BETTER TOGETHER

April 26th, 2022

A good negotiation results in a positive sum result. Most negotiation is thought of as compromise, where both parties give up something in order to reach an agreement. The only thing worse than a negotiation that results in dual compromise is a negotiation that doesn’t result in a deal. Then again, no deal might actually be better than a compromise. Regardless, both are a failure of communication and negotiation. Partnerships and collaboration occur because we as humans, when grouped together in a team become capable of far more than the sum of our people. Compromise goes against the norm of what collaboration generally achieves.

I recently found myself in a group of people who were all tasked with a lot of searching and sifting of information that we all needed to be proficient with. As fate would have it, I wasn’t particularly thrilled about this inefficient task, so I hatched a plan. I proposed to the group a roundtable session to drill down on the needed information. Everyone being of like mind and feeling a little out of their element jumped at the opportunity. The hypothesis was that everyone would have bits of knowledge and if we simply had a session or two to share and experiment with the communal knowledge, then perhaps things would be more efficient. Indeed, they were. And the funny thing is, I did almost no preparation - I just scheduled the meet ups, and people thanked me for it. Yet that’s all I contributed. And in return, by hosting a couple sessions with different cross sections of available people from the whole group, I quickly gained a high level of proficiency.

This structure is exactly how businesses function. A business owners with a good idea ideally gets to the point where they can’t do everything themselves, so they hire labor. A person who is grateful for employment does the work the business owner no longer has time for (or simply doesn’t want to do). There’s an exchange where both parties get something out of the agreement. Now certainly this is an ideal, and real life is far more complex, and often there are enormous differences of benefit between employer and employed. But at its core, a business is just a group project, much like what I did with my group who all had to sift and search for knowledge we had to be capable with. 

Much is said about leadership these days, but it probably only boils down to this idea: that people around you become far more powerful if woven together in a team. The leader is just a person who recognizes that and schedules it to happen. It’s the simple difference between: I need to figure this out and Let’s figure this out together.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: LIVING WATER

April 24th, 2022

He had been careless, and now he was fighting for his life. The heavy trap dimmed in the distance as it fell ever downwards into the depths, dragging Lucilius by the tangle of rope bound round his ankle as his hands struggled frantically at the mess. All around him the water darkened and even his hands and the rope grew dim.

He had been baiting traps and tossing them with the boat on autopilot. A steady steam to the east, but he hadn’t taken the time to organize his lines properly, tired and run down as he was, figuring all would be fine.

The trap far below found the bottom and suspended now in the darkness, Lucilius stricken with panic flailed at the looser bits of rope, succeeding only in tightening the mess around the bulky boot of his wadders.

The bloat of his lungs turned to a burn, as if they were somehow shrinking on to a molten core of their own. The blood in his veins began to run hot with the burn as his mind raged.

And then, while doubled over, straining, a searing shock exploded on the side of his head. The pain was so intense that Lucilius let go of the rope, grasping at his neck where he’d felt the sting. And as he straightened, he saw it.

A jellyfish floated, serene before him. A stray tentacle had grazed Lucilius’ neck and stung him. And there for a brief moment, Lucilius no longer felt the burn of his lungs, the hot lead of his blood. He only gazed at the faint image of the jellyfish before him.

It pulsated, gently climbing, slowly and calm. Entranced, Lucilius felt the screaming of his body, and with the feeling of death so near, his mind breathed in the calmness.

He gazed downwards, seeing the whole situation and did not bend back down to struggle with the ropes. Instead, he unbuckled the shoulder straps of his wadders, and with his free foot anchored on the mess of rope, he gently pushed until he felt his foot slip through the squeeze, freeing itself of the boot bound beyond the tangle. Lucilius shimmied out of the wadders, pulling them down and kicking his legs until he was free and he began to swim up towards the glimmer of light.

THE IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCE

April 23rd, 2022

As a concept, the ideal circumstance is usually a fairly static dream in a person’s head. The right living situation, relationships, income and toys. It’s a hazy set of goals that we carry around with us, regardless of making progress toward them or not. While these “dream life” goals can be very motivating they can miss an important point. And it’s best encapsulated by the rich person who finally gets to the point where they can spend all their time on the beach, and while sitting on that beach for the third week, there’s an unsettling sense of: now what?

A better strategy is to shorten the time horizon and imagine a cascade of possible ideal circumstances. Given the goals for the next six months, what would be the ideal circumstance for them?

This sort of thinking isn’t generally available to people because of the rigid nature of keeping a job. For the most part a person’s time is almost completely spoken for. The freedom to wonder about life in 3 and 6 month stretches doesn’t usually come until retirement. Obligations stitch a person to their income pretty tightly, and it’s usually the un-obligated who can be so whimsical with their time, and flexible with how they achieve their goals.

A growing number of people, however, are trading in the old fashioned 9-5 for a more flexible, often remote situation. Living and working on that beach can be far cheaper than expected, and part time work paired with cheap living can afford a lot more time - that crucial ingredient which a 9-5 obliterates - to consider more flexible ways toward long term goals.

