Yesterday I confessed that the word ‘proactive’ triggers an emotional response in me quite different from its dictionary meaning. Since words are one of our principle communication tools , when a word gets a ‘reputation’ or ‘goes off the reservation’ so to speak, it loses value big time. It is like an unguided missile.

Words only mean what we think they mean

Since words mean something only in the brain of the listener or reader, my negative reaction to a word in no way reflects the impression that is has on others. Yesterday Karen responded very reasonably in a comment that while she could clearly see that I get my panties in a bunch over proactive, she finds it very helpful in describing how she keeps her life on track. I had to agree with her. Just because I can’t stand a word doesn’t make it useless for others – unless they are trying to communicate with me- and , of course there is the problem for all of us.

Words can take up with the wrong crowd

Proactive, the word, has kept bad company in my world and I don’t trust it. In Karen’s world, proactive has been a model citizen. This just shows how unreliable words are for communication tools. They develop meaning and nuance for individuals that goes far beyond the dictionary meaning. Words take on a life of their own.

Words are a problem

This creates a real problem for writers. Words are our tools in making thoughts concrete and the principle means for translating thoughts from our brains to other people’s brains. But even though we try to pin down the meaning of words by creating dictionaries, words are squirmy, devious things that shape-shift and metamorphose in front of our eyes and behind our backs. The clear idea that I have when I say proactive is quite different from the equally clear idea that forms in Karen’s mind.

Words are out of our control

Musing over this problem only points out the terrible peril for writers as they try to put their thoughts into words. Clear as we might  be in getting the words to line up with our thoughts, we are powerless to control the interpretation of those words by the person reading them.

Karen will use the word proactive to represent all the positive qualities she recognizes for the word. I will hear the word and rather than understanding those positive qualities, I will see manipulation and trickery. It is a terrible burden for a writer because it is hard enough to assemble the right words to convey your thoughts. It becomes much more difficult when you realize that you must also understand how the reader will interpret those words in his own mind.

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But surely you want to be proactive

I have probably spent too much time in business meetings in my lifetime, attended too many business conferences, read too many corporate mission statements and written too many personal development plans over my career but I convulse when ever I hear the word proactive.

You know, the opposite of antiactive.

I can’t remember when I first heard the term. At first it must have seemed fresh and positive. It must have brought a new perspective to the whole world of personal development and business. Take the word apart and we find pro meaning positive and forward looking and active meaning not inert. Put it together and it means acting in a positive fashion. So what distinguishes PRO active from just plain active?

Not just any old action!

My first thought is that it must be the direction of the action. Pro-action is moving forward where action might go in any direction. So it means more than just taking action. You must take special, forward moving action. So if that is true what about the times when you catch yourself going in the wrong direction and you immediately change course, maybe going backwards or sideways from the direction you were originally going. What kind of action is that? RE action or maybe RETRO action? I don’t know.

The secret ingredient is…..

When we are urged to be proactive, what are they trying to tell us? What is the special message about what we are doing? They want us to act; to do something but how is our action different from just plain action? What is the additive to the action that makes it PRO action? What is the secret ingredient?

It is self-hypnosis.

From my years of doing my best to be a productive employee, PRO is a code word for buy in to whatever the consultant or the corporate manager is hawking. It is a way to set up a Pavlovian response to make the listener choose to do what the speaker says. It is so much more effective than telling us what to do because we resist direct instructions. We do want to be Proactive however so it the speaker tells us that X is proactive and that we should be Proactive, then we, eager little lemmings will decide to do X all on our own – because we are Proactive. We feel good because we are proactive and because we are proactive we do X. We become mindless followers. It is a code word to hypnotize ourselves.

Proactive or anti-lemming, you decide.

So that is why I am repulsed by the word proactive. Instead of urging us to think about our actions and take charge, it tricks us into accepting whatever the speaker is advocating. It triggers an unconditional response to accept the recommendation and act, without questioning the value of the recommendation.  Stop being proactive and start thinking for yourself!

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How’s it going?

My experience tells me that simple ideas have the most powerful impact. That is why I got so excited about the weekly planning system. I was having difficulty translating a daily planner into long term progress. Important but not urgent tasks kept slipping out of my vision and I wasn’t making the kind of movement that I wanted.

Stepping up my committments

Add to that the headstrong decision to join the PreWriting Challenge and I faced a big time management problem. To honor my commitments would take all the time and organizational skill I had to give. So, one week in, how is it going? I’m pretty pleased.

Making some adjustments

I reported on the first week of the Challenge earlier. I give myself a B+- good but it could be better. The weekly plan kept me on track and I expect to do better as the weeks pass. Steve uses his system to reflect time blocks of 45 minutes. He doesn’t apply specific tasks to those blocks, just groups them in general categories like post wiring, etc. This is helpful in making sure that I have enough time committed to each task but doesn’t help me track progress on specific posts. Since I don’t know how long a post will take to draft, I can’t relate a specific time slice to a post topic but I can add a list of planned posts topics to complete during the week as a side panel on the weekly plan so that I can track post completion. This way I will dedicate sufficient time for the tasks but will also know that I am getting the specific posts and other activities done.

