No plans = No commitments

I've taken a little pride in disregarding plans in favor of reacting to opportunities as they present themselves. Given this self-satisfaction, it should come as no surprise that I reacted very favorably to this little piece about a class in Chinese philosophy. My approach to planning is nothing new. The ancient Chinese also felt that you can respond better to potentially fruitful opportunities when you aren't intent on advancing to the next stage of your plan.

Despite validation by thinkers who lived thousands of years ago, I've been cooling on my zest for staying in the moment. It's one thing to consciously choose to observe what's going on in your environment and react accordingly, but it's something altogether different to avoid making plans in an effort to remain uncommitted to a goal. Developing a plan requires the explicit statement of a target, of making it very clear to yourself and everybody else that you want a particular thing. You must express intent. I have a pattern of avoiding clear statements of desires, wants, and needs. Expressing a subjective opinion makes you susceptible to judgement. Judgement may come with ridicule.

I've been too embarrassed to express my desires for a good chunk of my life. It's ok to talk about things that are universally accepted as worthwhile.. Pursuing more education, working for a recognized company, staying fit. Nobody will make fun of you for those things. Going against the grain and liking something that others may find less appealing, that's a little more challenging. Hiding you desires allows you to build up some pretty good defensive skills. I've only recently realized that I frequently dual with my wife emotionally. I've viewed our big arguments as a contest to see if I could get her to see things my way. Listening to her and using what she told me as a way to improve our relationship was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted to figure out a way to show her that I was acting reasonably in the moment and that there is no reason she should be mad at me.

Avoiding plans was just another weapon I used to keep others from seeing what I'm really all about. You can't stay hidden if you tell your boss that you eventually want his job (or his boss's job) or share your hottest fantasy with your significant other. The boss can't say you don't have the skills to get to that job and nobody will think your twisted if you just keep those things to yourself. You can slide and adjust and change your story if you never let anybody know what you really have planned. You can also keep believing whatever crazy rationalizations your relying on to justify not pursuing some worthy goal. It's easier to play Tetris in the dorm than to actually experience what the world has to offer.

I'm a manager, now what?

I walked out of my soon to be bosses office on Friday reeling from our five minute conversation. All the tension, apathy, and funkiness of the last couple months was gone. It's been replaced by a chaotic mix of emotions that I'm only beginning to get a handle on. That management position that I talked myself into pursuing is mine. I'll have a group of people reporting to me in a few weeks. The reality and gravity of that statement is still sinking in. It's so much easier to plot and plan about what I would do as a leader when that's just a concept. Now I legitimately have to start making some plans for how I want to approach this role.

My first inclination is to get all crazy and try to throw everything that I've been thinking about over the last couple of years out on the table. I feel like I'll be expected to be different, but I need to remember that the way I've been working is what got me in a position to be a manager in the first place. A totally renovation of my work persona will fail. I need to stay true to myself. Rather than trying to introduce a dozen new ideas to my still to be decided team all at once, I need to pick the thing that I need to implement in order to get my team to start thinking about their job just a little differently. I need to keep this thing contained so I have a chance to grow as a leader rather than trying to do too much at once.

Focusing on a few important things rather than just going after everything all at once has been on my mind quite a bit in the last month or so. I've been looking at my life and recognizing that I'm too diffuse. I do a decent job on a variety of things rather than doing an outstanding job on just a few things. I need to really think about my new role and how that job fits into the larger organization, figure out what kind of things I would like to do with my team, suggest an organization that will allow me to do those things, and develop a plan to ensure that I get the people that I want. I'll have to spend too much time on my class to devote the right kind of energy on that task. (You could say that writing this post is a waste of time as well, but I typically use these posts as a way to clarify my thinking. Getting my thoughts into a form where a few other people can read them forces me to clarify plans that are ephemeral when they're trapped in my head. This is a useful function so I don't consider the blog a waste of time.)

I'm working on redirecting the emotional energy that I spend on frivolous things like fantasy football to the really meaningful parts of my life where I actually have a tremendous amount of influence on how things turn out. I'm working hard at solidifying my relationship with my wife. It has suffered from my pursuit of activities that satisfied a deep but unhealthy emotional need. Everything in my life starts with her. She deserves the best that I can give her. Everything else can wait. And that's why I'm going to cut this post short (and not add links) so I can get to bed.

