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Lead-from-the-Hip with James Otteson
Econtalk for September 8, 2014, James Otteson on the End of Socialism:
James’ central arguments are against Socialism and in favor of a decentralized notion of Capitalism as it relates toward viewing/treating each other in society:
Once you start thinking about human beings as members of classes…immediately what you begin to do is to see human beings within those classes being more or less interchangeable. They are like poker chips or marbles, one is just as good as another.
The danger that has issued real horrible consequences in human history is once you begin to see people as being interchangeable, as less amongst classes, this race, this religion, this nationality, this ethnicity, then you begin to dehumanize them. They don’t seem to you like individual centers of human dignity…
By contrast, when you see human beings as being individuals…individual centers of human agency, individual centers of human dignity, that completely transforms our relationship to on another…
I no longer see/view you as interchangeable, as fungible, as a poker chip. I view you as an irreplaceable and precious asset, a precious commodity, a precious human being. Someone who brings something to the world that nobody else ever has or nobody in the future ever will. That completely transforms our relationship to one another…
When we see it that way, this is what I call a triumph of human moral agency. That’s really a transformation in how we view other people. That is what will deter us from labelling a population of people as a certain kind of group and devaluing them because they are in the wrong kinds of group. We can’t do that. Because each member of that group is unique. Each member is different then all the others and each one is irreplaceable.
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Lead-from-the-Hip with Daniel Coyle
Brett Mckay had Daniel Coyle on his Art of Manliness Podcst #388 to talk about his new book, The Culture Code. This interview resonated with me and my experience working in corporate HR jobs over the past 20 years. Can’t wait to read the book, it’s next on my Kindle queue.
What is a super culture?
- Places where people and organizations are doing something that seems powerful and curious.
- Where they consistently have the knack for being and doing way more than the sum of their parts.
Why are they important?
- You know it as soon as you walk into a place.
- People spend more time doing and less time watching or waiting to see what happens.
- There is more collaboration and less intergroup competition, gossip, or backstabbing.
Good cultures have and promote:
- A close, physical connection and proximity to others
- People working together to solve difficult problems
- A sense of safety, security, and connection
Bad cultures, have, don’t have, or promote:
- No shared vision or future
- People that do not interact with or are physically isolated from one another
- Constant checks or tests where people are severly punished if they do not meet strict standards
How can we change or improve the culture where we work?
- As an individual contributor: - You probably can’t. Best thing to do is leave if it is a toxic culture.
As a leader: - Figure out where you are and where you want to be,
- Meet with everybody and start by listening to why things are they way they are,
- Identify the behaviors that will help you get there,
- Constantly communicate them and recognize and reward the right behaviors when they occur,
- Lastly, be human, own mistakes and shortcomings.
- Hold after action reviews and be transparent and truthful as to why things failed. Empower the owner to fix his or her own mistakes.
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Lead-from-the-Hip with Howard Marks
Shane interviews Howard Marks from Oaktree Capital on his podcast, The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish. The episode aired on March 5, 2019 and is titled, Luck, Risk, and Avoiding Losers.
Below is not a direct quote, but it is pretty close to what was originally said.
We understand that we are going to sometimes make decisions that aren’t going to work and the people we work with are going to sometimes make decisions that aren’t going to work all the time either. We have a mentality that recognizes this and doesn’t criticize people every time something goes wrong and we try to hire people who aren’t terribly emotional or egotistical, who don’t have a lot of hubris or testosterone, and I think we try to have a mellow organization which is very helpful in all these regards.
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Workflow - Using Ulysses to Design Training Content
I’ve had Ulysses for a couple of years and have never used it consistently or for anything productive. Until now, maybe. I am building out a new training class gear toward personal productivity and time management which I have tentatively titled, Focused. I’ve had a loose outline in my head for a number of years that I was able to quickly get down by opening a new sheet in Ulysses and created an ordered list in Markdown. Then, by enabling the second editor, I am able to create new sheets for each outline idea I have. What I like about it the most is that I can easily move sheets up or down in the order I want them as well as open them and add content that I want to come back to later.
