Monthly Archives: November 2019

Fathers and Sons – Mountain Leadership

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2019-10-26 12.13.28

An unfortunate reality…

Most educators spend more time with other people’s children than their own.

As a student, and parent, this has worked out very well for me. I’m grateful for our teachers, mentors and coaches.

2019-09-13 14.44.34

Last season, I spent a lot of time in Vail and noticed a gap between Vail Resort’s youtube clips and my actual experience with their first responders. I’ve been considering, “What are the qualities required to lead in the mountains?”

This season, there’s a new boss for Vail. She’s done fantastic work at Beaver Creek and I’m sure her team will sort it out. Everyone looked super-peppy during opening week. Maybe the grumpy guys retired?!

I spent months mentally rehashing my letter to the new boss. Gradually, I turned my “you could be so much more” mojo inwards, towards making myself a better father.

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Since my son could stand up, he’s been passionate about heading uphill. I figured it would take me a decade to get him up to speed. I underestimated the guy and we’ve had a lot of fun over the last year, skiing, camping and hiking.

My son has been eating up The Way of the Warrior Kid. There’s an unexpected overlap between the Code of The Warrior Kid and what he learned at his Buddhist preschool. The code fits with what I’m seeking to achieve in my own life.

2016-09-18-18-01-09

So that got me thinking… rather than figuring out how to fix grumpy ski-patrollers, why don’t we train ourselves to be the change.

  • The best memories of my life (and my son’s) are in the mountains
  • It’s a project we can enjoy for many years
  • It’s a beautiful legacy to leave him
  • It’s local
  • There’s no judges, tournaments, competitions or rankings
  • It provides huge motivation for me to stay in the game

2019-07-16 08.01.59

What would our code look like? Here’s a draft and we can make it our own over the next few years.

  • Fit For Purpose => strong, durable, resilient
  • Skilled => able to get where we need to be, in any conditions
  • Peer, Teacher & Student => learn from the experienced, share our knowledge and work with others
  • Prudent => pause and consider consequences
  • Prepared => we carry extra so we can help others
  • Calm, Humble and Patient => Knowing I need much more of this at home, I will practice it in my favorite environment. These traits are also on my (hotshot) son’s “to do” list.

The lesson here isn’t about the mountains.

The mountains are our story.

The lesson is to pay attention to passion and use childhood interests to create a value system for navigating the world.

Let’s fill the world with positive memories for our children.

Removing Things That Make Me Stupid

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2019-11-17 09.12.07

Sometimes the key to thinking better is getting rid of habits that tilt me towards stupidity.

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When I say “learning to think better”, what comes to mind?

I get a vision of learning new things (derivatives, higher level mathematics, stochastic modeling and probability).

For me, that’s not the answer.

I could spend 10,000 hours learning advanced techniques and be no further along than a decent graduate student. I’ve been reading The Alchemy of Finance => humbling!

The return on those hours would be low. A better bet is to get rid of the hours in my existing life that have a negative value.

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Where might less effort, generate far better results?

Make a habit of removing negative information

Hands down, my biggest source of noise is my phone. I tell myself that my smartphone makes me dumb but is that true?

Why don’t you put it away? I tell myself…

Key relationships value quick feedback.

OK, what can you change with zero impact on your key relationships?

Delete:

  1. Chrome
  2. Google News
  3. WSJ App
  4. Instagram (I reinstall for 10 minutes each time I publish)
  5. gMail

Push the above into my office hours, get off my phone and do something useful.

Noise is both addicting, and draining.

The first time I read a warning about noise was 2005. Back then, my noise was newspapers and online chat forums. I did a good job of getting rid of newspapers and forums. I miss newspapers, it’s a useful reminder to read more books.

Gradually, I replaced the space I created with social media and apps. Facebook is the ultimate forum for creating noise and distraction. It is personal, visual and uniquely tailored to my biases.

2019-11-16 09.12.40

Removing noise is a form of continuing education.

I needed to take action with my phone to capture the opportunity for self-improvement when I’m at my kids’ sports practices.

What to read? Older writers, classic books, biographies, stories that help me remember how I fool myself: Taleb, Munger, Marks, Cialdini and Buffett.

Mistakes flourish in an environment when I’m surrounded by noise, feeling rushed and dealing with frustration.

Be less stupid.

Ownership Within A Marriage

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2019-10-30 06.41.45Here’s a parenting challenge we’ve been dealing with for a few years.

If we don’t get her out of the house, 90-minutes after she wakes up, then our daughter gradually becomes anti-social. She doesn’t like to putter around. We’ve been muddling through for years. and it is why I used a ton of sitters => to get her engaged and into her day.

As I’ve phased out help we’ve been forced to deal with things we’ve been avoiding (article here).

 

I’m certain every marriage has repeating conflicts not between spouses => conflicts that give rise to frustration between spouses.

The conflict is never all that big.

Easy to endure for a little while.

But it repeats.

As it repeats, frustration morphs into bitterness towards the other spouse.

There is a simple fix.

Make it crystal clear who owns the situation.

