Interesting article in the NYT on the way willpower works (Found at kottke). I can’t say the article itself is good, but the questions it raises are. Check this out:

In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on average, working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who were excused from eating radishes. Similarly, people who were asked to circle every “e” on a page of text then showed less persistence in watching a video of an unchanging table and wall.

Ok. Stop laughing. Don’t we all test our willpower by staring at unchanging tables and walls? I know I do. And then, for fun, I break out the impossible puzzles, just for kicks!

The real problem here is that it’s hard to respect any article that mentions a study without providing references. I refuse to grant credibility to anyone using a study to support an argument without a reference. If the study was published I can read it myself and see what it actually says. Were the participants told the puzzle was impossible? How were they recruited? Were they paid? Did they accurately represent a typical urban population in age, education, etc?

As a baseline, anyone with above average willpower has a busy enough life not to have time to participate in psychological surveys. It’s a shallow, half-baked story that’s told here, and even at that, I’m not sure any conclusions can come from it. Speculation, yes. But a hypothesis, no.

I think I possess above average powers of will, but I would never test them against things I thought were pointless. Willpower works when I’m convinced of the value of the effort, or at a minimum, the value of the attempt. I can eat better or exercise more not because of some abstract force of will, but because my perception of the value grants me greater willpower.

And then the article obsesses about describing willpower in neurological terms, missing the point. For example:

No one knows why willpower can grow with practice but it must reflect some biological change in the brain. Perhaps neurons in the frontal cortex, which is responsible for planning behavior, or in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is associated with cognitive control, use blood sugar more efficiently after repeated challenges. Or maybe one of the chemical messengers that neurons use to communicate with one another is produced in larger quantities after it has been used up repeatedly, thereby improving the brain’s willpower capacity.

What would a kung-fu master or sports trainer say about willpower? There are tons of higher level masters of teaching willpower, but since they don’t have neuroscience degrees, this article neglects to give them a voice (Yes, it’s a short article, but the above paragraph is basically an extended guess. Why use 10% of the article on a guess, when a phone call could bring an expert with data).

If we are creatures of habit and increase our abilities at just about anything through repetition, why are the mechanisms for the habits of willpower any different?

My question to you is how do you cultivate your own willpower? When do you feel most in control, and most out of control? How do you use this knowledge to serve you?

Posted in lifehack, philosophy | 11 Comments »

In 2003 I quit my management job at Microsoft to try to live by writing books, teaching and public speaking. It was the scariest decision I’d made in my life and here on the other side, about 4 years later, is what I’ve learned. If you believe life is to be explored, here are notes from a work adventure. There’s no amazing new theory - you may have heard all this before, but here it is, in first person.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Teaching/Training, personal, philosophy | 13 Comments »

This is one of the greatest stories of innovation and change I’ve heard about in some time.

Note: although there are religious themes here, I’m aiming at the nature of change, not theological debate (Keep that in mind in the comments please).

One tension we all face is how to reconcile respect for the past with the desire to making the world a better place. There is an inherent conflict: we use traditions to honor the past and stay connected with who we were. But if innovation is change, it means breaking with the past to make things better. And rarely do people agree on which traditions should be broken and how to break them, or reinterpret them.

The irony of course is that all traditions, even ones 1000 years old, were invented by someone. And on that day they asked people to break with whatever tradition came before it. The study of any history is the study of change. As Woody Allen said, “Tradition is the illusion of permanence.” However, even if it is an illusion, it’s a powerful one that can bring people together.

Recently the Vatican announced several new lists of behaviors they now define as sinful. The list includes pollution, drug abuse and becoming obscenely wealthy. They also released a curious list of rules for the road, leading to much sarcastic commentary.

On the one hand, wow. For the first time in nearly 1500 years, they’ve released version 2.0 of their list (Note that the 7 deadly sins as we know them do not appear in the Western bible). That’s not an easy thing to do - and it’s fascinating to see one of the oldest and most conservative organizations in the western world demonstrating renewed interest in the pressing issues of the day.

On the other hand, early Christian theology, or at least the Jesus Christ described by the approved gospels, has always been tough on the wealthy and those that take advantage of the weak (The whole eye of a needle thing). And this list can be seen as a call to return to those values - it’s a change, but a change in line with ideas from the past.

But the best way to comprehend all this comes from A.J. Jacobs excellent book, The Year of Living Biblically. In the process of trying to follow every instruction in the bible for 365 days, he learned that the bible has always been a matter of personal interpretation, from what laws apply, to how they’re applied. And when you add the multitude of translations, secondary gospels and other options on biblical law, the conception of there ever being a single definitive, comprehensible, interpretation free rulebook for living seems an impossibility, now or ever.

