When is good enough good enough?

The following is a lengthy quote from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:

"Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport [triathlon]. If pain weren't involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such and investment of time and energy? It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive - or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself."

Pushing past the pain inherent in an endurance competition presents a clear opportunity to test ourselves against a barrier, to see if we have what it takes to overcome a challenge that pushes us out to the very edge of our physical limitations. Exceeding that barrier, including the hours required to prepare for the competition, is the closest we can get to metamorphosis.

But opportunities for transformation, improvement, reaching new levels of accomplishment are not limited to physical competition. Accepting that a task will be painful, be it the physical pain of an endurance competition or the uncomfortable awkwardness of approaching a stranger, and choosing to do it anyway induce countless subtle alterations in who we are and what we can achieve.

The opportunities to test our limits and discover what we can achieve are boundless.

Talent is a myth. Genetic limitations are a myth. We choose how far we go, how high we climb. We decide when good enough is good enough.

Two reviews are up

I've posted the first two reviews from the Pitchfork top 50. They are for Youth Lagoon and Wild Flag.My user name on Amazon is Hbar. I've also changed my handle from phdboost to Hbar on this blog. It seemed time for a change.

There is a strong element of discovery in this experiment. Discovering new bands, new types of music, new ways to listen to and think about music, and new ways to express and describe the experience of listening to music. I've already experienced some of that in the first two reviews. With 48 more to go, I should be a regular Columbus by the time this is all wrapped up.

Update: I've also posted a review for Toro Y Moi.

Reviewing the Pitchfork Top 50

Pitchfork released their list of the top 50 albums of the year last week. I've come across some really good bands by checking out the site a couple of times a week, but I don't do much more than skim the reviews. Every review reads like the mid-term paper of some earnest college underclassman trying to impress the professor. References to underground bands from the '90s don't help me much when I've never even heard of the band being mentioned, much less have any familiarity with that band's sound.

The best way to find out if the band is any good is to listen to it myself. If an experiment is the best way to learn, opening myself to new experiences, even something as small as listening to a new band on my drive in to work, is the best way to broaden my sense of what's interesting, new, and beautiful. Given that I have issues with how these new bands are discussed by the professionals at Pitchfork, I figured that maybe I should stop criticizing and start writing a few reviews myself. To that end, I am going to listen to and write reviews for Pitchfork's top 50. I'm not giving myself a timeline, but I'm going to work my way through the entire list. It will be good practice for developing grit.

My plan is to write each review without relying on references to other bands to give an idea of how a particular band sounds. I'm going to try and focus on the images and emotions each album evokes while I'm listening to it. You won't need to have spent the last few years listening to every bootleg that's been posted online to get an idea of an act's sound. The album and the review will be as self-contained as I can make it. My writing on this blog or the documents I prepare at work do not require much in the way of description. Description will be the entire point of these album reviews.

I'm not going to post all of my reviews in this blog. I'm going to put them up over at Amazon, but I will put add a link to this post every time I put up a review.

Body Blows

Success is a choice. External circumstances determine the challenges that must be overcome, but whether or not you achieve a goal or reach elite status is ultimately up to you. Focus. Effort. Grit. A willingness to go to The Edge. Of course the process will be unpleasant. Change is uncomfortable.

Change, at least improvement, will also require NOT doing things that sound like, fun, interesting projects. True mastery only seems to happen when you dedicate your best energy to achieving a single aspiration. A commitment to excellence is a choice to limit. It's a decision to willingly perform unreasonable actions in pursuit of an unreasonable achievement. 

Big achievements are built on the consistent choice to pursue the goal. Day after day after day after day...

Specialist or Generalist?

Exceptional performance requires prolonged commitment to a particular activity to the exclusion of other pursuits. As such, the well-rounded strategy is only effective if standard performance is adequate for the task at hand. Where is standard performance adequate? Standard performance is fine in endeavors where there is no meaningful competition. Professional athletes, professional musicians, leading surgeons, there is considerable competition for elite status in these professions. There is also considerable specialization. Musicians only play one instrument and doctors specialize in a few different surgeries.

Standard performance is frequently adequate in the huge swathes of management that populate large organizations. This makes sense as management is best performed by generalists. A middle manager takes care of his staff, the projects assigned to his group, helps chart the strategy of the group, and may work to acquire some new technology. Those are activities that require being good a several skills but not excellent at any one of them. As a successful career is usually associated with promotions up the ranks of management, companies tend to encourage promising employees to pursue a variety of projects that will expose them to a number of different functions within the company.

In effect, companies discourage excellence and superior performance in employees because the prolonged effort in one area that is required for exceptional performance will never be encouraged or promoted. There is too much risk associated with focusing on a single skill. Broadening a skill set, either at the individual or corporate level, minimizes exposure to the risk that a highly refined skill will not be needed as a company evolves. A broader skill set is also more useful in that a number of tasks can be handled adequately by one person rather than having one person who is very good at one or two tasks.

The choice is not whether to be a specialist or a generalist. The question is whether to compete in a field where elite status requires developing a highly refined (and thereby rare) skill or whether to work in a position that accepts good enough in a range of skills.

Be Unreasonable

Reasonable = Safe, expected, normal = What everybody else does = straight line to mediocrity
Unreasonable = risky, strange, extreme, obsessive = Who does that? = Exceptional

Unreasonable

This is what happens when you go to The Edge (as told by the narrator of an old judo documentary that you can see here):

This is unreasonable [doing 600-1000 push-ups a day], we know that, but it pushes us beyond a physical limit [The Edge], to another place, way outside or way inside. I don’t know where exactly, but I’ve been there.

Unreasonable, obsessive, excessive. That what it takes to push past physical, emotional, and psychological boundaries.

Cultural experience

The mystery to how people exist in "their own world" is quickly solved when you realize that culture is not a monolithic, all encompassing entity that dominates our life from birth. All of us experience the dominant culture uniquely. We ultimately experience a culture of our own creation. When we decide how to spend our time, we're forming the culture that forms us. Study or hang out on the street? Play a sport or do theatre? Work in an office or work outside? Big corporation or small business? TV or radio? Novel or the internet? Passive reception or active creation? Each of those choices ends up providing the raw material that creates each individual's world.

Spend all of your time doing the same things that everybody else does and you'll be pulling from a common cultural experience. You will all exist in the same world. Spend your time pursing something a little less expected and you'll end up existing in a different world. Your expectations will change, you won't share assumptions, and you won't simply shrug your shoulders and meekly apologize when something you create is dismissed by some faction of the culture.

Mass culture is an anachronism. Your creation does not have to appeal to the broad mass of a culture. Reaching that little niche that resonates with your vision does not require millions of dollars or a team of marketers. That resonance is valuable and special. We no longer need to settle for adequate or mildly amusing. Each of us is free to spend our time seeking creations that provide significant emotional meaning.  Finding that resonance is a special experience. The resonance is what matters. The dismissals are just meaningless background noise.

                          

The Edge revisited

The Edge demands acceptance. Open yourself to the experience and feel the pain. Ignoring it, distracting yourself from it, those tricks will not work. Acknowledge the pain and keep going. Don't hide. Face it.

There's more to The Edge than pushing beyond perceived physical limits. We face barriers in every aspect of our life. We face the edge every time we encounter a situation that makes us want to retreat to a comfort zone. Tolerating ambiguity or overcoming the lizard brain draws on the same resiliency and grit marshaled to get through that last mile or finish that last rep.

That resiliency is built on a firm belief in your ability to achieve the goal. Assertive boldness grows from a willingness to calmly confront and accept fear. 

Enchantment

This is a very good way to spend an hour. (The presentation can be found here).

Relationships matter, connecting to one another is what makes us human. It's the foundation of who we are.

Shared Sources

Creativity and leadership spring from the same source. Leaders emerge when one brave soul ventures forth and offers a plan of action. Follow me, I know the way. Choosing to follow that path is an implicit acceptance of the leader's vision.

Creativity is the physical manifestation of a vision. Making this vision a physical reality opens the visionary to judgement. Like the strong leader, a talented creator's sense of worth and accomplishment does not derive from the views of others. The compulsion to endure the creative process wells up from deep down in the creator's soul.

