is tremendous value in brevity.

When I was a stock analyst, I often formatted my research into bullet point format, with three categories:

What’s new

• One or two sentences on a development.

What it means

• Translating those above sentences into easy-to-understand English and adding context and background

Recommended action

• Buy, sell or hold

Once I knew I had an audience who trusted me, I took pride in not wasting their time. There was tremendous value in helping others to tune out noise. There was value in what I didn’t say.

Time and attention are limited, perishable resources. If you generate too much noise, people will cut you off, filter you away, and tune you out.

This is true everywhere — at home, in the work place, on Facebook and Twitter. How much is too much? That’s subjective — it’s up to you to know your audience. Maybe you need to communicate more. Maybe less. If no one is opening your emails, or they are missing important information, it’s time to re-calibrate.

We’re all communicators now.

Calibrate constantly. Think about your audience. Strive to reduce noise.

There are lots of productivity tools to help you manage your e-mail and your time. But I never simply jump into prescribing productivity tools.

Instead, where I get curious first is whether the interruptions are interfering with the work, or whether they are part of the work.

In a hospital emergency room, the answer is obvious. Doctors and nurses serve in the moment — their work is meant to be interrupted by patients in crisis. In a retail store, a sales associate’s secondary job may be to keep the sweaters folded neatly. But his or her primary job is to sell, to be available for customer questions, to be open to interruption.  Pastors, parents and teachers do some of their best work at the moment of interruption.

On the other hand, interruptions are detrimental to the productivity of construction contractors, software development engineers, tax accountants, studying students, and writers. For task-oriented work and learning new concepts, I’ve adopted this Time magazine headline as a mantra: Focus is the new IQ.

For many of us in the critical thinking economy whose positions straddle management and deliverables, it’s not always clear whether the interruptions are wasting time or simply part of the job. It takes about 23 minutes to refocus after being interrupted, so it makes sense to spend some time thinking this through.

If interruptions are getting frustrating for you, ask yourself which interruptions are part of your work and which are interfering with the work. The answer to that will help you decide what to do next.

If you find yourself staying at work too late every day without exception to finish up what could not be done during the day, some priority setting may be in order. (Check out the link below about makers and managers to dive more deeply.)

And finally, for newer entrants to the work force, part of managing up to supervisors means reminding them what’s on your plate and letting them assist you in prioritization. It’s your responsibility to manage your own time, but you don’t have to assume priorities. Not knowing is perfectly valid and wise managers can help. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen employees focus really hard on some weekly or monthly report simply because that is their task that they must complete, and they put to the side one-off projects that are actually more important to the overall mission. If interruptions are coming from above, you can always ask, “Should Y take priority over X?” …The answer might surprise you. And bonus points if Y is a pointless meeting that you now get to skip!

If you liked that post, you might like:
The double workday: Makers and managers
Life: One risk-reward calculation after another
Don’t let unconscious inertia decide for you
You can afford it, you just choose not to
The mob asks the wrong questions
Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it
Stoicism > Hysteria: What do you wish to leak?
Taking it down to the science
How a year on Wall Street changed his world view

“OK,” I said, my legs dangling off the exam table.

After I agreed, she proceeded to try to sell me on it. Clearly, this doctor was used to being argued with. Although I tend to be a questioner, in this instance, I had no qualms. I’d already done the risk / reward calculation in my head and determined that the reward of avoiding whooping cough outweighed any risk. I also subscribe to the broader philosophy that if you cannot trust recommendations from your doctor, your first order of business is to find a new doctor.

This is not a post in which I wish to argue about choosing doctors or the merits of vaccines. Rather, I wish to posit that considering the risk / reward profile of any action can help you make better and quicker decisions.

I find this frame more useful than creating pros and cons lists. The risk / reward frame puts you in a mindset that implicitly acknowledges this truism: Living involves risk. 

There is no such thing as a risk-free existence. Luckily, there’s no such thing as a reward-free existence, either!

Stock investors know this. They are always asking, “What’s my upside? What’s my downside? What’s the risk / reward?” As a stock analyst, I spent a lot of time trying to call bottoms in stocks — meaning, interpreting whether a stock was as low as it could go. Depending on one’s time horizon and risk profile, going long a stock (that is, buying it) when it is at a bottom is not a bad way to grow the portfolio. Minimize risk, maximize reward, make money. (The mindset is easy. Doing it is the hard part.)

You can apply your own internal risk / reward calculation to every major life decision. Even inaction carries risk.

In your personal life, risk tolerance is a spectrum with thrill-seeking dare devils on one end and perhaps accountants on the other. (Calm down. Some of my best friends are accountants.) To the thrill seeker, the reward of the thrill outweighs the risk of death. Put another way, a thrill seeker’s choices are designed to avoid the risk of living a life without exhilaration. Same type of calculation, different tolerance set point.