In this context, what we superficially see as static, say a bible or a religious law, rarely holds together when put into play by millions of different people. We make one tiny interpretation here, or exception there, and naturally gravitate to those who make similar choices, and in this sense, we are all low-scale innovators. Perhaps we do it in private, or in secret, but everyone’s unique nature surfaces even in how we follow the same rules. And of course all religious groups throughout history have had different leaders at different times and each emphasized different rules, beliefs, traditions and activities, while ignoring others (E.g. religious wars generally violate the core principles of the whoever founded the religion).

It seems a smart thing for a religion, or any powerful group, to do what the Vatican has done: to update its rules and guidelines to reflect the changing nature of people and the world. What could be smarter than a tradition to re-evaluate the traditions?

There can be no smarter tradition for anyone than to 1) encourage a questioning of old rules and what motivations their authors had, and 2) allowing periodic changing of rules for the present so they have the greatest value, until they need to be changed again.

Posted in Innovation, philosophy | 11 Comments »

On days like this when someone famous is honored, I try to dig up something they wrote to compare what I think I know about that person and why they’re famous, with what they actually did and said. It’s always enlightening, but sometimes I find unexpected gems like this:

(yes it’s 3 long paragraphs, but I bet you $50 it’s the best writing you’ll read today).

Modern man has brought this whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. He has produced machines that think and instruments that peer into the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. He has built gigantic bridges to span the seas and gargantuan buildings to kiss the skies. His airplanes and spaceships have dwarfed distance, placed time in chains, and carved highways through the stratosphere. This is a dazzling picture of modern man’s scientific and technological progress.

Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: “Improved means to an unimproved end.” This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual “lag” must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the “without” of man’s nature subjugates the “within,” dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

If we believe this, then why is so little of what we talk about when we use the word innovation directed at helping people make, in MLKs terms, internal progress?

Read the full transcript of MLK’s amazing acceptance speech for the Nobel prize, from Dec, 1964.

(hat tip to truehoop)

Posted in Innovation, philosophy | 7 Comments »

The Times Online has a short piece about the dangers of Google dominance for education, called White bread for young minds. It quotes a professor, Tara Brabazon, concerned about the trends:

Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments.

It seems unfair to blame Google for this. But in reading the article and some background on Brabazon, it doesn’t seem she blames Google either. It’s the author of the Times article who focuses the blame on Google.

In truth school textbooks are notoriously poor sources of information on history - as are television and films, mediums children spend as may hours getting educated by as their classrooms. Really what it seems she wants, is to teach children how to interpret all kinds of media. According to the article:

Her own students are banned from using Wikipedia or Google as research tools in their first year of study, but instead are provided with 200 extracts from peer-reviewed printed texts at the beginning of the year, supplemented by printed extracts from eight to nine texts for individual pieces of work.

I get the ban - but the article frames this wrong. The ban is to help people to understand what’s being banned, not to ban it forever. As best I can tell Brabazon is trying to teach a kind of
media literacy for research. The highlight of the article for me is this quote:

We need to teach our students the interpretative skills first before we teach them the technological skills. Students must be trained to be dynamic and critical thinkers rather than drifting to the first site returned through Google

And no technology can do our critical thinking for us - we have to depend on our brains for that one. However, there have been advocates of mandatory media literacy education for a long time. The core theme being to teach children how to compare sources, deconstruct advertising, and be savvy about what they read & see, instead of wasting time training students in rote research methods devoid of critical thinking.

Given the context, I’d hoped Tara Brabazon, the professor quoted in the article, had a blog, perhaps to respond to the thin, biased tone of the article. But her site lists only her books and CV.

She writes quite well and I’m intrigued enough by her smart, funny articles like Socrates in earpods: the i-podification of education to read more of her work.

Her most recent book is called the University of Google, which from the description advocates the teaching of research, but I couldn’t find a table of contents or even a review of the book. The best sumation of Tara’s own thinking on the issue was from these notes on a lecture she gave about the book.

Posted in Teaching/Training, creative thinking, philosophy | 9 Comments »

George Orwell wrote about what happens when we misuse words. A core theme in the novel 1984 is how abuse of language enables other evils. Well the time has come: I’m stepping up to defend the word Zen.

