How Should I Have Spent My Time?

I've established a good habit of getting up early each day before 6am to check the online job listings. I've also looked into getting a "project management" certification in order to make myself more useful to prospective employers. In the mean time, I've done some volunteer work, and talked to people about doing more volunteer work in the near future. I figure it's a way to make more connections and possibly open some doors that I don't even know exist yet.

That's a satisfying set of respectable and socially useful activities. I'm not writing this to blow my own horn though, but to contrast this to an alternative activity I could have spent my time on.

I'm not a stock market expert, but I did suspect that Citigroup and AIG stock, which both dipped below $1 on fears of going bankrupt, were undervalued because the government would not let them go bankrupt. If I studied this a little more and convinced myself that it was worth the risk of investing my severance pay on these stocks, I could have made over $100,000 in the last two weeks as these stocks shot up. I didn't make that investment out of fear that I could have lost a good portion of my severance pay if I was wrong, and my family needed that money to survive on until I find my next job.

Does this seem wrong to anyone else? An economic system that rewards stock speculation so much more than socially useful efforts seems broken. Maybe we accepted this in the past, but perhaps now the problems this leads to have become all too painfully apparent. Perhaps the economy won't fully recover until this situation fundamentally changes. As long as the most economically profitable thing to do involves financial speculation, we can't consider ourselves to be on the road to creating a reasonable and sustainable economy for the 21st century. Just some speculation, and I don't know if it's more wishful thinking than reality yet.

Making this Election a Transformational Event

It’s Saturday evening, Nov 8th, or as some of us call it, the 4th day of the new world. Now that I'm able to focus on something other than an uncontrollable compulsion to check the latest poll numbers every 2 hours, or to read the latest episode of "The Miss-Adventures of Sarah from Wasilla" (man I'll miss watching Tina Fey), I can finally write some blog entries.

The election on Nov 4th was certainly a transformational event for our political system. It was more than just a change of administrations; it was a change of direction for the country. Changing directions means the immediate impacts may be small, but the long term impacts can be enormous.

Clearly it energized and empowered the progressive movement. There is a true sense of hope, optimism, and even renewed pride in the air. There is also a growing consensus that now the hard work begins if we really want to make this election a transformational event for the society. In that spirit, I would like to exploit this opportunity and make this be a transformational event for myself too. But how to best do that?

There is a “Coming of Age” class for teenagers at my congregation that is meant to help them in the transition from childhood to the next stage in life (not quite young adults yet, but no long a child). As part of the process, they bring in something from their childhood that is relinquished and taken away during a ceremony to symbolize leaving that prior life behind.

I thought that was a neat idea, and wondered if I could do something like that to symbolize leaving the pre-election Bush years behind, and moving into the new era symbolized by Obama’s election. The first act I’ve decided to do is to remove from my browser the pointers to all the political blogs and web sites I obsessed over before the election. I’ve wasted way too much time on them with no benefits to show for it. Time to put that behind me and move on now. Instead I'll limit myself to tracking a very limited number of web sites and blogs that I get some true benefits from. More steps to follow….

A Big Part of Success is Showing Up

You can make detailed plans for your future, but often times the best opportunities show up unexpectedly and are not something you plan for. They don’t show up at random though. On the contrary, I’ve realized that they tend to show up for people who tend to show up. In other words, if you make yourself a visible, active, hardworking participant in some field, people looking to give someone an opportunity will be much more likely to come to you. The result can be a totally unexpected chance to move your plans forward in a new direction.

Let me give you a recent example from our town. One good friend - let’s call her Anne (because that’s her real name), was a housewife with two young children. I am on our town’s Conservation Advisory Council, and I invited Anne to attend one of the meetings. She got very interested in one of the local environmental issues and did an enormous amount of work on it culminating in a presentation to the town board. Soon after that she joined another town council and became active there too.

When people were looking for some new to run for our State Assembly seat, guess who they decided to ask? One year ago Anne was a housewife taking care of two young children and getting somewhat board with the lack of activities in her life. Now she’s busy running for State Assembly, something neither she or her husband had in their plans. If she wins, that's a start of a major political career for her. If she looses, the contacts she made and the reputation she built up in the process will open up many new doors for her.

And all because she showed up and started to get involved on a small scale to begin with.

Showing up, and Generating Opportunities

It’s been a while since I posted – I had three major presentations to give in a four week period, plus attending college graduation ceremonies for my son. Giving these presentations was a big step forward with my career goals, and these opportunities all came about because of efforts I made at giving previous minor presentations. Woody Allen used to say that “Eighty percent of success is showing up”. In a way it was true in my case. If you show up at gatherings and make yourself known as someone who has something to say about a topic, opportunities will start emerging. As a result of these most recent presentations, I was invited to review an article, review a book, and give a presentation at a conference in Beijing. (Unfortunately I had to turn down the Beijing presentation because my company wouldn’t pay for it). The more you show up and make the effort, the more opportunities present themselves.

This gets me to my son’s graduation from college. I was trying to decide what words of wisdom I could give him at this transition point in his life. I came up with the following thoughts:

You know those quotes about “opportunity knocking”? Well, it doesn’t really work that way. Opportunity doesn’t knock on your door, but it does hang around the area for a while. You have to go out and do a little exploring to find it. And sometimes what you find are the pieces that you have to put together yourself.

Accepting Leadership Roles

One of the characteristics of a mature adult is a willingness to accept roles of responsibilities in the community. Society requires people who are willing to accept such roles. It is said that one of the requirements of a well functioning democracy is a large pool of people willing to accept leadership roles when the situation requires it.