There is no manual for creativity. There are countless guides and suggestions on how to be creative available online, but the only way to be creative is to create something. There is no manual for leadership either. The only way to demonstrate leadership is to lead.

Act boldly to make your vision a reality.

Seeds of a mission

I've pondered the similarities between chemistry thinking and design thinking in previous posts, so it should come as no surprise that I heard echoes of chemistry thinking in reading Hugh McCracken's contention that design thinking is significant to the future of business. McCracken holds up design thinking as effective training to deal with messy data and ambiguous problems. A good chemist is equally adept at handling problems that require novel analysis and creative insight. Of course, designers are trained to think of themselves as creative people with the capacity to solve a multitude of problems. Chemists are trained to apply their skills to narrow research problems.

If businesses, well, organizations in general, are going to need people who can handle messy, nonlinear problems, chemistry departments or R&D groups should be the first place recruiters look when trying to find people with these skills. They don't do this now because they're not aware of this capacity in good chemists. The real tragedy is that most good chemists don't recognize this capacity in themselves. Chemistry skills can be applied in to business problems just as easily as they can be applied to research programs. Research programs actually provide a fantastic avenue to develop those thinking skills.

Too many people focus on the laboratory skills that they develop in graduate school. The real training comes in thinking about data, asking questions and designing experiments to solve those problems, and developing a data based explanation and interpretation of the research problem. I can't think of many business challenges that could be any messier than that.

Chemistry departments are focused on developing the next generation of people to work in chemistry departments. Why aren't they geared toward developing leaders? Chemistry is the ideal training ground for creative thinking that can be used to effectively understand and solve complicated problems. What can I do to get other chemists to realize their potential as the big problem solvers we need to resolve the complex challenges of the future (and now)?

Leadership Theory

Leaders are people whose conception of themselves is absolutely independent of opinion. They never seek approval, thereby never implicitly acknowledging the superiority of others. They have no need to be liked, so they act in the manner that is most consistent with their conception of the best course of action rather than complying with the will of majority. They have no hesitation to express an opinion or be the first to act because they have no fear of being judged inferior for having the "wrong" answer.

People will follow an individual who loves himself unconditionally. Somebody who is bold and assertive and gets what needs to get done done. All while being completely at ease in his skin. Constant external validation is unnecessary.

These traits are rare (and good leaders are rare) because most of us are inherently followers by nature. We follow the bold because they are usually the first to state a course of action. For those of us who may have the disposition to become a strong leader, contemporary culture, with its emphasis on compliance, encourages and shapes followership. 

Leaders don't emerge because they were motivated by the rewards of leadership. Individuals who boldly seek their desires become leaders.

How I lost 60 pounds, Part II

6) Enjoy what I really enjoy without going over the top. There are some things that I just can't keep out of my diet. Rather than keep fighting to avoid things like beer or chips and salsa, I limit how much of them I eat.

7) Embrace incremental progress. A digital scale with a tenths place makes a huge difference. Ten pounds is lot of weight to lose. It's much easier to stay motivated when I see the weight coming off slowly but steadily. I just have to keep reminding myself that it's a long process. Any step in the right direction makes it that much easier to focus on the process rather than getting caught up in how many pounds I have left to lose. Monitoring my weight also provides regular feedback on whether I'm eating right and moving around enough. I recently dropped from about 220 to a little under 210. I've been floating around this weight for about a month. I've been eating too much to get any lighter. I also know that I haven't been eating enough to start putting weight back on.

8) Pay attention to, but don't obsess over, the numbers. By numbers, I mean calories and weight. While it's nice to see changes in my weight, I started this whole process with a concern about my health. I talked to my doctor about what I should target as my ideal weight. He told me that if I'm exercising regularly and eating right, my weight will settle on a point that is best for me. Trying to achieve a weight to get a good BMI or some other arbitrary target doesn't make any sense to him. As for calories, I don't count them excessively. I try to have a general idea about how many calories I eat, but I don't try to keep a regular record or anything like that.

9) Make smart choices. There are ways to make not so healthy foods into something a little more nutritious. When we order pizza, my wife and I will get light cheese (that's less of the regular cheese, not a cheese that is made with something to reduce the fat content) and only vegetable toppings (no sausage or pepperoni). I tend to stick with chicken when we eat out. I don't put cheese in my chili or eat some of a cracker with each bite. I don't get any ridiculously large portions. I also try to ask myself if I'm really hungry or do I just feel like eating.

10) Find motivation in as many places as possible with no thought to what others may think about that motivation. One of the biggest things that got me to seriously consider the health implications of my weight was the potential for impotence. Vanity is a good motivator too. I'm not ashamed to check myself out in a mirror. Seeing progress is a big motivator. I also got some motivation from some blood work that suggested that I could develop some heart problems later in life if I don't start doing something about my cholesterol levels now. That was actually the impetus for the 10 pound drop I mentioned in point 7.

How I lost 60 pounds, Part 1

I ran into several people who haven't seen me for a few years at a conference last week. They each commented on how different I look. My beard is one aspect of the new look, but the 60 or so pounds that I've dropped since I finished grad school have also changed my appearance. The reminders of what I used to look like got me thinking about how my lifestyle has changed since I weighed 265 (give or take a few pounds). So what did I do to lose 60 pounds?

1) I decided from the beginning that losing weight would be about changing my lifestyle. I wouldn't try any programs, gimmick diets, or weight lose products. Living healthy was the goal. Losing weight was just an outcome of the process.

2) I stopped eating to the point of nausea. Burrito night was the first time that I recognized that I was eating far more than I needed to on a regular basis. I was pretty full after 1 burrito, but I would eat a second one anyway. I would frequently be forcing down the last few bites. Fortunately, I recognized the lunacy of eating to the point of feeling sick. I started paying attention to whether I wanted to eat because I was hungry or just felt like eating.

3) Cut way back on eating out, both sit down and fast food restaurants. I started trying to lose weight when my wife was trying to get pregnant with our first child. (He's about to turn six to give you an idea of how long I've been following these steps.) One of the first things we did to pursue a healthier lifestyle was to cut back on eating out. At my heaviest I had fast food for lunch EVERY day of the work week. I went back and forth between Taco Bell and Wendy's. We would eat out for dinner almost every night of the week too. The dinners out were eliminated first. Now we go out to eat once, maybe twice a week. Young kids make it harder to go out to eat too.

It took me a long time to stop eating out for lunch everyday. I pack a lunch these days. It's pretty much the same thing day after day. I have a Clif bar (I buy the big multi-pack at CostCo), a bag of Veggie Chips (again, big box at CostCo), an apple (always organic, see next point), and a banana. I mix up the different kinds of Clif Bars to give me some variety. The Veggie Chips come in three varieties so that keeps things from getting stale too. When I do go out to lunch, I go to a local grocery store that has a salad bar. I get a big salad, some soup (nothing cream based), and a bagel. My other option is usually Chipotle.

4) More meals with ingredients from the produce section, fewer processed foods. I pay more attention to the quality of what I eat more than the calorie content. When I was at my fattest, if I didn't eat at a restaurant, my meal probably came from a box. All of the crap they put in that processed food could not have been helping my ample waist line. My wife's decision to get healthy has had a huge impact on my health. When she started eating better, I was an eager convert to her new meals.It really helped that Trader Joe's and Whole Foods opened up nearby right when we were starting to focus on the quality of our food. We eat as much organic produce as possible, especially if the skin is consumed. I don't worry about getting organic bananas, but I ALWAYS get organic apples. I love breakfast cereal, but I always buy the organic brands over General Mills (although I eat Cheerios almost every day, it's good for the cholesterol) or other national brands that run commercials during kids shows. (It was very hard to pass on Count Chocula over Halloween.) Sure it costs more to buy organic (our local Kroger has a great organic section so that helps us limit big trips to Whole Paycheck), but we look at it as an investment in our health.

5) Keep moving. I go to the gym three days a week, but I try to find as many ways to stay moving as possible. Just walking around beats just sitting around. I take my kids outside to play, we take family walks, and hit the playgrounds in our neighborhood. My desk is way in an extreme corner of the building. That gives me plenty of opportunity to walk around to check on the progress of a project or just get ice from a cafeteria. I sometimes walk through the basement to give me an extra set of stairs to climb (my desk is on the third floor).