Zen is in a sorry state of abuse in 2008. Much like innovation, the word Zen is now a placeholder for thought, used for its connotation of something positive rather than any specific meaning. People often use the word in complete ignorance. Here’s what the word means:

To practice Zen is to use meditation and other techniques to develop an understanding of oneself, and seek spiritual enlightenment

That’s heavy, no? Can you think of a concept more worthy of respect than someone dedicating time to seeking spiritual enlightenment? To understand their true selves? If more people spent time figuring out how to be cool with themselves spiritually (in whatever flavor they choose), instead of accumulating more stuff they don’t need, or taking shit that isn’t theirs, we’d be happier all around on this planet. The word Zen, and it’s meaning, gets a top shelf spot on the list of words worthy of reverence and respect.

So how then, can we explain the following?

1. Zenhabits.net, a fine site about personal productivity and more, but it’s a lifehacker competitor, not spiritual or even philosophical in focus. Zenhabits also has an e-book called Zen to done, the ultimate productivity system. Why must we suffer these incomprehensible contradictions of Zen and productivity in the same sentence? Simply because the alternatives weren’t cool enough for the author.
2. Worse perhaps is CSS Zen Garden, which uses not only the word Zen, but the Japanese rock garden, which are used by some in meditation practices. To their credit, at least they’re giving stuff away, but still. That’s charity garden, not zen. (Why wouldn’t simply CSS Garden have been good enough?)
3. Presentation Zen, which describes itself as a blog on professional presentation design. Perhaps it gives excellent advice, and there’s a forthcoming book, but where is the study of Zen? I could find none. The site and the book appear to be a compendium of presentation tips. They may be amazing tips mind you, but zen related they are not.
4. Of course we also have ZenCart, a shopping cart service, the Zen drupal theme, an MP3 player, a communal blog, and an Internet provider.

I’m sure some of these sites are good. People use them and get value. Rock on. But they have nothing to do with Zen. The word is decoration. It’s a marketing hook, used to suggest but not provide. Many use visual imagery that vaguely suggests eastern philosophy, but it’s purely visual. The superficial without the substance.

Look. I’m no saint of titles. I took crap from friends for titling my first book The art of project management, as “The art of…” is perhaps the most cliché title in the world. It’s a fair cop (Perhaps I’m redeemed by the name change). But unlike the sites above, a cliché title can accurately describe what is being offered, without the material itself being cliché.

These sites use this amazing word, Zen, fun to say, beautifully compact, high in noble purpose, and use it for decoration. Orwell would claim these folks are both benefiting from the dilution of language, and promoting the further gutting of an enlightenment-path into a for profit choice of branding style. Ok. Forget Orwell, he’s dead and can’t speak for himself: So I make that claim. This is bad for everyone.

From my skimmings of these sites, these folks are smart. I’m sure they all knew synonyms for good, great, cool, or whatever it was they were looking for could be found in any thesaurus. They could have been industrious enough to make up their own name or hire someone to do it for them. They could even have stooped, like I did, to reuse a naming cliché (Secrets of, Art of, etc.). But instead they chose to drag a word like Zen into the laziest kind of intellectual mud.

Certainly, these folks have company. Many point the finger at Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance for starting the trend. It’s an excellent book on one man’s explorations into philosophy and life, but Zen is a sideline. Of course Pirsig was probably riffing off of Herrigel’s Zen in the art of archery. That book actually is about Zen, and the attempt by a Westerner to practice it. It should be required reading (despite its flaws) for anyone who even thinks about taking command of the Z-word for their own profit.

If you’re curious about Zen, I’m no expert. Here’s a good experience to start with. I bet you’ll be surprised. (flash site, but worth the ride).

The single best book introducing meditation (and by-proxy Zen & Buddhism), is Turning the Mind into an ally. Highly recommended (it’s the best of many I’ve read).

Posted in philosophy, rant | 19 Comments »

Gift giving was never a strength in my family. Sure, we gave gifts, we just didn’t do it well (”Hey, here’s your annual CD/book/cake that’s indistinguishable from what I got you last year”). Later on, through friends and girlfriends, I’d figure out what it meant to give a good gift: something clever, personal and thoughtful that they’d enjoy or need, but probably wouldn’t think to buy for themselves.

But with the web, and the same 15 chain stores in every mall in every city, it’s harder to actually buy truly good gifts. Everything is available everywhere. And I’m loathe to buy people more stuff they don’t really need: I don’t know many folks who complain about empty storage rooms, closets or kitchen cabinets.

