I was recently watching a syndicated episode of How I Met Your Mother and in it the lead character was dating a girl who played bass guitar in a reggae band. He and his friends proceeded to talk about how cool female bassists were, and that led to the weekly theory.
I Have a Theory…
…that bands with female bassists are two times cooler than bands without female bassists.
Top Ten
In honor of the theory, the top ten songs by bands with a female bassist are:
10. Lazy Eye – Silversun Pickups (Nikki Moninger)
9. It's a Shame About Ray – The Lemonheads (Juliana Hatfield)
8. Tomorrow, Wendy – Concrete Blonde (Johnette Napolitano)
7. Top of the World – Shonen Knife (Michi Nakatani)
6. Pretend We're Dead – L7 (Jennifer Finch)
5. Drown – Smashing Pumpkins (D'Arcy Wretzky)
4. Violet – Hole (Kristin Pfaff)
3. Our Lips are Sealed – The Go-Go’s (Kathy Valentine)
2. Teenage Riot – Sonic Youth (Kim Gordon)
1. Gigantic – The Pixies (Kim Deal)
Song of the Day
In honor of any bassist named Kim, the song of the day is, of course, the Pixies' "Gigantic".
The NFL Draft is tonight and the typical manufactured drama this year is compounded by real-world confusion and multi-billion dollar business reality. For those of you who don’t know, the NFL ownership is in a bitter labor battle with their workforce, the players. It’s a battle over money, rights, freedom to work, and freedom to operate a business. It involves the courts, appeals, motions, lockouts, and a whole host of complications of how to proceed. But of those who didn’t know that, you probably didn’t even care. And that’s ok. You can breathe a sigh of relief because I won’t get into a discussion of the rights of labor or ownership here. Because honestly, I don’t care either.
But what I do find interesting is the comment that many of the players will be significantly impacted by the lockout because they live paycheck to paycheck, because they have, in essence, lost their jobs. Now most of you are currently rolling your eyes and playing your miniature violins. I don’t disagree. This isn’t a defense of their financial woes, rather this is a commentary on human nature’s tendency to “fill the plate.” Many of these players make multi-million dollar salaries yet are so spread thin that they can’t survive losing their paychecks. We tend to think that scale of magnitude changes our ability to live within our means. That by having more, we want less. But practical experience shows that to be false. A year after getting a raise we can’t fathom how we used to make it on the old salary. Somehow we manage to fill our plate, or exhaust all resources, despite the magnitude. I would argue that the same percentage of people who make $30k a year live paycheck to paycheck as those who make $100k, or even $2 million.
I'll talk more about this but the concept doesn’t only apply to money. It applies to space, time, and tasks. Just because we have a capacity for more doesn’t mean we should take it. Identifying what is just enough is the key.
Song of the Day
Someone showed me the link to this video today and it only re-affirmed what I always knew. The Beastie Boys are the greatest band ever. In honor of awesomeness, the song of the day is the Beastie Boys' "Make Some Noise". Comment on your favorite cameo!
File under Set the Bar Low (and barely exceed the bar)
So this post is a little personal and a little embarrassing. I’m not exactly proud of what I am about to recount, but it is the epitome of setting the bar low and it is what truly opened my eyes to the benefit of managing expectations.
When I was in college and much of my early adult life (who are we kidding, even sometimes today) I was horrible about remembering birthdays and anniversaries of family members, friends, and close relatives. While my sisters on the other hand were always prompt with a card or a phone call. I would even get reminders from my family of impending dates and I would still forget to send a card or make the call. Either I was too self-absorbed, had a bad memory, God forbid didn’t care enough, or a combination of all three. But what I was inadvertently doing was setting expectations of my thoughtfulness (or lack thereof). It became commonplace for my grandmother to receive birthday cards and phone calls from my sisters but not from me. It soon enough wasn’t even a thought that I hadn’t remembered. Then one day I did it. I bought a card, wrote a heartfelt note, and sent it on. Actually getting it there on time too! The response was more unexpected than I could have imagined. My grandmother prominently displayed my card in front of everyone else’s. She told all of her friends of her “thoughtful” grandson, and even bragged of my deed to my sisters when they called to wish her happy birthday. They understandably were livid. Although not proud of my lack of thoughtfulness I learned an important fact. The perception of my thoughtfulness was relative to the expectation that I had set.