I'll list five more lifestyle changes that have helped me drop 60 pounds in the next post.

A rare opportunity

For all that I grouse about working for a giant corporation, being part of an organization with vast resources does have its occasional perks. I experienced one of those perks this morning. I attended the inaugural presentation of a series of presentations from outside experts. As with most things innovation related, I was skeptical, but I'm also not one to pass on the opportunity to listen to an expert describe their work. The presentation was by Juan Enriquez. I had never heard of him, but I am familiar with one of his pet projects. He's part of the team that developed the first artificial organism.

The talk was excellent. He's presented at TED a few times, and his presentation skills reflect this level of experience. He's also very convincing. I've never really bought into the hype around the potential of artificial organisms, but he almost managed to level my doubts with his well designed slides and fascinating arguments about the role of codes in our technology. I held on though, and managed to craft a fairly intelligent question. I'm not usually one to ask questions in this type of forum, but when would I ever have another opportunity to directly address a leader in biotechnology and genomics?

We viewed the presentation over an internet broadcast so I had to get on the mic and pose my question through a camera. The presentation was heavy on how the genetic code can be used to achieve tremendous breakthroughs with significant wealth creation. Understand the code and create wealth was one of the major themes of the presentation. He also spent a good chunk of the talk on the role of information flow through through networks. The genetic code is a linear and relatively simple system that creates a highly nonlinear and complex network. In creating an organism to produce fuel or medicines, the linear genetic code would need to changed, but how would that change impact the networks that form as a consequence of genetic information?

He didn't really answer my question, but his response implicitly acknowledged the premise of my question. He talked about the redundancy of biological systems and the challenge of building up knowledge from the genetic to the systems level. Making an organism do our bidding is far more complex than simply manipulating a few lines of genetic code. In accepting that challenge, Enriquez views this complexity as an opportunity to develop radically new technologies. Where I see the complexity of life as a mystery that will thwart our attempts to bend it to our will, he sees the opportunity available to somebody willing to dedicate themselves to the challenge.

In thinking about his talk and my challenge to his premise, I realized that much of what I've been yearning for over the last year or so is the opportunity to work on a big problem. I'm not looking for more little puzzles that will yield some insights with a few simple experiments, but I need something that will require concerted, focused effort for decades. I want to test my skills against a big, hairy, audacious problem. I need it. I will never be the scientist and leader that I am capable of becoming if I don't pursue answers to the Big Questions.

My classes insist on staying relevant

I have very little motivation to keep working on my MBA classes, but despite my best efforts to convince myself that they're a waste of my time, I keep bumping into ideas and concepts that change how I think about what I do at work (and, more importantly, what I would like to do more of as I start preparing for an academic position).

The idea of product-orientation versus market-orientation is a good example of how class material modifies how I view my work-self. My group's resources are focused on delivering our primary output, data. Data is our product. If I had been challenged to define my role in the organization a couple of weeks ago, it would have been something along the lines of generating and interpreting data to solve complex product development problems. My statement would have revealed a product-orientation.

When I read about the ramifications of shifting from a product-orientation to a market-orientation, I started thinking more about my work in terms of a market rather than a process. I started with data, of course, and thought about how I use data. I use data to solve problems. In solving these problems, I always discover little nuggets of insight that could be applied to any number of situations. Those nuggets represent new knowledge. The shift from this product-orientation (I solve product development problems) to a market-orientation (I generate knowledge) expands the potential of my role from dealing with a few technical problems to a virtually unlimited sphere of influence.

Focusing on solving problems requires me to sit around and wait for a problem to appear. It's passive. Generating knowledge implies an active pursuit. It requires aggressive action and bold thinking. Freed from the requirement that there be a problem to solve, the only limit on generating knowledge is my imagination and what the company is willing to support. It doesn't even have to be technical. How can we become more creative in our approach to product development? What is the best organization for an R&D organization like ours? How do we define the value that deliver to the division? A product-orientation obscures these questions, but they reveal themselves when you think about generating knowledge.  

Bias Against the Status Quo

Steve Jobs is a major figure in a new book on what differentiates the CEOs of innovative, disruptive companies from more run of the mill executives. The book, Innovator's DNA, describes the five skills of innovative disruptors that were identified after analyzing a series of interviews with a selection of CEOs. The selling point of the book is the idea that anybody can apply these behaviors in their professional or personal life to generate more and better ideas.

The marketing and organization of the book downplays a key finding of the original research. An early report on the project identified bias against the status quo as a common attitude among innovative CEOs. The book is written to highlight the skills, granted, and a bias against the status quo is more of a disposition, but that disposition is essential to pursuing a vision that deviates from "the right answer" to building a successful company. Seeking a disruptive innovation is essentially recognizing that there is a better way to get things done. The recognition of this shortcoming compels a search for a better way to do things. This search requires experimentation and trying novel approaches to routine tasks. A successful search requires a rejection of what everybody thinks is normal for the pursuit of something that you think is better.

Pursuing a vision that deviates from the accepted way of going about your business is a bigger challenge than developing that vision. The courage to make a new idea a reality is more precious than the new idea. Working to turn a novel idea into reality isn't a simple rejection of superficial appearance norms. It's more about an authentic sense of purpose and identity. It's an attitude and projection of confidence. It's an inability to follow the herd. Being away from the herd is uncomfortable. Embracing the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in the cutting edge is the first step to making a difference in the world. It's also the hardest.

The Betrayal of Book Smarts

The outpouring of adulation that has accompanied the ascension of Steve Jobs into the pantheon of Immortal Men offers a telling testament to the irrelevance of formal education. Steve Jobs accomplished all that he achieved not by applying insights gathered from a curriculum "designed" by stuffy professors. He did things and used what he learned in those activities to do more things. He pursued a vision that grew from experience and the desire to create. Formal education had a role, but what he learned in school was a complement to an internally developed and determined direction. Jobs didn't try to find the "right" path and work hard to pursue that path. He followed a path that grew from his experience and thinking.

Much is made of innovation at Apple. It seems that management writers have a difficult time finding other companies and leaders to use as examples in their discussions on creativity and innovation. They seem to have this immediate need to type "Apple" after typing "innovative." Apple exemplified innovation because Jobs never felt compelled to reconcile his vision with "the right answer." The only right answer for Jobs was his vision. He didn't try to make Apple match the prescriptions for a successful company that are taught in business schools. His ideas came from a cache of books that he wouldn't discuss because he didn't want to offer his competition access to his insights.

Apple succeeds because Jobs created a culture that focuses on generating and building ideas that support a well-defined vision. The right answer was the answer that made the vision more of a reality. It didn't matter what the experts had to say. They ignored the nay-sayers and the media critics. You can't create when you're aiming for the same target as everybody else. I read a brilliant quote by the Dutch sculptor Theo Jansen. I'll get the exact wording later, but the gist of the quote was that most engineers come to the same solution to a problem because human minds think alike. Novel solutions are born through the combination of previously disparate ideas.

Formal education, book smarts, builds a connection of thoughts that are supposed to go together. These are the right answers that people turn to when they face a novel challenge. It's easier to flip through the book and find an answer rather than think about the problem and come up with a fresh approach. Formal education conditions the mind to seek experts, either in person or on in writing, to suggest the best path forward. There are companies that print money on the fact that executives prefer to rely on the expertise of management consultants, the people with the right answers, rather than using their teams to develop novel insights that could solve the company's problems.

Creativity is a messy, chaotic, nonlinear process that may offer solutions that defy conventional thinking. It's risky and ambiguous. It requires thinking about and learning from experience rather than falling back on the tried and true. The best solutions are usually spotted by a novice who's thinking has not been shaped by the conventional thinking of the field. It's about learning by doing, an active participation in the process rather than sitting outside of the fray and commenting on what's happening. Critics may recognize something creative, but they are hard pressed to be creative themselves.