Accepting leadership roles in non-profit community organizations is also recognized as an important part of creating future opportunities for yourself. Not only do you gain experience and make good contacts, but managers of both profit and non-profit organizations look at experiences in community leadership when evaluating whether or not a person has a "leadership disposition".

With that in mind, it was an easy decision for me to accept the position of President of our local Unitarian Universalists congregation when I was recently asked to run for that office. There will be an election later this year, but that is mostly a formality and I will likely run unopposed. It’s a big time commitment and a little scary, but there is no doubt in my mind that the experience will be extremely valuable for anything I decide to do afterwards. I’m also excited about the new ideas and programs I can help introduce and help the organization grow and flourish. It’s a wonderful group of people and a wonderful organization to work with. I believe that a progressive religion such as this can be a real benefit to people’s lives, and an important part of the solutions to some of our world’s problems. It's also an important counterweight to religious fundamentalism. Wish me luck!

Developing a Growth Mind-set

I found a lot of useful insight in a recent article in Scientific American Mind by Carol S. Dweck. The article is titled The Secret to Raising Smart Kids, but it contains many useful comments on success and failure in general. For example, in one study it was shown that after repeated failures, most animals concluded that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. From then on, the animals tended to remain passive even when they could affect events. They were in a state called learned helplessness. How often do we find ourselves in such a state with regards to a situation?

Now consider the attitudes in children towards successes and failures in school, in particular with their beliefs about why they fail. Children with a fixed mind-set believed intelligence was innate and fixed. Making mistakes or even the need to exert an effort was seen as a weakness, an indication that they lacked ability, which often lead to a downward spiral of further failures and learned helplessness.

Children with a growth mind-set believed that intelligence was malleable and can be improved though work and education. They viewed mistakes as something to be overcome and an opportunity to improve, as if the brain was a muscle that gets stronger with use. One inspiring student was observed to respond to a problem by pulling up a chair, rubbing his hands together, and saying “I love a challenge!” Students with such attitudes performed better academically in the long run that gifted children with the fixed mind-set.

How do you transmit a growth mind-set to children (or develop it in yourself)? They key way was to praise them for their effort, not their intelligence. Instead of saying “Wow, that’s a really good score – you must be smart”, use an alternative praise of the form “Wow, that’s a really good score – you must have worked very hard.” We can encourage similar attitudes in ourselves in a variety of fields by consciously deciding to view failures as challenging learning opportunities, and to be more proud of our efforts than our natural intelligence or skills when we do succeed. We should try to view ourselves as agents of our own brain development.

Having a "Research Attitude"

After working for many years in a development environment, I transferred to a research department last year. After working there for one year I had a discussion with my manager about how I was doing. I commented that I didn't feel like I had changed to a research organization - it's as if I was still doing the same style of work I had been doing in development. His reply was yes, I was still working as if I was in a development group. Specifically, I was working on projects as if I had to succeed on almost everything I did, and if I didn't, I had to explain why I screwed up.

He went on to remind me that in a research organization, you have to be more aggressive at taking risks to explore new ideas. He wanted me to come back at the end of the year and list the 5 big projects I worked on that failed (and if I had maybe 3 that succeeded that would be good too). What great advise! That really produced a change in the way I started viewing things.

I started wondering if there were phases or areas of life that corresponded to research and some that corresponded to development. Starting and supporting a new family has some similarities to development. While there can be periods in college or early adulthood that call for more of a research attitude as far as aggressively exploring new ideas. There may also be times later in life when things start to stagnate or plateau which also call for some more aggressive pursuing of new ideas. In some cases perhaps this might correspond to the infamous mid-life crisis.

Other situations corresponding to transitions or reaching former goals may also call for more of a "research attitude" when it comes to exploring what to do next or what changes to make. The key lesson for today is that trying things that don't work out is supposed to be part of the process of moving forward.

"Wow, what a ride!" and other quotes

Three quotes to think about today.

"Do one thing every day that scares you." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, totally worn out and proclaiming. "Wow, what a ride!" - author unknown but sometimes attributed to motorcycle racer Bill McKenna.

Attending two funerals in one week recently made me think about what I will have accomplished when my time is up. Sometimes I think I have decades to go, but I also know that things can change in an instant. Time is not something to continuously waste (though regular relaxation and rejuvenation is needed). I've been on a short hiatus from focusing on goals lately due to other pressing events, but I think I need to figure out what I can do tomorrow that's scary.

To help remind yourself that every day is precious, I want to include one final quote I recently heard from Nick Donofrio, an IBM executive.

I have two major thoughts every morning to start the day:
(1) Today I will make a difference
(2) Today I will do no harm

Thinking about what you did to make a difference today seems like a good way to reflect on each day as you slip into bed.

Do Something Scarry

My son asked me recently what lessons I had learned in the first half of life. The one that immediately popped into mind was a philosophy that I adopted recently that has turned out to be quite beneficial.

Do something scary on a regular basis

I'm not talking about doing something physically dangerous here. I'm talking about taking a step with your life that you may be a little scary. We often are faced with options that have only a small downside if they don't work out, but have a potentially significant benefit if they do work out. A reasonable view would normally say such is risk is well worth taking, but we to often fail to do so because of fear of failure or embarassment, uncertainty, or just lack of initiative. The philosophy of "do some thing scary on a regular basis" is a way of saying - take that risk. It could be submitting a letter to the editor, joining an organization, attending a conference, creating a business venture, starting a new project, or making a phone call.... Or starting a new blog as an experiment. So far, this philosophy has worked out very well for me.