Nerves

I've felt a little off all night. I thought I was just recovering from a very busy day at work followed by an unplanned detour to pick up dinner, but that's all behind me and I'm still not right. Part of if may be that I've been trying to get a project to work for a week with progress but no success. I thought I had it licked, but I just checked on its progress and I'm still one small step from having it finished. I'm making a Hail Mary move tonight. Hopefully there will be good news when I get up tomorrow morning. That may be contributing to my funk, but that's not the whole story.

There's only one explanation. I'm nervous about my interview tomorrow. That may not seem like such a big reveal, but identifying and acknowledging my feelings is a relatively new experience for me. My standard approach is to play it cool and act like I'm not bothered by the situation. I know what I have to offer so why should I be nervous? That false bravado is just a way to hide from my feelings. Push those uncomfortable feelings aside and pretend that all is well. I've done that for most of my life. It's time for something new. It's not like I've never been nervous before. The most nerves that I've ever felt in my entire life was sitting in my car getting ready to go up for my interview with Solgar. I got that job. It was that interview that got put me in a position to have my current job. There were big stakes on the line at that interview. I can't help but feel that the stakes for this interview are just as big.

This is what I've been working toward since I rejoined the organization in 2006. I was being honest with myself when I admitted that I'm nervous about my interview tomorrow. I should also be honest with myself and acknowledge that I want to run things. I have a horrible time sitting back and simply doing as I've been told. I like to build something all my own. I've been able to do that with ideas and concepts, but I've never done it with a team. I can do my thing, but I want to scale that up to the team level. That's an entirely new challenge. I feel stagnant. That stalling isn't a consequence of projects or other job assignments. It's boredom with doing more of the same. I'm tired of technical challenges. I want something new. I'm desperate for something new. No wonder I'm nervous.

A deliberate step

I have another job interview on Friday. No trips to other cities for this one. I just have to walk down the hall from my desk at work. After being buried in a flat organization for the last two and half years, I finally have a chance to move up the hierarchy. It's me and one other guy. My instincts tell me that the other guy is the preferred candidate going into the interview panel, but I suspect that I have a better story to tell. I have the better story because I want the job more than he does. 

I had to talk myself into applying for this position, but I need to take this active step towards something different in my life. I know that in one of my previous posts I noted that my efforts to improve my position, law school applications, interviews at companies in other cities, even my MBA classes, don't come with any real risk. I was never going to go to law school or move to Boston. My MBA doesn't challenge my comfort zone. All these things that I do to convince myself that I'm doing something (all while looking for ways that people can notice me and give me some praise) are all for show. There is no risk of failure, and as such there is real opportunity to succeed. 

I'm a little scared about the prospect of getting this job. I don't fully know what to expect. That's the reason why I need it. It makes me uncomfortable. It's also not something that I'm drifting into. Sure, there could be other opportunities in a month or two that are more aligned with my inherent drives, but this is the point where I need to do something unexpected. Doing what fits with my current path will juts be more of what I'm doing now. I don't want more pie. I want to try something that I might not be any good at. Or maybe I'll excel. I don't know which is more likely and that's why I want to take a crack at being a manager. 

What held me back then and still holds me back today

I took my son to the local high school football game tonight. I had a great time with him. It was fun to see him react to everything that was going on, to answer his questions, and to just spend some time with him without his sister making things crazy. It's nice to have a new association with a high school football game.

Twenty years ago, I was the one out on the field. Rather than basking in warm feelings about those good old days, I couldn't help but focus on how messed I was in high school (well, my whole youth really). Those Friday nights held way too much significance and importance to my teenage life. Being out on the field rather than up in the stands defined so much of who I was. Well, it was really more about what I was not than what I was. Being a football player made me feel important. I was too scared to really explore life in high school. Football gave me something to hide behind. I never had to assert my identity in the social morass of a high school hallway. I let my status as a member of the football team do that for me. I worked so hard at keeping myself separate and distinct. I never sought to find something in common with other kids and build relationships up from that. I found ways to draw distinctions between me and everybody else. All alone in my fragile little world, I never had to open up or show anybody anything about myself. I wouldn't be opened to negative judgments, and rejections, by people who might like to be my friend.

Not that there was really all that much to me other than football, grades, and the desire to get into a fancy school (yet another way that I could distinguish myself from everybody else). I don't really know what the 17 year old version of me would think of what he's become. I never really thought about my life much past college. I didn't have a vision of who I wanted to be or what I wanted to achieve once I started my professional life. Goals and aspirations suggest a preference. You have to have an opinion and make a choice if you're going to have a real aspiration. I didn't make choices in high school. I just did what was expected of me. I was really nothing more than the reflection of what I thought others wanted to see.