It's easy to recognize creative genius, but the process of being creative is alien to most of us. The process looks mysterious and magical, but it only looks that way because we're all brain washed into conformity thinking as we endure years of formal schooling. The lack of a right answer usually scares people into something that's a little more well-defined. The fear that you feel when facing this kind of challenge is really just your creativity trying to get some attention. Listen to it. That's an opportunity for the next level of achievement.

Why I'm relieved that I didn't go to law school

What little internet traffic finds it's way here, a good deal of it starts with a blog I wrote while I was applying to law school a couple of years ago. Writing the blog was fun, and I had fun applying to law school. The LSAT was an intriguing mental game, the cut and dry nature of LSAT and GPA made the law school application process feel more like a game than anything with serious real-life repercussions, and waiting to hear decisions on my applications made checking my email a fun adventure. There was a community aspect of the whole process too. Keeping up with, and occasionally posting, on the Top Law Schools forums became a regular part of my day. Law School Predictor, Law School Numbers, these law school application social media sites consumed a tremendous amount of my time. My engagement with these sites had a lot to do with my engagement in the application process.

Getting into law school took several months of focused effort. I threw myself into the process. I was ready to hit the law books and work hard at the next stage of the law school game, getting the top grades. It was hard to leave it behind when I finally had to face reality and recognize that the time and money that would be required to get a law degree were definitely not worth the effort. I always knew that the process would end with me staying exactly where I was, that seems to happen to me more often than I want to deeply consider at the moment, and that's probably why I never gave serious thought to what it means to be a lawyer. I would hate being a lawyer. But that's not really why I'm relieved I didn't go to law school.  

Every first year associate at a big law firm is pursuing the same career path. They started down that road when they started preparing for the LSAT or picked their major. They'll stay on that road until they burn out, fail to make partner, or retire from their office or life. The course is fixed for every Big Law attorney. Maybe a few of them will step out and become in-house counsel for a corporation, my college roommate did that, or perhaps a few of the lucky ones with the prestigious resumes will become law professors. In any event, their options are limited. The study of law requires no imagination or creativity, and the practice of law is largely a practice in drudgery and minutia.

I could put a link into every word of this sentence, hell, probably the remainder of this post, that would take you to a blog or a website that offers abundant stories and reasons why you shouldn't waste your time and money in any law school, much less the vast majority of schools outside of the top 15 or 20 programs. All of those sites go on about how there are very few jobs, you spend more than I spent on my first house to get the degree, and the frustration that too many people feel over doing everything right only to end up living with mom and dad while making an hourly wage. The same basic theme pervades all of those sites (Google will get you to a few if you ask), law school closes opportunity.

That's why I'm relieved I didn't go to law school. Had I made that choice, I would have had basically one career path open to me. It would be the standard lawyer path, with the wrinkle that I would be in IP. My career template would be to join a firm's intellectual property group, work like a dog to repay my loans before my kids start college, keep at it until I just can't do it any longer. That would be it. The job wouldn't require my best skills. I would probably be competent enough to do alright, but I would never be the best. The cases would change, the names of the clients would be different, but the work would be pretty much the same thing year in and year out. Write the patent, defend the patent, schmooze the client. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Definitions and Perceptions

The University of Richmond chemistry department puts the worst possible description of chemistry right in the middle of their department website. Did they intentionally highlight the most uninspiring description imaginable? Chemistry is NOT simply the study of matter and transformations that occur in material things. Chemistry is a process of DOING, not merely a body of knowledge. Chemistry is a system of inquiry that seeks to improve human welfare through the application of a molecular level understanding of complex systems.

I say this only to emphasize that how an entity describes itself goes a long way toward determining how it acts. A chemistry department that sees chemistry as a subject contained in a textbook for ready digestion by undergrads will act in a manner that perpetuates that view. Rather than getting students engaged in the process of discovery that drives the creation of scientific curiosity, students will be treated to four years of abstract theories and dry facts. Zappo's and Apple seek to create meaningful experiences for their customers. In both instances, the entire company behaves in a manner that seeks to make this self-definition an actuality.

Losing your legs could make you an amputee, with all of the limitations that label connotes, or losing your legs could spur an exploration of the limits of human potential and what it means to be beautiful. Definitions imply limits, so the more limited or amorphous the definition, the more potential for exploration and growth atrophy. A definition delineates, separates, and makes crisp borders that are often better left vague and ambiguous. If actions limit thinking, a clear definition of what you are or who you strive to become puts a wall around what it means to be you.

Misplaced Cognitive Surplus?

After taking yet another chapter quiz on Wednesday night, I sat down to write a post about how I was fed up with my MBA program. I had just lost points on a multiple choice question when I couldn't see how my response was wrong. I was thinking about how much time I've been spending on these MBA classes, and I started considering all the other things that I could have been doing with that time. Maybe I could have read some different books or had more energy to play with my kids. I've been yearning for something related to my research to gain enough critical mass for me to prepare a publication. I finally have that, but I'm spending all my time preparing for multiple choice quizzes so I can keep getting A's. It just didn't seem worth the effort.

Rather than writing the post, I wrote an email to my econ instructor asking about the question. She replied to my message the next morning and agreed that the question was poorly worded. She ended up giving me credit for my response. I suddenly didn't feel so bad about all the time I've been spending on my classes. This change in my mood opened my eyes to how much my class performance colors my perception of the class experience. That made me a little sad. I went into the MBA program looking to earn a credential and signal to my superiors that I was serious about broadening my skill base. I didn't have any particular interest in the topics of the classes. I wanted a project and an online MBA program offered enough of a potential return on my time, money, and energy to justify the required resources. I told myself that I wasn't going to worry about the grades. I'd focus on what I found interesting and do what was needed to keep going through the program. Now my primary focusing is maintaining my A average.

Part of my frustration with the program was rooted in the fact that I didn't think the material that I have been studying for the last year and a month or so was going to be more than an intellectual exercise. That changed today. I have been giving an opportunity to give my boss's boss's boss (who used to be my direct boss, if that clears anything up) input on ways to improve the operation of the analytical labs. I didn't realize how much all of this business stuff had changed the way I think about the value that my daily activities add to the company. I was able to directly apply insights that I've had from my classes (and a few random blog posts) to justify my proposal for managing and organizing the labs. Maybe I haven't been wasting my time after all.

Creative juices

Chemistry, science in general really, is a creative endeavor, but most scientists don't think of themselves and their work as creative. As such, science training does not explicitly develop creative faculties and other soft skills needed to succeed in research. I've noticed a schism between researchers who know how to perform experiments and researchers who know how to ask questions. Those that know how to ask questions were lucky enough to fall into work in a creative lab at some point in their training.

A recent article provides a succinct list of skills that separate the creative researcher from the mere experimenter. More importantly, the perception of the creative process as a mysterious force only accessible to the elect is refuted with a clear statement that creativity is an acquired skill:

"Creativity is not a mysterious quality, nor can one simply try on one of Edward de Bono's six thinking hats to start the creative juices flowing. Rather, creativity is cultivated through rigorous training and by deliberately practicing certain core abilities and skills over an extended period of time. These include:
1. the ability to approach problems in nonroutine ways using analogy and metaphor;
2. conditional or abductive reasoning (posing "what if" propositions and reframing problems);
3. keen observation and the ability to see new and unexpected patterns;
4. the ability to risk failure by taking initiative in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty;
5. the ability to heed critical feedback to revise and improve an idea;
6. a capacity to bring people, power, and resources together to implement novel ideas; and
7. the expressive agility required to draw on multiple means (visual, oral, written, media-related) to communicate novel ideas to others."

I particularly like item 4. The root of every discovery is something that looked like a failure the first time it was seen. Embracing unexpected results as the first glimpse of discovery rather than signs of imminent failure should be the foundation of every academic laboratory.

Deadlines

They're really just an excuse to do something else. Whey bother pushing a project ahead when the deadline is still a good ways down the road? It's more fun to watch the football game and do this or that online. There is nobody waiting for my product. It can sit idle for a little while longer.

Would I have made the same decision without the deadline? If I just want to get my manuscript finished so I can move on to the next project, it would make sense for me to work hard to get the project finished no matter what external time frame has been imposed. Get the project moving. Get it finished. Build on that experience and make the next project that much better. Produce, produce, produce.

