How shiny is your noise?

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How shiny is your noise? How much does it glitter? How bright are the sparkles?

Does your noise ring like a bell? Does it sing brightly?

It’s not that noise. That other noise is dreary and harsh. It’s easy to note, notice, and avoid.

But that light tune? Our daily bread. Yes, with peaks and valleys but present thru the seasons.

It’s a trickster.

Our big beautiful bright noise. The one that sparkles, glitters, and shines. The lovely taste. The perk and pleasure. It tricks us.

It tricks us to think it’s a signal. It’s not – it’s just shiny.

There are two types of noise.

There’s the loud, brash, refreshed but not refreshing version. Like other obvious ills, easy to steer clear. But it’s the other noise that gets us. The other noise won’t tell you the truth but the truth is: it’s what you know that ain’t so. It’s noise. It doesn’t look like “noise”, it doesn’t sound like noise (it goes by names like “information”), but noise it is.

Assemble the forces. Garrison the powers. It is this noise we must block. This noise is insidious.

My noise sings. My noise is a ringing bell. But it’s noise – when all I want is signal.

They’re just Puppies

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All dogs wanted to be good dogs, no matter how unpromising they seemed. You just had to help them find a way. – The Old Man

There were frustrations when I returned to the classroom. Pesky persistent complainers. Foot draggers. Sleepers. Phone concealers. Make up concealers. C’mon, we’re in this together.

But then, after threatened and assigned detentions. After exhausted days. After hallway gripes. I realized, they’re just puppies.

People are just like puppies. Both have basic states of operation given their genetics, rules of physics, body chemistry and so on. Then, they both learn rules.

Puppies are taught not to pee in the house. Puppies are taught to walk on a leash. Puppies are taught to socialize. We don’t get mad at puppies for being puppies – we once had a puppy that only chewed up the right shoe. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Everything my students did was learned – successfully!

Complaining got results. Procrastination worked. Sleep was fine.

Life got a lot better when I thought about students as puppies.

Don’t Shoot the Dog! It takes time, persistence, and work to train puppies. Oh, and it’s fun. Puppies are happy to learn things and it feels good to teach them. Just like students. Just like all of us.

They’re just puppies.

The 9th Best College Town

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In his review of College Towns, Ray Delahanty (aka CityNerd) combines the walk, bike, and transport scores along with census data to score college towns.

Places score well (highly) on good urbanism, design, walkability, pedestrian streets and so on.

Corvallis Oregon ranks ninth, thanks to high bike use based on census data.

But, “it’s a little puzzling because the bike infrastructure isn’t exactly world class which goes to show how important culture and habit are for transportation choices“.

There’s a beauty to good design. We love design. It’s satisfying. It feels like we’re doing something.

But it’s not the root level.

Design is superficial. It’s shines. There’s polish.

Done well, design relies on points of friction, human needs, and feelings of belonging (like identity). Design is on culture and habit. Design must align with basic issues.

Positive Feedback Loops

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“But today I think about it as my mission in life is to get as many people as possible into positive feedback loops,” Graham Duncan told Tim Ferriss.

It’s why he spends so much time interviewing, talking with, and hanging out with people. “So I like getting the design right up front…I don’t wanna put something into somebody. I wanna have them do the thing that they wanna do anyway.”

Or as someone else said recently: don’t be trying to run up a down escalator.

One joy of YouTube is the rabbit hole. Find a niche and let the algorithm pump your feed full of whatever randomness.

One of my trips was the Toyota Sienna. One reviewer noted: it just doesn’t fight you. It’s not the top categorically – but there are no weaknesses. It’s a “floor-raiser”.

Positive feedback loops. Running up a down escalator. It just doesn’t fight you.

Alignment matters. It doesn’t make the knots less tangled but it makes untying them a lot easier.

How to Talk About Money with Your Rich Friends

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We all have rich friends. The richest person you know, knows someone richer.

I meant to go running one Sunday but as soon as leaving the driveway I saw Brian and Rachel – two neighbors I hadn’t seen recently. Instead, I walked with them.

Brian and Rachel are rich friends. Their house is bigger and in a nicer section of the neighborhood. They drive a Mercedes, I have a Toyota Sienna. They eat at restaurants I’ve never heard of. They take day trips – via plane – to see their son in Philadelphia. They donate enough to the Orlando arts their name is in the program and they get valet parking. They’re richer than me.

I’ve got another friend not as rich as me. Before I talk about him, let’s define rich.

One of my high school students lives in our neighborhood – the regular big and decent part like me. He said I was rich. “You’re right” I replied, “And here’s how you can tell”.

Anyone who owns any piece of exercise equipment is rich. They have enough money and space to buy extra things and enough energy (or aspirations of) to work out for whatever reason. Non-concern about basic things like food and shelter comes when you’re rich. I have a bike. My student has a rower. We’re rich.

My not-as-rich friend Bobby (a different one) likes to talk about how expensive things are. Travel is expensive. Our HOA is expensive. Vehicles and food and kids are expensive. Listening to him costs me energy.

But our conversations aren’t about money. Life isn’t about money. It’s not even really about the things money leads to.

It’s not the dinner, it’s the company.

It’s not the hoa, it’s the safety of family and proximity of friends.

It’s not the place tickets, it’s seeing your Ohio cousins once a summer.

That’s what Bobby misses and what Rachel and Brian get.

When I talk to my rich friends I listen for that: How do they love their peoples? When I talk to my rich friends that’s what I say: Here’s how I love my peoples.

Four Thousand Weeks (book review)

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Likely one of the best books I’ll read this year.

I have soft spots. For movies it’s one last job. For books it’s This is Water.

