The Warthog

File under Understanding the Problem

“A lot of what happens to us – success in our careers, investments, and in our life decisions, both major and minor – is as much the result of random factors as the result of skill, preparedness, and hard work.” – Leonard Mlodinow The Drunkard’s Walk

I’m going to start a few posts on the concept of randomness in our lives and how, despite our best efforts, it has as much an effect on our lives as our conscious decisions, yet we tend to neglect it.

I’ll start by telling the story of a not so bright senior in high school (it’s me by the way). My senior year, in addition to applying for colleges, I applied for military scholarships through ROTC. I always felt drawn to the military and thought if I could get them to pay for college, well then, bonus. For some reason I was always enamored by the Army ground support aircraft, the A-10 warthog.

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In hopes of flying it someday, I applied for the Army ROTC scholarship and I figured I would apply for the Navy scholarship as well, as a back-up. Fortunately, I got the Army scholarship and set off to school in Florida with my sights set on one day taking to the air in the A-10. It wasn’t until halfway through my sophomore year that I realized that I hadn’t seen or heard any mention of the A-10 in the army arsenal in the past year and a half. Upon inquiring with our instructors they looked at me with a puzzled look on their faces and responded that it was an Air Force airplane. I applied for the wrong scholarship. To this day I’m not sure why I thought it was the other way around.

Now at this time I had already grown to love my school and the Army and I wasn’t really upset in the least because I still saw benefits and good things for my future. But had I known it was an Air Force plane from the beginning and applied for the Air Force ROTC scholarship and NOT gotten it, I’m not so sure I would have had the same reaction. I would have been devastated - my future in shambles.

I think the latter instance is how we react when it appears our happiness is tied to one outcome; when success can only be achieved through one endstate. But think of all the random events that have directed your life one way or another when there was no obvious outcome determined. Your life would certainly be different, but would it be any less successful, or would you be any less happy?

I’m sure you’ve all thought of this before. What if you had a different roommate in college, or were assigned to a different dorm? Or what if you turned left instead of right? How different would your life be? In each case there is no obvious difference to your choices at that instant, yet the outcome could be wildly different. There are many more of those decisions everyday than ones where we understand the outcome and yet we get extremely upset when the latter decisions “don’t go our way.”

The Daily Antidote
You turn random events into successful outcomes every day. Do the same thing with events that don’t seem to go your way, and quit worrying about them.

The Song of the Day
In honor of a song played at 87% of all college parties in the late 80's and early 90's, the song of the day is a live version of the Violent Femmes’ Kiss Off.

The Weekly Theory 5.27.2011

File under Useless Information

So after a bit of a break, I'm back.  I know you were getting worried!

Ok, most likely not.

Well, in any case I think summer has officially arrived here in Baltimore.  Maybe not by the celestial calendar, but certainly by the fact that it's Memorial Day weekend and it's 90 degrees during the days.  Which means time for the NCAA lacrosse championships, crabs, and baseball games.

We were lucky enough to attend an Oriole's game last week in my company's box seats.  In between the beer, hot dogs, crab cakes, and conversation, my co-worker came up with this week's theory:

I Have a Theory...
...that the more expensive the seats, the less you pay attention to the baseball game.

Seriously, i was surprised when the game actually ended.  I didn't even know it was the 9th inning.

Song of the Day
I know I'm a little late to the Florence + The Machine party, but I haven't been able to get this song out of my head for the past month.  In honor of the unofficial start of summer, the song of the day is Florence + The Machine's Dog Days Are Over.

The Bottle Rocket

File under Set the Bar Low (and barely exceed the bar)

Yesterday a friend reminded me how much I love the movie Bottle Rocket. For those of you who don't know, it is Wes Anderson's first full length movie, and it features Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson in their first movie as well.  In fact, I like this movie so much I named one of my dogs after the main character, Dignan (on the right below).

But the story of how I first saw the movie is the simplest form of setting the bar low.


When I was stationed in Hawaii I had to serve as staff duty officer one night at the unit.  It can be pretty boring most nights while you wait there in case something happens  This night was no exception.   I spent each hour watching random VHS movies that people had left there.  One of which happened to be Bottle Rocket. I had never seen, nor heard of the movie prior to that night, and by the end of the night i had watched it twice.

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It was like finding a diamond in a pile of crap.  I had zero expectations of this movie even being watchable.  But the well-written characters, the quotable lines, the main character's misguided optimism, and the message of belonging, all added up to have an incredible impact on me.  Probably more so because I thought it wouldn't be good. 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb says in his book The Black Swan that the effectiveness of an outcome is inversely proportional to the expectations we have of that outcome.   Case in point - Avatar.  I refuse to watch it because of all of the great things I have heard about it. 

Bottle Rocket certainly isn't the greatest movie of all time, but it blew my expectations out of the water and the memory of that adds to its likeability.  So if you're planning on watching it some time, it's average.  You might like it, you might not.

I'm going to start a new feature to make all of this theoretical junk a little more practical and i'll call it "The Daily Antidote."

 The Daily Antidote

"Don't let anyone tell you about a movie you may go see, other than 'See it', or 'Don't see it'."


The Song of the Day
 In honor of Wes Anderson's musical tastes and a great song perfectly placed in this movie, the song of the day is Love's "Alone again or".

