Another self-improvememt stumble

Self improvement blogs can get tiring; they're usually repeating the same essential points because people keep making similar problems! However, I'm forgetful so I like to be reminded now and again.
I found this list of life advice useful and fairly comprehensive. My own comments follows:

Nice list Tom. I can hear a wealth of experience in your words. I am always grateful for the opportunity to skip hard times others have endured by listening to their stories!

I have to agree with the others that self-change is not easy at all. The real difference is that it is never impossible. If you have given away your ability to make the decisions in parts of your life it will appear difficult, perhaps insurmountable. But it’s never beyond reach.
I think the important thing is to realize that the first person you have to convince is yourself. “I can’t do anything” is a tempting thought, but if you reduce it to a trivial level it’s obviously false (you can always act at some basic point).
So if you find yourself lacking in confidence or motivation, start with your absolute smallest unconnected problem and fix it. Make a plan, gather what you need and get it done. Take a little time to appreciate your success, then move on to your new smallest problem.
By the time you reach issues that are actually difficult you will have built up some confidence and discipline in your problem-solving abilities and will feel ready to ask other to help. Just make sure not to rush ahead. Set a pace that won’t overwhelm you. Start soon and start slow.

Not Challenged at your Job?

Maybe you're unhappy because you're 'smart'..
An interesting article with an extreme bias towards the intelligent and ambitious set.

My comment:

Excellent piece - I think you capture and convey well the feelings of a significant portion of the population. And of course you have stirred a lot of controversy with your explicit grouping of ’smart’ ( reads defensively as ‘better’) and ‘not smart’. Anyone who perceives themself in the latter group will probably feel insulted. Veritas has some nice comments there.

I think there is basically one criterion for Success: create something good or destroy something bad.
(Btw, be Really careful about that second one.)

Here’s the Problem: you will probably not Succeed at a 9-5, at least not anytime soon.
That’s because a 9-5 not designed for Success, it’s designed for Stability. Decent income, minimal risk. And let’s face it, creation and destruction are risky! But with that risk comes greater potential reward. Wealth doesn’t just appear, it has to be created (natural resources being the blatant exception).

So if you want out, you need to plan for risk. That means saving of course, but it also means communicating your plans to those around you. Finding partners and supporters is every bit as important having the idea in the first place.
Just don’t fall into the trap of not engaging people because you don’t have one yet. Your brilliant idea will be a variation of someone else’s idea.

Hard questions

I few months ago I was at a Christian music festival, Spirit West Coast in Monterey. While out and about, we were collared by a roving pastor/organizer. They were sending bibles to the troops in Iraq and they wanted people to sign them to add a personalized touch and some encouragement. I might have blown them off but Angie wanted to do one together. So I took the first turn, opened up the front flap, readied my pen... and sat.


And sat.


I quickly realized that I never think about Iraq as anything other than a news item, safely Over There. Which is just how they want it, right?
Then I noticed that must surely be upper middle class because I could count on one hand the number of people I know from my high school class that have served there.

This bible could easily go to a combat soldier on the front lines, i.e. the entire country of Iraq. What could I possibly say to such a person?
I'm sorry you're there, fighting an unneeded war?
I admire your bravery and/or insanity in the face of danger and death?

I finally settled for 'May this book bring you some hope through the danger and darkness you face. I hope you return home safely and soon.'

Throughout it all, Todd Agnew was playing 'Peace on Earth', which was far too appropriate for comfort.

I was reminded of this all recently, when I head an NPR piece by a journalist who's father had been killed in Vietnam. She was continually bothered by people who would say 'what a waste' and completed her GI-funded education partially just to prove them wrong.
Seeing as how Iraq is our new Vietnam I hope we have learned how to treat our soldiers better this time around. From what I have heard pacifists during the last war treated them like crap, like it was their fault. This treatment sounds ironically combative, failing to refute the 'us vs them' mentality that enables conflict. Our political commanders ignored the historical lessons of Vietnam. Let's hope we civilians can react better.

Riches and Fame-ishness

I went to a mixer at Facebook a few weeks ago, (yes that Facebook). CEO Mark Zuckerberg was there in flip-flops and an Arm and Hammer t-shirt. It's funny how someone so close in age can be in such a different world.
I was so certain that he wouldn't be there I hadn't bothered to think of what I would say. I asked him a question about using Facebook as a platform for politics but I don't think he understood my full implications and I was too flustered to explain. In retrospect, I wish I had asked him one thing: How much has being rich and famous changed the way your friends treat you?

How the world works

Philosophies of Traffic and World Politics

The other day as I sat in traffic I Figured Out How the World Works.
It came to me as I lingered in another pocket of classic Silicon Valley congestion. I realized that I knew a better way. Pulling to the right, I rode an almost empty lane to next off-ramp and proceeded along various side streets until I had passed the majority of the slowdown. I came out with an extra ten minutes and an inflated sense of self-esteem.
However, the important thing is that I had become a long-term actor. By this I mean a few things:

• I knew where to get current information and how long it would stay relevant. Before leaving work I had checked a traffic site, beatthetraffic.com. I knew where the slowdowns had been half an hour ago and could approximate from experience where they might be now. Also I had another backup source of information, a rival site sigalert.com
• I knew what the options were. Having been traveling to the same location everyday for months now, I had investigated side streets around places where traffic backed up, using both maps and trial and error.
• I had detailed knowledge of my options such as their risks, rewards and chances of success. I knew where the lanes often slowed down, which lights were long and what time the traffic got heavy.
• I was able to synthesize the information rapidly by recognizing patterns I had observed before and remembering successful or failed responses. Taking into account the newest information, this allowed me to take an informed risk and change course.
  

Why does all this matter? Because people by nature are long-term actors.
This may seem obvious to those of you who are already long-term actors yourselves, but I think many young people do not yet understand it. Yet it is critically important because it determines how the majority of the decisions in the world are made.

The characteristics of long-term actors show up perhaps the most in the realm of politics. This makes sense because politics is, at its essence, the process of allocating resources.
Any organization, be it a nation, state or even a local club has a certain amount of resources at its disposal. (Time and money are the primary ones. We can ignore knowledge because we assume that long-term actors have it.) Furthermore, the larger an organization is, the more slowly its set of resources will change. A club might double in size overnight, but the same magnitude of change in an entire nation takes decades. Therefore politics has inherent potential for conflict because today's resources are finite and their uses are not.

The goal in politics, business and most other facets in life is generally to do a little better today than you did yesterday. More importantly, you want to be doing as well (or better) next week as you were today. Leaving aside discussion on whether or not this is a good goal, it is indeed how most people operate.

Coming back around, a fresh-faced youngster will not immediately understand the current state of things, i.e. how the world works today because they do not have knowledge of how things
used to be. All the people making decisions today view their choices through the lens of their own unique past. Experience forms opinion and opinion forms action. People seek to protect what they have. The only real incentive to change falls on those who have nothing and those who are losing what they do have. More than anything, this explains why young people are known for idealism and old people are known for conservatism.

So, next time you are baffled by how the world works just remember that everyone else has already done this before. Your job is to learn the rules of the game. Do that first, and then we can talk about how to change them.