Don’t Label Me, Bro

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, and all the ships at sea, I present to you a classic. This quote is legen – wait for it –

We are what we frequently do. – Aristotle

DARY! How do you like them apples? This is a favorite of mine ’cause I come back to it when I find myself doing a lot of something I later somewhat regret (plowing through episodes of ‘How I Met Your Mother’), or when I find myself saying I’m something that I don’t think I am (as a Biomedical Engineer, I’m not researching commercially available tissue engineered skin equivalents, I’m testing medical devices), or when I find myself saying I’m something I later realize I actually am (I’m a blogger? I’m guess I’m right…).

It starts harmlessly. You meet a friend of a friend, or start chatting up your neighbor at the cafe counter. Eventually, “Hey man, so what do you do?” blurts out. You answer the question by sharing your day job (or lying) and possibly your hobbies or whatever you do in your down-time.

It ends harmfully. Stop right there. Take a step back. Listen to yourself answering that question. Those things you just said that you do? You are those things.

Picture it this way. Take those things, turn them into job-title-looking nouns, and then list them, comma-separated, below your name on your imaginary business card. You now have a few words associated with your name, letterally supporting your nominal identification. It’s one thing to think about the things you do each day and each week, but to take those same things and turn them into labels for yourself is like transforming the question, “What did you do Wednesday night?” into, “What kind of animal are you?”

After another look at those words below your name on your imaginary business card, how do they make you feel? Do you like them? Do you want them associated with your name? I mention labels, and I hear an instant backlash of, “You don’t KNOW me! I can’t be pigeon-holed into neat categories! I’m more complex than that! I’m more than that!” I’m sure you are. I’m sure you’re a great listener, a loyal friend, a fun-loving step-ish-mother to your fiance’s kid who you see every other weekend. But would you say you do those things with high frequency? Would you seriously say you are those things if you met somebody? Is that how you want to be remembered (besides smelling nice – it’s Vetiver by Givency)?

Those few words… if you don’t like any of ’em, what would you rather they be? Have an idea? I guess you better do that with some frequency. I’ll be honest, it’s harsher for me to read this than it is to write this. So now that I’ve found a life vector I’m happy with, I’ve refined my ‘product’ vision, written up ScrumOfOne stories that I’m getting done, and am focusing on the following platitude, which I’m taking on as more of a platypus an attitude:

Do more and more of fewer things, but more important things, and get better and better at each of them.

Those few words… how do you like yours?

How do you like them apples?

Supposing It Didn’t

I’m reading ‘The Te of Piglet’ by Benjamin Hoff, after thoroughly enjoying his ‘The Tao of Pooh’. Hoff is effectively teaching Taoism via Pooh and the gang, and though I found the first half of this book to be rather preachy, I’m getting to some really good stuff now. He starts his ‘The Upright Heart’ chapter with the following, taken from one of the Winnie the Pooh stories by A. A. Milne:

The wind was against them now, and Piglet’s ears streamed behind him like banners as he fought his way along, and it seemed hours before he got them into the shelter of the Hundred Acre Wood and they stood up straight again, to listen, a little nervously, to the roaring of the gale among the treetops.

“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”

“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.

Piglet was comforted by this, and in a little while they were knocking and ringing very cheerfully at Owl’s door.

Piglet is a worrier extraordinaire. Sure, he is a Very Small Animal, and he seems to use this as a crutch, but I’m not going to address that. I read the emboldened (so yes, emphasis mine) exchange above and was blown away at the simplicity of Pooh’s response.

Yes, fear is wired deep in our brains, but as a species, we’re no longer under the threat of lions and tigers and bears (oh my). For the majority of us in the first world, we’re doing alright in the food-clothing-shelter department. If we follow Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, fear is now from other things… beyond physiological survival and security (job included) to social ideas like belonging. How social are these fears? Seth Godin in ‘Tribes’ argues that we are less afraid of actual failure than we are of consequent criticism! A stern talking to? This is hardly an imminent threat to the squishy ball of cells that is you.

Because the things we fear are in the future, we can choose to be afraid of them. Or not.

Supposing those mostly social fears weren’t to happen? How would you walk around then? What doors would you knock on?

One Epic Thing Before You Die

Chicken feet. Ever had?

I’m pretty sure it’s a calorie-neutral food, since it takes as much energy to EAT it as there is IN it. It’s pretty fatty, lot of little bones, or cartilage, or whatever. Not sure why it’s a part of Dim Sum, but that’s what was offered this past weekend, and I’ve never had it, and you only live twice, right?

And then, somehow, the topic of whaling came up in our party of 13 – not entirely surprising (oh, it was from outfitting barbs at the end of the chopsticks, turning them into little harpoons). Anyway, my buddy says, before he dies, he wants to go on a whaling expedition and kill a whale himself. And then feed his family, friends, and a village. And himself. That’s pretty manly stuff, I’ll admit. He follows up this declaration with:

You’ve gotta do one epic thing before you die.

And then it hit me – I have had red bean ice cream before.

And then something way more significant hit me – what would mine be? It was exhilarating to think about. Killing a large beast to feed hundreds (dozens?) is both epic and bad-ass, but just not my cup of green tea. It doesn’t drive me. It doesn’t get me jumping out of bed, “Alright, Captain Ahab, time to whale for fish, or fish for whale, or just… whale. Whatever. I’m hungry.”

And then I thought a little more about the construct of his remark… one epic thing… one epic thing. Let’s address the grandiosity of the thing before the singularity of it. It’s gotta be big. BIG. Bordering on ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. Aim for the bleachers. Sure, there are fewer people after the over-sized goal, and the nature of those things is that the pay-off is larger. Yet, is this what we mean by epic? If my understanding of epic is correct, maybe we really mean something hella-crazy-wikked cool, or whatever the kids say nowadays after I yell at them to get off my lawn as I wave my harpoon cane. I’m going to fathom that whatever this thing is for me, it’s the most cool/epic if it most aligns with my purpose / life path.

And then there’s the one-ness of it. One? ONE? Only one epic thing? After I accomplish this singular event… that’s it? Is everything downhill from there? I can’t ever do that again? Do I spend the rest of my life saying, “Yeah, I did that one epic thing back then, yep, I’m awesome,” or another chest-pounding phrase? Or do I just feel it as an other-dimensional warmth and confidence to do whatever since I pulled off that one epic thing? The idea of the best being behind me is semi-depressing. Here’s an ideal: do the epic thing not just once, but each day / all the time.

And then we can turn the “one epic thing” into the “all the time awesome thing”.

And then… you die.

New Year’s Resolutions Suck

Some time around a couple of New Year’s Eves ago, I became happily resolved in my resolution that Resolutions suck. I mean, I don’t mean to offend either of you, Father Time and Baby With Sash, you guys have a good thing going. What better marker than (basically) the Winter Solstice to celebrate longer days and the fact we’ve made it through another Winter as a species (in the Northern Hemisphere… caipirinhas be chillin’ with Caipirinhas in Rio). High-fives all around, can’t wait for that harvest.

Survival worries aside, you two have built in a Natural Retrospective, although the focus seems to be on the Adaptive aspect. Dah boat a yews are off to a great start… we’ve got a good thing going here… but I’ve still got some beef (especially with you, Baby With Sash, sashes are so last… century). Why are you setting us up to fail?

This whole thing is well-intentioned – getting us to write lists that are then framed in our hearts to keep for the entire year to become better people. But from whatever cloud you’re sitting, sipping champagne and blowing bugles, you’re laughing at us as we go along with your cruel and unusual punishment. I’d like to meet somebody who has truthfully pulled off their list of New Year’s Resolutions – each one; they deserve a Nobel Prize in Discipline and/or Stubbornness. At least the folks doing Lent have a fighting chance since it’s a MUCH shorter time to keep some resolution. I’ll bet on those guys any day over some schmuck who says they really believe they can keep something up for a year.

So, gentlemen, allow me to submit a modification to the impractical prank you’re peddling while keeping the intent:

Give Resolutions a chance: shrink that time box down from a year to a fortnight.

And make them smaller, so that you could pull them off in two weeks. And make them clear, so that you know when you’re done.

Action Expresses Priorities

Was Mahatma Gandhi a ScrumMaster? The title of this post is a quote of his and it perfectly describes the Sprint Backlog – the set of things you’re doing now, which happen to be the highest priority things based on business value (personal value for ScrumOfOne).

And check this. He was a leader with great influence, in service of others, yet no managerial authority. This sounds a lot like a ScrumMaster. Hmm…