My life was controlled by fear. But what was I afraid of? I was afraid that people would think my preferences, my choices, what I wanted, liked and desired, were wrong. I stuck to the safe, status quo stuff that didn't require any effort or risk of judgement. I had so little faith and confidence in my wants that I never asserted them for fear of being found deficient. I never pursued a girlfriend because I couldn't let a girl know that I liked her. Expressing a desire for a relationship with somebody was fraught with too much risk. I couldn't handle the potential for rejection. I had so little confidence and self-assurance that I relied on external approval to feel good about being me. Disapproval of any kind was not acceptable.

I keep writing this stuff in the past tense, like I'm well beyond these things. In some ways I am, but in many ways these fears still have a powerful hold on me. Look at the title I've given this blog. I'm still trying to do things that make me feel distinct from other people. My relationship struggles have their roots in my inability to share my wants, needs, and desires with the one person in this world who I know loves me without condition. It's hard for your wife to feel wanted when you've spent your whole life perfecting the art of keeping other people in the dark about what you want. I experienced my old fears while doing some consumer testing at work this week. This is the first time I've ever done one of these things. I was sitting there, recording what I thought about a prototype, and I was afraid that the the person running the test would think my preferences were wrong. I was afraid that preferring A over B was wrong and that other person would castigate me for that preference. I immediately recognized that those thoughts were absolutely crazy, but they were still so strong that I had to tell myself that I was not being judged. Picking out a ring for my wife on our anniversary was very challenging because I had to go in and express a desire for something and make a decision in front of another person.

Twenty years these things have been controlling me. I feel like I'm getting some kind of control, finally, but I still have a long way to go...

Poke, poke, poke

I've been suffering from a general level of apathy for my professional pursuits for the last couple of months. It's boredom with my assignments (which are keeping me from pursuing more interesting side projects) and fatigue with the tedium and arbitrariness of my MBA studies. I'm just not interested in what I'm doing right now. Even a breakthrough in a problem that I've been dealing with for over a year has done little to assuage my ennui. I'm feeling stagnant.

I'm not particularly motivated to workout (but that doesn't keep me from hitting the gym or going on runs). I don't even have a very strong inclination to write this blog post. I'm writing to fight back against this blah that has been gradually dragging me down. Pursuits that I once found valuable have lost a bit of their luster.

I've learned that these low phases are just part of a cycle. There are better times ahead if I can just keep moving. Moving makes things possible, introduces a bit of disorder and chaos into things. The best stuff rarely comes from where we expect. It's those minor things that spawn the most satisfying parts of our life. If I don't keep poking around, they're not going to show up.

Going Deep

I've spent a great deal of my life being abundantly aware of what I thought of myself, but largely ignorant of what other people thought about me. I'm always aware of my intentions, preferences, and desires. The people I interact with should be aware of these things as well, implicitly, without any real input or communication from me. That perspective has been my unspoken (and largely unacknowledged) guide to personal relationships. My life is arid and desolate when it comes to me telling people what I think about them in either word or deeds. My likes and dislikes, needs and desires have been a closely held secret. I never let people know what I thought about them, that I found them interesting or liked to spend time with them. I never expressed affection. It was so much easier to remain aloof.

The rational bent of most of my posts here echo this predilection. Thoughts, thinking, ideas, are so much easier to discuss than feelings and opinions. Even all this business school stuff is about analyzing numbers and basing decisions on a careful analysis of the facts. I can't help but look at this business data and make parallels to the data I generate in the lab. Conventionally sound management is rooted in facts because facts are assumed to accurately reflect the environment. Facts are facts, but the environment contains the facts and all the assumptions and underlying behavior that went into generating that fact. There's also an entirely separate body of unseen and unaccounted for stuff that is the basis of some fact. My research in the lab is all about figuring out what's the unseen and unaccounted for stuff that is the basis of some observation. Business facts just seem to be taken for granted without too much thought about what it all means.

I think I've gone about as far as I can go with my highly rational approach to life. The next step in my career demands more. The next step in my life demands more from me on a deeply emotional level. What's going on behind the scenes, the real motivation for people's behavior, is far more important than what we see at the surface.