It's about taking charge of the process and imposing my will rather than ceding control to an authority that will dictate my pace and control my output.

Effort for A

Marist changed the format of online MBA foundations classes. Forums, group projects, problem sets, all of that is gone. Now it's you and the book with a chapter quiz to gauge your learning. When the semester started, you passed if you got 80% of the quiz questions correct. Less than that was a fail. Well, a grade of pass is not allowed under their accreditation. Two and a half weeks into the class we find out we're getting letter grades.In the new scale, you need a 95 to get an A. You get an F if you have a 79 or below. I started the second week right at the 80% passing line. I just wanted to pass. Why put in the extra effort to get all the answers right when I really only need 4 out of every 5? I have other things going on in my life. I'm busy with work, my son starting kindergarten has taken away the time that I was using to study, and I'm trying to get a paper published so I can start an academic career. I was being economical with my time.

Now that I'll need a 95 to get an A in the class, I've been trying to decide how hard I want to work to get that grade. I'm not planning on finishing the MBA (and even if I do, it's not going to be through Marist, not after how they've handled the introduction of the new class format). I have to pass to get my money back through the reimbursement program so I need a B at the minimum. I really want that A. If anybody ever looks at my transcripts, which could happen given my potential career change, I would rather they see the A and draw some positive conclusions rather than seeing a B and start wondering why I slipped in Econ after getting A's in the other classes. When the broad strokes between candidates for a position are similar, the little details become that much more important. This feels like a detail that will matter. Getting an A despite everything that I have going on creates a much better impression than accepting a B because I was busy with other things. I'm going to put in the effort for the potential buzz that a solid performance in business school might create for me in a committee meeting.

How to become a research scientist

The origin of the list is not quite clear to me at this point, but these 10 qualities are an excellent description of a research scientist

1) The ability to define problems without a guide.

2) The ability to ask hard questions which challenge prevailing assumptions.

3) The ability to work in teams without guidance.

4) The ability to work absolutely alone.

5) The ability to persuade others that your course is the right one.

6) The ability to discuss issues and techniques in public with an eye to reaching decisions about policy.

7) The ability to conceptualize and reorganize information into new patterns.

8) The ability to pull what you need quickly from masses of irrelevant data.

9) The ability to think inductively, deductively, and dialectically.

10) The ability to attack problems heuristically.

These skills will lead to a productive research career. No doubt about it. 

What Do You Want

How can you get what you want if you never think to yourself, I want that? How do you ever get the hot guy/girl into bed if you never tell them that you want them? When do you start doing the work that you love if you're too busy doing the work that others want you to pursue? How do you get fit without getting tired of being fat? Making a decision to pursue only comes after feeling desire. You can only answer the challenge of how to get it after making the choice to want it in the first place.

This isn't just setting a goal. A goal is external. Pursuing what you want is an expression of intent. It's not a wish that something externally will come along to make your dream a reality. Pursuit is active, direct, and selfish. It's knowing that you want something with no regard to others' opinion on the matter. No approval is sought, no permission is asked.

There is no sheepish stammering request. I want you. I want this job. There are no doubts, fears, or hesitations. This is me as I am. I have chosen. Will you?

Destination Determined

The law school psychosis, the various job searches, even my MBA course work has been about finding something to fill some need that I have never been able to put into words. It's been expressed by actions. Funneling energy into applying to law school expressed some need to strive for an achievement, however hollow and inconsequential. A new company might offer challenges that would feed my desire to do something. To DO something. Not to simply show up at work to go through the motions required by the company culture. To claim something as my own, pour my energy into it, watch it grow, develop, emerge, that's what I've sought for my entire career.

I have no real desire to pursue seniority in my current position. I want power and influence, some direction over what I do and how I do it, but my boss's boss's job has no real appeal for me. I've mentioned that I've struggled with leaving the lab behind to pursue positions with greater influence. The path to power does not run through my greatest competency. Why am I staying there if my skills are not wanted? Why stay if I have to leave behind the one thing about my job that provides enough fulfillment to get me through the rest of it?

Money. Sure, I could make more money doing what I'm doing. Get that MBA, try some business stuff, I might make even more. I'd probably be living in Boston or New Jersey with a miserable wife and an hour plus commute. I would be miserable too, inventing ways to make my stifling role in a unimaginative corporate behemoth tolerable. Is there anything else? I can't think of anything.

I'll trade time in the lab to pursue interesting questions. I'll trade teaching and committee assignments for projects that never had a realistic chance at success. I'll trade a house in the megapolis for a modest home within human locomotion distance of the beach. I'll give up the career that I've fallen into for a chance to build a career.

This is what I've been thinking about

When I say I'm thinking about seeking a faculty position, this is exactly the kind of position that I would like to pursue. The College of Charleston is actually one of the schools that I was hoping to target when I start putting together my application materials. It's a bit of a bummer to see this opportunity available now. I won't be ready until next year.

A Daily Dose

Seth Godin's relentless and upbeat pounding on a small set of ideas is the secret to his success. He's not about complexity and nuance. His writing is a multi-vitamin. It's easy and it makes you feel like you're doing something to improve yourself. It may not be doing all that much, but it definitely doesn't hurt.

The Struggle

The tangible product of my effort on my paper is essentially nothing. I have the skeleton of a paper written on the back of a meeting agenda. I have a few papers that I think will give my work some context while supporting the interpretation of the data. Despite my lack of physical evidence, my early efforts to prepare my manuscript have been unexpectedly productive. The hard part is almost finished, now I just have to write.

Writing is the easy part. Figuring out how to mold a few related observations and associated conclusions into something that addresses an active research area is the daunting challenge. How do I make my research relevant and interesting? What aspect of my work is the most significant? The story that I expected to tell when I tried to get a draft started Wednesday night has been consumed in the process of addressing these concerns. What I thought would be a minor observation near the end of my paper has emerged as a critical component of my argument. The context has broadened to include several other interesting research areas. In the course of thinking through the context of my work, I realized that I could actually write a second, more focused paper, using results that I was not planning on incorporating into this manuscript.

That second paper will have to wait until the winter break. I have forgotten (or repressed) the struggle implicit in writing a paper. My current approach to this kind of project, working on it a little hear and a little there, will not suffice if I'm going to get this thing ready for submission in a time frame that would support exploring academic positions this time next year (most of the academic jobs for the following year are posted in September). I will need to maximize every night if I'm going to get it done. That means not mock fantasy football drafts, Tetris games, or blog posts. I look at how much I diffuse my energy on various interests and I wonder if I'm trying to do too many things at once. This paper needs must reflect my best effort. Anything less than my top work will not suffice. Time to put away the games and get serious.

Am I seriously considering this?!

I have seriously been considering joining a university faculty. Not a big school, just someplace that would give me the opportunity to do some research with undergraduates. Preferably with a campus near the beach. I dismissed academia as a career while I was in graduate school, but a few disparate events have me reconsidering that decision.

The Jeff Kindler article, my family's beach vacation, the retirement of a colleague after 33 years with the company, the tedium that I've been dealing with for the last month, the cancellation of a project that has dominated my time for most of this year, the dissatisfaction that I've been facing in trying to plot out a career in an industry that is getting bored with my skills, a desire to have more power over what I work on. This is the miasma of my career discontent. A bucolic campus where I can move my background projects into the foreground has tremendous appeal. The geographic limitations of pharma would be lifted, I wouldn't have to leave behind the most exciting part of my job, and I would be able to determine where I put my energy rather than being told what to work on. I would make less money, but I could potentially have more job security. Faculty positions are notoriously difficult to obtain, but I think I could put together a very appealing package.

A key part of that package would be the paper that has been percolating in my mind for months. Succeed and my chances for getting a faculty position improve dramatically. Fail and I'll be the one retiring from PCH after working there for 33 years. I'm going to start writing it tomorrow. My goal is to have a draft by the time the wife and I head back to the beach later this month to celebrate our anniversary. Writing papers will be a huge part of my day if I become a professor. This is my chance to sample that career while working on advancing my current one.