If you haven’t done so, try putting some upcoming decisions within a risk / reward framework. What’s your absolute downside? What’s the upside? Can you apply probabilities to each — in other words, what are the odds of each happening? Now which side outweighs the other?

We all get this calculation wrong from time to time — that’s called learning.

Non sequitur: Many of our political disagreements are arguments over risk tolerance versus perceived reward. When you disagree with someone, you might try asking yourself how his views play into his perception of risks and rewards and how those might differ from your own. How do probabilities tie in?

If you liked this post, you might like:

Don’t let unconscious inertia decide for you
You can afford it, you just choose not to
The mob asks the wrong questions
Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it
Stoicism > Hysteria: What do you wish to leak?
Taking it down to the science
How a year on Wall Street changed his world view

For some people, gift-giving and anniversary-remembering is a strength. It’s not for others.

Life gets a lot easier when we find what we’re good at and enjoy doing, and do more of that thing. When we play to our strengths, we compound our gains. We end up in relationships, job positions, and careers that are an optimal fit.

Too often, employees and partners spend too much time trying to fix weaknesses. The problem is that one only gets a marginal return on investment when expending energy on a weakness. There’s a reason why it’s a weakness!

This is all personal growth and leadership 101. I’m just adapting it as an excuse to ignore Valentine’s day.

Feel free to share this post with your partner.

Happy ordinary Tuesday!

Further reading:
Harvard Business Review: How to play to your strengths
Book: Now, discover your strengths
Forbes: Forget about working on your weaknesses, play to your strengths. A case study.

(Note: Many messages sent via this Web site between August 2016 and February 2017 went to my spam folder and I did not see them before they were automatically deleted. Please accept my sincerest apologies, know that it was not personal, and send the message again!)

Here are a few verses that seem to resonate and provide wisdom on how those of us in business can navigate the present times:

“If to your benefit as a rational being, adopt it: but if simply to your benefit as an animal, reject it, and stick to your judgement without fanfare. Only make sure that your scrutiny is sound.”

 

“If you set yourself to your present task along the path of true reason, with all determination, vigour, and good will: if you admit no distraction, but keep your own divinity pure and standing strong, as if you had to surrender it right now; if you grapple this to you, expecting nothing, shirking nothing, but self-content with each present action taken in accordance with nature and a heroic truthfulness in all that you say and mean – then you will lead a good life. And nobody is able to stop you.”

 

“Wherever it is in agreement with nature, the ruling power within us takes a flexible approach to circumstances, always adapting itself easily to both practicality and the given event. It has no favoured material for its work, but sets out on its objects in a conditional way, turning any obstacle into material for its own use. It is like a fire mastering whatever falls into it. A small flame would be extinguished, but a bright fire rapidly claims as its own all that is heaped on it, devours it all, and leaps up yet higher in consequence.”

 

“Always make a definition or sketch of what presents itself to your mind, so you can see it stripped bare to its essential nature and identify it clearly, in whole and in all its parts, and can tell yourself its proper name and the names of those elements of which it is compounded and into which it will be dissolved. . . . Ask then, what is this which is now making its impression on me? What is it composed of? How long in the nature of things will it last? What virtue is needed to meet it — gentleness, for example, or courage, truthfulness, loyalty, simplicity, self-sufficiency, and so on? So in each case we must say: This has come from god; this is due to a juncture of fate, the mesh of destiny, or some similar coincidence of chance; and this is from my fellow man, my kinsman and colleague, though one who does not know what accords with his own nature. But I do know: and so I treat him kindly and fairly, following the natural law of our fellowship, but at the same time I am to give him his proper desert in matters which are morally neutral.”

As you go about your life, you will leak out whatever is inside you: Calm, fear, courage, love, kind-heartedness, authenticity, fakery, hatred, or contempt. This is true of both leaders and followers. We all do better when we examine what’s inside and take note of what we are leaking. Go ahead and leak what you please, but do so knowingly.

If you liked this post, you might like:
Taking it down to the science
You can afford it, you just choose not to
The greatest selfie ever taken: Pale Blue Dot
Adapt or die: Trump and the thematic lesson of 2016
A bit about the fourth dimension: Time
What does self rule mean to you?
The mob asks the wrong questions

But I did want to share some thoughts as we head into 2017.

Working at Tesla, you hear the words “first principles” a lot, which has not yet become a widespread business buzzword, but absolutely colors how employees are encouraged to think. Studying Tesla over the years influenced me so much that I named my company, Solve for X Coaching, after this philosophy.

(Video of Elon Musk talking about the concept is here.)

It’s a concept based on physics, which means you take things down to the physics and mathematical levels and question all assumptions. Put another way, you ask “why” continuously until you get down to science (or in my view, in the case of life, guidance from religion or philosophy, and even then, you could probably still drill down deeper to the atomic level.)

It requires that you eliminate thinking by analogy or comparison with known processes. Analogies look at how something else works and then applies that knowledge to the current situation. But the problem with that is that you end up blind to things that could change. Analogies might help in understanding how something works right now, but they don’t help to build something new and better from scratch.

If you apply this way of thinking to the structure of your own life, sometimes dangerous and miraculous things will happen. Dangerous because it’s hard to maintain the status quo if you’ve questioned everything, miraculous because you discover how much of your own life design is within your own power.

It’s hard to do it on one’s own, though, with is why I like being a coach and working with people as they lean forward into their own life designs. We all have blind spots, myself as well. I can’t believe how many huge ones I’ve seen in my own life through executive coaching.

In my own life, when I boil things down to the science, so many of my recent decisions come down to biology and acceptance of that. I have monetary, career, family and motherhood aspirations that often seem to conflict with each other. As a female member of our species with a biologically and psychologically driven desire to reproduce, for instance, I must birth and nurse my offspring and I accept that is a limiting factor on my overall earnings potential. It also defines what I’m solving for now. What I’m solving for in the future will change.

I accept that my two biggest performance constraints in any corporate environment are 1) my biologically and psychologically driven desire to reproduce and care for offspring and 2) my underdeveloped spatial intelligence, in part caused by nearsightedness and astigmatisms, which make me bad at driving and navigating in any environment. Meh. Luckily, I offer enough strengths to compensate for those two.

I share this self-analysis because we can all do something similar in our own lives. It’s hard to be bitter when we own our choices and recognize what is outside of our control. (The rules of science are outside of our control.)

If you are facing conflicting desires or what seems like an unsolvable problem, take it down to first principles, down to the science. Break it all down, nay, wreck it, and build it back up, even if only in your own head. And see what solutions you come up with.

Happy new year.

If you liked this post, you might like:

You can afford it, you just choose not to
How a stock analyst looks at housework
Don’t let unconscious inertia decide for you
The mob asks the wrong questions
Can we treat life like an engineering problem?
Outsourcing versus insourcing your own life
How a year on Wall Street changed his view
Sleep deprivation is literally torture
Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it

Regardless of how you voted this year, I think we can all agree that in 2016, Donald Trump disrupted politics and the Republican party.

Some of us know market disruptors when we see them. But the majority of us fail to see what’s coming — and that especially goes for people entrenched in circles of group think.

When disruption happens, the old rules no longer apply and the status quo is upended. This is why the so-called experts are so often wrong on predicting the future. In the case of technological disruption — of which I am usually biased in favor — the activities that sustain our society and human life become more efficient. Everyone has to adapt to a new reality — and that reality is defined by the market disruptor.

I started talking with Wall Street clients about a Donald Trump presidency in summer 2015, when the GOP field was still full of contender nominees. It’s not that I was particularly more prescient or intelligent than my esteemed colleagues, it’s just that I grew up as a member of the white working class and have spent portions of my life on the Jersey shore, Alabama, and Minnesota, as well as having lived in Chicago, Washington, D.C., London and Seattle.

Also, you can take this political truism to the bank: People vote for the candidate who makes them feel the best about themselves. We are all narcissists looking for the most favorable mirror. Once you get that fact down, it’s just a numbers game.

A new thought occurred to me recently: When you’re in the midst of it, disruption and adaptation sometimes looks like death. This past summer, the media was convinced that the Republican party was toast — Democrats would surely sweep the presidency and the Senate and erode the Republican lead in the house. But the opposite happened. Republicans won the presidency, both houses of Congress, and expanded state governorships. But that Republican party will be a different one going forward than it was in the past, with a shifted set of priorities and policies.

That a rebirth looks like death in the midst of it also throws off the experts, pointing and laughing from the outside. I can’t name a disruptive technology that wasn’t scoffed at initially.

Adapt or die. That’s the thematic lesson of 2016, and maybe for all time.

Here is the photo of Earth that Voyager took on February 14, 1990:

This was the best and most illuminating selfie ever taken. Not because it shows the Earth in all its close-up glory, but because of its wise and humble perspective.

Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot speech, inspired by that photo, comes from his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot.

The speech is under four minutes long, read aloud. A YouTube video of that is profound.

Here are the words:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

 

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

 

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

 

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

 

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

 

–Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

So many of us are living our lives as if we’ve missed the cosmic memo. The memo tells us that the atoms in our bodies come from the stars, that Earth is all we have and all we know, that our time here is finite, and that to be in awe is not to be on the fringe of life, but it is to capture the meaning of life.

I got the memo at a young age, which is why I chose to minor in physics. Today for some reason, I needed a reminder. Maybe you did, too.

More courtesy of NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab.