The year in review (with a little forecast of what's to come)

I acknowledged a truth about myself a couple of days ago. I like science fiction and fantasy books. That should come as no surprise as I started the year reading two science fiction books and I ended the year reading two fantasy books. Nevertheless, if asked whether or not I was sci fi fan at this point last year, I would have firmly responded in the negative. I've read a few of those books, but that doesn't make me a fan of the genre. Besides, the people who read those books get dressed up for conventions, play Warcraft, and hang out a Reniassance fairs. That's not me. Well, I may not fit the stereotype, but I have to confess that I really like the genre.

Learning to accept truths about myself no matter how they may be viewed by some imaginary image jury that only exists in my head is one of the things I've definitely gotten better at this year. It started with buying that shirt. The process of selecting and buying a polo shirt with some details forced me to look at how I acquire clothes (which means taking a look at how I present myself). When I honestly evaluated my approach to style, I realized that I was still stuck in my high school mindset. That wasn't an easy truth for me to accept, but recognizing that fact was important. I realized that I needed to honestly critique my assumptions if I was ever going to change.

The next big question is, assuming I'm going to change, what should I change into? A quick look at my resolutions gives some insight into what I want to change about myself. Why did I choose these things to change? Let's take it on resolution at a time. The waist measurement was just my wrinkle to the perennial resolution to lose weight. I did lose weight. I'm down 10 pounds or so from last year at this time, but I was headed towards achieving this goal until I stopped working out and lost my desire to eat responsibly. I'm working towards getting back on track, but until I really acknowledge why I want to lose weight, I'll keep slipping back into my old ways. I want to be healthy, and I tell myself that's my motivation, but I really want to look good naked. I hate having a roll around my stomach. I don't need to see my abs or anything. I would just like my trunk to lack bulges.

I added the law school resolution to recognize all the effort that I put into my law school applications in the annual resolution review. I also knew it was something that I would be able to check off come resolution review time. The broader question is why I bothered applying in the first place. Despite the arguments that I made to myself about the alternative career, it was really more about seeing how well I could do on the LSAT. Once I had the LSAT score, it seemed like a waste to not apply to a few schools, especially once the fee waivers started coming in. I really enjoyed the challenge of the entire process. It was a challenge that pushed my intellectual abilities. I relish those kinds of challenges. I didn't really want to attend law school, I just wanted the challenge of the classes. (If it wasn't so damned expensive and I wasn't doing this MBA thing, it would be fun to take class, just to see how I could do). That just to see how I could do is a big element of my attraction to intellectual challenges. I'm getting that with my MBA classes. The MBA will be a great credential for my career, but I'm really motivated by the challenge to see how well I can learn the material.

Buying no more than 8 books (and reading 16 of them) has dominated this blog (at least that's my impression, I haven't reread much of what I've written). Books have always been a big part of my life. I'm an introvert. I get more pleasure from reading than going to a big party (although that statement can be modified depending on the party). Unfortunately, I tend to acquire new interests that I follow up with reading material faster than I can read the books that I bought following my previous interest in a topic. I want to read what I have, but the more I buy, the less likely I will be able to read the books I already own. I was hoping the eight book limit would slow my buying down enough that I could catch up a little bit. I read plenty this year, but only 6 of the 25 books I read this year were in my library on January 1, 2010. The other 19 were either new purchases or library books. I just want to focus on a topic and get to know it in depth. I'm so spastic with my reading material that I don't make much progress down any one road.

The Dickens resolution is my statement towards getting more intimate with a topic. By focusing on reading at least one Dickens novel a year, I get that much more acquainted with a particular writer. The only problem with Dickens is the length of his novels. It's takes so long to make it through one. They always go fast at the end, but getting to that point can require getting through some tedium. I'll keep that resolution on my list without modification until I've read all of his novels. I'll pick a new author after that. Next time I'll pick somebody who can tell their story in under 500 pages.

The Spartacus challenge was on my list to motivate me to workout, but it's along the lines of looking good naked. That workout really works. I had plans to do it a few times over my holiday break, but I have been able to hit the gym often enough that I don't need to use it here at the house. That may change in the coming weeks.

I need to get more sleep. There is nothing else to say about that.  

As for next year. The biggest challenge will be buying 0 books (excluding textbooks for my classes). I will be shocked if I can go a whole year without purchasing a new book, but Tiffany has given me a nice incentive to keep my eye on the prize. I've been making a few purchases to get me through the year over the last several days. With my new found acceptance of my taste for fantasy, I've bought the rest of the Song of Fire and Ice (4 books), a new fantasy trilogy (3 books, duh), 2 books from a rather large fantasy saga, and the first book in a new series. Only one book has been written so I figured it won't hurt to get the whole series with a single purchase. I can't read school stuff during odd times so the fantasy books provide plenty of entertainment during the kids videos or other boring times.

I like the look better naked resolution. It's a vague target, but I think it captures the essence of what I'm shooting for better than a boring number.

I don't know how to set my book reading target for the year. I would do one a week, but that's not realistic with my classes. Besides, some of these fantasy books that I just bought are mighty thick. I think I will try for one a week when I don't have class. Anything over that will just be gravy. While I'm on the topic of books, one of the books I read in 2011 will be by Charles Dickens.

I'll try to come up with a couple more resolutions, but that's a good start.

Lessons from a Jigsaw Puzzle

The pictures on a puzzle are just a filtering mechanism for the pieces. Getting the puzzle together requires you to look past the picture and focus on the shape of each piece. Once you see the structure, the picture helps narrow down which pieces go where, but it's not needed to find which piece goes where.

There's a deeper lesson there. Surfaces features, appearances, are easy to see. Those obvious features may be hiding something more important. Looking past the surface and trying to see how things fit together could lead to important connections or insights.

Christmas Reflections

I've long debated making a comment at this post at the HBR blogs. I read a paper by the psychologist mentioned in that post earlier this year. The discovery of that paper, and the work of another psychologist, Simonton, have been two of my best discoveries for 2010. My comment would be in response to the people who don't believe the research discussed in the post because it implies that natural talent is not a necessary trait for people to achieve elite status in a chosen field. People mention elite athletes first as contrary examples of the research. They could never play tennis as well as Roger Federer or run as fast as Usain Bolt. That's true, now, but what if you had started playing tennis when you were 5 years old and had focused all of your time, energy, and effort on becoming the best tennis player you could possibly be? Would you still not be able to compete at an elite level? Jamaica is a very small country but there are a disproportionally large number of world class sprinters from Jamaica. Why? Well, it must be genetic. Maybe, but what if a segment of our population started racing at a young age and spent a lot of time and effort learning how to run faster? They do that in Jamaica.

Talent is an excuse for not being elite. It's easy to look at somebody who writes really well or gives really great presentations and simply say that they're good because they have an innate knack. The presence or absence of that knack is outside of your control. No knack, no pressure to excel. Ericsson proposes a different variable for elite performance. Focused and deliberate practice leads to elite performance in the Ericsson model. This work must be dreary, hard, and unpleasant in order to improve performance. In this model, the barrier to excellence isn't innate ability but a conscious decision to get better and the dedication and comitment to put in the work needed to achieve that goal. Simply sitting at a keyboard and pounding out blog posts won't make you a better writer. The effort must be directed towards improvement. 10,000 hours (or 10 years) seems to be a magical number toward reaching superior performance. It's not just passively doing something to pass the time that counts. Practice demands the same energy and focus as a performance if you want to get better. That's a heavy price.

The only thing that holds us back from getting better is ourself.

What next?

I just finished my 26th book of the year. Now I'm faced with the big question of what to read next. I told myself that I was going to use this time between my classes to read something challenging, but I'm not sure what that really means. I need to take a look at my shelves to see what strikes my interest. I'm thinking novel but I may go with one of my history books or a biography. Hard to say at this point.

I could also read something on my iPod. I downloaded the Kindle app a couple of days ago. I found the free classics. I limited myself to downloading two. I've been reading A Christmas Carol here and there, but I was so close to finishing A Game of Thrones that I put focused my reading time on that. The reader will be nice going into next year. Seeing how pathetic I was with limiting myself to 8 books for the year, I've decided that next year I'm not going to buy any new books (other than school books of course). I can shop in a store and go home and download the book for free (as long as I stick to classics with expired trademarks anyway). The decision to go cold turkey has also prompted me to get what I want now. I will be buying the rest of the Song of Fire and Ice before the year is out (I'll try to get it used or as cheap as I can on Amazon). I bought a bio of Henry James when I bought one of my school books for next year. I have a week to figure out if there is anything else that I need before the year is out. It's going to be tough.

With the semester over...

I really have no idea of what to do with myself. I submitted my final paper for my management class a little after 10 last night. I feel asleep soon after that so I didn't have to worry about what to do last night. I was on my own as of 9:45 tonight. I read for a little while before coming downstairs to drink the rest of my beer (Legend's Octoberfest, I bought a 40 of it at the grocery store today). I've been poking around the internet since then.

I went back and checked on one of my old favorites, the top law school forums. I read one thread about what to read before starting law school. It's the same stuff that people were writing about when I was following the threads more closely. The farther away from my law school decision I get, the better I feel about not going. Law school is the easy choice for somebody who wants a fancy job and a little prestige. As I found through my experience, it's not really all that difficult to get in to a decent school. Once you're there, the path to success is laid out nice and clear for anybody with the guts to put in the study hours. Get good grades, get good summer job, get hired, work like crazy, lots of money. Follow the leader all the way to the big paycheck. The hard part seems to be more about your willingness to forfeit a life for your profession rather than any real individual skill.

I like my job when I make a contribution that only I can make. The routine stuff bores me because it's all about following the procedure and checking the boxes. Yawn. I'm quietly coming to realize that this trait is both my biggest asset and a big liability. It helps me when I'm in the right situation, but I could do better about doing top work on the routine stuff. I'm too quick to dismiss it as boring and irrelevant. I'm hoping to make a stronger shift into management type of problems this year. That's a new challenge so the more routine aspect of things won't be boring. If I don't take another MBA class again, my management class was worth the trouble just for the perspective it gave me on what management really means.

The end of the year is coming. That means it's time to assess where I am with my resolutions. All in good time.

Working for her

I just read several posts that my wife wrote while I was in New Orleans for work last week. Several times, she mentions that I never have to work for her. I have to confess that I'm not really sure that I know what that means. When I was icing my sac after my vasectomy in March, I sat and plotted out how I could fix the problems that I had caused by stubbornly refusing the delay my surgery. I ended up not needing those plans, but that's the closest I can come to having a picture of what working for her looks like.

She also went into detail about her feelings that I settled for her. Those comments really upset me. We've been through some pretty heavy stuff in our relationship, but I've never thought about leaving her. I love her too much. Maybe we could debate the first couple of months of our relationship, but once I fell in love with her, I've never wavered. She seems to have a much bigger issue with my lack of serious relationships prior to her than I do. We had a great night last weekend, but rather than just be pleased with the outcome, she questions the validity of my judgement. It's frustrating for me. She's making issues where there are no issues to worry about.

The bittersweet thrill of a library book sale

I spent $10 at the VCU Friends of the Library book sale last week. That got me three hardback books, three paperbacks, and 4 comics. I made a really nice find of an organizational behavior book, The Social Psychology of Organizations. That book is going for $50 on Amazon. I paid $2 for it. I've already read one of the books, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, but I've wanted my own copy for awhile. I won't add these books to my book list. I save that for books that I buy new (which I have also been doing).

Finding good books cheap is always a thrill, but when I see all of these books that were once cherished and displayed in book cases being discarded for next to nothing, I feel a pange of angst about my own mortal coil. Will my books end up in a book sale when I die? I have always had this notion that my kids will cherish my books just as much as I do. That's not really fair to them. I'm sure they'll develop their own tastes in books. Who's to say that it will overlap with mine. Maybe I just need to develop a network of fellow book lovers as I mature. I would rather slowly give my books away as I get older rather than leave it to my kids to dump them on a library for cheap disposal.

Expert Advice

Another lesson from playing fantasy football (well, more of a question really); why do we rely so much on the opinions of experts? Especially in things like fantasy sports, the stock market, job hunting, and other realms. Fantasy sports I kind of understand, I don't have the time (or inclination really) to delve into the details of every player's stats, trends, and match-ups. It's easier to see what other people think and use that analysis to guide my decision. But at the end of the day, it's all a guess anyway. We can make all kinds of arguments for what might happen, but ultimately we're using past performance to predict future performance. That's always a dicey proposition. My guess about what might happen in a game is just as good as some guy on TV. We're just making a guess about the future. He may have more information, but that doesn't make it any better. The same thing can be said about the stock market. Information galore does not guarantee a better prediction. The application of rationality to an irrational situation still results in an irrational outcome.The more irrational the situation, the more we seem to rely on "experts" to lead the way. Why?

I already did algebra in high school

I've spent a good chunk of my study time this week working algebra problems for my finance class. I kind of like doing them, they're fun little puzzles, but do I really need to spend all of this time working problems where I use one ratio to figure out a term in another? It feels kind of like busy work to me. We'll see what the test is like. It looks like Saturday nights are going to be my test taking nights. What a fun way to spend the weekend! It's part of this process though. I have to use all of the time at my disposal. Every hour counts.

I finished The Black Swan today. That brings me up to 21 books. I realized that if I can get to 26 I will have averaged a book every 2 weeks. That's not too shabby, especially given that I'm doing this whole online school thing. The next book in the Wheel of Time series comes out soon. That will be 22 this year. I just need to find 4 books to read over the next 3 months. I should really try to find something that I can use for my management class. That would be killing 2 birds with one stone.

A little gap

I feel a little ahead in my studies this week. I was very into the organizational behavior topics last week so I wanted to write nice forum posts about employee engagement and job satisfaction. This week we're discussing personality traits and value statements. I don't find those topics as interesting. We're talking about ratio analysis in Finance. That's just an extension of what we discussed last week so it's not as demanding as learning something entirely new. It's nice to have a short breather. It's been an intense few weeks with a full schedule at work, these classes at night, and very busy weekends. I'll take a slower paced week.

I wore a pair of size 34 pants today. It's nice to know that I'm making progress. To think I almost got rid of those pants too. I'm also making my way through The Black Swan (which reminds me, there are interesting aspects to the chapters that we're readying in OB, creativity and decision making biases being two examples, but those topics were not posted as forum questions. Maybe I should try to get those topics into a post...). I really thought I was done meeting resolutions. I could be wrong about that. (I'm definitely missing the sleep one, there's no doubt about that one.)

I've been prepping for online school for months...

Little did I know that I was getting ready for taking online classes when I started writing blog entries. The forum discussion is basically a series of blog posts. Everybody has their own style and emphasis. It's interesting if a little dissonate at times. There isn't much of a conversation, with people using other's comments to build on their own ideas, but kind of parallel discussions around a similar topic. We'll see how things progress as the semester proceeds.

I have begun to realize that I may be able to tone down my effort on some assignments. I won't tone down my effort to engage with the material, but I can probably aim a little lower on what gets turned in, at least on some assignments, and still get the same grade. I'll have to see how things go in the next couple of weeks. I don't want to burn too intense early on and have nothing left for the end of the semester.

I've been sticking to my workouts. My pants are starting to get too big so I figure I'm making progress on my waist size. I have also been improving on my ability to do pull-ups. I was never very good at them, even when I was in good shape. I have made it a point to do a few everytime I go to the gym. Maybe next year I'll make a resolution to get up to 20 of them at once or something (a set of 5 is my max now). That's next year. I still have plenty to focus on THIS year.

It's going to suck anyway...

Wisdom from Marines going through Recon training. It's going to suck anyway so you might as well just dig in and put out. That idea resonated with me at the moment. I heard this little nugget while watching Making the Cut on the Discovery Channel on Wednesday night before going upstairs to study. I was going through one of those phases when you're doing something new where you start to wonder if you made the right decision. I was trying to get a feel for how these online classes were going to work and I started to get a sense of the scale of my project. Most of it is just working through the uncertainty of how each week will work with assignments, forum participation, and keeping up with the material. While I was snagging a few minutes of working out before reading about financital statements, hearing guys getting their ass handed to them by some very intense training made me take a second look at what I've gotten myself into. I can do it. It may not always be fun, but I know it's the best move for me and my family. Some nights I won't want to hit the books, but digging in and putting in those kind of nights are what will separate me from everybody else. I want it. I will find a way to make it work.

Consolidation #1 - Management

People skills are important in management, at least that's what the textbook and other materials are trying to teach us. People skills has an immediate conotation of being a friendly, out-going person who can charm a room or be the life of a party. But is that what people skills mean in the context of being a good manager? No, these people skills are more about being able to lead, motivate, and earn the respect of your team. There is no one way to achieve those ends, but whatever the leadership style, having good people skills means that you are able to marshal the skills and energies of your team to achieve an objective. These kinds of people skills are not the sole domain of those people who have been conditioned to make friends easily. These skills, like any other body of knowledge, can be learned.

If leadership (or effective management, the differentiation between the two is open to debate) is a technical skill that can be learned, what is the established body or knowledge or research perspective that provides a theoretical foundation to gain the knowledge needed to become a more effective manager? Organizational Behavior combines the study of individual traits, how those individual traits interact in a team environment, and how the structure of an organization effects the work or individuals and teams. OB strives to systematically study how particular variables (which are usually contigent on the context of the behavior being studied) impact the efficiency and effectiveness of a work group (be that one person or a collection of individuals). OB is frequently deemed less important by uninitiated students because the research simply appears to confirm common sense intuitions about how people work. OB research looks for the unquestioned or unacknowledged assumptions that frequently underlie our intuitive judgements. Rather than simply accept a truth because it seems to so obvious or has become so enmeshed in a corporate culture, OB designs experiments to identifiy causal linkages between aspects of the work environment and the quality of the work product.

This is the value of statistics in this type of research. Stats provides the tools to identify how much of a particular observation is due to a particular variable in the environment and how much it is due to other, uncontrolled or seemingly unrelated conditions. The three social sciences that underlie OB, psychology (the individual), sociology (groups), anthropology (the organizational culture), and a little bit of poly sci all use the tools of stats to provide an objective evaluation of their quantitiative data. The use of stats is intended to make the research objective and scientific (in the sense that it is based on evidence and not the judgement of the individual). The cause and effect relationships that these studies demonstrate allow managers to lead by applying evidence based decision making processes rather than simply relying on experience or intuition. This does not mean that a manager should abandon all judgement to the rigidity of evidence. There are very few absolutes in OB. Deductive reasoning is not a very effective tool. Understanding the nuances of the managerial situation and the contingent conditions of a particular study is a vital skill to effectively applying OB research in a business environment.

The textbook identifies behaviors that OB is meant to reinforce and how the application of OB findings can reduce undesirable traits like absenteeism, deviant workplace behavior, and high turnover rates. Those kinds of applications strike me as outdated. The kind of research they seem interested in is more directed at production and manufacturing jobs. Those jobs are going away. The focus really needs to be on how to lead creative work groups that rely on high educated teams working on ill-defined and open ended problems. (Is there reseach out there that supports the management philosophy of Netflix? Is that an isolated system that is too small to provide justification for more sweeping conclusions?)

Resolution Achieved & my first impression of class online

I finished my Dickens book for the year about 20 minutes ago. I just completed Nicholas Nickleby. I can now add this to the list of other Dickens books that I have read (Great Expectations, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities). I have read half of Dombey and Son (that's no small feat, the book is 1000+ pages) so I wouldn't mind trying to wrap that up this year. If I do manage to finish that book, it will have to wait until some time right before the new year. I start working on my MBA tomorrow.

My classes are up on the Marist iLearn website. I expected there to be some kind of video lecture as part of each class, but it looks like everything is done via post to the iLearn sites and discussion on different forums that have been set up for each class. A few people have already been making posts to the Management class forums. I was actually thinking about doing that myself tonight, but I've had my two beers for this weekend (I'm working on slimming down (with some progress) and cutting back on beer is an easy way to lower my calories for the week; I had the surprisingly good Road Dog Porter from Flying Dog Brewery) and am feeling a little too buzzed for school work at the moment. I plan on putting a bunch of due dates into a Google calendar tomorrow. I get the feeling that keeping track of when I need to do what will be my biggest challenge, at least until I get into the flow of each class. The classes are organized around a book chapter per week. I am going to try to take advantage of this structure and set up a weekly schedule for myself. I have a very detailed schedule in mind, with each study time associated with a particular task. I'm currently thinking that lunch, random work time, and the weekends will be spent on management with my evenings spent on finance. The finance syllabus is very detailed, even down to how long I should allow myself for each weekly test. I start in earnest next week. I will find time to write about my experience here.

Finding my groove

My Management Foundations book is a piece of crap. I feel like I'm wasting my time when I read it. Do I really need the key words with their definitions at the bottom of each page? There is no flow to the ideas and the treatment of different topics feels very superficial. Maybe that's to be expected in an introductory course that is probably more survey than deep dive. While the text of each chapter blows (at least the first two), there are references to research papers and reviews that flesh out the concepts in a much more comprehensive and interesting way. Organizational behavior is a very interesting field of research. I would rather read through a pile of research papers than that piece of crap textbook that cost me $150 or so dollars.

My little rant above suggests two possibilities for the next couple months of my new academic project. I do not want to turn into the know-it-all jerk with the PhD who thinks the advanced degree makes him an authority on all topics. My issues with the book could come off as issues with the topics of the class. For all I know, the professor will say that the book is a piece of crap and direct us to particular footnotes for papers that do a better job of describing an area of organizational behavior research. I want to contribute to the class, but I will try very hard to make constructive and informed comments in whatever medium we use to discuss the readings. The tone of my comments will be critical. I also need to keep in mind that this is a prerequisite class for what I expect will be a more in depth treatment in an MBA class. The content of this class should really be comparable to what you would see in a similar undergraduate class (or classes).

If the class ends up being a fairly superficial trip through a cliche textbook, I guess that will just leave me more time to read interesting papers cited in the footnotes. I get out from these classes what I put in. I can do what the class requires, take my grade, and move on, or I can use the class as an opportunity to develop my own ideas about how to run an organization. I don't know how hard I'll have to try to develop my own thinking after reading this presentation by Reed Hastings of Netflix. I will just us all of their thinking to guide my own. I see a tendency in my class textbook to implement programs that will help the company fit the needs of the employee. I like how Netflix has defined how the company will work and seeks employees that fit that vision rather than fitting their vision to the employees. The Hastings presentation is a good lens to look at all of this organization behavior research discussed in the textbook. I hope to use the good of the presentation to make something meaningful for myself from the textbook.

I say all this while still a week outside of my first online class. My view of where the book fits into the value of the class may change after one or two classes.

Business Card study plan

After getting slightly uneasy with the the realization that I wasn't making much progress on retaining what I've read in my finance book, I stumbled on what has every appearance of being an efficient study technique. I've been summarizing sections of my finance book on the back of my old business cards. The small size forces me synthesize the information, the cards are easy to carry, and I have a couple hundred of them just sitting around. I can carry them in my new computer bag and pull them out to grab a few minutes review here and there throughout my day. Just lining them up helps me see how different sections of the chapter are organized. If nothing else, it's a good start on an efficient system.

I have also been forcing myself to read through the entire chapter rather than skipping sections that aren't mentioned in the summary at the end of the chapter. I tried that skipping around business when I was an undergrad and it didn't work too well. I have also decided that I want good grades. While not doing awesome will not be a hindrance, doing really well has the potential to help me out at some point in the future. Besides, I'm competitive. I want to be the best.

To convince myself that playing fantasy football is not a complete waste of my time and cognitive surplus, I try to take something from fantically watching the score ticker at the bottom of the screen during football games that I can apply to other aspects of my life. Two elements of the fantasy football experience always rise to the top during these episodic affirmations. One, much of life is due to random chance that I can do little to control. We live in a probablistic universe after all, why shouldn't the laws that govern the basis of our physical world apply to a simple sport as well? Two, following the herd is the shortest route to mediocrity. Mindlessly applying the word of a fantasy "expert" or doing what is right based on some consensus of the best player or strategy will only get you so far. You have to position yourself to take advantage of those times that chance falls in your favor.

While I don't expect random chance to be much of a factor in my MBA classes (although you just never know), the probability that I will be dealing with experts of dubious distinction is unity. I know this because I have already encountered a couple of these experts in chapter 1 of my management foundations textbook. I have found a study style that will suit this class quite well, argue against the points these management technicians make about how organizations behave. The tone of chapter 1 runs counter to much of how I would like to lead once I'm in a position to use others to achieve goals (which is their definition of management). This definition of management sets the tone for their analysis, as the rest of the chapter goes on to describe how they are going to teach us how to manipulate people like the software and machines that are used to get so much done in business.

I knew that I would have to built a fort around the perspective on management and other areas of business that I have developed over the years. Chapter 1 warns that one of the challenges of organizational behavior is seperating people from their intuitions on how to manage people and replace those ideas (which are likely based on their experience actually working in organizations) with concepts developed using the tools of social science. What I am defending is not a few cliches about how people behave in organizations, but a philosophical position on the best way to work with people to achieve goals assigned by the organization while pursuing goals that we have given ourselves (which, ideally, will benefit the company and shape the future assigned goals by providing higher level executives with a more complete picture of our organization's capabilities). I have my ideas. We'll see how they withstand the onslaught of formal education. Let the battle begin.

Practice

My experiment in trying to live like a part-time student has been slow to really get off the ground. I did sit down and read for an hour and a half or so on Tuesday or Wednesday night. Other than that, I haven't really done much. I feel asleep for an hour after Project Runway ended last night. I came down stairs to take care of a few things after I woke up, but I didn't have the mental energy to psuedo-study. I came down stairs tonight planning to study, but I spent awhile writing in my wife's anniversary card (11 years tomorrow). Then I read her latest blog post, felt like an ass, left a comment, and came back to write this post. It's still early. As soon as I'm finished I will move over to the kitchen table and do something school-like.

I have decided to use the desk as my study spot. The room is a touch cluttered, but I think it will be better studying in there rather than trying to use a common area of the house. I was talking to my wife about it and mentioned that I would just move a dining table chair up there to replace the super squeaky chair that's at the desk now. She suggested that I buy a new chair. After all, she tells me, I'm going to be taking classes for years. I've been so focused on getting everything in place just to start taking classes that I tend to de-emphasize the amount of effort this is going to take. This is going to be hard.

Diversions

I plan on using the next few weeks to see how well I can switch from reading to working out to some other kind of study activity. Writing this blog post isn't working on something for one of my classes (I keep reminding myself that I'll be taking two classes, my planning always seems to focus on one class), but going from one activity to another as smoothly as possible is the real trick. I have a tendency to take 15 minutes reading blogs or some other online activity before getting down to whatever task I have planned for a particular evening (working on grad school applications, writing posts, that kind of thing). I need to smooth out those transitions to stay efficient and on task.

I may also look for some good study techniques. I have studying science (well, chemistry anyway) down cold, but it's been a long time since I thought about how to study out of a text book that is mostly text. I was never very efficient at studying from textbooks in college. Do I try the summarizing each paragraph in the margin? Do I put everything in the context of my imaginary research company? I guess I should try to figure these things out before classes start. Well, maybe it's not a matter of how I go about studying, but what I want to get out of each class. It's easy to fall back into the conditioned response of going for the grade in school. I don't need good grades to get an interview for the summer job that will lead to my first hire post-MBA, but I do want to learn something from these classes. I need to keep asking myself how the material impacts what I do now and what I want to do as my career progresses. I really want to use these foundations classes as a way to get the business perspective on my company and the industry. I look at it as a scientist. How do other people in the company view the same organization? Maybe these classes will help me figure that out.

Rising to the Challenge

I just finished working out. I tried to get on the computer to write this post as quickly as possible in an effort to simulate what going straight from a workout to hitting the books will be like. I took on the Spartacus Workout and managed to get through two cycles. That's about the hardest workout I can manage here at home. Oscar's post about his week at a martial arts camp reminded me that I need to push beyond my comfort level if I'm going to lower my 1000 m time on the rowing machine or get rid of my gut. Pushing past my limits is the only way to make meaningful progress. Why take the time to workout if I'm not going to push myself hard enough to get anything out of it. With that idea in mind, I kept pushing when I felt like sitting on the steps and calling it a night.

I need to get in the habit of staying on task when I would rather be doing something else. The class schedules and the associated text books are pretty easy to find on the Marist website. I have decided to take Management and Finance over Accounting and Analytical Tools. (I'll register as soon as I get my login and password.) Almost the entire first chapter of the Finance textbook is available as a preview on Amazon. I took a look at it last night to get a feel for what I'll be up against. The content of the book was not overly intimidating, but I could feel the heft of the book through my internet browser. It's almost 1000 pages. Throw in the supplemental materials online, and I'm looking at well over 1000 pages. And that's just one class.

In reading through the online preview, I found myself approaching the text like I did as an undergrad. While that approach would likely get me through the class, I want more from these classes than a grade. The whole point of taking on this challenge is to open opportunities for my career. My last month at work has been spent on a research project that is not directly linked to the development of a new product. The deeper I get into the project, the more I think my group should be focused on similar problems and projects. I know there is value in this kind of work. Taking the time to understand what we're doing could result in a much improved product development process. Top science talent will flock to a lab that allows them to pursue problems that push their research abilities. There is value in taking on hard problems. Rather than simply absorb and purge the content of my MBA classes, I plan on using what I learn in my studies to help me design a business plan for my vision of a research facility. Finding a way to make my vision a reality is far more engaging than trudging through a thick textbook so I can answer questions on an exam.

Keeping things moving in my career, staying involved with my family, lowering my 1000 m time on the rowing machine, and working hard in my MBA classes is going to require plenty of hustle on my part. I want the challenge. It may mean that I don't get to watch much football this season and I may have to skip watching Survivor or the Amazing Race. I know that I need to find that next level of performance to take my career to the next level. Doing this right will require me to push past my limits to find a higher performance level.

Nature of Knowledge about Nature

I'm a big fan of shows that talk to scientist. There is a great episode of NOVA where the guys who were trying to be the first to generate Bose-Einstein condensates recount what it was like in the lab moments before their breakthrough. While I don't know much about that area of science, I was captivated by their description of what they were experiencing in those tense hours leading up to their successful experiment. The race to be the first to observe something new in science is high drama as far as I'm concerned. The achievement brought them a Nobel Prize (which is probably the only reason that NOVA made a show about them to begin with), but it also verified a theoretical prediction that had been made decades earlier by, well, Bose and Einstein.

There can be little doubt about the veracity of the predictions made by Bose and Einstein after seeing the exotic state of matter that they predicted be created in a lab. But what about theories that attempt to describe long standing observations? How good does the data need to fit the experiment before we can say that the theory is correct? Any reasonable solution that gives a reasonable fit to a data set can be considered a viable theoretical explanation. How is consensus reached on which explanation is the accepted one? Why is the Big Bang so widely accepted over other explanations for the origin of the universe? People have been looking at the stars for as long as there have been people on the planet. We are awash in data about the nature of the universe. How well do the theories that account for these observations fit the data?

To hear the scientist that they talk to for shows like Through the Wormhole or The Universe, the big questions of cosmology have pretty much been worked out. All that's left is working through the finer details of the Big Bang theory and the origins of our expanding universe. These are the models that the astronomy establishment have accepted as the best possible explanation for the origin and nature of our universe. There are very few people outside of the astronomy researchers who have the technical skills and knowledge to assess the validity of these models to any significant detail. We all just talk their word on it when they invoke terms like dark matter or dark energy to describe why the universe is expanding or some other cosmological observation.

I have never gotten a warm, fuzzy feeling for things like dark matter and dark energy. It's rather odd to think that the vast majority of the energy and matter in the universe is something that has never been detected or experienced. That's not to say that these proposed universal constituents are not present all around us, but at this point they're little more than theoretical predictions. There are plenty of research groups scrambling to observe dark matter or dark energy. They want to win a Nobel Prize and have their own episode of NOVA too. Seeing matter and energy and where we have never seen either feels a little arbitrary, but that's the best explanation that the established astronomers and cosmologists have been able to develop for their expansive data set about the nature of the universe.

It's no wonder that a new theory that claims to explain unexpected aspects of the universe without resorting to vast amounts of unknown energy and matter comes from Institute of Statistics at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. Wun-Yi Shu has written a paper that uses physical "constants" as conversion factors for other physical properties of the universe. I really have no way to evaluate his theory (although those that do have several issues with the paper, although I could have done without commentary on the formatting, like that really matters), but the paper does point out that our current theories do not fit the data as well as we might like. The presence of this paper is a reminder that for all that we think we know about the universe, much of that knowledge rests on large assumptions, generalizations, and reasonable conjecture (ie, guessing).

While this paper will likely disappear without leaving a lasting impact on physics, other papers that are just as ridiculed when they first appear may provide revolutionary insights into the workings of our universe. Science is dynamic and evolving. Our imperfect knowledge is constantly being revised. Even the most highly regarded theory can be undermined by a short paper from an unlikely source. That's just the way the world works.

Marist Update

I received my admissions packet from Marist yesterday. Not only have I been accepted to the MBA program (which is not all that surprising), but I have been awarded a Graduate Scholars Award of $250 per class (this was unexpected). It doesn't sound like much when 1 credit is $695, but when you consider that I'll be taking 5 classes a year, that $1250 that I will not have to put out for my MBA. I'm a big believer in self-education, but it's difficult to communicate my efforts to improve my management skills on my resume without a formal program to reference. My goal is to get an MBA for as cheaply as possible with as little disruption to my life as I can manage. The graduate award is one more step to minimize the foot print of my MBA studies on my life.

Saying that I want my MBA to have a minimal foot print on my life is not a statement about the seriousness that I have in approaching this process. I want to extract as much useful knowledge and experience as I can from my classes, professors, and classmates. At the same time, I don't want to take attention away from my career or my family while doing this. These may sound like contradictory aims, but think it's more of a challenge to displine myself and use the time that I have for school work to my greatest advantage. If I have 30 minutes to read or study, I need to maximize the value of that time. Efficiency and focus will be the name of the game.

It's too bad I don't have a man cave. It would be great to retreat into a space like these rooms to focus on my school work for 30 minutes or so. I have been thinking about where I am going to do this intense studying. We have a guest room. Our old desktop computer is on a desk up there just collecting dust. I could ditch the computer and make that my work space. I would like to work at a desk rather than our kitchen table so I can keep my materials out for quick access rather than taking them out and putting them away every time I study, especially on the weekends. The room shares a wall with my daughters room so I would have to be careful about how much noise I made while I was working. I'm sure it will be a trial and error process to see what kind of arrangement works best for everybody. The process begins August 30.

Progress

I had a very big moment at work this afternoon. I didn't see the import of the event until I starting thinking about it earlier this evening. The low key nature of the exchange denied the event of a dramatic flavor, but the mundane nature of the exchange doesn't change the fact that 20 minutes in a colleague's cubicle justified an approach to laboratory problems that I have been promoting for three years. I have spent a good deal of my time the last couple of years digging into the details of some developmental data. I've read (or skimmed) dozens of research papers, spent hours trying to get data to fit equations, and expended a considerable amount of cognitive surplus to understand how the data and the equations all fit together. Some people would probably consider this wasted time as it was time not spent advancing a project toward a well-defined goal. I justified the time by arguing that understanding the process in this prototype will help us understand the data when we apply similar formulation strategies to other prototypes.

I looked at some data from a similar system this afternoon and was able to provide an explanation for some contradictory trends by applying the insights that I gained during my struggles with my developmental data. I predicted that a certain analysis would yield a straight line for one compound and a curved line for the other. My prediction was accurate. I have to promote my accomplishment, but the fact that I was able to apply something that I learned by using the research literature is immensely satisfying. This small incident proves (to me at least) that taking the time to understand some data rather than simply rushing on to the next stage of a development project can facilitate future development projects. My vision of a successful research lab is partially based on this premise. It is very nice to see that it has some validity.

New Motivation

My HDL levels are borderline high. Seeing that I'm only 34, now seems the right time to address this issue rather than brushing it aside. After a quick online search into what causes high cholesterol, my plan is to get back on track to lose my gut. Losing weight (which will involve more exercise and better eating habits) will bring my HDL down a few points, hopefully. Maybe this not great news will get the scale going down again.

While I'm commenting on my losing the gut resolution, I'll give an update on another neglected resolution, reading a Dickens book. I have been focusing my reading time on Nicholas Nickleby. I'm almost half finished. I want to get it wrapped up by the time my online classes start at Marist (assuming they accept me of course). I have no idea how much time I will have to read once my classes start so I figured I should take care of that resolution now rather than trying to squeeze a fat Dickens book into the last couple weeks of December. I'm reading 25-30 pages a night before I workout (or pass out like I did last night, that's one way to go to bed earlier).

I've been thinking about which two foundations classes to take this semester. Should I tackle one of the subjects that I do not find particularly appealing (like accounting or finance) or should I pick something interesting (like economics)? I guess I'll have an advisor that is supposed to help me make this decision, but I'm sure I'll get a stock answer. I have to take them all eventually so it probably doesn't matter in which order I take them, and it's not like I have to pick a time that works for me. I'm currently leaning towards economics (or analytical tools, I may be able to use some of that in my job) and management. We'll see what my adviser says, assuming I get accepted of course. (Yes, I will count school books in my books read for the year.)

I have always been amazed at how the things I read end up being related to one another. I don't know if they're really related to one another, or I just invent connections between them, but my most recent chain of associations started with this post over at the hbr blog site. The post is about the vulnerability of entrepreneurs. They are taking a risk by starting a new business. Any time you take risk, you open yourself to criticism and failure. That kind of exposure can be pretty scary. Later that night I was reading a chapter in a book about problem solving in the context of creativity. The chapter is just a review of other work, but one of the studies that they discuss identified personality traits of creative people. Creative people tend to be more willing to take risks, are open to new experiences, they are persistent, and are tolerant of ambiguity. Both the blog post and book chapter reminded me of this manifesto over at changethis.com.

What idea path did these random associations lead to for me? Well, let me tell you. At it's heart, creativity is really just deviating from the status quo. Something is creative when it defies somebody's expectations, expectations that have been established by experiencing the normal, average, mundane, experiences of everyday life. Creativity is just the willingness to reach beyond the everyday for something different and new. To be creative, you have to be willing to take a risk that the new thing will not succeed, what ever criteria that you have put in place for success. A status quo education/developmental experience does not challenge us to defy expectations and find ways to change the way things are. If anything, we are actually taught to be afraid of putting ourselves out there for fear of being ridiculed or mocked when something doesn't work as hoped. People never practice creativity so they just think that they aren't creative.

Creativity is really just a willingness to fail. If you are willing to put some crazy idea out there for other people to evaluate, you are being creative. When somebody says they don't have a fresh idea, do they not have an idea or are they not willing to share the ideas that they are having? Building creativity is just getting in the habit of offering new ideas. Not every idea needs to be fully evaluated and fleshed out prior to proposal. Just get it out there.

Creativity isn't purely a talent. It's a skill. Building that skill requires the willingness to open yourself to criticism, to being vulnerable. We all have the power to do that, we're just not all equally willing to act in that manner. The more I read by Ericsson, the more I realize that our limitations are largely self-imposed. So much achievement is attributed to talent and innate ability that we just figure that certain acts are outside of our ability. That's not true. Achievement is more about how we choose to apply our energies and direct our focus. It's easier to say that creativity is a natural ability that I lack. It's much harder to pursue actions that may make me more creative (or thinner, or more athletic, or a better parent, or whatever skill I happen to have in mind at a given moment).

The more I recognize that my achievements are the result of consistent effort and focus on a particular task, the challenge becomes determining how I should spend my time. That's the really tricky question...

Strategies

By strategies, I mean both implemented and in development. For those that have been implemented, my effort to get below the average 1000 m time on the Concept 2 rowing machine took less than a few weeks. I managed to get below the average time when I went to the gym yesterday. After I recovered from that effort, I got back on and did a couple more miles. I figured out some form stuff on that second workout so I'm pretty sure that I can get my time down by another few seconds when I try again next week. I'm going to stick with my current workout of goblet squats and push-ups, with a few elements of the Spartacus workout thrown in for variety. I need to work on my lower body endurance so I'll try to do more reps with lighter weights and maybe work in some incline work on the treadmill.

Using design principles to figure out problems that I have in the lab has also been a fruitful strategy. I had a breakthrough in my current project on Thursday night and Friday morning. After spending a month trying to put my data into some kind of context to help me use the literature to find an explanation for my observations, a Google search on "adsorption equilibrium" led me to the Langmuir isotherm. I've heard of the Langmuir isotherm several times, but I have never made an effort to figure it out. I took the time to think about it on Friday. That little session gave me an idea for an experiment that could give me more than the random points that I've been looking at for weeks. I also got smart and added my old data to the more recent data. Both data sets agreed (which is very good), and I could make sense of some outliers based on how I did the experiment. I made a couple of other experimental modifications to reduce some experimental variability. I was starting to feel like the project may stall on me again, but the introduction of the Langmuir isotherm has given the experiments a real boost. My formal project is entering a very important phase of development in the next couple of weeks. Once that aspect of the project gets going, it will be much harder for me to get the resources to keep generating data on my side project (which could is actually starting to yield insight into a problem in my formal project). I want to have enough data to put a paper together before that new process gets initiated. It will be close, but I am confident that we will get it done.

Seeing that I'm going to be laying out a few grand of my own money on my MBA, I have been thinking of what I really want out of the degree. I want the credential, but if I'm going to spend the time and money to get the credential, I might as well maximize the return on my investment. I have already decided to use the "learning environment" idea discussed in Barker's HBR piece to find people whose experience I can use to accelerate my management expertise. My natural tendency would be to do the minimal discussion and interaction required of the class, but I'm going to step outside of my comfort zone and try to find a nucleus of three or four people to work closely with this semester. I also read about a way to implement deliberate practice into management training. I should have access to business case studies at some point in my MBA. Whether that happens during my foundations classes or once I'm in the more advanced aspects of the program remains to be seen, but I will start using them to develop my skills as a manager as soon as I can.

Random Configuration Expertise

I have expanded my readings in psychology to K. Anders Ericsson. He writes about how elite performers in a variety of domains reached their achievement levels. The foundation of his framework in the idea of deliberate practice. Experts become experts because they spend a tremendous amount of time and effort on training excercises designed to improve their performance. In his model, the source of very high achievement is not a function of innate ability but a consequence of an accumulation of skills and mediators that have been developed during hours and hours of concentrated effort.

He has applied his model to scientists. As world-class scientist publish papers at a higher rate than less heralded researchers, he recommends that scientist focus on writing research papers to maximize their impact. Simonton (he wrote Scientific Genius and Creativity in Science, both of which are in my read book list) would likely agree with this suggestion as his model for successful scientists is based on publishing as many papers as possible to increase the liklihood that one of the papers will contain a significant idea.

There is another aspect of Ericsson's model that also corresponds well with Simonton's random configuration model. Simonton notes that a number of prominent scientists read widely in displines outside of their own. He notes that this provides mental elements that may combine with an element from the researchers specialty to produce a novel insight into a difficult problem. This outside reading could also serve to keep a researcher's thinking fresh. Rather than using the same ideas to solve every problem, the ideas presented in other types of scientific research forces the scientist to incoporate these new ideas into the mental models that they have established around their own research. In Ericsson's words "Expert performers counteract the arrested development associated with generalized automaticity of skill by deliberately acquiring and refining cognitive mechanisms to support continued learning and improvement."

I have never been much of a reader of the literature when I wasn't looking for ideas about my own research, but I am going to start reading non-chemistry papers every now and then. Everytime I thought about trying to read more papers, I envisioned reading chemistry papers. The ideas in Simonton and Ericsson make expanding my selections to other areas of science sound more productive. I don't want to get cognitive freeze, where my thinking around particular problems gets locked in one particular model. Breaking up my chemistry knowledge to incorporate ideas from biology, geology, or physics would definitely prevent that from happening.

You could say that I am already doing this by reading Simonton's and Ericsson's work. I have gotten a number of ideas on how to improve my performance and the performance of my colleagues by reading both psychologists. In writing this post, I have seen other ways that their models support one another. This strengthens their validity in my thinking, which makes me even more likely to incorporate their ideas into my approach to work. And to think that I always though psychology was a big waste of time...

Inverse Knowledge

I've been touting my research experience in my admission assays for the Marist online MBA. I use this experience to illustrate how my insight into the research process will make me a more effective leader in the consumer healthcare industry than an executive who lacks a similar foundation. While I was working on these essays, I realized that while my understanding of how a lab works and what it needs to be productive is useful, the real value in my research experience is knowing what the lab can NOT do.

I actually wouldn't have had this insight if I hadn't been reading Against Method while eating lunch at Chipolte on Thursday. I haven't read the book close enough to summarize the main points (this looks like a pretty good summary), but I have read enough to get the sense that Feyerabend has some issues with institutional science. I have some sympathy with the idea that science may not be the all powerful source of truth that contemporary culture has made it out to be. My own experience has made me all too aware of the limitations of our scientific knowledge. Sometimes the best answer is "I don't know." That answer should be followed up with some ideas about how to get an idea of what may be going on in a particular experiment, but every researcher knows that there are questions that just can't (and shouldn't) be answered given our current understanding of a particular problem.

Of course, going into a meeting with some executives whose experience with a lab has been largely limited to taking tours on facility visits and telling them that you can't solve a problem using the fancy lab that you proudly showed off during the tour is not wise. Nobody wants to hear why a particular problem can't be solved. They just want it fixed. (They also have no interest in things that are not directly related to a product that makes money even though knowing more about a particular molecule or material may be helpful to a real product somewhere down the line...) Having been a research scientist myself, I hope that I will still be able to look at lab problems the same way once I've moved out of the lab and into a leadership position. I know to ask whether the people closest to the problem can find a solution and if they can't (which is a valid response), what can I give them to get them closer to a solution. That's the real value of my laboratory experience in a leadership role in the pharmaceutical industry.

Concept 2

I've used the Concept 2 at the gym a few more times. Every time I use it, I get a little bit faster. Seeing that I can only get to the gym on the weekends, I started thinking about ways to improve my stamina and power using other types of workouts to get faster even though I'm not actually on the machine. It didn't take me long to realize that the Spartacus workout is a good place to start. If I do it as prescribed, I will get plenty of work on improving my explosivity while improving my cardiovascular fitness. Based on the workout I did today, I'm right around the 25th percentile of the online rankings for my age and weight for just about every distance up to 5000 meters. With a little bit of focus and effort, I think I can get to the average time for each distance in a few weeks.

I've always been intrigued by the Concept 2 because there are detailed rankings online. I have no idea how far I could get up the rankings, but having a scale to measure my performance against is a solid motivator. Anything that gets to my competitive nature will help me get out in the garage to workout. Running never did it for me because I am such a pathetic distance runner. I knew that I would never be that competitive as a runner. This rowing thing seems much more up my alley.

Besides the desire to drop some inches from my waist, I read an article in Men's Health that has got me thinking about my resting heart rate. Currently, my resting heart rate is a little below 60 beats per minute. That's alright, but I would like to get it down a few more beats per minute. That will require getting out in the garage and actually working on more than one or two nights a week. We'll see if this desire to get faster on the Concept 2 gets me back in the garage.

A Design in Chemistry Experience

Back when I was reading Notes on the Synthesis of Form, I mentioned that one of Alexander's productive diagrams can make a bunch of senseless data suddenly morph into something meaningful. I experienced this type of eureka moment today. I have been struggling with the data that I have generated using the chiral column. Assumptions that I had going into the project have been ravaged, leaving me with two or three possible ways to interpret the data. The first step to my productive diagram was reading a paper (that my coworker found) describing how two of the materials that I have been using have different sublimation properties. One of my assumptions at the beginning of the project was that these materials had basically the same sublimation properties. My data was suggesting that their sublimation properties were different, but it wasn't until I read this paper that I could use this insight to interpret the rest of the data.

I encountered the power of the productive diagram when I gave each type of material that I have been using (there are 3) a different symbol in a figure that summarizes my data. As soon as I made this change (all 3 materials had the same symbol previously), my messy data became crystal clear. I now have a relationship between a property of my experimental material and one of my experimental observables. I'm not quite sure what it means, but rather than preparing to let the project sit for a week or so while I try to figure out what to do next, I have a clear plan of what I need to do over the next couple of weeks. I'm running some old samples now to see if the same trend holds. I wasn't sure if I would have something that could be published from this work when I went to work this morning. Now, thanks to a well designed diagram, I see a clear path to a publication. Now I just have to see if my experiments will cooperate with my plan.

Learning environment online

Fresh off my decision to pursue an MBA online through Marist College comes an article by Richard Barker in the Harvard Business Review (that is also posted on their blog) that blasts the entire idea of on online MBA. The online MBA does not provide the right platform for management training because "the environment within which people learn can be more powerful than the specific material taught." It's the interaction with other students and learning from their professional experience that is the real benefit of obtaining an MBA.

The business school, at least in Barker's ideal, provides a learning environment that allows the student to link the topics of the different classes with those topics from other classes and their own experience. The combined experience of other people allow this linking to extend to other situations through discussions with other members of the class. As expressed in the article "The pedagogical opportunities in sharing [professional experiences] are obvious—and they require an environment in which students actively work together and learn from one another." Barker goes on to say that "in a collaborative learning environment the people around you are more than just colleagues and friends; they are an explicit and valuable part of your educational experience. It follows from this that effective business education cannot be delivered exclusively online, because online delivery is a teaching mechanism, not a learning environment."

Why can't an online class provide the learning enviroment that Barker finds so commendable? If a broad array of experience in one's classmates is an explicit and valuable part of the educational experience, won't 500 or so people drawn from all over the country at a variety of professional levels be superior to 200 or so students drawn from a fairly narrow distribution of educational and professional backgrounds? I do not need to be physically proximal to sombody to engage in a meaningful discussion of how my experience colors a particular class topic. Online discussion tools available for the class, gchat, email, text messaging, or an old fashion phone call can be used to discuss a topic just as well as talking about it in person.

Barker puts the onus of providing a learning environment on the instutition. Once that is in place, the student will be a vessel for this abundance of rich interactions that the wise admissions officers and deans have created for these fertile minds. That perspective is backwards. Every student chooses how engaged they will be in a class. If I want Barker's learning environment, I will be able to find it no matter where I go to school or how the instruction is delivered. Just because somebody goes to Harvard doesn't mean that they will be fully engaged in the Harvard learning environment. Similarly, just because I'm not in the same room as my classmates doesn't mean that I will not engage in a meaningful discussion with one or two of them. I am responsible for my classroom (virtual or otherwise) experience. The creation of a learning environment falls to me. The institution provides the context. I decide how deeply I will delve into the content.