There’s this thing that everyone talks about but everyone talks about it wrongly. That’s a soft spot.

That’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. According to author Oliver Burkeman, we are doing time management all wrong. We are swimming through water without really knowing what it is.

And water is a good analogy because water, like time, isn’t something we can grasp. It’s something we have to accept. We can scoop water. We can vacuum water. We can pour water – but these are on water’s terms. To paraphrase high school science: water does what water does.

That is also how to think about time. We act like we manage time, “time management”, but only in the same way we manage water: creating spaces for it to be.

You should read this book!

It’s difficult to review for the same reasons productivity feels important. We check things off a list. We progressed. We got-things-done. But are these the right metrics or just the easy ones?

Productivity isn’t the goal. Accomplishment isn’t either. Living. L-I-V-I-N (a similar book) is the goal.

How to live is a messy question relative to How to be productive.

But here’s a tip. An honest-to-goodness fact. This is as close to a guarantee as you’ll ever get.

Spend time with people. Optimize community. Aim for togetherness. Move from ‘me’ to unity. Move from ego to love. Less get more done, and more to-get-her.

Be that way. That’s a productivity hack.

The Algebra of Wealth (isn’t really about money)

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“The whole shooting match,” Scott Galloway ends his book, The Algebra of Wealth, “Everything meaningful in life is about others.”

It’s not a great personal finance book. It felt like Galloway looked at his bookshelf, categorized the books he’s read into sections, found some news and research, and put it together.

But it’s an interesting personal finance book.

It’s interesting because Galloway is a brand. It’s a flavor I don’t care for, without nudging from J.F., I never would have read this book. Even then, I didn’t love it. Until that last line when it all came together.

We get personal finance wrong. We think of it as a thing people do, a distinct part of their life. We have the marriage part. We have the work part. We have the parenting/childhood parts. We have all these buckets, but they aren’t buckets. These are not different parts. It’s one life.

Any message (like your choice of personal finance) is like an organ transplant. The organ might be good (advice), but if the receiver rejects it, it doesn’t matter how healthy it is. There has to be a match.

This is why personal finance is full of gurus. Scott, Dave, Suze, Ramit, don’t persuade. They select. It’s a sampling effect. Ramit’s book: I Will Teach You To Be Rich brings in people willing to hear the message. Scott’s book brings in people familiar with his schtick.

And this is what Galloway gets so right. It’s not about money, it’s about the meaning and, “everything meaningful in life is about others.” That’s the seed to a successful transplant.

We miss this in our message. Maybe the medium isn’t the message. Maybe the meaning is the message. What does this mean to us? To our tribe? To my history?

People want meaning. They find it thru gurus.

It’s not the weather

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Growing up, my dad took my brother and I duck hunting. The worst the weather for humans, goes the rule of thumb, the better the conditions for ducks. So, we grew up, sitting in cold, windy, wet marshes around northern Ohio and southern Michigan. It was miserable.

It was miserable, for me. My brother actually liked it a lot, and we think it’s because of the clothes.

When I was young and out with my dad, it was a lot of cotton and some wool. When my brother started there was Gore-Tex, Under Armour, dry fit, and a whole list of synthetic fabrics that repelled water, retained warmth, and didn’t cost too much.

We came to joke in our family, it’s not bad weather, it’s the wrong clothes. 

Now I’m the parent, not duck hunting, but travel volleyball, and we spend a lot of time in the car. Car time can be a little aggravating. 

But isn’t it a little like the weather?

The problem isn’t the traffic and other drivers the problem is me. Both weather and traffic are out of my control, and both have solutions in my control.

And unlike my youth, driving is nice. There are podcasts and audiobooks. They are comfortable chairs with heated lumbar supports. There’s adaptive cruise control. A lot to be grateful for!

Pause more. Be grateful. Don’t focus on the uncontrollable, be creative, and find things you can do. It’s not the bad __________, it’s the wrong ________.

Wheaton Scales

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In 2010, Paul Wheaton created the Wheaton Eco Scale. He begins by noting our perceptions of other people. Those one or two steps ahead in a similar FESPE (financial, ecologic, spiritual, personal, etc.) journey look “pretty cool”. Those four or five steps “downright crazy”. While, “one level back are ignorant and two levels back are assholes”.

We’re all on our own journeys, coming across shamans, oracles, and gurus at different times. Part of this is why there are no bad books.

The importance of Wheaton Scales hit home during two successive days. First, reading the philosophy/finance forum of Early Retirement Extreme. Commenters noted how communicating about FIRE is such a challenge. Part (maybe most!) of the burden comes down to talking to someone in their language. It’s not about all the things I know so much as it’s about all the things they’ll understand.

Second, sitting in church and listening to the pastor talk about debates, agreements, and conversations among theologians. I know who he’s not talking to – me! He’s talking to the two guys who fact check, give feedback, and have studied the Bible for years.

Wheaton Scales snuggle up nicely in our mental models, like a pet on a cold afternoon, because they match JTBD. The aim of Jobs is moving from supplier language (how I see the world) to demand language (how other people see it). Wheaton gives a model for thinking through that.

And scales like this are nice. And helpful. It’s better to be mostly right than precisely wrong.

Reliable means redundant

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Practical engineering presented this video about the Hawaiian islands power grid. Like a lot of questions of the form: Why can’t we just… the answer is, it’s complicated.

Host Grady Hillhouse offers a new definition that helps to frame the issue (Words matter!).

Instead of talking about reliable power, talk about redundant power. If we frame things this way it sounds a lot better, and things that sound good are perceived as more true. Redundant power needs a rebranding. Rather than think about waste, the people of Hawaii can think of it as reliable.