My intent wasn’t then, nor is it now, to purposefully show a lack of caring or concern. And I wouldn’t advocate setting the bar low when it comes to people’s hearts, but I did learn something from the whole event. I spent the same effort my sister’s did in buying a card, writing a note, and mailing it, yet I received a different result because of the expectation that had been previously set. That concept does not apply only to birthday cards. You can magnify the impact and perception of an action solely by limiting the effort or experience before-hand.
This is precisely why we rush with joy to throw on hoodies and jackets in the fall when the temperature drops to 55 degrees, yet walk around in t-shirts and shorts in the spring when the temperature rises to the same 55 degrees. There has been a lack of experience of colder or warmer temperatures respectively and the perception (and anticipation) is new and exciting.
Song of the Day I heard this song the other day and quite unexpectedly I found myself singing it all day long. In honor of low expectations, and slow dancing like a 13 year old, the song of the day is The Dells' "Oh, What a Night".
Recently, while my wife and I were traveling, she saw a shoe shine stand in the airport and asked if people actually have someone else shine their shoes. I dismissed it claiming that some people are really busy and if they have an opportunity and are waiting for a flight or a train, it’s not a bad idea. I’m here to say I’m wrong. Her feelings were confirmed when a co-worker provided our next weekly theory:
I Have a Theory…
…that you can never rely on a man who doesn’t shine his own shoes.
I mean really?! Are you that busy?!
Have a great weekend everyone! Let’s go Capitals!!
Song of the Day
In honor of shoes, the song of the day is Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes”. Graceland - definitely in the top 25 albums of all time.
File under Set the Bar Low (and barely exceed the bar)
I heard a song the other day on the radio that got me thinking about how we associate meaning solely based on the messenger, and thus create expectations. Here are the lyrics:
“Up, up, up and down Turn, turn, turn around Round, round, round about And over again Gun, gun, son of a gun You are the only one Who makes any difference what I say The sun shines in the bedroom when we play The rain it always starts when you go away”
This song is titled “Son of a Gun” and was originally written and performed by a late 80’s alternative band from Scotland – The Vaseline’s. However it may be more readily recognized when it was covered by a troubled heroin addict who blew his head off with a shotgun because he couldn’t meet the perceived expectations of his fans. It was performed by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, and that is the song I heard.
Source
Cobain had a devastating inability to reconcile the band's mainstream success with his personal antipathy towards that success. In his suicide note he wrote:
“I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things.”
Author Chuck Klosterman writes in his book Eating the Dinosaur that Cobain’s most depressing artistic weakness was that “he could not stop himself from caring about people who would only appreciate his work if he were a mainstream failure…and that was never going to happen.” He felt he couldn’t meet the expectations of a fan base he wanted, because of the expectations of a fan base he didn’t want.
But this isn’t about what expectations can do to a person, and this isn’t a warning of the danger of expectations, for it wasn’t expectations that killed him. His deep-seeded inadequacies, heroin, and a shotgun did a fine job by themselves. Rather it is about how those expectations manifest themselves in us. What I can understand is a feeling of expectations of a group of people you never intended to provide for in the first place. Those expectations are based on past experience and with a limited set of knowledge of the person or situation.
Take the song “Son of a Gun”. The Vaseline’s version is a lullaby, a matter-of-fact, stream of conscious reflection of an innocent time we can all relate to. The Nirvana version is a dark, ironic song of our loss of innocence. Or is it? Maybe we just imply meaning to it based on the messenger. We associate conflicted misery with Cobain - an inability to enjoy life. There MUST be some deeper meaning to it, we reason. I do it, we all do it. If Miley Cyrus sings that song I abhor it, because it must be a superficial, commercial ploy intended for the masses. If Nirvana sings it, it becomes one of my favorite songs of all time because it must be ART! Or maybe Cobain just really loved the song and was thinking of his wife and daughter every time he sung it.
The point is that Cobain could sing Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” and we would interpret it as rant against the affluence in the US and the antipathy towards the plight in the rest of the world. Those are expectations based on the messenger and they manifest themselves in our lives more often than we think.
Song of the Day
The songs of the day are the Vaselines’ and Nirvana’s versions of “Son of a Gun”.
File under Set the Bar Low (and barely exceed the bar)
So why now are we even concerned about meeting others' expectations?Why do we care?Why can’t we do what we know needs to be done and not worry about what others expect us to do?Although there have been thousands of motivational studies, the answer sometimes remains a mystery and this medical study demonstrates that.
