The Gorillas

File under "Get a Smaller Plate"

Today is a glorious, glorious day. It’s 45 degrees and raining, but in my mind the shutters are open, the birds are singing, and the flowers are blooming.

It’s opening day ladies and gentlemen.

I love baseball. I love everything about baseball. I love the precision, the timelessness, the probability, the statistics, the symmetry, the history books, the records, the asterisks, the open ended and infinite nature of each game, the $10 beers, the landscaping, the human error, the quest for perfection, and the quest for being perfect 3 out of 10 tries. I love baseball.

I also have grown to love the Baltimore Orioles, the loveable losers who will exceed expectations by winning half of their games this year. But whenever I think of the Orioles, or especially go to a game, I think of a tradition that is inexplicable to me. When I ask native Baltimoreans where the tradition comes from, the answer is invariably “I don’t know. That's just always been done.”

“That’s the way we’ve always done it here.” I’m sure you’ve railed against that disclaimer at least once in your life. But despite having enough commentary about it already out there, we’ll take a ‘Perfect’ Antidote view of the statement by starting with a parable I’m sure you heard before.

“There are five gorillas in a cage in a zoo that get fed bananas on a regular basis. One day the zoo keeper ties a banana to a string at the top of the cage and places a ladder underneath the banana. As soon as one of the gorillas goes near the banana the zoo keeper blasts all of the gorillas with ice cold water from a hose. After a week of being sprayed anytime they go near the banana, they cease to even attempt the effort.

At the end of the week one of the gorillas is moved to another cage and replaced with a new one. After a few minutes the new one attempts to grab the banana. But this time, instead of being sprayed by the zoo keeper, the other gorillas attack him to prevent them all from being sprayed with water. The new gorilla doesn’t know why he shouldn’t grab for the banana, but he is sure not to try again. The next day a new gorilla replaces an original one and the same story ensues, this time with the first replacement joining in on the beating of the new gorilla despite not understanding why.

This goes on until all of the original gorillas have been replaced, and when the new gorilla attempts to grab the prize he is mercilessly attacked by the others despite any of them knowing why, or ever having been sprayed with cold water. Why do they still attack?

Because that’s the way it’s always been done.”

How often in everyday settings do we, without a second thought, do something because of habit without really knowing the basis for those actions, or how they will support our goals? We often think, or are told, we have to do certain things in certain ways to achieve the outcome, because we are told that is the correct way, even if that way takes greater effort. Thinking back to a previous post, it’s the outcome that’s important, not the means. Does the activity have to be done a certain way, or even at all to achieve the outcome? Are you spending needless effort just because “that’s the way it’s always been done?”



So, what about the tradition? Well that brings us to the song of the day.

Song of the Day
In honor of questioning our way of doing things, humane treatment of gorillas, cakes on the griddle, and a song inexplicably played during the seventh inning stretch at Camden Yards, the song of the day is John Denver’s “Thank God I'm a Country Boy.”

Play Ball everyone, Play Ball.

The Ditch Digger

File under “Meet Yourself”




Ted Knight’s statement, meant as a derogatory dismissal, is actually a prophetic commentary on what I like to call the “Entropy of Endeavor.” The concept being that not everyone can achieve the same successes in the same fields. The world requires a distribution of endeavors to achieve progress. People often navigate towards efforts that are aligned with their interests, but more importantly have easier paths of resistance. It’s like water finding the unoccupied spaces when poured into a bowl of small pebbles. And those paths are based on our capabilities and limitations skill-wise as well as the saturation of those paths by others. There is an even distribution of careers and efforts all of which are noble from the garbage collector to the doctor, from the CEO to fry cook. The problem comes when we spend effort to achieve success in endeavors where many others are, our capabilities don't align, and success is harder to come by. We struggle and we toil in areas that are saturated with others’ efforts, when in reality happiness and success can be found in other pursuits. We spend effort digging in areas in which success is difficult to achieve.

What is your ditch?

So what?! So let's dance!!

Song of the Day
In honor of finding an easier path to success, and in dancing like Rondey Dangerfield everytime I hear this song, the song of the day is Journey's "Anyway You Want It."

