somebodyisalive

(home | archive | ask | about)

[russell-tomlin]

Just Weeds Growing Along the Side of a Walkway

Below the 9th Street bridge just west of Ocean City, NJ

[mattforsythe]

[somebodyisalive]

by Matt Forsythe

[somebodyisalive]

the value of checklists

1.

Here, then, is our situation at the start of the twenty-first century: We have accumulated stupendous know-how. We have put it in the hands of some of the most highly trained, highly skilled, and hardworking people in our society. And, with it, they have indeed accomplished extraordinary things. Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields—from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy — though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies. It is a checklist.

2.

We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. 

Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.

3.

The fear people have about the idea of adherence to protocol is rigidity. They imagine mindless automatons, heads down in a checklist, incapable of looking out their windshield and coping with the real world in front of them. But what you find, when a checklist is well made, is exactly the opposite. The checklist gets the dumb stuff out of the way, the routines your brain shouldn’t have to occupy itself with (Are the elevator controls set? Did the patient get her antibiotics on time? Did the managers sell all their shares? Is everyone on the same page here?), and lets it rise above to focus on the hard stuff (Where should we land?).

4.

To be sure, checklists must not become ossified mandates that hinder rather than help. Even the simplest requires frequent revisitation and ongoing refinement. Airline manufacturers put a the hero in the age of checklists publication date on all their checklists, and there is a reason why—they are expected to change with time. In the end, a checklist is only an aid. If it doesn’t aid, it’s not right. 

5.

One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems—on assemblages of people or technologies or both—and among our most profound difficulties is making them work. …having great components is not enough.

—  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande

[somebodyisalive]

thinking in bets

1.

I didn’t become an always-rational, emotion-free decision-maker from thinking in bets. I still made (and make) plenty of mistakes. Mistakes, emotions, losing—those things are all inevitable because we are human. The approach of thinking in bets moved me toward objectivity, accuracy, and open-mindedness. That movement compounds over time to create significant changes in our lives.

2. 

Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about.

3.

…our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome. …a word for this: “resulting.” When I started playing poker, more experienced players warned me about the dangers of resulting, cautioning me to resist the temptation to change my strategy just because a few hands didn’t turn out well in the short run.

— Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

[somebodyisalive]

The whole time I’ve been here I’ve longed unconsciously – and at times consciously – for trust, love and physical affection. This longing may change in intensity, but it’s always there.

Anne Frank (from The Guardian’ article about 3 versions of her diary)

[russell-tomlin]

Reed Canary Grass

[somebodyisalive]

There comes a moment in young adulthood when many of us decide that one or both of our parents are crazy. But then we compare notes with friends, share stories with colleagues and discover, much to our astonishment, that crazy is relative, and the bell curve in this case is plump, and that our mothers or fathers, whom we once considered uniquely deranged, are really only averagely so.

NYTimes.com

[somebodyisalive]

Learn to get the same pleasure from saving that you feel when spending. The pleasure of saving is what makes your dreams possible; saving gives you happiness and peace of mind through finding security, hope and opportunity, says Orman. Learn to see saving as giving yourself a gift rather than denying yourself a purchase.

(x)

[somebodyisalive]

[somebodyisalive]

Don't worry about it, don't worry about it. As long as it's true and it's from you, it will be new.

Claire Foy on the best acting advice she has received (happened when she was doing Shakespeare) (x)

[somebodyisalive]

“Besides,” he says, “the things that used to annoy the heck out of me I now find amusing. It finally dawned on me what a dull world this would be if people were all alike and everybody was perfect.” Note this simple but key fact: No person is all good and no person is all bad. The perfect person just doesn’t exist.

The Magic of Thinking Big by Dr David Schwartz

The School of Life’ The Weakness of Strength animation video (pdf) makes another good point, the core of it being:

The theory goes like this: every strength that an individual has necessarily brings with it a weakness of which it is an inherent part. It is impossible to have strengths without weaknesses. Every virtue has an associated weakness.

[somebodyisalive]

Yes, I do know people who live with integrity. They are not specialized religious practitioners. They are just people who value themselves and their time here deeply and who prioritize truth over the routines of human social life. ...Learning to say no and keep to that no in the face of pressure from others is how a person builds courage and integrity.

Natalie Smolenski (x and x)

[somebodyisalive]

It is not possible to control your thoughts. It is not possible to control the feelings upon which your thoughts are based. It is not possible to go through life feeling only good things or thinking only good things. …What is within your control are the following things: 1. Learning from what your negative thoughts have to teach you. What is the lesson you can take away from them? For example: Do I just need to stay away from the person I'm obsessively thinking negatively about? Is there something I'm trying to control that I can't control? Is this thing reminding me of a time in my past when I was really hurt and couldn't do much about it? Is this thing I'm obsessing about actually harming me now? If so, what will I do about it? ...3. Choosing to focus your attention on life-giving work and experiences. You can't control your thoughts, but you can practice directing your focus to the things that are most important and worthwhile in your life. Very often, obsessive negative thinking is just a distraction from the things that are our true responsibilities and true joys. Your mind is always training itself to think and focus in certain ways. While you can't control it, you can train it to think and focus differently over time.

Natalie Smolenksi (x)

[somebodyisalive]

Adulthood

Q:  Do others feel like becoming an adult is just a bunch of broken dreams? Are you living out your dreams and passion?

A:  …Many people simply burn out or collapse when they are faced with the true difficulty and complexity of things as adults. But it doesn't have to be that way. Instead, you can see growing up as the process by which your dreams move from the realm of fantasy to the realm of reality through the way you choose to live—with regard to the world as it is, not as you would like it to be. Part of that recognition involves understanding that there is not already an easy path ahead of you to “living your passion.” There’s no script for the life you most deeply want. You will either cultivate the insight and skill to bring it about through diligent presence, implication, and work with no guarantees, or you won't.

— Natalie Smolenski (x)

Q: Why do most adults seem to be so miserable?

A:  It's too easy for people to fall into the social scripts for how they should live their lives, beginning first and foremost with repeating how their own parents lived their lives—or trying to do the opposite of whatever that was. People generally accept the world around them as the only way things can be (even if they rebel against it!) and conform to that world, with all its expectations.

…They chose the wrong career, the wrong partner, and the wrong friends because they caved to social pressure or believed erroneous things rather than living their own lives. Or they simply refused to live their own lives because it would be “too hard.” 

 …If you want to be happy as an adult, you will need to find your own way in the world rather than simply accepting what others want you to do or think you should do. Being a happy adult means growing beyond who your parents were and who they expected and wanted you to be. It means thinking for yourself instead of taking up a cultural script for how you and others should think, feel, or behave. It means creating a future, not dwelling on the past. That requires finding your way into your own responsibilities as well as your own joys.

There is no one right or wrong way to live—there is only integrity. If you live out of integrity with yourself, no matter how “good” your reasons for doing so, you will be deeply unhappy, even if on the surface things seem just fine.

— Natalie Smolenski (x)

[somebodyisalive]

She cultivated an aura of toughness, partly because she couldn’t help it (she didn’t suffer fools gladly) and partly because to her, being smart was just plain fun — it never occurred to her that anyone should find it otherwise. Intelligence wasn’t a burden; it wasn’t even a grand gift. It was a toy to be enjoyed and played with daily.

Stephanie Zacharek on Pauline Kael

[somebodyisalive]

….when opportunities for advancement present themselves, someone who feels like a fraud is more likely to adopt a “why bother” kind of attitude: “As impostors feel they have fewer adaptability resources and are less optimistic regarding their career, their perceived internal marketability diminishes,” ...making them less inclined to advocate for themselves at their current companies or jump ship for a better gig elsewhere.

Impostor Syndrome Can Be a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, NYMag’s Science of Us column about this study

[somebodyisalive]

“One of our theories of group formation, it starts with forming — that members have to get to know one another,” she says. That theory, known as Tuckman’s model, breaks group development into four stages: forming, in which group members begin to build trust, create a team identity, and start setting collective goals; storming, in which individual differences and conflicts emerge; norming, in which the group figures out how to resolve those conflicts and creates a greater sense of cohesion; and performing, in which everyone works together toward a common purpose. (There’s also a fifth, not-quite-rhyming phase, alternately known as mourning or adjourning, for when a group disbands.) Especially in a professional setting, she adds, “forming” can also be a way of building a transactive memory system — getting a sense of who knows what, so you know whom to rely on for different scenarios or parts of a project. And even when the bonds it creates are superficial and temporary, both Villado and Mohammed say that an icebreaker can help to foster a sense of “psychological safety,” or an atmosphere in which people feel free to speak up — to question, criticize, say something out-there — without fear of being ostracized.

Icebreakers Are Terrible. They Also, Unfortunately, Work Really Well in NYMag’s Science of Us column