An Australian behavioral study described in British Medical Journal in 1997 studied medical prescribing behavior relative to expectations.Of 169 patients presenting with similar conditions, those who expected to receive medications were nearly three times as likely to receive the medicine, than those who did not expect medication.Why? Everyone presented with the same conditions and either needed medicine or not.The rationally thinking doctors should have leveled the ratio of prescriptions despite a patient’s expectations.But that’s not what was observed.Those who thought they should have medicine either inferred, intimated, or demanded medication in ways that medical professionals gave in to.Or, flipping the analogy, if prescription was appropriate, then those that did not have expectations of it were not provided with needed medication.
In either case, medical providers were influenced by expectations and sought to appease individuals for reasons unknown.This demonstrates that expectations are clearly not analogous to reality, and humans have an innate need to please people, sometimes without any benefit to their desired endstate.
Song of the Day In honor of those crazy Aussies, the greatest Australian rock band, and bringing back the 'black tank top tucked into jeans' look, the song of the day is AC/DC's "Thunderstruck."
British Medical Journal. 1997. Prescribing behaviour in clinical practice: patients' expectations and doctors' perceptions of patients' expectations—a questionnaire study. 350:520-523. (30 August)
I have recently spent several days in Austin, TX for work and it brings me back to my Texas roots. Love this place. But I discovered a new theory I thought I would share.
I Have a Theory…
...that the cleanliness of a Mexican restaurant is inversely proportional to the quality of food.
I’m not sure why, and maybe I don’t want to know. By the way, that does not hold true for Chinese restaurants.
So being in Texas got me thinking about the top ten states. And here they are:
10. Virginia
9. Maryland
8. New York
7. North Carolina
6. Montana
5. New Mexico
4. Colorado
3. Texas
2. Florida
1. California
Sorry Virginia, but at least you made the list. (That’s right. I’m talking about you Jersey!)
Hope you’re having a great weekend, even if you’re spending it in the Garden(?) State.
Song of the Day
In honor of the Garden State movie soundtrack, the song of the day is the Shins’ “New Slang.”
File under Set the Bar Low (and barely exceed the bar)
So what does setting the bar low actually look like? Here is an example of the benefits of reducing expectations. Please forgive the blatant stereotypes.
Scenario #1: It’s Saturday morning and you tell your wife that you can’t go to the mall today with her because you are going to mow the lawn, fix the toilet, and reorganize the garage. She leaves and when she comes back she finds you watching the football game having accomplished exactly what you have said. Although both of you are pleased with your productivity, you’re actions are not entirely notable.
Scenario #2: It’s Saturday morning and you tell your wife that you can’t go to the mall today with her because you are going to reorganize the garage. She leaves and when she comes back she finds you watching the football game having already organized the garage, as well as mowed the lawn, and fixed the toilet. You are so proud of your initiative and hard work that you show her just how well the toilet flushes now with great enthusiasm. Your wife is thrilled with you for being attentive and responsible.
Scenario #3: It’s Saturday morning and you tell your wife that you can’t go to the mall today with her because you are going to mow the lawn, fix the toilet, re-organize the garage, and get the oil changed in the cars. She leaves and when she comes back she finds you watching the football game having done everything but change the oil in the cars. Although you have done a lot, she thinks to herself that you shouldn’t be watching TV because there are things to do. And likewise you feel a sense of guilt about it that sticks around for a long time.
In each scenario you accomplished the same exact tasks, but the perception of your accomplishments was affected by the expectations. Your feelings of happiness and self-worth, as well as your spouse’s perception, was positively affected by your committing to do less. You actually derived more satisfaction out of a consistent level of work, by SAYING LESS!
THAT is ‘setting the bar low’. Not necessarily doing less, just not committing to doing more.
Let me hear how you set the bar low.
Song of the Day
My wife often reminds me that I have said “This is one of my all-time favorite songs” for at least 800 different songs. Exaggeration or not, this one is top 50 easily. In honor of complicating complications, underrated songwriters, and our need to hold on to someone, the song of the day is Sebadoh’s “On Fire.”
File under Set the Bar Low (and barely exceed the bar)
“Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” – Alexander Pope
I think I’ll spend a couple of posts on "setting the bar low." Let me say right now, they’re probably not going to be very good.
See how easy it is?
In semi-seriousness though it’s amazing to me how expectations of ourselves and others drive so much un-needed effort and stress. We dismiss the thought of setting the bar low as a funny mantra that can’t actually be followed, or if it is, with disastrous effect. I often hear: “That’s so true! But you don’t really mean that do you?”
But what is setting the bar low? It’s really nothing more than an aggressive form of managing expectations.
It’s easy to see, and much more accepted, when we manage emotional expectations; when we caution not to get our hopes up too high or sink too low. But what about in how we manage the expectations others have in us? That, we’re not so good at. We have a need to please, a need to be liked, and a need to be trusted that drives us often to commit to more than we are capable of achieving at work, at home, and in relationships.
There is a perfectly acceptable phrase in the consulting world: Under Promise, and Over Deliver. It’s nothing more than an equation: X + more = good. Look at the inverse: Over Promise and Under Deliver. X + less = bad. Why is that straight forward common sense approach so stigmatized in a negative light in our personal lives? Why is realistically committing to do less frowned upon? When do we spend un-needed efforts that don’t truly achieve our endstate and feel guilty when we fail?
Setting the bar low was the first “habit” I realized that started me down this path. In the next few posts I’ll talk about that and we’ll talk about some examples of why we have expectations, what they look like, how irrational they can be, and how we can set the bar low.
Song of the Day
In honor of a pretty good song that has nothing to do with this post, the song of the day is Architecture in Helsinki's "Heart it Races" as performed by Philly-based Dr. Dog.
File under Set the Bar Low (and Barely Exceed the Bar)
Let me tell you about the transition from winter to spring to summer in our nation’s capital: temperature above 50...some tourists on the metro...cherry blossoms bloom...lots of tourists on the metro...95 degrees with 100% humidity...lots of sweaty tourists on the metro.
So as I was stuck behind a family of four standing two wide on the metro escalator in the morning rush hour commute I heard the 5 year old ask her mother "do we have to go to the 'errand' space museum today?" It wasn't hard to comprehend exactly what she meant by the disappointment in her voice. Understandably so, as she believed she was faced with a day of learning about grocery shopping and picking up the dry cleaning. But as her mother attempted to enunciate the phrase more clearly it got me thinking about expectations because she was about to undoubtedly have a surprisingly good day.
I was thinking not so much in the way we develop or set expectations (we’ll talk enough about that soon), but in how we communicate them. It was not the parents' intent to purposely deceive their child by setting the bar low (although good job if they did). They conveyed something to their kid that was so natural to them, "Air and Space", yet it was foreign to her 5 year old ears. They took for granted her understanding, or more importantly that she wouldn’t misunderstand. Fortunately it worked out well, as that day may have inspired the next Amelia Earhardt or Sally Ride (but probably not).
But what if it was the other way around? What if she dreamt of staring in awe at the Spirit of St. Louis or the Lunar Rover only to discover she would be learning about going to the bank or the drug store? The result may not have been so pleasant. Our stress levels are directly tied to not only how we set expectations for others, but also in how they understand them. We may work carefully to craft the message, yet ultimately fail because of how we communicate it.
How did you communicate expectations today?
Let me hear what your favorite Smithsonian is and why.
Song of the Day
In honor of communicating expectations, the Smithsonian Institution, and punk cover super-bands, the song of the day is Elton John’s “Rocket Man” as performed by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.
In addition to being the coolest name ever for a hypothetical rock band, a cytokine storm is the biological equivalent of “Too Much of a Good Thing.” Briefly, cytokines are molecules that play a major role in fighting infection by stimulating immune cells. However, they also stimulate those immune cells to produce more cytokines in a positive feedback loop. The body normally down-regulates this production as needed, but in some infections the feedback loop is not broken resulting in the body being attacked by overwhelming numbers of its own immune cells. It's called a Cytokine Storm and it often leads to death.
Source
The bad news is, well, the whole death thing. The good news is that our bodies, more often than not, do a pretty good job of regulating just enough cytokines to be beneficial. Our brain however is not as good in telling us what is ‘enough’, or in down-regulating our quest for more. More money, more things, more time, more recognition, more satisfaction. Whatever the category, we are inherently unsatisfied with what we have and always want more. Unfortunately when we achieve our desired success it seems fleeting and we return to a sense of inadequacy with what we have achieved. Whether in comparing our new salary to a new set of peers, or buying the car you always wanted then realizing you’re jealous of the person who has two dream cars, we seldom pause to appreciate our successes. Harvard professors Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson in their book “Just Enough” call this ‘success’ “at best a series of temporary highs and at worst a difficult slog through an endless string of quick solutions that never quite satisfy complex desires.”