The Hubble

Galaxy M74  Source: Hubblesite.org

Believe it or not (or care or not), not too long ago the universe was understood to be exponentially smaller than our current understanding of it is. Prior to 1925, our galaxy, the Milky Way, was thought to encompass the entirety of the universe. At that time it was still mind-bogglingly large enough to contain hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of stars. Marcia Bartusiak wrote in “The Day We Found the Universe” that:

“The cosmos consisted solely of a vast collection of stars, a disk shaped distribution somewhat flattened, with the Sun situated in an honored place near the center. Beyond that, said most astronomers, was simply a void…”                                                                                                                         

But that all changed, in one of the greatest discoveries of all time, when Edwin Hubble sent a paper to the American Astronomical Society Meeting in New York on January 1st, 1925 identifying the Milky Way as only one of maybe millions of “Island Universe” galaxies dotting a far vaster landscape than could have been imagined.
                                                                        
Unfortunately, that is a simple way of viewing the transition in understanding in the late19th century and early 20th century. In reality the concept of “Island Universes” had been proposed and hotly debated for more than 50 years prior to the “discovery” by Hubble. This was not to say Hubble was not brilliant and accomplished, but rather that his studiousness and attention to detail enabled him to build on the successes of many people before him. Astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, lens makers, and a whole host of other characters laid the ground work that enabled Hubble to identify the shift in a distant stars brightness and correlate it to a distance far greater than was understood. If Hubble wasn’t the one who figured it out, would anyone have? Maybe. Maybe not. But there is no doubt the timing was ripe.

The point you ask, is that greatness often does not stand alone. Scientific break-throughs and individual achievements rarely are a result of insulated action or hard work alone. Determining what has been done previously so as not to repeat the effort is critical to success.

How can you rely on the successes of others to reduce your effort?

Song of the Day
In honor of Edwin Hubble, those who paved the way, and really bad 80’s rock videos, the song of the day is The Church’s “Under the Milky Way.”

The Disclaimer

No, but it may be more fun.


All kidding aside, this blog is not intended to be a polemic for the slacker in each of us.  I would never encourage anyone not to follow their dreams, or not to stay late at work to improve a presentation, or not to study each night for three weeks for a final exam.  And in no way do I encourage passive, Blutarski-esque laziness, or advocate a world where we don’t keep score, or have winners and losers. The difference, as we will see, is in how we tread the fine line between laziness and proactive management of our effort-to-success ratio.  For I am acutely aware that if no one strived to be an astronaut, we would still stare at the moon each night wondering what could be (or what it's made of).  My hope is the readers of this blog take a look at their lives and ask “When is ‘Good’, good enough?"

Song of the Day
In honor of "Do you mind if we dance with yo dates?", the song of the day is the Isley Brothers' "Shout". as performed by Otis Day and the Knights (by the way, the greatest wedding song of all time, hands down, no question, end of discussion).

Have a great weekend!!

The Thursday Theory - 3.24.2011

I swear my wife is one of the funniest people I've ever known.  She has a dry, sarcastic wit that completely catches you off guard sometimes.  This week's 'I have a Theory Thursday' post is in honor of her and something she said several weeks ago in the middle of a plumbing catastrophe.

I Have a Theory...

...that nothing good is EVER described by the word 'Seepage.'

(You are currently going through every permutation of the word 'Seepage' in a sentence and you are coming to the same conclusion, aren't you?)

Let me hear your theories!

Song of the Day
In thinking about the song of the day recently I thought of a song that I always considered a great song to run to.  Then I thought about all of the great running songs and I decided to share with you the top 10 greatest running songs of all time:

10. 'Diamonds and Guns' - Transplants
9. 'Body Count' - Ice T & Body Count
8. 'The Brews' - NoFX
7. 'All These Things That I Have Done' - The Killers
6. 'Vasoline' - Stone Temple Pilots
5. 'Right Here, Right Now' - Fatboy Slim
4. 'Knights of Cydonia' - Muse
3.'Goin' Against Your Mind' - Built to Spill
2. 'Lose Yourself' - Eminem;  Only #2 because it's a better pre-workout, get you amped up song
1. 'Girlfriend' - Avril Lavigne;  I'm not proud of this choice, but it's hard to argue with fact.


So in honor of great running songs, and the counter-intuitive nature of the 6 Habits, the song of the day is Built to Spill's 'Goin' Against Your Mind.'

The 6 Habits

So after all of the intro stuff I’ve posted thus far, we’re finally here at the take-away practices from this blog. I call them the Six Habits for Marginally Effective (yet Happy) People.  So here they are, in particular order:


1. Meet Yourself – Our effort is derived from our understanding of our own capabilities. By understanding our capabilities and limitations we can better align our efforts to what we have the capacity to achieve.

2. Set the Bar Low (and Barely Exceed the Bar) – Our effort is based on the need to meet other’s expectations. By committing to less we can actually ultimately please others (and ourselves) more.

3. Get a Smaller Plate – Our effort is based on our productivity-derived self-worth. By understanding that being busy does not equal being productive we can make sure the activities we do support the endstate.

4. Procrastinate – Our effort is based on our time management skills. By understanding the time required to complete a task we are freed from over analyzing, thinking, and stressing about the outcome.

5. Avoid the Machine – Our effort is based on our susceptibility to the allure of the perfect state. By understanding why we succumb to the self-help machine we can be much happier with the state we’re in.

6. Cage the Rage – Effort is based on our emotional state in achieving success. By understanding how “failure” affects us emotionally, we can reduce the stress we feel when perceiving certain outcomes.

The rest of the posts from here on out will be stories and examples that show the benefit of perfecting these habits. And I sincerely hope other’s share their examples as well. Next up: The Disclaimer.

But first, the…

Song of the Day
In honor of the passing of the legendary blues and boogie-woogie piano player, Pinetop Perkins, the song of the day is Pinetop Perkins’ “Mojo Workin’.”  Stick around if you can through the whole song, or at least check out around the 2 minute mark.  It's pretty amazing to see someone in their 90's jam.

The Effort

So right now we're working through the basis of the 'perfect' antidote philosophy and so far we've briefly talked about averageness and the realities of achieving success, and now we come to the effort we expend to achieve those goals.

First of all, we'll define Effort as the physical, mental, or emotional expenditure required to do work or achieve something. Effort may also encompass our physical reactions to certain factors such as stress of failure, or time pressures. All to achieve a certain level of success.

Let's call that success, "Greatness,"  which we'll define as an ideal state of being in regards to any aspect of your life. It is a completely self-defined state. However, in each case it is the ideal ultimate state, whether in your career, hobbies, relationships, beauty, self-worth, whatever. Examples may include a perfect beach body, promotion at work, the perfect relationship, a .400 batting average, acing the final exam, or the perfect recital.

The effort to achieve that may take many forms. Whether it's stress at work, time studying, pleasing others, or emotions in response to failure or negative situations, we all expend effort every day.  So before we can begin thinking about what drives us to achieve greatness, what the problems associated with our ambition are, and how we can begin to change or reduce our effort, we need to understand the six components from which our effort is derived:

- Our understanding of our own capabilities
- Our need to meet others’ expectations
- Our productivity-derived self-worth
- Our time management skills
- Our susceptibility to the allure of the perfect state
- Our emotional state in achieving success

Now it starts to get fun, because next up are the 6 Habit's of Marginally Effective (yet happy) People.

 Song of the Day
In honor of the pressure to expend effort every day, and in honor of great songs in great movies, the song of the day is Queen's "Under Pressure".

The Endstate, Part 2

As a young Army Lieutenant in an aviation unit I made the mistake of telling the aviation Battalion Commander that we needed two Blackhawk helicopters for the upcoming mission. At which point he efficiently told me that was incorrect. What I really needed was to move 22 people from one point to another. THAT was the goal. The means by which that would happen would be based on multiple factors, none of which included my “expert” opinion. Since then I have been careful to distinguish ‘means’ from the goal. But I see a lot of the confusion of the two when we spend effort that has nothing to do with what our ultimate goal is, and that brings us to core thought #2:

2. If “success” is achieved, most often the rewards don’t equate to the amount of effort expended.

We’re always told that hard work and perseverance is the gold standard for success, when in reality it may only give us the experience of working hard and persevering. The core thought results from two things: We may not have understood the endstate to begin with and couldn’t figure out the actual effort required to achieve it, or it wasn’t the endstate we wanted anyway. In either case we incorrectly understood what we truly wanted. We confused the effort with the endstate, and the means we think we wanted, may not be the easiest, nor the most effective way to achieve our goals.

We’ll share lots of different examples of this, but in each case our goal will be to lower the effort to success ratio and we’ll talk about that next.

Song of the Day

In honor of the NCAA Basketball Tournament (the Big Dance), and the full moon being closest to the earth on its elliptical orbit since 1983 tonight, the song of the day is a live version of Van Morrison’s "Moondance". Check out moonrise around 7:30 pm in the mid-atlantic.

The Thursday Theory...3/17/2011

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

First of all congratulations to JC W. from Arlington, VA for correctly guessing the movie line from "Tommy Boy" in the last post. 

I’m going to take a little break today and start a recurring feature that we’ll call “I Have a Theory Thursdays.” But in true perfect antidote fashion I’m not going to actually commit to doing this each Thursday. Just setting expectations.

I am fascinated by people’s random theories about the way the world works (that really have nothing to do with the way the world works). We all have them, I certainly do. What I love is that no matter how ridiculous they are, there is an ounce of truth in there somewhere, even if it’s just experiential truth for a couple people. I think we can all relate. So we’ll start off with the first one today.