Daily Time Committments

Another area where I want to improve is tracking time commitment during each day. I need to relate my weekly plan to daily activity and commit action for scheduled blocks of time. Without the daily time planning, I won’t commit to dedication of blocks of time and I will certainly get diverted to less important activities.

It seems controlled and anal

I confess that I don’t like this kind of time management. It seems rigid and constrained. I want to be spontaneous and creative and instead I feel controlled and anal. I will not let myself slack off.  I know that this is just a mind trick to get out of work. So far my spontaneous, creative side has not made the progress I need.

Moving Right Along

This week I will be tightening up the connections between my weekly plan of time slices and activities and my daily time commitments. In addition I will be working with a task list of blog topics and other specific tasks to check off and measure progress. Right now all this effort seems like a burden. It is extra work that keeps me from my real commitments and goals. Long term, I believe that as I continue to use and refine this system, it will become part of my daily routine and start to increase my productivity.

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The Forecast is Wrong.

Humans are lousy at predicting the future. There seems to be something in the way our minds are wired that resists that truth because no matter how many times we make bad forecasts, we insist on going right back and making another. We continue to believe that predicting the future is possible and that with enough effort, the right data and algorithms we will get it right yet. We continue to predict economic conditions, political elections, the weather and almost anything else. And we continue to get it wrong. But we don’t accept this continuing failure as evidence that we should stop forecasting.

We Don’t Learn!

In spite of dismal failure to forecast the future (with occasional gusts of good guesses), we persist in making forecasts and they are wrong. We refine the data (or cheat if we are the United Nations), tweak the assumptions and improve the mathematics and go right back at it. When, inexplicably despite our statistical mumbo-jumbo and applied mathematics we are wrong, we study the process. We search for better data. We change our assumptions until we can make it give us the right answer (what really happened). And after we bludgeon the model to give us the right answer, we convince ourselves that we can use it to make another prediction. We still get it wrong.

We Want to Believe

Why is is that we still listen to these charlatans? Why do we continue to pay for the services of these ineffective Tarot card readers and use their advice to make important decisions about our lives in spite of their miserable track record? Why do we believe in their mathematical precision and statistical accuracy? I don’t know? You tell me.

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Papierkrieg from Makaio Tisu on Vimeo.

Thanks to LikeCOOL

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At the beginning of week two of the PreWriting Challenge (I started late so my week two is week three for the bulk of the participants), I am pleased with the results so far.  I planned to write ten posts with the idea that they would be finals but that didn’t happen.  I prepared six scheduled posts during the week, five were published and the sixth is scheduled.  I have three drafts awaiting final review and I expect to use some of them for this week while I prepare ten new posts.  You can see the proposed posts for last week and the actual status here.  The planned posts for this weeks writing are here.

As with most things, the tidy planning gives way to messy production but I am getting more organized.  The first thing I am discovering is that I need to keep my drafts in a separate folder.  I am already losing track of the documents and I can see this as a continuing problem when I prepare work ahead of time.  I can remember and keep track of details over a short time frame but stretch that time-frame out and I am certain to forget what I have done and where I put it.

The weekly plan works very nicely with the Challenge and I will be preparing a review of my experience over the next week

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This quote from Wikipedia sums up this remarkable car:

The Citroën 2CV (French: deux chevaux vapeur, literally “two steam horses“, from the tax horsepower rating) was an economy car produced by the French automaker Citroën from 1948 to 1990.^[1] It was technologically advanced and innovative, but with extremely utilitarian and deceptively simple Bauhaus inspired bodywork, that belied the sheer quality of its underlying engineering. It was designed to move the French peasantry on from horses and carts. It is considered one of Citroën’s most iconic cars. In 1953 ‘Autocar‘ in a technical review of the car wrote of, “…the extraordinary ingenuity of this design, which is undoubtedly the most original since the Model T Ford.”^[2] It was described by CAR magazine journalist and author LJK Setright as “the most intelligent application of minimalism ever to succeed as a car.”^[3] It was designed for low cost, simplicity of use, versatility, reliability, and off-road driving. For this it had a light, easily serviceable engine, extremely soft long travel suspension (with adjustable ride height), high ground clearance, and for oversized loads a car-wide canvas sunroof (which until 1960 also covered the boot).

One of the enjoyable aspects of watching classic European movies from the 50’s and 60’s is catching some of the wonderful cars of the era in action.  Take for example this scene from Breathless.  As Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg stroll down the middle of a Parisian street, look for the 2CV’s on either side.

Even James Bond couldn’t keep his hands off the 2CV.

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The obstacle you can’t avoid

At every stage in life we face an incredible obstacle that limits our ability to grow and develop. We don’t know what we don’t know. And even worse since we don’t know what we don’t know, we don’t know where to look for it or even what that it is that we should look for.