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Lead-from-the-Hip with Kevin Smith
In Jay and Silent Bob Get Old 10: Mewes Shook Me All Night Long, a podcast inspired to keep his close friend and movie sidekick Jason Mewes on-the-wagon, Kevin Smith breaks from the usual comedic routine to talk about what he's learned over the years as a director and how his personal style of leadership has progressed.
I could never understand when I was younger and listening to older directors, how much control they gave up. When I was a young director, I used to force actors to do what I wanted them to do. Now that I'm older, I get it. You get more by letting go. If you put somebody in charge of their own performance, they are ultimately going to give you their best. The best thing to do to create an environment for very talented people is to let them do what they do best and take a step back and don't interfere; maybe stepping in every once in a while to help shape or tweak something. I know how to get the best out of people and what they do and that is my job. That is what I'm good at.”
As I listened to him, I was reminded of a post I recently read at The Science of Personality, where Bob Hogan reminds readers of Walter Michel's strong and weak situations: - Strong situations provide clear cues for behavior, which then suppress individual personality. - Weak situations provide ambiguous cues for behavior, which then potentiates individual personality.
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Things 3: Inbox to Folders and Projects
I spent a lot of time over the weekend doing a GTD brain dump and then sorting/converting into tasks and projects. Really helped me focus on Monday. After I completed my last important task from my list today, I rewarded myself by recording the first part of a screencast project I am just starting.
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Food for Thought - Work Context and Subsequent Behavior
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the work context shapes behavior. Take for instance, the CB radio and the long haul truck driver. Working in isolation for long periods of time created the desire to interact with other driver’s (at least before internet radio came along). The opposite is true for knowledge workers sitting in an open office space. They wish for taller cubicle walls and wear noise-cancelling headphones because there is too much social interaction.
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Scott Lees on Establishing a Growth Mindset
Sage advice from Scott Lees from his book titled, Addicted to the Process: How to Close Transactional Sales with Confidence and Consistency
Take a moment now. Acknowledge that you don’t know everything. Recognize that there might be a different way, a better way, to make some improvements.
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1978 - Catfished
Some of my fondest memories from childhood come from when my family, my future step-family, grandmother, and cousins all lived in the same mobile home park (he all had separate homes). When I went out to play with my two cousins, Eddie and Mikey, we left no stone unturned. Even though we were not allowed to leave the park, we did. We were also restricted to stay within the family block and not allowed to play or ride our bikes in the adult section of the park.
One day when we were covertly exploring the adult side of the park, we were hiding out beside the big trash dumpsters when we heard something thrashing inside of them. We recruited Mikey, who was the youngest, to go in and find the source. Eddie and I boosted him up and over and a few moments later, Mikey comes up with a big catfish. “They’re still alive, we’ve got to save them!”
Actually, there were two catfish and our plan was to bring them home and put them in the tub. However, on our way to the family side of the park, we pasted the big fountain and waterfall that bifurcated the two sections of the park. The catfish desperately needed oxygen so we put them inside of the fountain. The two fish floated upside down for a while, but then to our surprise, flipped upright and began to swim about the fountain. Mission accomplished.
Word spread across through the family side of the neighborhood that two big catfish were swimming in the pond and soon a group of kids and teenagers were at the scene. That size of a crowd draws attention and soon the park maintenance guy came and dispersed the crowd. My cousins and I sat on our bikes from a distance as we watched the man pull the catfish from the pond, smack their heads on the sidewalk, and through them into a small trashcan he had attached to his golf cart. We had all thought, because of us they got to live a little longer and at least they didn’t suffer the cruel death of suffocating in the end. They went quick.
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1982 - A Poltergeist in Kingman, AZ
When I was 9, my mother and father separated. My mother was seeing my future step-father and to get some space, we moved from Southern California to Kingman, AZ.