Book 15

I finished my fifteenth book of the year while my AC was being repaired this morning. Unfortunately, only a few of those 15 were books that I've had on my shelf for a little while. Most of them were bought at the end of last year or they were checked out from a library. I have a few library books checked out that I want to read, then it will be on to my large backlog...

What about Scientists leading Pharma?

I've expressed my discontent with accountants and lawyers leading pharmaceutical companies. Those feelings have only intensified after reading a recent article in Fortune about the events and circumstances of Jeff Kindler's ouster as Pfizer CEO earlier this year. How can somebody who had virtually no experience in the industry lead a company that expresses the desire, the sincerity of which can be debated, to find cures for debilitating and deadly diseases?

Bob Lutz has gotten some attention for his recent book on how MBAs have messed up the auto industry. Given that a recent report suggesting that doctors are better at running hospitals than business people (shocking), he could be on to something with the role that number crunchers who lack industry specific expertise have played in the decline of American manufacturing. The Fortune story details how a neophyte in pharma wrecked an industry leader. Lutz makes the case that similar things have happened in Detroit. I'm sure similar tales could be told in more than a handful of the biggest (not I didn't say best) companies in this country no matter the industry.

Reading the Fortune story about Kindler comes at an interesting time for me. This story shines a bright light on two major features of my life that I have been reconsidering lately. One is how I'm going about earning my MBA (and whether the effort is worth my time). It's pretty clear that I will never be taken seriously outside of a lab without something to suggest that I can do more than stand at a bench. Whether or not the route that I'm taking to obtain my business credential will impact its value remains to be seen. The second element is how long I want to remain a Pfizer employee. There are advantages to working for Pfizer, primarily potential opportunities outside of the lab, but those advantages come with working for a bloated bureaucracy that isn't showing signs of being able to do much more than acquire other companies. Even those other opportunities would likely require moving to Pennsylvania or New Jersey. My wife would be much more receptive to a move it was to some place with pleasant climate that was near a sandy beach. I've committed to seeing how my recent reorientation impacts my career opportunities. I'll see how this goes and finish up my MBA foundations classes. That won't stop me from looking for opportunities near a beach...

Do Something

Our schools, whether made of bricks or computer files, supply a stream of loosely connected facts and algorithms. You start a class with a list of topics to cover, you cover the topics, you take a test, and you move on to the next class to repeat the cycle. That's a good way to provide credentials, evidence that you've been exposed to a body of knowledge and may have caught a glimpse or  two of how to apply that knowledge to an actual problem, but that's not the basis for a sound education.

To get an education, the facts and algorithms need to be tools for developing a solution to a problem, convincing others that your solution is sound, and implementing that solution. This is not possible through passive learning from a book or participating in discussions about a topic. You must get engaged in a problem and flail around trying to find an answer. Random facts that were covered in a class suddenly take on new significance when understanding those facts becomes critical to solving a real problem.

Real problems can't be faced in a classroom. There is no easy factory approach to education that will provide the experience required to obtaining an education. You can't do it in a traditional classroom and it's not really possible when the traditional classroom experience is transferred to the online environment. The classroom homogenizes thinking, creates a bias for the "right" answer, and rewards conformity rather than promoting divergent thinking.

When I wrote my quick little blurb about what allowed early humans to survive, that something I referred to that allowed early humans to survive was the propensity for people to hang out with one another. Where were the studies that looked at the impact of group dynamics on human evolution? Complex social organizations are the foundations of all human achievement. It seems to me that our evolution was shaped more by our social environment than our physical environment.

This is not an original thought. My ideas grew from reading Naturally Selected. Surely somebody else had come to a similar conclusion. I knew there had to be research being pursued along these lines, but I only found the linked to paper today. While this idea has an aesthetic appeal to me, it's evidently not in the main stream of contemporary thought and research. My impression is that most of the current attention is being given to the molecular aspects of genetics. We have a long way to go before we can start making definitive links between gene sequences and behavior. Our genes function on a level of complexity and feedback that far exceed our limited ability to understand complex and nonlinear systems. 

Online learning reflections five classes in...

I completed my fifth online MBA class on Thursday. The relief that I feel to have accounting behind me is palpable. I was dreading it going into the program. It wasn't as bad as I feared, but I can't say that I really enjoyed it either. Economics and marketing are all that stands between me and actual MBA level classes (and the completion of a resolution).

Given that I've almost completed the pre-requisites for pretty much every MBA program in the country, I did a little poking around to see if any prominent business schools have introduced an online MBA since I started last year. The B-school at UNC has introduced an online option for their MBA this year. I did a little poking around to see whether it might be an option for me after I wrap up my foundations classes at Marist. Before I go into what I learned during this investigation, it should explain why I was thinking about changing programs in the first place.

I went into the MBA program knowing that I was in it for a credential. I didn't expect to have a life changing educational experience (I've already had that). I was just looking for training that would open the door to a broader range of opportunities than what are currently available to me. I was also looking to signal my intention to eventually leave R&D to various people in my current organization. I chose Marist because they waived the GMAT, the price was right, and they don't require me to ever step foot on campus. While those considerations are still valid, another reason I liked Marist was the availability of classes to address my deficiency in the basics of business education. Once I finish the foundations classes, there is really nothing stopping me from switching to a different program. If I'm looking to get a credential, why not get a credential from an institution with a higher Q score than Marist?

The details around UNC's new online option gave me the answer to that question. The schools that get the high rankings from US News or any other source hold themselves in very high regard. There are certain aspects of the program that a student MUST participate in if they are to receive the maximum benefits of University X's educational opportunities. UNC requires participation in immersion weekends, classes that are held online, and the curriculum offers very little flexibility. The school, and a good number of other more highly regarded online programs, offers a program that will shape you into their ideal of a future executive. You go there to receive the education they offer. You are expected to accept the molding that they offer. Given that most people happily pay many thousands of dollars for the opportunity to be molded in this manner, the schools are under no pressure to change they way they go about offering classes that lead to a credential.

Note that I didn't say anything about offering an education. I've gotten an A in every one of my foundations classes. (I'm pretty sure I have an A in accounting, my professor has been posting various grades while I've been writing this post. Those grades match the assumptions that I used to estimate my grade before I started writing. I do like to live on the edge though. One more question wrong on the final would have put my score in the A- range.) I would be hard pressed to give you specifics about what I learned in every class, with the exception of organizational behavior. I've actually gotten good at giving the minimal amount of effort required to get an A.

Why should I try any harder? I'm not going to get anything out of learning the material from a textbook. These classes are changing how I think about business organizations, but I could get the same thing by reading a few books on my own. The deeper I get into this program, the more I realize that traditional classroom education is a waste of time. Everybody talks about online learning changing education, but it's really nothing more than a change in delivery of the same old material. Most online programs just try to make the online experience get as close to a traditional class as they can. That's not a revolution, that's just a revision.

Live Long to Prosper

I've been delving into evolutionary psychology (just look at the books I've been reading recently). I plan on heading over to the library tomorrow to check out yet another book on the subject. I hope the next book does more than cast everything as part of the arms race to get one up on our competition to sire the next generation. Sure there may be a few factors on the margins that do have that role, but what was common to those that managed to reach reproductive age that gave them an advantage? Where are the investigations into this question? Besides, the evolutionary refrain that all things are directed towards attracting a mate gets a little tiresome after awhile. It feels flimsy, insubstantial, and incomplete. The fact that we managed to live long enough to even reach reproductive age seems like a factor that should take a more central role in the development of very interesting and compelling ideas. The evolutionary framework provides a perspective on human actions, which are guided by instinct far more often than reason, that tells us more about who we are than other theoretical constructs of human behavior. To reduce everything to a drive to get laid belittles our biological heritage.

Reasonably Content

The first few moves of my three-pronged assault have been made. I'm gradually being shifted into a design role on the project that I was angling for when I first considered this move. It's too early to tell how this gambit will impact my career, but it has had an immediate impact on how I feel about my job. It's given me a challenge and an opportunity to demonstrate my skills. That's what I really wanted when I started looking at other career opportunities. With my reputation established in the analytical labs, I'm left to take care of what needs to be done without too much interference. I like the autonomy, but that autonomy has come with more anonymity. I'm just doing what's expected. My skills are taken for granted. Working with a design team presents a fresh opportunity to demonstrate what separates me from my peers.

