Proceed Until Apprehended

Try this with me. Use both your index finger and your middle finger to point with both hands. Tilt your head slightly forward, place your newly formed pointers at your temples and try and turn on your screensaver. Sometimes it takes up to five minutes, but you’ll get it. I promise.

If that’s not your cup of tea, try this: By simply using your free will, you can alter the behaviour of others.

This is sci-fi, mind-bending stuff, but I need you to bear with me. By simply deciding what you’re going to do (and not do), you can influence the way others act.

Here’s an example. I decided not to be so beholden to email. Actually, I decided not to allow my day to be dictated by all members of the interruption family – walk-in requests, phone calls and voicemails, emails, the day’s media stories… I made a conscious choice to work on the most important things, not the last thing.

I still deal with all the “incoming,” but I do it on my schedule. That means twice a day email checks, all phone calls screened, polite requests to reschedule if an interruption is inconvenient and I disregard local media.

You know what happened?

Nothing.

Well actually, better than nothing. Colleagues quit sending me urgent stuff. I quit being so quick to respond to what I saw as distractions and I received less of them.

How did that happen, you say? Well, this is where the paranormal piece is strongest. I don’t really know what caused it. I don’t think it was a conscious utility decision by my colleagues (Danielson won’t help, keep him off the list). I think it was that, over time, I was no longer considered the guy who just gets stuff done. At some point, I stopped being top of mind for panic situations. I quit being an enabler of urgency addiction.

Maybe another example makes it clearer. I like to ride my bike to work. I’m a die-hard commuter during the months we’re not covered in snow. When I first started biking, I was a timid, apologetic cyclist, using the roadway when I wasn’t being an obstruction for vehicles. I’d squeeze over to the right side, as far as I could without falling onto the curb and make myself small when a vehicle skimmed past. And vehicles came real close. Drivers saw that I was offering the lane and they took it. It was their lane after all, I was just an interloper.

Now, though, I’ve decided my bike is a vehicle. it’s MY LANE to do with as I please. I’m right out in the middle of it, and if a driver doesn’t like it, well, they can not like it. It’s now a rare occurrence that a vehicle doesn’t give me a wide berth.

You could say I’m moving three tons of glass and metal with my mind. Pretty impressive, huh?

I tend to think of my bike actions as “signaling.” The behaviours I consciously exhibit (and remain steadfastly committed to) create a constant that others simply choose to work around. In a way, I’m counting on the smaller commitment of others. They may desire to move/operate/function in a certain way, but it’s not worth their time to argue with the obstinate guy.

Of course, I don’t think I’m obstinate. I think I’m passionate, and committed, and thoughtful. Sometimes it’s hard because I feel like other’s eyes are boring into me either at the office or on the road, but that’s actually my baggage. I can definitely influence that.

I can point to two definitive instances when I had a revelation about my personal responsibility.

The first happened when I was about seven or eight years old. It was a realization that someone had been taking care of me. Before that point, I had the care-free existence that most children get to have, where everything just was. The neighbourhood was my entire world. There was no responsibility, no future to concern me and no basic needs to fulfill. Someone else, namely my parents, took complete responsibility for my welfare.

That was a long time ago and I was a little kid, but I still remember the loss I felt. I knew then that one day I was going to have to take responsibility. I was soon resigned to this new future, but I remember wishing I just hadn’t figured it out for a few more years.

What followed was a few decades of slow, incremental growth of responsibility. I went from being a child to being a kid with desires to grow. I went from being a straight-A student to being a young adult that wanted to be successful in the world. I got into management roles and areas of responsibility with work that I thought were impressive. I kept a mental note of who were at the same “level” as me. I should always be the youngest, I thought. I thought that was a good measure of my ability and my success. It was this pattern that also started to create dissonance for me. I saw that this was a path that would keep going for my entire career. Then, as the saying goes, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

I found myself at a leadership training course in 2005 with a man that would become my personal coach. He said leadership was “down and in before up and out.” This idea, as well as many of the practical concepts he shared that day, created the second significant revelation for me. I saw that not only was I responsible to care for myself (my epiphany as an eight-year-old), but I was also personally responsible for the way I responded to events and the way I acted. I wasn’t just there to know the answer and implement it. As an intelligent and responsible person, I could… should… decide what was the right and effective thing to do. A subtle distinction, perhaps, but it shifted me from my basic responsibility to be a proficient and market-valuable person to a responsibility to be a thoughtful and participating member of humanity.

