Sunday, January 11, 2009

An Alternative to the Golden Rule?

The Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, is sometimes considered to be the most basic foundational principle of ethics in our society. Variations on it can be found in almost every society and every major religion, and it is often considered the best candidate for the common basic principle taught by all religions.

I was recently reading about Ethical Culture, which is a notheistic religion based entirely on ethical principles. I would have guessed that some variation of the Golden Rule served as the basis of their ethical principles. However, their basic ethical core value is "Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby yourself". This is an interesting alternative to the Golden Rule, one which has some merit. In some ways it goes beyond just defining right and wrong, and focuses additionally on describing the most effective action along with giving a guideline to help decide what that action might be.

I couldn't think of any cases where this Ethical Culture core value would conflict with the Golden Rule. But I also don’t think that one is just a subset or special case of the other – they are different. When considering how to respond to people affected by a natural disaster, or a neighbor who suffered a tragic loss of some sort, applying the Golden Rule seems like the best guide to establishing the right ethical action. However, in the much more common daily life occurrences of dealing with someone who is angry, argumentative, or despondent, then acting in a way to elicit the best in that person (as opposed to further feeding their anger for example), seems like the right guideline. In fact, for the very general cases of how to set examples for others or how to properly raise a child, acting in a way to draw out the best in that person seems to be exactly the right approach.

Interestingly, this also has implications to international policy. Consider how different things would be in Gaza right now if both sides had acted in ways to elicit the best in others. This would mean always acting to strengthen the moderate and cooperative tendencies on the other side as your overarching guiding principle. Imagine the results from such an approach, and compare that to the current horrific results produced by the policies of always showing greater strength or determination through the use of force or violence. I’ll go one step further - I'll assert that "Always acting so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby yourself" should be one of the basic principles of American foreign policy if our attempt to transform the world is to be at all effective.

Friday, January 2, 2009

New Year's Resolutions, or Alternatives

Most of productivity experts seem to have little enthusiasm for New Year’s Resolutions. In large part that’s because they are often just wishes (“I want to loose some weight”) and not really goals. To be an effective goal, there should be a clear description of what success is (“I will loose 20 pounds by June 1st”), and a plan for how to get there (“Starting today I will eat 3 healthy meals a day, avoid all other snacks, and I will avoid completely the following foods and drinks …..”).

Some people suggest picking your most important single goal for the year and just focusing on that to maximize the chances of success. A variation on this that works well with setting new habits is to set a single goal of establishing a new habit each month and focus on that. If you’re successful you’ll set 12 new good habits in a year, which is actually quite an accomplishment.

So after giving this a fair amount of though over the holidays, here’s what I would like to publicly declare. After completing several exercises to examine my strengths and interests, my single big goal for the year is to:
Use my insights and leadership abilities to inform people and inspire them to promote a cooperative, sustainable and peaceful society.

That high level description is too general to be an effective goal, so I’m developing a description of what being successful would look like and a plan to get there.

In terms of a monthly habit I’d like to establish, I came up with the following cluster of related habits for January:
Establish a habit of being better organized, uncluttered, and focused on my important goals. This includes:

  • Write current life goals on a wallet sized card. Every project must follow from these.
  • Unclutter: nothing is to be stored on horizontal surfaces - desk, table tops, floors. Regularly discard unused items.
  • Email inbox: reduce to less than one screen every evening. When a response is called for, do so within 24 hours.
  • Web browser: shut down every evening (i.e. no long list of unread articles in tabs)
  • Simplify activities by applying the 80/20 rule - focus on that 20% of work that produces most of the benefits and start eliminating the rest.
  • Awake at 5am for daily reflection and planning of the day’s activities. Focus on the most important thing I can accomplish that day to achieve my long term goals.
  • Regular weekly / monthly / yearly review of goals, projects, progress, plans

Practices specific to work:

  • Write current work goals on a wallet sized card. Every project must follow from these.
  • Keep track of time spent at work to see how well I'm focusing on the important projects.
  • No personal email or web reading until 4 hours of work is accomplished, then only 30 minutes until work day is done (at least 8 hours).

That’s quite a challenge for establishing new habits in one month, but if successful it could have a big impact on my daily life.