This assignment also gives me an opportunity to gain more experience in the area of the industry that is ripe for growth. I want to make this my niche. While I was hard on myself about the interview a few weeks ago, that trip did provide the industry intelligence that I was looking for when I starting floating my resume to various recruiters. I needed to find an aspect of the industry that requires technical skills but also offers opportunities to get closer to the customer. I've found a role that provides this opportunity.

My complaints about the quality of my projects still apply, I would much rather be working on something a little more cutting edge, but I've made peace with my role in the organization. I've also come to accept that I'll be working on what other people think is important for a while. Getting the job done is the only way that I'll get to a point where I can have a bigger influence in the culture and strategy of an organization. Pouting about it won't put me in the mindset required to achieve my maximum impact in my present role.

Desert Island Sounds

Google Reader stopped giving me endless updates on bored housewives running workouts and pictures of their meals (I would post links so everybody can enjoy the inanity, but I don't want to send any page views their way) just in time to give me this, a little teaser video from the upcoming album of one of my new favorite bands, M83. The discovery of this little video clip came right after I finished reading one of the Reactions columns from The Sceptical Chymist blog. Every week they ask a chemist a few questions that give a little insight into the personal side of the researchers. One of the questions is which book and which album would they want with them if they were stranded on a desert island. The association between the M83 clip and the Reactions column got me wondering what would be on my CD list.

I guess it would likely be one of the CD's that has been central to my life at one time or another. Here are a few possibilities:

Depeche Mode - Violator
This album (well, cassette tape was the main medium at the time) got me through many 3 or 4 hour bus rides to and from basketball games in various dinky cities in eastern New Mexico. I still listen to it from time to time. It hasn't lost it's appeal.

Tool - Aenima
I loved Undertow, but this is the CD that made Tool a regular feature in my CD player through college. I can't imagine how many pages I wrote listening to it. I don't listen to it much anymore, mainly because it sounds crappy on my iPod, but there will never come a time when I don't have the Tool library in whatever media music happens to be popular in at the moment.

Radiohead - OK Computer/Amnesiac/Kid A
I loved OK Computer, for whatever reason I can still remember buying that CD. My page count with this CD probably rivals Aenima. I almost felt betrayed the first time I listened to Kid A. I hated it. What were they trying to prove? I kept listening to it though. Once I got over listening for OK Computer part 2, I started to dig the new sound. Amnesiac completed my conversion.

Muse - I'm not sure which one
I got my first iPod soon after I discovered Muse. Their CD's are all a big mash to me because I listened to them on shuffle so many times. I would like to pick a few of my favorite songs to make my own mix CD.

Oceansize - Effloresce
I read about this CD on some hipster website while sitting in office hours while I was in grad school. I had no idea what the band sounded like, but I was obsessed with getting the CD. The second it showed up in Tower, I  picked it up and took it to the lab to check it out. I liked it the first couple of times I listened to it, then I started to become obsessed with it. M83 gives me the same vibe that I found so moving in tracks on this CD (Saturday Morning Breakfast Show in particular). The band released a couple of albums after this one, but they went down hill quickly after losing a key member of the group. They broke up a year or so ago.

Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns
This is the only thing in my Mog library that I keep going back to on a regular basis (although the M83 stuff and Gang Gang Dance's Eye Contact are also getting multiple repeat plays). I will likely associate it with my trip to Boston for my job interview for a little while (I had it on pretty much the entire time I was in my hotel room getting ready for my interview). I read one review that compared it to an OK Computer like move for Linkin Park. I can't help but dig it.

A Direct Application

A direct application of something I've read to a problem that I'm facing at work hit me like a thunderbolt Friday morning. While I have tried to make the case that not having direct applications from my reading to my life is not really such big deal, seeing a link between some theory from a book and a real life situation was a nice validation of my, well, let's call it independent study. I desperately want to share my insight with a former manager, but he is notoriously difficult to track down. I only need a few minutes. I have a second person in mind who might be more receptive to my idea, but I would rather share my insight with somebody at the top. I want the credit for coming up with the idea. Status is one of my new pursuits after all.

Our Deepest Nature is Fixated on the Superficial

In my drive to put my issues with status and dominance into some kind of larger perspective (to place aspects of my personality onto some external and objective frame so I can look at them without feeling like a pimply 14 year old), I've begun to piece together a new perspective on motivation. While my primary, uh, motivation was to understand myself so I could stop being such a pushover, the things that drive me aren't any different than what drive you or anybody else. These primal drivers don't mesh well with our progressive social views on how we're supposed to think about one another.

Our physical appearance is our most valuable social commodity. The way we act, the manner in which we display our physical appearance, is also critical. This is not a comforting conclusion for the father or a young daughter. As much as I would like to think that my daughter will be judged for her intellect, which is considerable, or other talents, her most valuable social commodity will be the way she looks. Ignoring this fact will do nothing to change the reality of the situation. Her appearance does not have to agree with some culturally defined ideal for her to gain social status, but what people see when she walks into a room, both what she looks like and how she carries herself, will guide their judgement. Is acknowledging this fact and using that acknowledgement to her advantage necessarily erroneous?

Books like this are written from the perspective that we're more than our appearance and people will be able to see that and come to judge us accordingly. Ignoring the fact that appearance matters or pretending that it doesn't matter overlooks the fact that the opportunity for people to get to know us and appreciate our deeper layers only comes after our appearance has been used to determine if we're worth the effort to build a relationship. We're attracted to people by their appearance and demeanor. Our nature won't change just because our bias is not favored by certain elements in our culture.

Master the System

Three of my papers have been cited by three different research groups in the last month or so. One group is in Turkey, another was in the Czech Republic. I didn't bother to look up the third. As much as I long to keep making contributions to and participating in the international research community, my continued effort to influence that world is a distraction from where I should be focusing my energy to raise my status at PCH. If I was really serious about becoming a decision maker, I would build a barrier around my building and focus on learning how to use the system that has been built in our organization.

The more I know about how one piece of my organization connects to another, the more I will be able to manipulate the system. Figuring out a problem and waiting for recognition to flow my way will only result in more of the same. Understand the politics, understand the flow of information, understand where the real decisions come from, and I'll know where to position myself for opportunities to impact and change the organization.

I've gone through life pursuing goals that I thought would bring recognition and reward rather than directly pursuing what I wanted to achieve. I've pursued recognition as an end rather than recognizing that being recognized is merely a means to something greater. I've never sought status. I've merely sought approval from those with status. It's time to enter the fray.

Giving it Away

I've been trying to get some perspective on my recent discoveries from the psychology literature. This is the best passage that I have been able to locate so far:

"The finding that those low on Surgency (note: that's just a fancy word for extraversion) tend to use Debasement (e.g., lowering self to get others to do something), for example, supports [the] conceptual proposition that submissiveness involves denying status to the self. Combined with finding that those high in Surgency tend to be somewhat condescending..., these results yield compelling support for the notion that status allocation is a central psychological ingredient in this major personality factor." (reference here)

Status allocation? So I've been denying myself status for all of these years? I made the choice to occupy lower status positions? Why do I have a drive to defer? What would happen if I decided that I didn't want to be the lap dog?

Omega

One month after my interview in Boston, I've come to see that entire job search as what it really was. It was a game. I knew I wasn't going to take the job. I wanted to get an interview so I could talk about myself and get some feedback on where I've been in my career. It was a safe way to feel like I was doing something to shake up my career without the risk of starting over with a new company in a strange city. My approach to the search ensured that I had nothing at stake in the process. If I had been serious about changing the direction of my career, I would have taken steps to be in a position to take the position if it was offered. That would have required me to plan and take definitive steps to make the transition a realistic proposal. It would have required action.

Over the last couple of days, I've been grappling with how to live my life now that I've stopped hiding from the fact that I am definitely not a man of action. I am passive. My passivity leads to an ineffective weakness.  I've avoided dealing with this uncomfortable fact through rationalizations about being socially awkward and clueless or taken a more detached and aloof approach to more complex social situations. The truth is that I am too weak to assert myself in situations that make me uncomfortable. I let the situation dictate my actions and define my response. I shrink from confrontation. I put my tail between my legs and wait for the alpha dog to give me his approval.