I Have a Theory…

…that the relevance of time is directly proportional to your distance from the equator.

The shorter the distance, the less relevant time is. Seriously, they don’t call it Aloha time for nothin’.


So share your theories either in a comment here or by emailing yourperfectantidote@gmail.com at any time and i'll try to get them posted.


Song of the Day
In honor of Green Beer, Clan McSweeny, and Tommy O'Shea, the song of the day is Flogging Molly's "Drunken Lullabies".

Intro: The Endstate-Part 1

I've been in grad school for a long time. In fact, it feels like I'm on the seven year plan. A lot of people go to school for seven years, you may say. Yes, but those people are called doctors.*

A couple of years ago in class, our professor went over the answers to our mid-terms having passed out the graded exams. As the class was dismissed there was one student who approached the professor and began vehemently disagreeing with her grade. She was obviously distressed having put in a lot of time studying, yet having not achieved her goals. She left the room without resolution and was clearly spending emotional effort. There were most likely internal and external forces that defined her endstate success by that grade.

I hoped that someday she would have perspective on her situation and she would see that the grade would have much less effect on her future than many other factors. But that didn’t change her immediate feeling of effort not equating to success. I walked away thinking that we often don't understand the endstate we're striving for, and it led me to two core thoughts. The first being:

1. Despite considerable effort, “success” may never be achieved.

First of all, we don't have to define "success" too stringently. We can just call it any desired endstate to which we commit effort. And this core thought is a result of so many different things: we may not truly understand what it takes to achieve the endstate, we may not have the capabilities to achieve the endstate, or there are other random factors in our lives that prevent achievement. In any case, we often struggle without understanding why we're not succeeding, why we don't escape the bounds of our current state.

Source

Think of a mountain with “Good” at the bottom and “Great” at the top. To achieve greatness you must exert effort to roll a boulder up the mountain. Only by getting the boulder all the way to the top do you achieve your desired outcome, at great effort nonetheless. Anything short of that, no matter the effort expended, the boulder rolls back to the bottom, or back to a state of “Good.” Like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, we are condemned to an eternity of rolling the boulder uphill over and over again only to have it roll back to “Good” every time. Or like the Coyote who never gets the Roadrunner despite great effort. Pick your analogy.

We'll talk about the second core thought in the next post.

*The first person to comment with the name of the movie the line above is from will receive a free Sisyphus “That’s How I Roll” T-shirt (should you actually want one). For the record that's not me in the picture.

Song of the Day

In honor of rolling a stone and the pressure of ideal, perfect states, the song of the day is The Rolling Stone’s “Mother’s Little Helper.”

Jack Squat

In this, the inaugural post of Your 'Perfect' Antidote, i realize it's impossible to explain my entire philosophy in a few short paragraphs.  So I won't even try.  I will only harken back to a pop-culture clip from many years ago to set us along our journey.




Those are harsh words from easily the worst fictional motivational speaker of all time and yet it’s funny because the thought rings a certain truth to us.   The “what do you want to be when you grow up” questions asked of us as children were always answered with the loftiest of goals – a doctor, astronaut, president, professional sports player, etc.  Yet only a miniscule percentage of us achieve the pinnacle of those professions much less any profession.  So what happened?  Why in the years between such proclamations and professional reality did most of us ‘Fail’ to achieve greatness?  Did we not try hard enough?  Did we not want it badly enough?  Of course we did.  The answer is that is wasn’t meant to happen.  Not in a predestined sort of way, but in that we are all different.  We have different capabilities and limitations, different life circumstances, and a host of seen and unseen influences that shape our future achievements and potential.  And this goes for every aspect of our lives, not just professional, but in relationships, health and fitness, appearance, and intelligence too. Just as most of us do not reach the pinnacle of our career fields, most of us are not the most thoughtful spouses or friends, we do not have movie star looks, we have high blood pressure, or food goes straight to our hips.  The point is, most of us are average in just about everything we do or are.

So what you ask? If we're all average, why do you need a guide to 'achieve' averageness?

Because we all spend an unbelievable amount of time and considerable effort to not be average, yet we all still are.  And we'll spend the rest of our time figuring out why that is.  Along the way we'll learn about what that effort looks like, tips and tools for reducing that effort, and we'll share our experiences in our quest for averageness.

 Plus there will be lots of random information.  So let's kick it off with the Song of the Day.  


Song of the Day
In honor of reducing emotional effort, we'll start with a favorite - Modest Mouse's 'Float On'. Because we'll all be ok, even if things end up a bit too heavy.