I see now there is an entire industry of people trying to help others make this leap. The personal responsibility revelation market. If I could bottle my experience and put it on a shelf, I could be a millionaire. Alas, it appears that the revelation is destined to remain in the domain of psyches and souls of individuals. It’s a personal journey. No-one else takes you there. Having people talk about it and share their experience helps though, so I’ll keep talking about it.

I was re-reading Seth Godin’s Tribes and came across this:

It’s easy to underestimate how difficult it is for someone to become curious. For seven, ten, or even fifiteen years of school, you are required to not be curious. Over and over and over again, the curious are punished.

I don’t think it’s a matter of saying a magic word; boom and then suddenly something happens and you’re curious. It’s more about a five- or ten- or fifteen year process where you start finding your voice, and finally you bigin to realize that the safest thing you can do feels risk and the riskies thing you can do is play it safe.

I apologize if this isn’t new to you. I’m not necessarily writing anything original with this post. However, I find this to be such a simple, profound observation that I can’t let it go, even if it’s new for just one reader.

I want to share with you the “Marshmallow Test.” I’m familiar with the Marshmallow Test because Daniel Goleman talks about it. Goleman is a leader in the Emotional Intelligence field of study, and it’s very informative stuff, in that so-reasonable-it-must-be-true sort of way.

The Marshmallow Test had researchers putting a marshmallow in front of four-year-olds. If the child can wait 20 minutes without consuming it, they get another one. They can then receive a total of two marshmallows. If they eat the first before 20, that’s it. They’re done at one.

This can be seen as a pretty simple measure of these kid’s ability to delay gratification. Twenty years later, the researchers show that the kids that had the ability to manage their impulsive desire to eat the marshmallow for twenty minutes did better on a number of measures intended to indicate life success.

Perhaps the lesson is obvious by this point, but let me hit you over the head with it anyway. We’re confronted with opportunities to get instant gratification all the time. Buy now, pay next year. Skip the gym. Eat the dessert. Avoid the crucial conversation.

Beyond the results of the test, I think we all know we can challenge ourselves to put the long-term utility of our choices as a bigger priority than our immediate satisfaction.

I’m not saying don’t pursue gratification, though it’s an option. The lesson I take is that the more we can manage our impulses and make rationale decisions about what and when, the better off we are in the long run.

This might be a really simple idea, but sometimes I can forget it. My guess is that you’re prone, too.

What we chase to make us happy and what actually makes us happy are often two different things. We chase a bigger salary, a nicer car, a trip to Mexico or a bigger office. We chase acknowledgement for our volunteer efforts or for someone to compliment our new shirt. We save up to buy… wait, who am I kidding? We use our credit card to buy a new camera.

Without fail, these items soon become part of our new routine or a distant memory. Once the euphoria fades away, we’re filled with “what next?”

There’s a pattern here, and if we step back for a moment it’s easy to see it. The majority of our lives is spent in the routine, not the moment of achievement. If your happiness is derived from THE NEXT THING, you’re establishing that you will live most of your life unfulfilled. Sure, you get a sense of satisfaction when you attain something, but that’s fleeting.

I say we should focus on what’s constant. Rather than “what’s next?”, how about asking “what am I doing on a consistent basis?” Then, if you plan to continue repeating the pattern, figure out how being in that moment can make you happy.

I am getting VERY excited about going over to my new position with the Saskatchewan Public Service Commission. I believe the PSC offers some enlightened management practices, a positive working culture and an important, meaningful mandate.

For all of its positive traits, I’m sort of anticipating that there’s also a culture of “policy adherence” that has gone a bit overboard. What I mean is that HR functions are quite often the whipping boy in an organization, and staff tend to rely on policies and interpretation of policies to serve as a a form of protection (or backbone). I recognize this is also partly done out of respect for a collective bargaining agreement, though I do think there’s a difference between respecting it and instantly capitulating to it.

I’m probably not going to be very accepting of policy adherence, if in fact I come across it. I’m toying with a work-specific mission statement, sort of a supplement to my still relevant personal mission statement.

Here’s some language, though perhaps I’ll call it draft. [If my new supervisor is reading this, feedback is definitely welcome.]

This will make some colleagues uncomfortable. They’ll come around… or they won’t.

My job is to ask unflinching questions and be radically honest. I’ll operate with the best intentions and without permission.

And the shorter version: Boundaries are the enemy. As gently as possible, blow the fucking lid off.

I just said that publicly. Gulp.

I encourage you to go back to his The Liberation Manifesto post and then catch up to now, reading how his last few months have evolved. I think it’s fascinating.

I’m really comfortable right now… too comfortable. I need to build a clearer, more deliberate plan about how I’m going to let go of more and more of this false security blanket. It’s the only way to get to the real victory, I think.

• Understand you’re being evaluated.
• Have a clear picture of what you really need. Don’t do a selection process without first thoughtfully establishing what skills and functions you need the candidate to be able to fulfill. If you’re choosing to name a certain degree or a number of years of experience as a key criteria, it’s an immediate flag that you’re looking for an image, not a result.
• Respect my time. Don’t be late, unprepared or easily interrupted. I want you to be expressing how important this role is from the moment I meet you. If you don’t respect what staff do for you, I self-select myself out.
• Ask good, relevant questions that make me sweat. If you are interested in demonstrating that you’re competent, that’s how.
• Don’t hack on current employees. I’m trying to be one of those. I’m savvy enough to know I’ll get the same treatment.

The employee version of these rules has always been a requirement for applicants to follow, but for the employer, they used to be optional. You used to be able to assume the power position and indicate that you could hardly be bothered with this process… you could do everything including saying, “I’m kind of a big deal.” No longer.

Every year, when my fundraising team for the MS Bike Tour gets out on the road in our costumes, people say, “Oh cool. I wish I was that creative.” We dress up as cows, or soldiers, we make up a theme and dress as the Adam West Batman characters. People say, “how did you ever come up with that?” or “I’d never think of that in a million years.”

These statements always surprise me. You see, I’m not creative, either.

I just so happened to care about fundraising for MS. I participated in the bike tour and determined that it was too elitist, too competitive and too fashion-conscious for my liking. I determined that new fundraisers were getting turned off by a culture that they didn’t fit in. I want new fundraisers. I want the tour to grow. I want more money for MS research. As the title suggests, these are “selfish matters.” I decided that I cared enough to try and change it, and I’d do it by example.

So, deconstructing how we make our team costumes, here’s how I get creative:
1) I get quite specific about what I want to change and how I might change it
2) I created space to reflect on what would work as a solution
3) I enlisted others to react and contribute to a kernel of an idea
4) We try it. We don’t know if it will make sense to others, but we implement.

I guess what I’m saying is that creativity, for me, isn’t some other-worldly headspace where stuff just pops in and “becomes.” It’s deliberate, it’s methodical and it takes work. Typically, I think the “I wish” crowd just doesn’t get deliberate enough to make it happen.

This is from the SAMBA blog:
After a concert, a woman gushed to Beethoven about how enthralled she was by his music. “Oh, sir, I wish I could play like you! It’s genius the music you create!”
Beethoven: “Well maam. If you want to practice 8 hours a day for 30 years, you could most certainly play that way also.”
She didn’t expect that. To Beethoven, his performance was not a one-off coincidence where talent met opportunity. To him, it was the culmination of effort and sweat put into his practice daily. The woman, only aware of the performance, didn’t give the process the respect it deserved. Honoring the process matters. It’s the thing that matters.

By the way, this year’s theme is SuperHeros. It’s going to rock.

You have two choices in how you react to life. You can be conditioned or deliberate.

Our default is set to conditioned. We have ingrained, emotionally-driven responses for every scenario – guilt, fear, happiness, joy, you name it, it’s there and ready, should the need arise. If you choose conditioned, you accept the program that’s already installed. Perhaps you’re accepting or competitive, optimistic or pessimistic, whatever has been established as your modus operandi is pretty much there to stay. You can thank your childhood, your life experiences and your worldview for the program you’ve got.

The big selling feature of this choice is that you don’t really have to choose, you simply have to keep on course. The downside is that you don’t usually get to choose which reaction you’re having at any given time. It’s hardwired, so it depends on what’s happening to you.

As a bonus, nothing is ever your fault. Someone else is always the architect of your misery.

The other choice is to be deliberate in your reactions. You can catch yourself before you react and plot out how you want your actions to play out, you can rewire the hardwired reactions. Declare that you are calm, cool and collected… or thoughtful… or passionate… or honest, and start to be that way in your reactions and interactions.

The positives of this choice are that you get to have the kinds of experiences you want and no-one is doing things unto you. While it sounds great, the downside is that you have to do work between your ears, right now and forever after. It gets easier, but you’ll find you can never be complacent.