So this year I made two rules:

1. To buy only experiences. Tickets to plays, events, massages, meals, things that they’ll experience and own as a memory instead of as a thing. Perhaps I can baby or pet sit for friends, gifts that really could be useful to them. This also has the benefit of low environmental impact if you’re into that sort of thing.
2. To make things for people. If I make it with my own hands then it’s impossible to get at the GAP, or at their local mall and as ugly or fragile as it might be, it will be personal. It will will represent more of the the most precious thing i have, my time, than anything I could buy.

The problem is I don’t really know how to make anything. I can do great lectures and write essays, but those don’t fit the bill for a personal gift for anyone I know.

So while I figure this out, if the basic idea intrigues you, you’re not alone.

Buy nothing Christmas is a movement of sorts, with an alternative approach to the holidays. There are various flavors, from simple tips for inexpensive and creative gifts, to tips for parents and kits for simplifying the holiday season.

Of course there are folks who take a more aggressive stand on the whole idea. Xmas resistance offers stickers, posters and other aids to help spread the word about their boycott of the entire idea.

The less militant and more philosophical Canadian Buy nothing Christmas group, asks the question “What would Jesus buy?” with a humorous catalog of free things to give (includes the ever popular seaweed), advocacy, and even a well written FAQ. Check it out.

Posted in personal, philosophy | 7 Comments »

With the end of year coming around, my highlights and lowlights for 2007 are coming to mind. One clear failure was my Scoliday project. In 2004 I set about creating my own holidays, to honor what I thought was important. I did them that year, fell off in 2005, and the started again in 2006 with a new list of days, some of which I celebrated.

Somehow in 2007 I didn’t even try.

I know a few folks did their own flavor of this idea, including antigeek, Konrad West, and more, and I hope they’ve faired better than I have.

I’m reading through my journals for 2007 and trying to see if I can figure it out.

Thoughts so far:

1. I didn’t have any partners in crime. As an author/speaker dude, I work solo most of the time and suffer from solo project fatigue. Having a holiday buddy or something would probably up my odds.
2. Perhaps I need a holiday every few months called called Celebrate all the holiday’s you’ve missed so far day. Build in a way to recover part way through the year.
3. Use this blog as a forcing function - post a note on the day, and if I didn’t celebrate it, hang my head in shame online or donate money to charity for each day I let fly by.

I’m still in love with the idea - but trying to learn from my mistakes, and improve my commitment level for 2008.

Posted in personal, philosophy | No Comments »

We walked. We walked. And then we walked some more.

And thanks to all your contributions, we raised over $1500 for folks who need some help this holiday season. Awesome! Thanks for helping us make a difference.

We’ll be sending out the signed books and artcards on Dec 2nd.

If you feel guilty now, you can still donate online until Dec 2nd: and donations of $25 or $50 get special gifts from Jill and myself - to find out more, go here.

Thanks - you guys rock.

Posted in philosophy | No Comments »

Innovation shminovation - some folks out there have trouble feeding their kids and staying warm. There are real problems out there that I often forget about.

This Sunday my wife, myself and our two goofy dogs are doing a 5k walk for the non-profit Hopelink.org. Unless you’ve recently done something cool for folks who need help, I’m inviting you to chip in and sponsor us on the walk.

They set up a personal website for my team, and it’s easy,safe and fast to donate. You’ll feel better. And most important of all: My dogs Max and Griz will think better of me, and you.

What to do: Go here and donate $1, $15 or more for our team, by paypal or credit card. Donate more than $50, and I’ll send you a signed, first edition copy of the Myths of Innovation.

If you can’t spare the cash, I hope you’ll find another way to make a difference this holiday season.

More info on the event, including creating your own team: Hopelink Turkey trot 2008.

Update: Donations accepted until December 2nd 2007.

Posted in philosophy | 3 Comments »

This is in two parts: first, a quick and dirty movie review. Second, a short essay on the book, the film (trailer), and the mythology of Chris McCannless.

Movie Review: Recommended. High appeal for anyone interested in self-exploration, nature, the limits of freedom, and the idea of philosophical integrity (do you actually do what you believe in?). It’s based on a true story of a young man who leaves his upper-middle class family behind to adventure in the American West. There is some brilliant storytelling and adventure and the performances are excellent (Emile Hursch is great as Chris). However, the pacing runs into trouble, with long and forced narrative points and occasional over-stylized editing. If if you’re interested in the above themes, you’ll like the film anyway, but if you hate Thoreau and can’t stand nature, then stay away: you’ll be throwing your popcorn at the screen. There is a excellent film in here, but it does sit interspersed with 25 minutes of oddly paced material (I have a similar criticism of the otherwise excellent book) and your tolerance for it will hinge on your interest in the themes.