  • Saturday mornings => down to me
  • Organize a swim meet => down to my wife
  • Get the kids to gymnastics, ski team or water polo => down to me
  • Sunday mornings => down to my wife

So when conflict arises, I know who’s in charge.

This helps me:

  • let go from outcome when I don’t own; and
  • own my frustration within my domain => instead of sliding into blaming… fix it, or grind it out.

 

 

With ownership assigned, we need a process for assessing if the job is getting done.

This can be tricky!

With babies and toddlers in the house, I could not reconcile my leadership principles with my marriage principles.

#1 being => I will never ask my spouse to do something I am not willing to do myself.

I do not like spending time with toddlers. So I used a lot of childcare, preschool and after school activities (~50,000 hours). It was a difficult, but temporary, time.

These days, I chuckle and remind my wife that the kids will start moving out “soon.”

Soon being eight years.

 

 

Increasing My Capacity To Own

Over the last two years, I have put the key elements of “my life” into the time before my family wakes up, or when the kids are in school.

Going back five years, I made my daily schedule visible to my spouse.

These two changes created the capacity to own more of my family life.

I also changed my attitude. I am willing to take on, or eliminate, anything. I’ll either do it, or eliminate it.

Own the predawn, live an open life and fix repeating pain points.

In this case, better is better.

How I Watch Sport

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2019-11-08 16.19.44It was the family’s first water polo tournament this past weekend.

2019-11-08 12.46.22It’s worth spending time to understand what YOU want from sport. This will let you see if your desires line up with the reality of your sport-of-choice.

I’ve seen enough to decide it’s best if I focus primarily on my kids’ sport.

I have one overriding goal for my kids.

Create an enduring positive association with exercise.

Former athletes, bitter athletes, non-athletes… they can lack the positive association and it costs them.

It is easy to get distracted by winning, skill development, playing time, parent board politics…

Create the positive association!

ax_poloSo, when I watch:

  • Sit passively and try to learn what’s going on => my kids don’t do “my” sports
  • Very little feedback => only positive, given 1-on-1, after they’ve slowed down from the event
  • Be seen in the last third of practice (it’s the only part they remember) => use the first 2/3rds of practice to do something useful => I buy groceries then read a book
  • Phone put away (ideally in airplane mode – warn your spouse you won’t be taking pictures or answering questions)
  • Listen to, and work through, coaches => reinforce a consistent message => you need a team (and school) culture that matches what you teach at home => if your teen tracks into a single sport then her team becomes a key reference point, at an important transitional point in her life
  • Ample healthy snacks afterwards => do not train the “exercise-sugar-reward” cycle, as it will haunt them forever!
  • Drive them with no music, no electronics => create a forum to ask about life issues => no taboo topics, everyone gets to speak (or not speak)

If you’d predicted that I would enjoy doing the above, even three years ago, then I would have said you were high.

The fact that I look forward to these times shows I am incapable of predicting where life will take me!

2019-11-08 17.39.27Take the above together:

  1. Dad is there
  2. Dad’s not on his phone
  3. Dad talks about anything
  4. Food rewards are healthy snacks => strong food
  5. Dad is always happy to see me afterwards

Building these habits was a major pain in the rear.

The phone habit is a tough one!

ax_g_poloI’ll end with a story.

My son is the youngest on the team and he has a concern, he might drown.

Bro, there’s no way you’re going to drown. You’re going to pass out and that’s no big deal.

I’ll Superman into the pool, we’ll pull you out and I’ll stay with you until you wake up.

You can even go back in, if you want.

Thanks Dad.

2019-11-09 16.01.23

Mood Management 2019

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2019-11-02 14.02.09

One of Taleb’s best insights:

It’s better to make the system robust to reality, rather than seeking to change the way people are.

He applies the advice to financial greed but you can extend the idea across domains. For example, I consume less sport because…

It’s better to make your mood robust to reality, rather than rail against cheating. 

Outrage is a distraction from the work I need to do. So is fear, and I found myself feeling fearful in a meeting last week.

I spent most of my working life in a job where there is a financial incentive to mislead me. Recently, I was sitting in a meeting and the CEO lit up my spidey sense:

  1. He showed over-reaction to small stimuli
  2. He told me he was honest
  3. He showed a lack of impulse control

I pay attention to the trifecta because it usually means there is a secret around me.

It could be innocuous => I can be insufferable when hyped and nervous. Anyhow, the lesson here is not about the CEO. I looked inside:

  • Repulsion => the feeling that I might get ripped off is unpleasant.
  • Hubris => I caught myself thinking, “if only this guy was more like me. He could be so much more…”
  • Catastrophizing => my mind jumped to the worst case scenario => he’s a crook and I’m going to lose my investment!

Fortunately, I didn’t act on any of these feelings. Merely watched them come & go.

I reminded myself that I can only be deceived when I want something.

  1. What do I want to have happen?
  2. Why am I in this meeting?

I was in the meeting to avoid making a mistake in my life.

Someone else’s life is beside the point.

2019-11-02 14.23.47

But what was I seeking? What was causing the uneasiness?

