Just the Conclusion, Please

Wise men speak because they have something to say – fools because they have to say something.
– Plato

Had my dad over to the house today to work on some of the pre-sale cleanup and maintenance I’ve been doing. He’s a skilled handyman and could show me how to do just about everything I wanted to get done. Simple stuff, but things I would’ve had to spend time researching and reading about to do myself. He’s also very intelligent, a senior aerospace engineer at the company he works for with many patents to his name. He knows a lot and he gets a lot done.

As far back as I can remember, he’s had a habit of thinking out loud. He’ll talk through every process as he goes, explaining what he’s doing and asking rhetorical questions that he’ll answer a moment later. He’ll describe half a dozen options for solving a problem before proceeding with the one that’s obviously best. He’ll go into detail about why an option isn’t right. When asked a question, he’ll answer – but he will also explain the other possible answers, why he didn’t choose them, and the circumstances under which they might have been right. He’ll describe technical details of the decision – things that I don’t know enough to understand, let alone care about.

In short, he brings me along for the entire mental process he goes through to make what is almost always, ultimately, the right decision.

Listening to him, I realized I do that sometimes – in my writing occasionally and especially at work. I think in my writing it can be okay – I’m trying to convey a feeling and motivate or entertain just as much as I’m trying to convey information. At work it’s basically unacceptable. If my boss asks “How is problem X going to be solved” or “When will feature Y be complete” or “How confident in decision Z are you”, he’s asking because he doesn’t want to understand for himself. X, Y and Z are my jobs. He needs a high level piece of information about them to do his job, but if I give him all the details I used to reach my conclusion I’ve basically forced him to do my job as well – I’ve loaded him up with all the data I used instead of just the conclusion (which is probably all he cares about).

(There are times when a wide-ranging discussion, rambling, and spitballing are appropriate. I’m not talking about those times).

When a decision is your responsibility, just make it. Ask questions if you need to, but otherwise take charge and provide only the answer that was requested.

This will save your peers time – they can get the benefit of your thinking without being dragged through the process with you. It will teach them to trust your decision-making, assuming your conclusions are good (explaining how you got to them won’t save you if they aren’t). Most importantly it will force you to double check your conclusions – are you confident enough to say “Z is correct” instead of “I think Z is correct assuming A B C and  1 2 3?”

If you’re not, do you think hedging makes you look any smarter?

Integrity

It’s a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.
– George Bernanos

The other night, Uncle Engineer offered to pay off all my credit card debt and assume that debt himself. I’ll still owe the total balance, but I won’t be paying any interest in the time it takes me to pay him back.

Wow.

Doing a back of the napkin calculation – rounding what I owe up to $12k and averaging the interest rates out to 17% – it would take me roughly 5 years and $5k in interest paid to pay everything off. With the 0% interest rate this deal offers, I’ll save about a year of payments and $5,000.

It’s a no brainer, right? Five grand in pocket.

Still, it feels like cheating. I have a strong sense of honor and independence, and going this far into debt to a family member seems reckless and lazy, even though it’s the obvious best option financially. I actually had to deliberate for a while before accepting the offer, and even now I’m a little uneasy about the implications.

This is how I see it: unlike the credit card companies, I actually care what Uncle Engineer thinks of me, and I won’t let him down by failing to repay or being late on any of these payments. Like having an accountability partner at the gym or in business, I think knowing someone I know is aware of my debt will make me that much more motivated to pay it off.

There’s no take home message, here. Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you get offered help that’s so good you can’t not take it.

(Did shoulder press (75) and power clean (95) for the first time last night, and upped by squat to 145. These numbers will live on the Progress page from now on. Everything else is done and updated. I have set aside all day Saturday, and maybe Friday evening, to work on goals so they should all be updated then.)

Being Seen

Truth never damages a cause that is just.
– Mahatma Ghandi

One of the mistakes I made in my marriage was hiding my real beliefs in order to avoid conflict. I wasn’t as religious as my ex, and I spent a lot of time trying to find ways to cushion and sugar coat my thoughts about it.

Needless to say, that didn’t work.

We might have avoided a fight or two in the long term, sure. If I’d been more open, more firm in my opinions and less willing to compromise, things might have ended sooner – but that would have been a good thing. The man I am couldn’t make it work with the woman she was, and denying either of those things just prolonged things and made the fallout worse.

The past year I’ve been trying something different. I’ve been very honest about my beliefs, my lifestyle and my preferences. I tell people what I think, even when I suspect they won’t like it, and I try to make sure the people close to me know where I stand on things.

This has some massive benefits.

First, it prevents me from getting satisfaction from things I haven’t actually done. If my peers know just how successful I really am in my goals, I definitely can’t lie to myself about how far I’m getting. This is a risky play from a self-esteem standpoint. If I admit I’m going to boxing, I also have to admit I’ve never done it before and that I’m a rank amateur. Same’s true of salsa, rapping, writing and the other things I’ve tried to improve this year. Showing the truth of myself to others forces me to face it, and that can only be a good thing.

Second, it lets me get help. Talking about fighting got me a gym suggestion from a coworker – that’s the gym I go to now and I’m very happy with it. Talking about writing has got me suggestions and support from friends. Talking about selling the house got me advice from a coworker doing the same in this area, and talking about learning to ride a motorcycle got me a loaned copy of the law book and an offer for beginning lessons sometime. People can’t help you if they don’t know what you’re working on, and people love to help.

Finally, it helps me use fear of embarassment and do what works. If I told someone I respect that I’ll be somewhere or have something done, you’d better believe I’ll be there and it’ll be done. Vague plans and “I want to” instead of “I will” are great for managing expectations, but they’re poisonous to motivation.

This isn’t a call to brag, talk about yourself constantly or make grandiose plans to your friends and colleagues. It’s often best to say nothing at all. Rather, just stop trying to hide what you’re doing and who you are. Trust me, it’s freeing.

Say Hey

Networking is rubbish; have friends instead.
– Steve Winwood

Over the summer, I decided to learn to salsa. I took some private lessons and became almost decent, but my teacher kept telling me I needed to go out and dance socially in order to see real progress.

I’ll admit – I was pretty nervous. Go out in public specifically to do something I was bad at?

I tried to get several of my friends – guys and girls – to go with me, but it was on Friday night and far away and they didn’t know how and plans always fell through.

Eventually I got sick of it and went by myself.

When I got there, I didn’t know anybody, and I barely knew how to dance.

When I left, I had made a half dozen new friends (“See you next week?”, we asked each other. “See you next week.”), got farther with dancing than I had in a month of private lessons, and had an awesome memory.

The same thing has been happening at the gym, lately. I’m having a blast, learning, and most of all I’m meeting people – to the point where I get head nods and people calling my by name on my second or third time at class.

It’s happening with the meetups I’ve been going to, as well – getting good contacts and having fun.

I’m building a network of people working on the same things I am, both friends and useful associates.

This is all happening because of one simple rule – when you’re near a stranger, say “Hey, what’s up?”.

You know what I mean – that awkward pause where you’re standing near someone you don’t know and nothing’s really going on. You’re both making a choice – initiate contact, or awkwardly avoid looking at each other until something happens or one of you is able to drift away.

Time to stop the awkwardness. From now on, initiate contact. You don’t have to have anything to say after “Hey”. If the vibe is good, they’ll talk to you. If it isn’t, they’ll think of you as that nice person who said hey, and later contact will be even easier.

The sooner you do this, the better it goes. Later you can ask for their name, talk about what’s going on, make a connection – but opening communication the first time is 90% of the battle. Get in the habit of doing it automatically, every time, and you’ll be shocked how many more connections (real, useful ones) you make every day.

(I just received my copy of Writer’s Market 2014, bought with some Christmas gift cards. Next on the Writing goal is reading through it once, thoroughly, hoping to get an idea of where and how people get published.)