File under Set the Bar Low and Get a Smaller Plate
“Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” – Alexander Pope
Song of the Day
Can't believe i haven't featured these guys yet. In honor of not being what you own, the song of the day is Fugazi's "Merchandise". Great running song by the way.
It snowed here yesterday for the better part of 3 hours and i had no idea it was even going to snow at all. A nice little surprise. Funny because my wife just told me this theory the other day:
I Have a Theory...
...that your excitement for snow is inversely proportional to your "young at heart" age.
The older at heart you are, the less excited you get about snow. Therefore you can't be young at heart and also hate snow. Impossible. However this theory breaks down over the winter, because unfortunately the superceding theory is that your excitement for snow is also inversely proportional to how many times you have seen it this season.
Enjoy it now. Winter just began.
Song of the Day
No reason why, just felt like playing this song. It's long but it's great. Definitely an over-the-ear headphones kind of song. The song of the day is Neil Young's "Cowgirl in the Sand".
I probably should have posted this earlier this month because there was recently a study on gift-giving, detailed in the NY Times, that may have changed how you gave this holiday season.
Apparently spending lots of time or money on the perfect gift is most often lost on the recipient, and typically only satisfies the giver. "Spending extra time and money for the perfect gift may make them feel better, but it’s not doing much for the objects of their efforts" the study found.
When asked about memorable gifts, gift-givers typically recall expensive items, while gift-receivers tend to recall a gift they actually asked for, even if it was a T-shirt. The researchers also noted that, although not creative and somewhat boring, choosing a gift off of a registry is the best way to go.
It's kind of counter-intuitive to think that spending 5 minutes on a gift registry or asking for a wish list increases the recipients happiness more than spending hours on end thinking of and searching for the perfect gift. But i do agree that it's much less fun for the giver. At least just remember this when stressed out about finding the perfect gift - that the effort you put in is really mostly only satisfying yourself!
I love Christmas. I love Christmas eve. I love Christmas morning. I love how peaceful, how quiet, and how joyous it is. I love seeing my niece and nephew, and talking to friends and family. I love the desire to be selfless and put others first. They are all feelings i wish i felt all year long, but by January 2nd the world and it's demands slowly win back the day. Work, kids, school, parents, building a legacy, having an impact, changing the world. All of those things muddle the picture of what is important.
Advocating procrastination and the lowering of expectations isn't the most common advice. In fact you'll typically hear just the opposite. I've been asked about the 'perfect' antidote theory before - "You don't really believe that do you?" Well the truth is that i couldn't be more serious or passionate about this philosophy, and it's value is most inherently evident around the holiday time. Somehow we take a break, somehow we make time, somehow we figure out what is truly important to us. We share, we spend time with family and friends, we give of ourselves. We look forward with eager anticipation to the season and then lament that it went too quickly.
Did it go too quickly, or did we too easily just revert back to our busy lives of worrying and focusing on things that aren't important?
As the holiday passes and the spirit fades, i have but one wish for this next year. Instead of trying to do too much, to be too perfect, or to change the whole world...i'm just going to try to change someone's world.
I hope you have a very merry and blessed Christmas!
Song of the Day
In honor of not letting our lives pass by each other in absent indifference, the song of the day is 10,000 Maniacs' "Verdi Cries" performed by Natalie Merchant.
File under Set the Bar Low (then barely exceed the bar)
Last week was an incredibly fun week for us: 4 and a half days at Walt Disney World with our niece and nephew. It was fun to be a kid again and i think that was helped repeatedly by our low expectations. Certainly we were excited about the trip and spending time with the kids, but not having been there in over 18 years we didn't know what we didn't know, and every experience was new and exciting. This was most evident when we rode a ride for the first time. The first ride on the Expedition Everest coaster was unbelievable, the 7th time was flat-out boring. It was the same ride every time, yet our experience was totally different.
Although not surprising, what it does shows is that 'New' increases excitement and expectations exponentially. Unfortunately, just because it's new doesn't mean it will live up to those expectations. In fact, it got to a point that as we waited in line for a new ride we would purposely talk up how lame the ride would be just to be pleasantly surprised. Not living up to new expectations becomes a lot more frustrating when we're not just talking about a roller coaster.
But unlike the new and exciting unknown, i was unprepared for a melancholy feeling of a return to a work-a-day life in the cold, rainy mid-atlantic weather. Somehow the 'known' and the 'same' always manage to fall short of expectations. No matter how low. And that has something to do with what we take for granted, which i'll talk more about tomorrow in the Thanksgiving post.
Song of the Day
In honor of being able to break away from the whirring of day to day life and then be able to integrate back into it, the song of the day is the great new band The Joy Formidable's "Whirring".