They argue that we tend to view success in a maximization paradigm; that we are constantly “seeking success in highly individualistic, meteoric, record-breaking feats.” When in reality our happiness is tied to identifying successes that are just enough.
“Instead of trying to have it all and do it all, you have to learn to recalibrate to go after just enough. The critical level that gets you there is determined by a reasoned calculation of what will really satisfy your particular needs in one category for now, for tomorrow, and for the larger picture. Beyond that, you really begin to waste your energy at the cost of your opportunity to address your other needs.”
Well spend more time later on how to avoid the cytokine storm, but right now we’ll reinforce the idea with the song of the day.
Let me hear how you avoid the ‘storm’, and the name of your hypothetical band!
Song of the Day
In honor of more not always being better, and early 90’s east coast hip hop, the song of the day is “Mo Money, Mo Problems” by Notorious B.I.G ft. Ma$e and Puff Daddy.
(by the way, we’re going to come back to Ma$e in a future post. Stay tuned.)
With this month of sporting madness coming to an end, I want to talk about a recently played semi-final event in a weeks-long sports competition that transcended sport as we know it. Wait…what? NCAA?...Butler?… VC who? Oh, no…sorry. I’m talking about the Cricket World Cup semi-final match between India and Pakistan. I’m sure you caught it. It’s only the most watched cricket game in the history of the world. Ok, maybe you didn’t.
This match was a heavy-weight battle between two bitter rivals, both on the field and in world politics. Many citizens of both countries commented prior to the event that it didn’t matter if the winner went on to claim the world cup, just as long as they won this match. In the days leading up to the event, the media was consumed with the questions of how this event would change the politics of their long standing dispute. Both prime ministers attended the event together as a sign of unity and goodwill, and hope for future collaboration. To say the least, there were a lot of hopes riding on the outcome of this match (by the way India won, but I still don’t understand what the final score was).
Indranil Mukherjee/AFP Photo/Newscom
The event got me thinking about sports, and the affect sport has on us individually and collectively - the hope we have at the beginning of a season, and the sucker-punch, kicked in the groin feeling I feel every January when the Baltimore Ravens get knocked out of the playoffs (similar to the feeling I get on April 15th with the Orioles). The outcome of sporting events is an extremely personal experience to many people. Just ask the billion-plus people on the Indian sub-continent. We tie personal success to the outcome which is why sport is inspiring, but sport can devastate; sport is enabling, and sport can be debilitating. We link our personal, communal, even national significance to our teams’ successes and failures. But all of the importance we give it can be dangerous, because sport is a ghost. Sport is untrustworthy, and sport is deceiving. Sport does not pay our bills, sport does not save our marriage, and sport does not sign peace treaties. The goodwill we feel, or the despair we endure, is fleeting and we are left right where we began before it started. The effort we spend in hoping for outcomes based on a sporting event, or in effort from releasing our frustrations, is wasted and could be better spent in productive endeavors. Sport can be our springboard, but we still need to carry through.
This doesn’t mean I won’t hang on the edge of my seat or scream at the TV. I love sports and I love the rollercoaster of emotions. But my hope is that at the end of the day, at the end of the season, regardless of the task, and regardless of the outcome we can all say with a smile on our faces “Well, there’s always next year.”
Song of the Day
In honor of restraining our emotions in response to events out of our control, a new hope for peace in South Asia, and the the loss of a visionary leader on this day in 1968, the song of the day is U2's "Pride (In The Name Of Love)."
So because of opening day, the Thursday theory has been bumped to Friday, but we may keep it here for a while. So on to the theory:
At a bar one evening, amazed at the number of people singing in united joy to a particular song, a friend said something that has always stuck with me.
I Have a Theory…
…that no matter where you are, no one can resist singing to Bon Jovi’s “Livin' on a Prayer.”
In your car, on a train, in Japan, at a bar, with a fox, in a box. Don’t try to pretend you’re immune. I’m not, you’re not, no one is. That song instantly increases the fun by 56%. I’m not saying I’m happy about it, I’m just stating a fact.
___
Top Ten
I’m not sure what it is about countdowns or top ten lists that people like, but they do. So I am going to keep doing a weekly top ten list, but I’ll keep these as ridiculous as possible.
In honor of one of the greatest kids’ movies of all time, this week’s list is the Top Ten Goonies:
Song of the Day
In honor of obvious choices, proving a theory, and the anticipation of the weekend, the co-songs of the day are Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” and the Black Eyed Peas' “Weekend” ft. Esthero.