Random

If I could figure out how to get my work laptop to connect to my Wifi network, I would have been doing work on Saturday night. I started an HPLC run on an idea that I came across while seeing what the literature had to say about enantiospecific interactions on Friday afternoon. I made a few trial injections before I left the lab. There looks to be some kind of interferent right on top of a very important peak, but I decided to go ahead and run a few samples anyway. I can think of one of two ways to get some useful information from the run even with the interferent. My curiosity to see how the run looked is pretty quiet when I'm busy with the kids, but once I'm on my own, I get very anixous to see how things look.

While I have accepted that research is not the best direction for my career, leaving the lab will be a difficult process. I plan on staying close enough to the labs that I will still see and think about data, but I won't have this daily interaction with a few problems that lead to original ideas and experiments. The depth of understanding that I have will become more superficial as my responsibilities shift. I have thought that maybe a smaller company will allow me to stay closer to lab activities while taking a leadership role. When I interviewed at a small company it was clear that every level of the company was involved in research. At the same time, maybe it would be better to just go cold turkey and make a clean break. A management position that requires a technical background might be better.

So what did I do on Saturday night when I wasn't checking on my HPLC data? I drank beer (which I would have done with the data anyway), listened to a Muse concert on the Spin website (which I also would have done while looking at the data), and played Mario Kart Wii online. I stopped playing for a couple of months, but I started playing again a couple of weeks ago when I figured out how to to mute the controller. I have done really well in the two or three sessions that I've played. I don't know the results are more about me being good or the other people being bad. I kind of think negative things about the people who are too good at some of the tracks (shouldn't they be doing something better with their time?), and I can't help but think that other people have the same opinion of me. I plan on limiting my playing to the weekends. I don't want to become a loser who is too good at a dumb video game.

The Evolving Mega-group (and my place in it)

After all of my gnashing of teeth over the Big Reorg at my place of work, not much has really changed in how I go about my day. My big fear, losing the freedom to pursue my solutions to interesting problems, has been a non-issue. I have teamed up with another scientist to keep the chiral column busy (it helps that each sample takes an hour to run, my conventional method for the same samples takes 2 minutes). It still seems that as long as I keep delivering what is needed for my development projects, management is content to let me tinker around in the lab. I have also been pleasantly surprised at the level of involvement from my new manager to how I coordinate activities in the lab. I expected a much stronger hand.

While some of my fears have not been realized, others problems are starting to pop up. It looks like we're going to treat the new big group as a larger version of our old groups. This will not work. It's just too burdensome. We are also relatively rudderless. The only hint of a vision for the group is to test a particular class of samples in a specified time frame. I think this should be treated as a given as we put more emphasis on improving how we work and gain a better understanding of the fundamental properties of our systems.

I'm doing all that I can to move the group to a greater emphasis on innovation and breaking free of the status quo. The structure of the entire division is not suited to an innovative culture, we're too focused on how many routine samples we can process, but I keep looking for ways to poke and prod the focus of individuals from what they're going to what they could be doing. Surely there is so critical mass that will shift the balance from a focus on routine tasks to an emphasis on innovative work.

I get the point, so what's the point in reading the whole thing?

I am very adept at finding the one piece of information that I need from a research paper. Why bother reading the whole thing when I can get what I need from a couple figures and a passage or two of text? I recently started applying a similar criteria to books that I'm thinking about reading. I was poised to read The Innovator's Dilemma. Rather than starting at the page one and reading straight through, I flipped to the back and read the summary of findings presented in the book. After reading that and the intro I felt like I had a good enough grasp of the innovator's dilemma. Rather than wade through a detailed description of the disk drive industry's evolution, I returned the book to the VCU library without reading the whole thing. I can't add the book to my list of completed books, but I don't think I would have gained anything by reading the whole thing.

I have also decided to pass on Clay Shirky's new book. I commented on a video that is basically a synopsis of the book (at least from the reviews of the book that I have read) a few months ago. (This interview with NPR also lays out a few of his arguments.) This whole cognitive surplus idea is an interesting way of thinking about how we use our time, but I really don't need to read (and buy) a whole book about how the web allows each of us to make a small contribution to a much larger project. I am not all that blown away by people using their free time to develop Linux. If there was a comparable thing for chemists, I would work on that. I have spent almost half of my life learning chemistry and using that knowledge to solve interesting problems. I would happily spend a couple of hours trying to make sense of data that somebody couldn't figure out. While it's not as easy to recognize as playing a musical instrument or painting a picture, I like to use my chemistry research skills. I have developed some level of mastery over an area of inquiry. I like to use expand my skill set by trying to solve new problems (after watching this video I can also cross Drive off of the books that I would like to read, I think this video pretty much says it all).

I have been a reader of fiction for most of my life. A novel begs to be read straight through from page one until the story ends. I am slowly orienting myself to the idea of flipping through a book to get the main idea and moving on to something else. Most of the popular business books that I've read are really only trying to convey one or two ideas. Most of the book is illustraions of that idea or an argument to support some conclusions. Unless I am extra interested in a topic, I don't see why I should spend time on what is really just filler. I will likely start applying strategies like these to get the good stuff out of a book and leave the rest behind. Once I start using my cognitive surplus to get my MBA, I will need to find new ways to find new ideas. This is a good place to start.

Different Paths

Lonnie Allen and I had almost every class together when we were ninth graders in Clovis, NM. We were in the advanced classes together. I remember talking to him about what we were going to do with our lives. I really had no clear idea of what I wanted to do (pharmaceutical research scientist was not on my list of potential careers), but he was already doing things to get ready to be a prosecutor. We had fewer classes together when we moved to the high school (only 10-12 grades were in the high school), but we did have Algebra II together. He would tell me how hard it was to take AP English with the math classes needed to take Calculus when we were seniors. I moved to Virginia after that year. I moved during the summer so I didn't get a chance to say good-bye to most of my friends from school.

I wondered about Lonnie until we reconnected on Facebook. He's not a lawyer. He draws comics. He doesn't draw superhero comics or Sunday funnies type of stuff. He's more a graphic novel comic artist. He posts a short strip every couple of days on his blog. He's been a zombie in a video store commercial too. I have no idea what his day to day life is like, but I'm certain that it's much different than mine. I have never thought about what life would be like as a struggling comic book artist living in Denver, but seeing somebody who was once very much like me (at least at a superficial level) choosing a much different life has made me wonder what could have happened if I had made different choices in my life. I'm very happy with the choices I've made, but I've always been so focused on the next stage of my life or career that I've never stopped to consider an alternative to my experience.

You know you've been closed to new experiences when buying a fairly unconventional polo shirt is a relevatory event. I have been pushing my limits here and there recently. It's been in fairly tame ways, like trying new restaurants (the wife and I discovered a great place just outside of our usual haunts this weekend) or wearing almost designer jeans with shoes other than running shoes on the weekend. My decision to pursue an MBA online is another way that I am thinking a little more broadly about how to go about living my life. I know that none of these things are particularly edgy. Lonnie will always be further out on the experimental side of life than I will ever be, but I intend to make experimentation, trying something new just for the sake of trying something new, a bigger part of my life. Rather than passively waiting for new experiences to find me, I will start looking for ways to do new things and building on positive experiences that I have had in pushing my boundaries. Today it's building a little wall for my kids' garden. Who knows how tomorrow's choices will change the path of my life.

Time Interference

My wife, in her infinite wisdom and stubborn practicality, has challenged me to figure out how much time I will need to purse an online MBA. How much will my studies impact the time I spend with family? How long will it take me to finish? Both good questions. The second one is easy to answer. If I follow through with the program at Marist, I will need to take 17 classes. If I take 5 classes a year and start this fall, I will finish in December of 2013.

The second question is harder to answer. I sent the school an email asking how many people are in the program (about 500) and how much time is needed per class. I got the response that the prep time varies considerably from class to class but I can get in touch with the School of Management to talk to a staff member about the time demands per class. I had no time to make that call today. I'll find some time tomorrow. Regardless of what they say, the real question is how much time do I have to work on my classes without taking time away from the family. This is how I see it. I currently leave the building for lunch. If I start this program, I'll use one of the smaller conference rooms to eat while I study. That will be about 45 minutes. I may be able to read a little bit while my kids watch a video before bed. We'll call that 15 minutes. My wife goes to bed around 10 while I stay up until 12:30 or so. Let's call that two hours. That's 3 hours a day. If I use all of that time everyday that's 15 hours a week, 7.5 hours per class. A couple more hours on the weekend, we'll call it 9 hours per week per class. I have half-day Fridays until late-October. That's about half of the class for the fall. I would also have half-day Fridays in the spring. That's a couple more hours a week, assuming I'm not taking care of other things. Is that enough?

If that is barely enough time, I will have to give up every other leisure activity that I currently have to get this degree. I can walk on the treadmill and read. I may be able to squeeze in a quick workout before I start studying in the evenings. I wouldn't have much time to read for pleasure while classes are in session. Is the degree worth it? That's what I need to figure out.

The only way to see if I can make this work is to try it. I figure I can apply for this semester. They have waived the application fee and I don't have to take the GMAT. The cost to attend will be tuition, of which I will get 90% back when I finish the semester. I will be taking business classes that I will be able to apply to my job, at least in theory. I figure I give it a shot. If it doesn't work out, I'll just stop after the fall semester. I would have a couple of classes for a few hundred dollars and no regrets. We'll see how the wife feels about that plan.

Big gains at the gym by working out at home

I visited the gym yesterday for the first time in many years. I walked through the door with two objectives. I wanted to test my strength level by doing some bench presses, and I wanted to try the Concept2 rowing machine. I started with the bench. I was hoping to do 225 lbs. at least once. I manged 4 reps. This was after working my way up to that weight from 135. I was surprised by how easily I was able to handle the weight. I could do a few reps with 225 when we used to visit the gym before we had kids. I would lift two or three times a week. Seeing that I haven't lifted in close to 5 years, I thought I made be able to struggle through one rep. The fact that I was able to lift more by doing whole body exercises and push-ups while working out in my garage than I was able to do while lifting regularly has affirmed my workout strategy.

As for the rowing machine, I read about the Concept2 machine somewhere online or in a magazine late last year. I thought about buying one, but at $900 or so, that wasn't something I could buy without knowing whether or not I would enjoy the workout. I only thought about getting one because I was intrigued by the challenges and competitions Concept2 runs through their website. Competition is a big motivator for me so I thought having an exercise machine that would give an outlet to my competitive nature could only help. But would I like the workout. After doing two miles on it yesterday, I can say that I really enjoyed the workout. It's a simple machine, but it provides so much feedback it's easy to set a goal and use the workout to see if you can make it. The designers of the display must have read Flow because it easily satisfies the requirements of a good flow activity. I'm looking forward to doing it again next Saturday. Maybe I'll even look for a used one online.

A little postscript here, I just added another book to my read list. I'm making excellent progress on this resolution, but a good number of the books I have read this year were either bought this year or borrowed from the library. The book I added tonight, Geeks and Geezers, came from a coworker who got it from the library in our building. I needed to get it through it this weekend as I promised to give it back to her Monday morning. I wanted to use that resolution to work through my substantial back log of books that I want to read. Maybe I'll focus on that aspect of the resolution in the second half of the year, until I start working on my MBA anyway.

Sorry, it's company policy

I never thought that I would mourn the passing of a grocery store chain, but every time I see the Martin's paid sticker I yearn for the good old days of Ukrop's. Ukrop's was part of the community. They treated their customers (and employees) like friends and neighbors. They trusted you enough to just give you your stuff if you didn't want a bag without putting a bright orange sticker on it. While I would occasionally get a tad annoyed by the cashier chatting away with somebody after everything had been bagged and paid for, I miss a store that values a customer as a person and not just a revenue source (that can't be trusted). The customer came first at Ukrop's. Corporate policy comes first at Martin's.

I never realized how different Ukrop's was until it was gone. I've never been one to bemoan the rise of large corporations, but seeing that a company could be successful and human makes me wonder why more companies don't value their relationship with the customer. We're constantly being manipulated by marketing tactics. Why not give me a good product and nice experience. Put your money into making my experience better rather than dumping it into some inane ad campaign.

30 day experiment conclusion

My experiment to write two posts a week has been a mild success. While I did not write two posts a week, I did post at an average rate of about 2 per week. This is a posting frequency that works well with my other activities. I think I'll try to stick to it.

Seeing as today is May 31, it seems fitting to pick a new 30 day challenge. My wife is giving up tortillas chips for the month. I am going to give up eating after dinner. No little snacks, no desserts, nothing. I measured my waist today. The gut has shrunk a little (the number depends on how tight I make the measuring tape, which is a difficult variable to control). Maybe this mini-resolution will help me make a little more progress.

An experiment in learning; an online MBA

I am going to get my MBA online. Why wouldn't I get my degree this way? One of my biggest conflicts about the degree was the time it would take from my family. I don't want to spend a couple nights a week at some class. I also wasn't sure that the two schools that I have to choose from would be the right fit for my degree objectives. Those issues are out the window with the online option. There are plenty of options for online programs at accredited schools that do not have TV commercials or their name on a football stadium. I can find a program that fits my needs at a price that I can handle (University of Nebraska has taken the early lead in my limited investigation of the available programs). Besides, sitting in class was the worst part of getting my graduate degree. Taking a class in an environment of my choosing has its appeal.

Aside from the practical concerns, there is an element of experimentation that I like. I can teach myself new material reasonably well. Maybe this type of instruction will suit my learning style better than a traditional class. As much as the internet is used to coordinate activities in my job, especially with other sites, taking classes online and seeing how well different types of information can be conveyed effectively online could be a very beneficial experience.

By my own hands

I built a wall for my kids' garden today. I just used a drill to screw four boards together, but it was the first thing that I have built by myself. It sounds so simple, but it was a big deal. My wife commented on how it was a very unlike me thing to do (without complaining about it even). I was glad to hear that. I'm trying to push back my boundaries. It was only recently that I realized I even had boundaries. Buying the new shirt a couple weeks ago opened my eyes to boundaries that I have in place to control how I present myself. Building this wall opened my eyes to another one.

I have always avoided home improvement type projects by using ignorance or incompetence as my excuse, but it was really more fear than anything else. Fear of trying something new, not knowing how to buy wood at Lowe's, or which screw to buy. It would be easy to go to somebody in the store and get their help, but it was always easier to stick where it was safe and use my handy excuses to avoid doing any kind of handy work. Instead of listening to that fear today, I make the effort to go outside of my safety zone and make the wall myself. My kids gave me my reward with the enthusiasm and excitement they had while digging in the dirt and planting their new seeds. The experience of watching them enjoy something that I built will be a cherished memory.

How many treasured memories have I lost by living in fear? I know I can't do anything about it now, but it's a provocative question. Do I want to keep letting experiences slip by because I don't want to fail or do something wrong or be judged by somebody as ignorant or incompetent? I have discovered that I really like beers that hoppy (IPA and the like). Until I started trying the single beers at Whole Foods, I never would have found this simple pleasure. It's easier to buy the safe Miller Lite or Bud rather than trying something new. Buying a new beer is a little risky. The stakes of buying a new beer are inconsequentially minor, but they were enough to trigger my fear of new things and potential failure alarms.

Of course I never thought of it like that. This is a recent discovery that has been triggered by opening myself to the risks inherent in new experiences. Today's was a big one. By building a simple wall to hold dirt for my kids to use as a garden, I weakened another barrier that I have been using to shield myself from life.

Sticking with it

Where would my physical fitness be if I had stuck with the Spartacus workout? What if I had stuck with my regular workouts rather than focusing my energy on the LSAT last February? Would I need this resolution to get my waist to half my height? What would happen if I consistently worked out for 6 months? I'm going to try to find out. Getting a good view of my gut while I was trying on my new shirt last week reminded me that I have not made much progress on this resolution. I have lost a few pounds since the New Year, but I'm still a couple of inches from my goal. There is still time to make a difference.

I'm going to be realistic in my workout goals. I want to workout four to five times a week. I am not a big fan of working out on the weekends (Friday and Saturday) and I would like a day or two each week to skip a workout if I'm really into whatever book I'm reading or to do a little preparation for the GMAT (with law school out of the picture, I need to do something else to get a credential that will give me non-research career options).

A bigger challenge than working out is controlling what I eat. If I have a decent DVD to watch, getting out on the treadmill for 30 minutes or so isn't a big deal (I watched the first part of The Transporter tonight). Controlling my diet over the weekends is a much bigger challenge. Big breakfasts, too much snacking, and a few beers add up over the weekend. If I can get those habits under control, I should start making some progress. We're pretty active on the weekends during the summer, but that activity will go much farther if I'm not stuffing my face all day.