This summer, I felt a push to start writing again. I had been reading books and listening to author interviews. There was something, essential, missing from their dialogue.

The humility to see that the optimal plan is rarely optimal.

I studied world-class experts, sharing world-class advice. Advice they could not implement in their own lives.

I wanted to shout, “If you are right but you can’t get it done then you are not right!”

Then I came across this Goggins post on Instagram

When you don’t know yourself nor do you care to know yourself, you end up spending the majority of your time trying to please other people. People who like you when it’s convenient for them, when you are doing something for them, when you are making them feel better about themselves, etc.

The entire post is gold. Wildly excessive fatigue strips everything away and leaves you with the truth, your truth. DG is lucky he’s writing it down. We are lucky he’s sharing.

You see, what I was feeling was a conflict between knowing the author’s advice works and seeing him not being able to implement. It was what drove the question in last week’s blog… Who gets the benefit of your best advice? Frankly, who cares. And more importantly, who am I to care?

Repulsion, hubris, catastrophizing => replaced with gratitude, for access to world-best advice, and an opportunity to improve myself.

Sport, finance, relationships… absent desire, we can never be deceived.

Attention Is Expensive

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2019-10-18 07.31.22Let’s start with a story.

When I was younger, I never let a lack of knowledge prevent me from confidently sharing my theories about anything (this remains a weakness, BTW).

One day, I was holding forth and my buddy Jeff (board-certified orthopedic surgeon) chuckled and said, “I would call what you just said G-medicine.”

Later on, he took me aside and said, “Buddy, you know there’s a reason we go to med-school.”

He left it at that, which was a wise way to deal with an over-confident guy, who’s outside his field of competence.

I had some follow up questions about fasting and optimizing for one-rep max.

To address tactics, I need to step back and explain strategy.

Body, mind and spirit => What are you trying to achieve?

You need to know because attention, effort, willpower and thought are expensive.

So fasting, one-rep max, wherever you are focusing…

What is your payoff from your protocol?

Effort is expensive. Spend it wisely.

2019-11-02 06.03.09-1My philosophy is:

  1. Know your goal
  2. Keep the protocol simple
  3. Access believable people to tell you what’s required
  4. Use simple benchmarks
  5. Use habit energy to make life flow on autopilot

My protocol…

  1. No Zeros => remove days where I don’t train
  2. Get Outside the box and into nature => even if the box is a Gulfstream, or a boardroom, it remains a cubicle
  3. Seek Mastery => surfing, moguls, powder, swimming, sailing => moments of flow await!

Be honest with yourself. Is your physical life where you want it to be?

  • Work before work rate => Develop work-capacity before you do work-rate training. One-rep max is a “work-rate” benchmark that is certain to decline over time.
  • Don’t fool yourself => nobody fasts for health & longevity => we are either looking for an easy way to lose weight, or creating caloric “space” for binges.

Simple metrics let you create the habits that enable larger projects. Looking backwards over the last year:

  • < 10 zeros (days without exercise)
  • 15th year of stable body weight
  • 200+ days on trails or snow
  • 350+ days awake before 5am

I know I could be more, too much time is wasted on my smartphone.

I must remember that life is empty without connection. So be open to change based on painful feedback from my closest relationships => my wife and kids are brutally honest with me!

Higher Order Effects

I have empty space in my life so I can reflect on where my actions are likely to take me.

  • I have an addictive personality in a family tree with mental illness, addicts and eating disorders. Kinda indicates caution with self-starvation! Respect your history.
  • Be cautious with putting pressure on your spinal column, heavy lifts and explosive movements. Powerlifting injures can be for life. Respect reality.

Where are you likely to go with your protocol? You OK with that?

What’s the worst that can happen? You OK with that?

Fragilities

What is going to derail you?

My depression triggers are: poor nutrition, irregular sleep, alcohol, missed endorphins and excessive fatigue.

My entire life is a positive-feedback loop designed to keep me rolling.

Much of my “not do” advice is related to the risk of ruin. My depression triggers are defined as fun by my peers.

I need to be OK with saying “no” because… Depression isn’t fun.

Nature Has Useful Information, even if unpleasant

As you age it will be tempting to access Big Pharma to fool yourself, particularly if your self image is wrapped up in physical performance.

Before you act, consider…

What’s your competitive advantage? I think better, and choose slower, at 50 than 28. Taking myself to 11 with testosterone would GREATLY increase my error rate, across all domains. Not worth it.

My competitive advantage is taking the best ideas and integrating them via new habit creation. I can do this until I die.

Fatigue is information that guides me away from physical ruin => my mojo feels like it’s a tenth of where I was at 40, but my life is better because I am a better person.

Once again, overriding nature greatly increases my risk of injury. Injury can be the first step on a downward spiral towards depression/ruin. Not worth it.

Surprisingly, getting physically worse isn’t worse.

Anyhow, lots here.

When it comes to positive change: set a low bar, and do it daily.

I live near a cemetery, which helps me remember my expected value is negative infinity.

Death is an outstanding reason to be true to yourself.