Essay: (No spoilers here, but what i say might not make sense if you’ve never read the book nor saw the film). I read the book Into the Wild years ago and loved it. After I saw the film last week I was so confused as to what was in the book, and what was created for the movie that I went back and read the book a 2nd time. What I found there surprised me: many of the seemingly cheezy plot points, his relationships with the young girl and the old man, are actually in the book.

The book is philosophically important - I’m prone to rejecting the status quo and share many of the ideals, or at least the questions, that McCandless had. The story stuck with me for years and seeing the film doubled it’s power. I fully admire the guts it took to walk away from everything and start over (giving away all my possessions is something I’d like to do), but at the same time I’m repulsed by the cruelty involved in walking away from his family, and especially his sister. Does independence demand hurting people? Can you be half-way independent, or as McCandless believed, is it an all or nothing proposition? The story has been a forcing function for me, looking back at my decisions to leave places, people and things, to see what damage I caused in the name of ideals.

The film and the book differ on one major perspective: The film lionizes McCandless, something hard to prevent since he’s the main character of the film. Watching him take pleasures from life most wish they could find makes him charismatic despite what he had to sacrifice to get them. But the book is merely sympathetic to the lead in a cautionary tale, and goes out if its way to analyze and dissect his decisions, showing the possibility, in retrospect, of achieving his ideals without sacrificing sanity. And that’s where the story has its power: I feel compelled to re-evaluate the bar on my ideals, and the all too easy habits I’ve developed have for resisting them. McCandless’s story, in whatever form it’s told, can’t help but force people to consider the gap between their behavior and their ideals, since without a penny to his name, he lived, for a time, exactly how he wanted.

Posted in movies, philosophy | 2 Comments »

I read an NYT article recently about The Really Terrible Orchestra. Their goal, in their own words, is as follows:

The policy of the orchestra is to make no distinction between the various grades of ability and the various forms of music, or time signature. The RTO looks forward to a further lowering of standards, in order to underline its commitment to accessibility and relevance.

You can go to their website and listen (they’re not that bad), but that’s not the point. The point is this: if the Boston Philharmonic and the RTC both threw parties on the same night, the RTC party would kick The Boston Philharmonic party’s ass. Why? Because the RTC vibe, as I read it, is free and open. They’re looking to experience more than to be perfect. Their rule set for what music is, and what it means, is way more open than any formalized orchestra could ever be.

This sounds idiotic but I think being good, as in proficient, isn’t good all the time. No doubt being good is good: I’ll hire a good doctor or lawyer over a bad one every time. But as I get older I realize how important it is for my soul to be bad or awful in at least one thing I do, and to take pleasure in it anyway. There is a way to take pleasure in things independent of my ability at them and I’m convinced that cultivating it will make me a happier person. This works solo, but even in groups I’d rather spend time with other people being silly & bad, than boring and good.

And while children naturally have this ability since most toddlers are happy and talentless (despite what their parents say), I find as I age it’s increasingly hard to find peers who:

1. Are willing to be bad in front of others, much less enjoy it
2. Accept my interest in taking pleasure in my badness at something.

Perhaps I need new friends, or must ignore their judgments, either way, as we age there’s the assumption we should know better than to do things we’re bad at. If you’re 15 and dance like a hapless idiot, that’s one thing, but when you’re 35, it’s a different story. In my thirties now I find people my age take life so much more seriously than a decade ago and I don’t fit in so well. I’m still crazy. And struggle as I might, my peers have more influence on me that I care to admit.

Back to my original point, being bad is a requirement in doing new things. To start anything new I have to concede badness: the first weeks of learning to speak Greek or taming alligators will be ugly. And I’m convinced the increasing fear of looking bad has everything to do with the tendency for people to try fewer new things as they age. We lose familiarity with the uncertainties of the new. We forget the necessity of feeling like an idiot now and then to grow. And before we know it we resist new experiences based on our forgotten understanding of how we got our old experiences: we did lots of stupid embarrassing things to accumulate all the skills and life knowledge we have.

For all these reasons there is freedom and joy in being bad at something - often more than being good at something.

I’m considering adding a new heuristic into my life:

1. Pick up a new activity that I’m bad at.
2. Spend time enjoying my badness at that thing while trying to learn it.
3. If I somehow get good at that thing, go to #1

I admit now I’m bad at being bad - much worse than I used to be, if that makes sense. But I’m making a point to get better at being worse - and we’ll see what happens.

Posted in creative thinking, philosophy | 20 Comments »