Experts can’t help

Many of us seek out experts because we want knowledge and we will follow the paths that those experts blaze through the discipline or profession we want to learn. We go to school. We mentor. We learn what the experts know. After some time and study, we too can become experts. We become sources of information for others. The cycle continues.

Learning can’t help

Nothing about this cycle addresses the basic problem. No matter how much we learn we still do not know what we don’t know. That is a big problem. Wherever you are in this cycle you think you see the whole range of possibilities but it is a lie. What you see is a beautifully fabricated false facade, a movie set. What you learn as you progress from amateur to expert is how to protect that flimsy facade from damage so that nobody, including yourself can see the reality – studio walls- behind the set.

Why does that matter?

Now you may wonder why this is a problem since if you don’t know what you don’t know, why should you think that others will know what you don’t know. It really doesn’t matter what others know. What is certain is that what you don’t know can cause you big problems. You can worry about things that you know. You act to take advantage of things that you know. You can protect yourself against things that you know. There is absolutely nothing you can do to deal with what you don’t know.

So what are you saying?

A commercial that I saw recently highlighted that point. A happy guy was working on his laptop in the yard. He looks comfortable and safe but suddenly he looks up in terror and runs, leaving his laptop behind. A flaming gas range falls from the sky and demolishes the laptop. Granted this is a virtually impossible scenario but it could happen and the guy was completely unprepared for it. It never crossed his mind that a flaming gas range would fall from the sky so he had no plan to deal with it. He didn’t know what he didn’t know. You may discount this example but there are other examples. For many years, doctors thought that hand washing was unimportant. They would treat patients and operate without any effort at cleaning their hands. Even when it was suggested that hand washing reduced infections and when one doctor actually documented reductions in infections, the doctors were unwilling to go to the extra effort and wash their hands. They didn’t know what we all know now that bacteria on the hands can infect patients and sabotage the healing process. They were good doctors with the best of intentions for their patients but they didn’t know something important and much worse, they didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Beware of experts

So beware of experts and distrust their confidence that they have all the answers. Remember that they don’t know what they don’t know and they may not even be open to consider that possibility. Seek advice from humble people who don’t have all the answers and are open to ideas and experiments. As you grow and learn and find that people are starting to view you as an expert, apply the same measure to yourself. Resist the temptation of thinking that your knowledge is anything more than superficial and pragmatic. Be open to ideas that challenge the conventional. Experiment with new ways of thinking and acting and hope that each day you might discover one more thing that you didn’t know you didn’t know.

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And now for the posts

My most popular posts are:

51 views for my 1959 Chevy Convertible, down from 70 last month but still the champion

26 views for my 1950 Chevy Pickup Truck up from 22 last month

25 views for taking up the Pre-Writing Challenge – new post only one day old

23 views for the Plan by the Week System by Steve Scott – only 5 days old

These are the posts for the month of February.  It seems to me that these stats suggest that I am creating posts that attract readers. The nostalgia posts still attract viewers but seem not to relate to other content.  I am adjusting the mix for March to include more variety to better gauge the topics where I should focus.  Any comments or observations are certainly welcome.

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Multi-syllables are good

Well to begin with, it’s a lovely, multi-syllabic word which trips off my tongue but there is more. It is more than just a tongue-teasing word. It’s a situation we all want to share. In popular use, it is regarded much like luck or good fortune. By some happy chance you are in the right place at the right time and find something wonderful that you weren’t looking for. You met the person who had the answer to your problem. You found the winning lottery ticket on the subway seat. You met the woman you want to marry. Serendipity is like a fairy tale, only it’s true.

It can happen to you

Usually we think of serendipity as something that happens to others. Our own lives are ordinary, boring and predictable. We have only ordinary interactions in ordinary circumstances most of the time. We don’t anticipate that anything wonderful and unexpected will happen to us.

Not ordinary

So what is it about serendipity that makes it not ordinary? It is not ordinary because serendipity brings together everything necessary for a good outcome. It is also unexpected and is different from other possible solutions that you can imagine. If you were to design the ideal outcome based upon your knowledge, it wouldn’t have been nearly so good as something serendipitous. You can’t imagine the unexpected. That is what makes serendipity so wonderful.

Put yourself in the way

But just because you can’t control serendipity doesn’t mean that it is nothing but dumb luck – at least that is what I believe. I think that you can find serendipitous events or maybe help them find you.

Avoid ordinary

What I mean is that when we do ordinary things we get ordinary outcomes. We can have serendipity happen even when we are doing mundane things. But I think we are much more likely to find serendipity when we venture away from the ordinary and business as usual. When we do something different, put ourselves in a new place, follow a new path, it is much more likely that what happens is unexpected. If it is positive and unexpected then we have serendipity.

Get our there

So put yourself out there. Go new places. Meet new people. Do new things. Make yourself uncomfortable. You may still not find serendipity – a wonderful and completely unpredictable event. But you won’t be ordinary either and your ordinary, boring life will be lifted to a new level.

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