This is the first time that I've thought about how I act in terms of seeking approval from the alpha dog. I am disgusted by the accuracy of the analogy. The job search was a pursuit of approval. I was looking for a hiring manager to pat me on the head and tell me that I am special. My whole crazy law school endeavor was a pursuit of approval. It's not even approval that actually leads to any new responsibilities. The practical impossibility of going to law school or moving to Boston allowed me to spend energy seeking approval without having to deal with the consequences of gaining that approval. I was being actively passive. I was spending time and energy that was never going to result in me taking a different direction in my career. I could get the approval that I sought without jeopardizing the safety of my normal life.

My normal life, where I continually seek the approval of my wife. Oh, I am truly a lowly, wretched pale imitation of a man! I constantly seek her approval. A little voice in me craves recognition for doing the smallest chore around the house. I continually wait for her to tell me what to do and then expect praise for taking care of it. I can see an element of approval seeking in almost every aspect of our relationship. I do not want to write this next statement, but I need to see it clearly in front of me so I can confront this ugly, disgusting fact....I wrote the sentence and confronted the fact. Leaving it out there for the world to see would undermine our entire relationship. I've already undermined how I think about pretty much every social interaction in my life. I think that's enough for one night.

or Perish

The scales fell from my eyes after accepting that my group provides support for other people's plans and projects. The reluctance to change, get better, or improve suddenly fit into a larger effort to keep our heads down and just do as we're told. Why be bold and try to shake things up when we have no control over what we work on in the first place? Our contribution is an either/or proposition. There is no almost making it. Either we deliver a product or we show up with nothing. I work for people who choose the safe and known over the risky and untried because they are only concerned about delivering. A successful launch is a victory no matter what it took to get there. More importantly, failure to meet a product launch is an unthinkable dereliction of duty. We MUST deliver.

We don't take chances because the rewards for success on a risky approach are uncertain, while the punishments for failure are clear. The downside of failing to deliver on a project far outweighs any benefit that could be realized by taking a chance. If my first prong of attack is to take the safe route and accept the role that I must take to get my career moving towards a position with a greater role in the decision making process, my second prong of attack rushes into totally unknown territory. I'm going to get my sublimation work published. I'm not wasting my time on a poster. I want to get my work published a communication in JACS. I'm not really looking to get a big career boost out of the publication, at least I don't see laurels falling on me from the PCH leadership. While I can envision career scenarios where having that publication could certainly be a benefit at other companies or labs, I'm not pursuing the paper to further my career. It's something that I need to do. I've worked hard in the lab to understand a problem. Either I publish the paper, or my discovery will die. The work has become part of who I am. I can't let a part of me perish.

Changing My World

Changing the world, making a dent in the universe, it sounds good but what does it really mean? I like to focus on the world that I touch every day. We all have the power to change our little piece of the world. We influence our friends, family, coworkers, bosses, teachers, classmates, or other people at the gym by the way we go about our business. We also have the power to change ourselves. We can strive to get better and be better. It's all a matter of choosing.

"We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are" - Max De Pree

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in a world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it." - David Beckham

Play the Game

I watched an old nemesis scrounging for scraps of recognition from our manager in a meeting a couple of days ago. There was a brief moment where I felt like I was outside of an important loop, but then I realized that The Big Cheese and Mini-Cheese were chasing scraps. They were discussing a minor task that makes us feel important, but their little situation is nothing more than the minutiae that comes with getting a new product on the market. There are always issues that need resolution, but they have very little impact on the direction or success of the division.

Now that I no longer give a shit, it's easier for me accept that my group truly is nothing more than a support function. We're there to advance projects, that's it. We are expected to take care of these annoying little issues as they pop up with as little discussion and argument as possible. We merely execute plans and strategies put in place three or four levels up and over in the organization. Decisions, strategies, and the direction of the business are plotted elsewhere. Executing those plans, just pieces of those plans really, is what the leadership expects from my facility.

Rather than become more and more bitter as my group wastes its talent and resources on meaningless details, I'm going to play the game and take a formulations assignment. This is the quickest way for me to get out from under the mass of my large and largely insignificant group. I'll still be wasting my time on a copycat, me-too project, but this shift into a product design role is a necessary step to reach a position that will have the power and influence to reshape the perception and application of analytical labs and other technical aspects of the pharma business.

This is not the only step that I have in mind. This is merely the first of a three-pronged assault.

Who needs a classroom?

Amid all my career crises and angst, I've continued to plug away at my online MBA classes at Marist College. My participation in this program has complicated my planning around making a change in my career as I will have to payback the tuition reimbursement if I leave PCH. That factor has made me question whether or not I should keep participating in the program, but whatever direction my MBA studies take, my foray into online learning has lowered my barrier to resisting other education venues that are popping up on the internet.

I recently began listening to the entrepreneurial talks given at Stanford that are readily accessible as podcasts. Besides giving me the opportunity to fulfill a youthful ambition to attend Stanford (that was target school in high school), the talks have been uniformly informative and well done. I tend to prefer the talks given by professors more than those given by actual entrepreneurs, but I guess that's not surprising given my academic biases. I downloaded a couple of talks from MIT onto my iPod this afternoon. (I've added links to the school's resources, but I actually found the lectures through iTunes.) It seems like a waste to leave the insights and knowledge shared in these talks just laying around. They're also a great way to increase bulk positive randomness. Who knows when an idea I pick up in these talks could provide the key I need to solve a tricky problem.

If I was not getting ready to bury myself in accounting for 8 weeks, I would seriously consider trying to take an actual class that has been posted online for anybody to take at their leisure. (Isn't this supposed to be the ticket to a world class education pretty soon?) My inability to grasp linear algebra has made if very difficult for me to understand the mathematics behind a data analysis technique that I've managed to implement at work. Could this class be my ticket to a linear algebra breakthrough? I would like to try, but it will have to wait until I've finished accounting.

Two sides of the IDGAS coin

I Don't Give A Shit so I'm going to do some of this and some of that until events conspire to eject me out of here. That's one side of the IDGAS coin.

I Don't Give A Shit so I'm going to pursue a crazy scheme to mix things up a little because I don't have anything to lose. That's the other side.

It's a choice between quitting but sticking around to collect a paycheck, or recognizing an opportunity to play on the edge, push the limits, and be a little impatient.

I choose to play the maverick.

It all starts with culture...

From Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans, as quoted in Ahead of the Curve:

"We really became philosophically driven real early. It all starts and ends with culture, environment, philosophy. It's all about who we are versus what we do. There is nothing more important you can do than to ingrain a culture where everybody is looking and has the power to make changes."

The author of the book adds a comment about how Gilbert's words reflect what he heard in some of his classes. That last line reminds him that one professor told them to "always be alert to a better way of doing everything, never stop innovating."


I couldn't have said it better myself.

Desiging for Human Nature

We are highly refined adaptation nodes operating in an intricate web of social interactions. Our bodies, muscles and mind, adapt to sustained effort by developing new abilities that promote higher levels of performance in those individuals who dedicate the requisite energy and resources. We continuously adapt to our social environment by effortlessly participating in an intricate exchange of signs signaling our mood, intent, and interest. The technological infrastructure that has been put in place over our history allows ideas to travel effortlessly to all points of the globe. Those ideas form the raw material for new ideas that push back boundaries and broaden how we understand our world. Our cognitive wiring is designed to take advantage of our social nature to maximize how we build on and expand the ideas that we encounter in our struggles with whatever problem piques our interest.

Human Nature is messy and fractal. It defies simple categorization. It craves space to expand and explore. Does our McDonaldized culture reflect those human needs? Research of any type is an exquisitely human activity. Left unencumbered by corporate or political dictates, a group of people can solve any problem. Industrial R&D labs do not reflect the inherent human needs of the research process. One or two brave companies could revolutionize an industry if they were brave enough to design their labs around the scientists instead of designing their research program to satisfy a corporate board. If there are any companies already working this way, I need to find them ASAP.

(Significant number of links to be added soon...)