File under Set the Bar Low (then Barely Exceed the Bar)
Halloween is a weird, weird holiday. Maybe it’s weird to even call it a holiday. I’m not talking about it being weird because kids ask strangers for candy, or that many people have a strange, morbid fascination with the grotesque. It’s weird because for some reason, Halloween gives people a license to do normally borderline unacceptable things, more so than any other day. Don’t believe me? Let me tell you about my Halloween.
License #1: Humiliating your kids.
It began at Starbucks that morning where I was doing work. All of a sudden the Day Care in the same building brought about 15 costumed children in to the coffee shop to trick or treat, followed by equally as many parents. Innocent enough, but there were two things I noticed. First of all, these kids weren’t 6 or 7 year olds. They were maybe 2, but no more. Not a single one of these toddlers had any idea what was going on. The bewildered looks on their faces were compounded by the fact that they had no association or understanding of the costumes their parents dressed them in. Try explaining to a 20 month old who Thor is. The second thing was that they were all physically tethered together in one long rope/harness contraption so as not to leave a man behind. It was as if a long chain gang of miniature criminals were dressed in humiliating costumes and paraded through the streets to be laughed at by the morning Starbucks crowd. And to add insult to injury, they were hounded by photo snapping paparazzi parents. This was clearly one step up from putting a costume on your dog.
License #2: Going out in clothes you would be embarrassed to wear any other day.
A co-worker and I went to Panera for lunch and I would have thought we walked in to Hooter’s based on what the girls taking your order were wearing. I think there has to be a manual somewhere that has costume instructions for both men and women:
Women:
Step 1: find a profession with a uniform
Step 2: make that uniform slutty
Men: Wear a costume that could be construed as sexual harassment in at least 27 states
License #3: Befriending complete strangers
When meeting up with my co-worker at his house, his 7 year old daughter was there. She was shy and untalkative. Untalkative until I asked her what she was going as for Halloween. As if a tornado swept us up into “best friend land”, she proceeded to tell me about, and then show me, her Dorothy costume. Barriers be gone. We were new BFFs. For one day of the year, Halloween replaces the awkward stranger talk about the weather.
Now my wife and I have never been huge Halloween people. And this is primarily due to our door-knock barking-machine, better known as our dog. A night of him freaking out every time a trick or treater comes to the door is not fun for us. So we usually hide out or leave the house. But for some reason it goes deeper than that for me. I’m not sure why, but it’s been 12 years since I last dressed up for Halloween; since my friends and I each went as different Fletch characters (That’s me in the pretty bad aircraft repairman costume)
And this year, my Halloween experiences have led me to one conclusion:
I’m missing out.
Watch out Halloween, we’ll be back next year.
Song of the Day
To continue the post-punk theme this week I’ve chosen a non-halloween, yet still haunting song. This song is a cover of an Echo and the Bunnymen song, performed by Nouvelle Vague. The waif-like vocals and the devious tone make for an interesting combination. In honor of embracing Halloween, the song of the day is “The Killing Moon.”
For the original Echo and the Bunnymen version, click here.
File under Set the Bar Low (and Barely Exceed the Bar)
After this “Snowtober” I’m a little worried about the rest of the fall and this winter, and it has to do with expectations. See I’m a Texas boy and even though I haven’t lived there in a looong time, Texas weather is still engrained in my soul. I still stare in wonder at the first snowfall, yet despise the prolonged winter in late February and March here in Maryland. It’s bad enough that following the holidays there are still 2+ months of miserable cold weather. I’m ok up through the holidays, I love it. But once the calendar turns, my enthusiasm wanes. I tend to refer to January and February as the Dark Ages. It’s all I can do to get through those 2 months. Unfortunately, with the first snow event here in October, my internal clock is all out of whack now. I’ll be expecting the spring to start in January, and when it doesn’t it’ll make those months even more miserable than before.
It’s a ridiculous complaint but we often have no control over that feeling. It has to do with our expectations. Every Fall I rush to put on sweatshirts and long pants when the temperature gets down to 60 degrees, but in the spring we’re strolling around in t-shirts and shorts when it finally gets up to 60 degrees. Why the difference? We’ve become accustomed to the commonplace and are thrilled when we experience something new, or even just anticipate a change. We’re in a constant struggle for ‘New’ in our lives. Recognize when that need for 'newness' is affecting your happiness.
For a more optimistic outlook on our recent Snowtober, click here.
Song of the Day
I think I’m on a new wave/post-punk kick this week. In high school I bought a CD by the band Modern English, most known for the song “I Melt with You.” A song made famous as my sister and brother-in-law’s wedding song (and I guess that Burger King commercial). But it was this song on the album that I grew to like the most, and it is definitely appropriate following our recent Nor’easter. In honor of having 4-wheel drive on snowy, hilly streets, the song of the day is “After the Snow” by Modern English.
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.
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".
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".
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)
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.