My step-father had two kids that were my age from his first wife. He would get them every other week. On one weekend, I thought it would be funny and hide then jump out and scare them whey they arrived. I remember climbing up in a tree in the front yard and would wait until they parked and then I would jump down and pounce on them. However, it got dark and they still had not arrived. So I moved my operation into the house. After a quick dinner, I hid behind the couch and my plan was to jump out at some point and scare them.
More hours went by, my mom and sister forgot where I was at (I don’t think I told them, nor did my mom check to see where I was at before she went to bed as I recall) and I grew tired and at some point fell asleep behind the couch. I woke up at some point in the middle of the night. I was a little disoriented until I realized where I was at. I stood up behind the couch to go to my room and I found my step-brother sitting cross-legged in front of the TV very close watching Poltergeist.
He was alone and there was only one way in the room which the entrance was in front of him. I waited for my opportunity, which I cannot remember now, but was timed with a jumpy scene from the move and I pounced. I’ve never seen someone as scared as he was that day. He went into shock and couldn’t move or speak for a couple of minutes. To this day, it was my best scare. Randall would be proud.
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1977 - Pre-Tivo and Tantrums
Growing up I vividly remember getting up from watching my show and pushing the button on the TV to turn it off and “freeze” the show until I returned again so I could pick up where I left off.
I would come home and turn the TV back on only to find that my show was not where it left off. I would get pissed and accuse my parents or my big sister of turning it on while I was away.
I was telling someone this story a while back and my mom overheard me. She faintly remembered me getting really pissed when returning to home, turning on the TV and throwing a tantrum, but didn’t know why until now. I wonder what she actually thought of me back then.
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40 Tasks and a Mule
I spent the last hour before heading home getting down to inbox zero for work. At the end, I completed 10 tasks, and deferred 40 until next week. FML - but at least they are out of my head on into Things 3.
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Novelty Warps the Fabric of Space and Time
I learned something new today: Most of the memories that we can easily recall tend to occur between the ages of 15 to 30. This is because the brain favors new and novel things rather than the routine and mundane. By the time we hit our 40s and 50s, first experiences and novelty tend to be less frequent. This is one of the reasons why as we get older, the time seems to fly by more quickly.
To hedge against this, Meik Wiking tells Brett McKay that we should continue to seek out new and novel experiences throughout life. This will create more memories and slow the perceived passage of time.
You can listen to the whole interview yourself by clicking on the link below.
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Sometimes you've just gotta pull over and take it all in.
Ortega Hwy facing north overlooking Lake Elsinore under heavy cloud cover. Snow capped mountains in the background.
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Switched Back to Things 3 from OmniFocus
I have way too much shit going on at work right now. Whenever things get this way, I feel compelled to review and change up the way I manage my work tasks and projects. I guess I’m always striving to uncover the perfect task management process, much like Ken Miles in Ford vs. Ferrari was constantly striving for the perfect lap.
The reasons that ultimately drove me back to Things 3 from Omni Focus were:
- I felt the $10 per month web service was too much money (especially after purchasing the Mac and iPhone apps),
- I could not figure out an easy way to drag my Today tasks around in order of priority.
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Likes vs. Comments: Which provides a more meaningful experience?
I recently learned that Instagram will remove the public follower like count on user’s posts in an effort to improve the quality of connections, conversations, and community amongst its user base. The topic of likes versus replies or comments also came up in the Micro Monday episode 69 podcast where I think the two women both agreed that replies and comments provide a better and more meaningful connected between community members. I agree and wanted to share two recent experiences I’ve had in trying to create more meaningful connections and conversations on Twitter and LinkedIn.
A few weeks ago, I posted the following on LinkedIn, “What is the one thing you wish your company had provided or covered during your new hire orientation?” I added not to provide one’s opinion, but to base it on your actual experience. I received a total of six responses out of the ~1,000 people I’m connected to. Four of the responses were Likes and two were Comments. Pretty poor outcome. The two actual comments I received were from a husband and wife that I interact with in the real world.
A week ago, I posted the following on Twitter, “I am building a ‘Feel Good’ playlist on Spotify and need your help. Will you please send me the one song that puts you into a great mood?” I received about the same number of responses, however, I did get more actual comments.
This morning, I posted, “Twitter friends, do you follow/read any interesting independent blogs? I am building an RSS feed and need more sources.” Although I just posted it, I don’t expect much of a response.
I can think of two reasons for the poor responses: 1) The feed itself - Many people never see the post; and 2) It is simply easier to like something and move on than to think about it, formulate a response, and reply. Not earth shattering, I know. But if we want to establish better connections and engage in more meaningful conversations, I agree that devaluing likes and encouraging comments and replies might help.
Resources:
[later.com/blog/hidd...]([later.com/blog/hidd...](https://later.com/blog/hidden-likes-instagram/)
[monday.micro.blog/2019/10/0...](https://monday.micro.blog/2019/10/01/episode-jeannie-mcgeehan.html)
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Closed Captioning for the "Learning Impaired"
I read a post on medium this morning about why people like to watch video with closed captioning on even if they are not hearing impaired. The post suggests it may help people better focus, especially if they have trouble processing audio.
This is true in my home. We frequently leave close captioning on when watching TV. Sometimes friends and family visiting will ask why we have it on and then after a few minutes they’ll make a comment like, “Oh that’s what they were saying!"
Growing up (even today) I had a hard time understanding the lyrics to songs. The best way for me to retain them was to read them from the Album or CD insert while the song was playing. This is kind of like closed captioning.
As a trainer, we have the option of turning closed captioning on or off with our e-learning and video-based training content. I frequently turn it on especially for longer courses. It helps me stay focused and I also feel I retain more information.
Might be worth a try if you also find yourself struggling to stay focused or feel like the information goes into one ear and out the other.
Original source where I found the link to the reference post: https://barbaraoakley.com/
Reference post: https://onezero.medium.com/why-gen-z-loves-closed-captioning-ec4e44b8d02f
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How to Effectively Engage in a Debate
I listened to an interview this morning where a woman was asked for her advice on how to engage in constructive debate with religious fundamentalists. I feel her advice could be used for any situation where the other person’s view is very different from his or her own. Also, I’ve been reading a lot and taking several courses on communication, active listening, etc., and many of the concepts presented overlap with this woman’s list.
How to effectively engage in conversation/debate:
1. Assume positive intent (of the other person) - That is assume the other person is genuine in their stance or belief system and is not just trying to pull one over on you.
2. Remain calm
3. Ask open-ended questions to try to better understand the other person’s position/argument.
4. Be sure to state your arguments too. Otherwise, it is not much of a conversation or debate.
5. Do you best to be patient throughout the process. It can be trying for both parties involved during the exchange.
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Anxiety Excavated
I was running late this morning to work. Traffic was stopped for about 30 minutes for a road-widening project. Instead of getting anxious or frustrated, I decided to turn off my car, roll down the window and watch the excavator do its work. Time passed quickly, and I was almost kind of sad when the road opened back up (I said almost).
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How I Manage Paper In My Office
I keep a very simple paper filing system. Below is a picture of my right desk drawer. It is one of two drawers that has paper. It contains my working files. The other drawer contains my reference files.
The first section contains anything I want to put into the secure Shred-It bin. The next section contains plastic folders that I keep loose leaf papers associated with a project. No binders and no sections. I use 3M tape to write the project name on each folder. I organize them by what folder I most recently used goes in the front.
The last section is a daily tickler file that I use to manage certain pieces of paper that some action needs to be taken on a given date.
Nothing fancy, but it works for me.
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Walken's Are Welcome!
I stopped by Dunkin' Donuts this morning to get coffee. The drive-thru was extremely busy and there were cars spilling out into the adjacent parking lot causing a bit of traffic to back-up and be diverted.
I pulled up to the front of the store, said “Hi" to the woman cleaning the windows on my way in, took my order (no line) from the very tall man and even got a “Have a nice day” from him as well.
Was back on the road with my hot coffee in no time. Not sure why more people don’t do this.
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