Most importantly, such flexibility can turn the ideal circumstance into an evolving equation, a process which has many incarnations. What could be better when compared to the traditional image of decades of toil capped by a vague sense of freedom in the later part of life?

Strangely, an idea of the ideal circumstance can get in the way of seeing an excellent circumstance right before us. Being so focused on some distant and unavailable circumstance can obscure the present - even if the present has evolved into a previously imagined ideal circumstance! Embarrassingly, I speak from very recent experience. . .

NOW WHAT?

April 22nd, 2022

Achievement is underwhelming. The success and euphoria that comes with a big goal finally materializing is fleeting at best. It can be enhanced, a bit, and we try all the time to pump up the celebration. Usually with alcohol, and food and friends. (But sleep deprivation of several days also adds - though it’s highly discouraged that you do this - sometimes it just happens when there’s a big crunch) But no matter how glorious that peak of feeling is, it remains just a peak, and it passes as quickly as anything else in life.

There’s two important things to realize about this all-too-human phenomenon. One is that it’s not a great idea to celebrate every win. This is an aspect of how the dopamine system works. To keep it healthy and revved up for solid motivation, it’s best to keep the dopamine system a little confused, and this means being a little erratic with when the “treat” actually arrives. Because celebration depletes our dopamine system by overtaxing it. And then, much like the actual hangover that often accompanies such celebration, there’s second hangover where dopamine his slowly returning to it’s normal operating levels. But celebrating for only some instances of success helps keep this system well oiled and tuned.

The second thing to realize about this momentary window of glorious achievement is that it’s the wrong thing to seek satisfaction from. Because the arrival of the end result is so fleeting, it doesn’t make up much of our experience. It’s just a thin slice of time. But the process required to get to that moment - that’s nearly the entire time we spend, and if that’s not a source of satisfaction, then it’s likely time for a hard and brutal examination of one’s own life.

What happens when work is satisfying but difficult is that our days become peppered with these tiny moments of achievement. Especially if the work requires figuring something out - something new - something that requires learning, confusion and moments when we are stricken without an idea of where to go next. See the reason why we go see adventure movies and dramas is for the same reason that we should embrace difficult work - it’s simply more interesting, and that feeling of paralysis when you don’t know what to do next only makes victory more sweet when you figure out a way forward.

SMALL BETS, SMALL WINS

April 21st, 2022

Why is it so important to edge outside of the comfort zone? And why is it called the comfort zone if we’re supposed to get out of it? Perhaps it would be better names the stagnation zone? What exactly occurs in this stagnating comfort zone? We do what is entirely predictable. We stick to the script, ensuring the reliable outcome. There’s no risk in this place, and because there’s no risk, there’s no possibility of any kind of reward outside of what comes with the usual routine. The comfort zone is a holding pattern, and the farther outside this holding pattern we venture, two things happen: our risk of messing up increases, but the size of potential reward also increases.

This is why small bets are so important. Staying inside the comfort zone is like placing a bet in a rigged game: the odds aren’t just high, they are pretty much guaranteed. But so is the pay off of that non-risk, which isn’t anything new or better or interesting compared to what we’ve always been doing. In short, there’s no real risk, and so - no reward. But venture out of the norm, and suddenly there’s a degree of risk. Try your hand at a new skill, test the waters with a business idea, ask that cutie out on a date. All of these suddenly introduce uncertainty, which is synonymous with risk. By mixing our own skills with the randomness out in the world, we engage that uncertainty, take that risk, but also discover and learn, no matter how badly we lose. Getting rejected by the cutie can have the unexpected effect of creating resilience in the face of rejection. A failed business project is almost always replete with lessons about what it means to enter the market, and finding out we have no innate talent for some new skill can create a strange and refreshing sense of being a beginner, like a child working through the first steps of learning.

All of these are relatively small bets. Pouring one’s life savings into a first business project would be a big bet - and an unwise bet. A better version would be to take perhaps 10% of those savings and create the minimum viable version of that business idea and see if it can garner any kind of success - any kind of small win.

Small wins lead to more small wins, and introspect, a course of exploration can look like one giant inevitable win. But like the montages in movies, that’s not what it is. Success begets success. Small wins beget more small wins.

The impulse may be to increase the size of the bet. A small bet worked, why not go for a medium bet this time, and if that works, why not a big bet after that? Surely this is a good direction!

But there in lies the error. The direction of that first small win might not be the overall direction. It might just be the entrance. In the same way that the front door to a house doesn’t indicate the direction to the bedroom. There’s navigation to be done. Which is why its best to creep toward success with a series of small bets and small wins. At any juncture, it might be wiser to cast two or three small bets to see which direction is best instead of one big bet in the wrong direction. 

It’s a bit like playing Marco Polo. Each call out of “Marco” gives an idea of where you should head. But a bunch of small bets versus one big bet is the difference between saying “Marco” a bunch of times to zero in on your opponent, and saying “Marco” once and heading off in that direction which is nearly guaranteed to be immediately outdated. 

Success is a moving target, and each small bet is an experiment to see which direction success might lie.