The Quotable Antidote 5.13.11

File under Uselss Information

“I do have a test today. It’s on European Socialism. I mean really, what’s the point?  I’m not European.  I don’t plan on being European.  So who gives a crap if they’re socialists? They could be fascist anarchists.  It still doesn’t change the fact that I don’t own a car.”  - Ferris Bueller

He may be a selfish jerk, but Ferris Bueller clearly knew what his priorities were.  Do you?


Song of the Day
I have always considered Social Distortion to be one of my favorite bands. The songs and voice of the lead singer Mike Ness always struck a chord with me. I also love cover songs. So in honor of Social D, Rockabilly music, those who have loved and lost, and Mike Ness going solo, the song of the day is Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice" as performed by Mike Ness. 

The Chomolungma

File under Meet Yourself

33 years ago today, famed mountain climber Reinhold Messner summited Mount Everest (Chomolungma in Tibet and Sagarmatha to you Nepalese out there) with his climbing partner Peter Habeler. Although certainly not the first to conquer Everest, it was the first ascent done without supplemental oxygen. A feat most at that time thought impossible. Messner is generally thought to be the greatest climber of all time, having set many other firsts including the first to climb Everest solo, and the first to summit all 14 of the peaks over 8,000 meters (greater than 26,246 feet).

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That “greatness” is certainly, in part, a result of single-minded focus and perseverance. But probably more importantly it came as a result of time and opportunity.

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Messner grew up in Northern Italy with the Alps as his backyard. He summited his first mountain with his father at the age of 5 and by the time he was 20 he was thought to be one of the best European climbers. Messner immersed himself in exploration and outdoor activities from an early age, amassing hour upon hour of practice and experience. Messner spent day and night in the mountains and was furthermore encouraged by his family to pursue his passion. Messner’s ability to spend that much time doing what he loved enabled him to achieve “greatness” more so than any desire he may have had to be great.

Few of us are going to be climbing Everest anytime soon, but the concept applies to our individual drive for success. We typically have intent and willingness but we often dismiss the importance of our environment and our available time as having anything to do with our success. We have jobs that prevent us from working out early in the morning, we have families that prevent us from working more, sleeping more, or playing more golf, or we surround ourselves with those who find a particular success unimportant. None of which are bad, they just happen to be examples of how we prioritize our lives and create environments that make certain successes extremely difficult. And yet we often don’t understand why we didn’t achieve our goals and blame ourselves.

Now what if Messner had grown up in Iowa? Would he be the greatest climber as we know him now? We’ll never know, but I would argue that the odds would be stacked against him, just as the odds are stacked against us when we can’t ensure an environment conducive to success.

We’ll look at this more in the next post, including the 10,000 hour threshold concept

Song of the Day

In honor of an album titled “Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner”, the song of the day is Ben Folds Five’s “Mess”.

The Weekly Theory 5.6.2011

File under Useless Information

From my wife:
I Have a Theory...

... that clothes with sparkles are sometimes classy.  Clothes with sparkles that spell words are never classy.

Forward to any Bedazzlers you may know.

Song of the Day
In honor of new music and new bands, the song of the day is Grouplove's "Colours".

The Round File

File under Procrastinate

In 1997 I was a new lieutenant in the Army at my first post in Korea. I was learning how to survive in the military, how to be an officer, and how not to be a college student all at the same time. The funny thing about being a staff officer in Korea in the Army was how much people worked there, primarily because it was difficult to do anything else. Wake up in the morning, go to PT, go to work, go to dinner, go back to work, go home around 9 or 10 p.m., go to bed, then wake up and do it again. There were few distractions, and few other ways to pass the time. Now what was only evident several years after leaving Korea was not that there were a whole lot of things to do, but rather there was just a lot of time to do things.

And this created workloads that seemed astronomical. People had time to create tasks, write emails, and make busy work for themselves and others because that was the expectation. Dealing with the mountains of requests, emails, and papers became a difficult task (fortunately we had the time!). But my boss, now a Brigadier General, had a novel idea that has stuck with me. He would assess each email or paper quickly and hold for action certain items, then put the rest of the items and printed emails in the bottom drawer of his desk. About 95% of all incoming items ended up in the drawer. If at any time he needed to go through the pile in the drawer to find a specific email or document, it was important enough to address. At the end of the month he threw the rest of the drawer out (in the round file) as it never again reached any level of importance.

His idea, borne out of necessity by the sheer number of “action items”, sifts through the piles of useless activities, using time as the filter. He could have easily spent time addressing each item carefully without any specific benefit to the endstate of his job or office, but instead he procrastinated on many items in order to more clearly understand their importance. He used his initial analysis to determine the critical items, then he relied on a simple statement to determine what else is important – “If I think about it, or someone asks me about it again, it has importance.”  It was that black and white.

There’s obviously risk in that approach and in the next post we’ll talk about what the initial analysis looks like and how we characterize that risk.

Song of the Day
Not having been blessed with the MP3 revolution yet in 1997 I listened to the same CDs and tapes over and over again. In honor of Korea, the 1/506th Infantry Battalion, the Sony Walkman, and playing a tape until it breaks, the song of the day is Portishead’s “Roads”.

The Persistence

File under Closure

All Hail...

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Song of the Day
In honor of Justice, the song of the day is Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence".