Scott Berkun's Blog, page 53

Open letter to people complaining about politics

Dear people who complain:

There was never a golden age in American politics. If you despair at how depressing our politics are, recall that in 1800 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson engaged in some of the nastiest PR campaigns against each other. Elections are about power, bringing the best and worst out of everyone who wants power, regardless of their motivation for wanting it.

While it is true that a singular nasty example doesn’t define the past, or the present, politics in a democracy is inherently frustrating. A government by and for the people includes your stupid neighbor, your weird cousin, the person with the religious beliefs you find absurd, everyone you stare at on the bus (or who stares at you), the people who own the company you work for and the ones begging for change on your way there. There is no way for a government by and for the people to function without frustrating most of the people in it in one way or another. It’s really a miracle it works at all and for as long as it has. Power changes hands in this country with surprising frequency and civilized grace, and for all its horrors and disappointments it is still a wonder to behold.

A common refrain heard during election season is “voting is picking the lesser of two evils”, a dig at the disappointing quality of our candidates. Whenever I’ve asked someone who says this if they would run for office of any kind, they’ve consistently said “no way”. We know how undesirable life as a politician is,  yet simultaneously we’re surprised by the low quality of the candidates we have. They are directly related to each other. We are not promised good candidates in the Constitution. Most of us invest little energy towards the process of picking candidates, understanding how they’re chosen or even helping decide the winners in races:  58% of American’s voted in 2008. And that was just a vote, which takes only minutes: who knows how much time they invested in considering their choices. Complaints and apathy are dangerous bedfellows and we suffer both in droves.

I believe, more or less, we get the government we deserve. Paying close attention twice a decade isn’t paying much attention at all. Only when things get bad enough that we’re watching our representatives, senators, mayors and governors regularly, and participating at levels of government where our vote carries much more weight, is the kind of change each of us wants both deserved and possible. Nothing is learned by throwing wrenches at an already broken machine. It’s only by getting inside and dirtying your hands, or at least studying the insides to see how the machinery is designed to work, and where it’s failing, can empty frustrations be replaced by insightful and meaningful actions. No matter how small those actions are, they have infinite more value to everyone than throwing bigger wrenches at bigger broken machines.

Churchill wrote:

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others.

Also see my essay on How to Pick a President.

 

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Man’s Search for Meaning: Book Review

This is one of those classic books I’ve had on my shelf for over a decade, but never touched. A friend was going to read it, and as I’ve been depressed with my recent injury, it seemed a good time for me to read it too. It’s a well known classic of philosophy / Holocaust literature, written by Viktor E. Frankel, an Austrian psychotherapist who was imprisoned at Aushwitz during World War II.

Man’s Search For Meaning is a short book and a worthy read. The author’s tale is exceptionally compelling as his observations about life in hellish conditions are enhanced by his training in psychology, going beyond the awful, but familiar, horrors many of us know from popular movies and documentaries about the Holocaust.

The central theme of the book is about how anyone can choose to make meaning out of any situation, no matter how bad thing are. He uses his personal experiences and observations from the Auschwitz to support this premise. More that the list of platitudes you often find in self help books, the lessons are grounded by the first 50 pages of the book, which centers on Frankl’s first person tale of  starvation, violence, cruelty and epic loss in the German death camps.

One measure of books I use is how many passages I copy down for later. This book scored very well. Three of my favorites were:

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

Another was this questioning of the American worldview, where we believe we can get anything simply by aiming directly:

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to “be happy.” But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon-laughter. If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Doing so would be the same as urging people posed in front of a camera to say “cheese,” only to find that in the finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial smiles.

And it was hard not to forget this one:

Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how”

The only disappointment is the extra sections of the book vary in quality, There’s one about the theory he invented called Logotherapy, which feels like it was written as it’s own thing (which I believe it was). While  interesting, it contains a series of repetitive self-aggrandizing anecdotal tales of how this method has helped people. Even so, the entire book can be read in an hour or two, these extra sections are short, and you might enjoy them more than I did.

It’s a great book to read when you feel like a failure, feel lost, beaten or downtrodden in any way. When you are finished reading you will, at worst, see your own  challenges in a different light: everything in your life could be so much worse, and even if it were, you could still find a way to find meaning.  Get the book here on amazon ( I read the kindle edition).

It seems he was a fantastic speaker. Here’s Frankel talking about the need for idealism:

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On Free Speech vs. Religious Respect: in five sentences

Either people believe in free speech or they don’t. Some cultures do, but many do not. It’s inevitable that people who do not believe in free speech feel outrage at the behavior of those who do believe in free speech. Leaders of the later decide how that outrage is expressed. All religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hindu have had phases of violence, and also tolerance, in their response to what outrages them.

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What I learned from losing a leg (for awhile)

Three weeks ago I tore my Achilles tendon playing basketball. Just like a well worn rope that snaps from being pulled too hard one too many times, it tore completely during my regular basketball game at the gym.

Everyone asks “what happened?” assuming there must be a grand story, like I reverse dunked over three people but misjudged the landing, or hit a game winning shot from half court, but someone fouled me hard, causing the injury. There wasn’t. It was entirely boring. No one touched me. For those who saw it happen, they saw me push down on my right foot to cut to the basket and I simply fell over as if a ghost had swept my leg from behind. It looked funny and harmless, as if I had forgotten where the floor was and tripped over it, surprised it was there. NBA star Chauncey Billip’s tore his Achilles the same way during a game last year, as you can see in this video.

I’ve played competitive basketball my entire life and know my body well. Sitting there on the court in mild shock, holding my ankle, I knew something very bad had happened.  Since that day I haven’t been able use my right leg for anything, which has been surprisingly traumatic.

Of the many serious injuries a body can suffer, the repair for this one is simple, if slow. The loss of use of my leg is temporary: 4-8 weeks. They surgically reconnected the tendon last week (see photo), and with rehab and care I can likely play basketball again in 5-7 months. Despite the impermanent nature of my injury, it has had some permanent effects on how I look at things.

Here’s what I’ve learned. These may be obvious to you but these were new, or humbling reminders, to me:

Disability is isolation. I can’t drive. If I can’t drive, I can’t go to the gym each day. If I don’t go to the gym each day, I can’t stop for coffee or at the bookstore, or meet a friend for lunch, or a dozen other little daily habits that keep me sane. I don’t live in a convenient place designed for this kind of thing. I’m self employed and write from home. I’ve had to find new support systems to make my life work.
Everything demands minute planning. I generally cook for myself and love to do it, but now my kitchen is a logistics nightmare. When on crutches, you lose use of your hands. Without hands you can’t carry anything. Normally, to make a meal requires dozens of thoughtless trips from the refrigerator to the pantry to the stove and back. Each one of those trips is an exercise in logistics now. Going to the bathroom, taking a shower are all long sequences of thoughtful acts that must be planned.
I see everything in small terms. We all forget all the little things our bodies do when we run down the street, or throw a frisbee. When something breaks, those seemingly simple tasks become complex. Every action has to be planned, considered, tested and carefully executed. Rehab is relearning. It takes me forever to get around the house, or to get from a parking lot to a store. I’m attentive, for better and for worse, to the small. My ankle will have to relearn all the basic things we expect our ankles to do for us.
100 years ago I’d be crippled.While the surgery is simple by today’s standards, 100 years ago I’d be walking with a cane the rest of my life, if I could walk at all. Grateful to the universe for being born at this time.
I’m connected to wheelchairs, handicapped parking spots and people who need help. I notice all these things because at the pace I’m able to travel, my companions are other people with issues the world isn’t designed for.
My mind follows my body. I’m a productive writer because I have a healthy body. I go to the gym nearly every day to clear my mind and let my subconscious work on problems for me. I haven’t been to the gym in almost a month. I’m still struggling to find a new way to balance stress and find physical relaxation.

I’m sad about the prospects of losing basketball from my life. It will be a long road to recovery and there are no guarantees at what level I’ll be able to play. Basketball is the  place I’ve learned most of what has made me successful. But sorting out what’s possible and dealing with my feelings about it are so far in the future, and I’m dealing with so much in the present, that I have no choice but to postpone worrying about it until I’m there.

I’m always grateful for people and things that get me to think and this experience definitely qualifies. I’ll be looking at the world from a different perspective for awhile. If nothing else, I’ve always been a fan of mythology – I now have a permanent scar connecting me with the legend of Achilles!

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9 ways to understand how ideas spread

A reader named Niko, who is working on a PhD in social network analysis, asked me for my favorite sources about how ideas spread:

I am doing a PhD in the field of social network analysis in which I try to determine mutual influence among people who are connected with cell phones. Many times individuals have good ideas but can’t bring them to life due to limited resources or social capital. If we would be able to find the right spot to plant the seed I believe there would be much more flowers on our planet.  know you read a lot and have broad horizon, I wanted to ask about any good source to learn more about the spread of ideas, social contagion and social network analysis in general, may it be from philosophical or scientific perspective.

I’ve read much about the subject, but most of what comes to mind are books, rather than papers or articles. It’s also interesting that most of these predate social media. Here’s my list:

The canonical pop business books about the spread of ideas are Made to Stick and The Tipping Point. These books have a strong marketing focus, and emphasize ideas that are bound to products. They’re both well written and easy to read. Made to Stick is more practical, focusing on a list of attributes to aim for. The Tipping Point is most notable for its identification of the roles certain types of people play in connecting people to ideas (e.g. Mavens).
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Cialdini. Influence takes a wider view of marketing and propaganda, exploring the wider history of how people in power use their power to tilt the playing field to their advantage. Most applicable to politics of the books in this list. Includes exploration of concepts like Reciprocity and Social Proof.
Connections, by James Burke. Most books on how ideas spread make it seem as if it’s something people control. Luck and factors outside of anyone’s control play a tremendous role. Connections entertainingly shows how random the spread of ideas can be, and the book joyously makes connections between inventions and breakthroughs that you’d never expect.
The Dr. Fox effect. This decades old study demonstrated that event experts are heavily swayed by the charisma of whoever is speaking to them. In the study, an actor played an expert, speaking entirely in jargon and obfuscated language, and scored higher marks in every way than a legitimate expert. You can see an excerpt of the video here.  I wrote about this effect at length in Confessions of a Public Speaker, Chapter 8.
The Diffusion of Innovations, Everett. This is the book that defined much of marketing theory for the last 50 years. S curves, early adopters, it’s all here. Ironically many modern books on marketing use these concepts, but don’t acknowledge or seem aware of the source. While the book’s research focused more of the spread of technologies, most of the theory applies well to any idea.
Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman. This critique of modern media demystifies how television thrives, and how it has changed our view of the world. It is a harsh critique (as you might guess from the title) and clearly takes the side that television has done more bad than good (or at best, it’s a draw). Postman’s goal was to disarm the negative influences television has for influencing which ideas spread and he succeeds: you won’t watch television the same way again.
Jerusalem: One city, Three faiths, Armstrong. What could be more instructive in the history of how ideas spread than a concise review of how religious ideas have developed and spread in the major religions of the West? This fascinating book, centered on the history of a city, walks through the early development of Jewish monotheism, to the birth of Christianity, to the development of Islam. You can see how each religion borrowed from the past (e.g. The Old Testament is really just the Jewish bible), factionalized in many directions, rejected  ideas inherited from the past (often violently), had times of peaceful acceptance of other ideas/religions, condemned things in their own faction that were once accepted, and on it goes. If nothing else it offers how malleable ideas, even ideas born of scripture, are by the forces of culture. (For a more academic and wider take on how religious ideas spread, see History of Religious Ideas, Vol 1, Eliade, or Masks of God: Vol 1, Campbell).
How to write headlines that work, Copyblogger. The major medium of today is the web, and the one sentence descriptions that appear on Facebook, twitter, and email, are the first decision points in what ideas we consume or avoid. Headlines an titles are a microcosm of the entire question of how and why ideas spread: how much will you lie or misrepresent an idea to get a click? What emotions do you play on? What tone or joke can you cleverly compress into just a few words? This article by Copyblogger is one of many, but it expresses how little of the quality of ideas themselves determine the fate of the idea.

More broadly, we love to assume the best idea win, especially ideas in our national, cultural or religious history. There’s questionable evidence for this assumption. In The Myths of Innovation an entire chapter explores this myth. In short, self-interest is a huge driver of choice, and what is best for people with influence may not be what’s best for everyone else.

Additionally, the skills for a) having the best ideas and b) being persuasive,  are not related to each other. A charismatic senator might have much worse ideas than his brilliant, but awkward, rival. Given how heavily influenced we are by superficials (see Dr. Fox, above) when it comes to evaluating ideas, the effects of this bias can not be overstated. Or in business terms, a product no one needs that is marketed well, can overcome a healthier, cheaper alternative that fails to excite or compel customers to buy. This should be troubling to everyone interested in progress.

Throughout history, ideas are often chosen for speed and convenience relative to an immediate issue, as their’s little expectation the choice will matter later. But when an idea takes off, they’re hard to change no matter how bad they turn about to be, in part because we love to protect the ideas from our past.

What books or articles should be on this list? Please leave a comment.

 

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Last call: Mindfire photos wanted

There are about , and the photographers will all get their name in the upcoming 1.1 edition of Mindfire.

It’s not to late:

1) Pull our you copy

2) Take a photo

3)  , as a comment.

And your name will be in the book. Offer ends EOD tomorrow.

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The math and aftermath of 9/11

Eleven years ago 2996 people died during the events of 9/11/2001. It was a tragic day for thousands of innocent people whose lives were taken. It’s impossible to understand the significance of the day for surviving family and friends.

From a colder, mathematical perspective, I’ve wondered what the total cost in lives has been since that morning. How connected these deaths are or are not to each other is up to you. With a few hours of research I compiled the math, with sources marked as follows:

WP = Wikipedia, CRS = Congressional Research Service, AP = Associated Press, DoD = U.S. Department of Defense

Deaths on 9/11/01: 2,996 (including 19 hijackers)

Injured on 9/11/01: 6000 (WP, but source needed)

The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

U.S. armed forces deaths in Iraq: 4422 (U.S. DoD)
U.S. armed forces injured in Iraq: 32,229 (U.S. DoD)
Coalition force deaths: 4,799 (WP, with sources)
Coalition forces injured: unknown
Contractor deaths: 1487 (WP, with sources)
Iraqi civilian deaths: 100,000 (AP, lowest of several estimates)
Iraqi civilians wounded: unknown
Iraqi military (supporting allies) deaths: 16,623 (WP, with sources)
Iraqi military (insurgent) deaths: 26,320 (WP, with sources)
U.S. armed forces killed in Afghanistan: 1980 (WP / CRS)
U.S. armed forces wounded in Afghanistan: 17,519 (WP / CRS)
Afghanistan civilian deaths (since 2007): 6478 (U.N. report)
Afghanistan military deaths: unknown (BBC)

In summary:

Total deaths: 179,628
Total casualties: 55,748

I don’t have any commentary. These numbers are staggering, no matter how you connect them or not.

Please check my math and my sources and note corrections in the comments. I’d be thrilled to see these stats vetted and improved. It was bewildering to go through all the reports and studies to compile even this list, as many reports show similar data in slightly different ways with different sources. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes, I’m just not sure where.

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Free Ticket to XOXO event in Portland, 9/13-9/15

I have a ticket to XOXO in Portland next week, Sept 13 to 16th. An amazing event for creatives, with great talks, parties and workshops.

http://xoxofest.com/schedule/

All you need to do is leave a comment by the end of today that includes a quote from any of my books. I’ll pick a winner  tomorrow morning.

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Researching and writing the next book

Something I do while working on the first draft of a book is read books that have elements I want to emulate. It could be structure, style, tone or simply a feeling the book gave me as a reader. I go back and reread and it helps me figure out exactly what I want to do in the book I’m writing.

Here’s the list of books I’ve gone back and looked at to help me with the book I’m writing about my experience at WordPress.com:

Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder. This is one of the first, and greatest, books written about a modern tech project. He followed a team of engineers working on one of the last mainframe computers (Data General Eclipse) in 1981, before the rise of personal computers. The book won the Pulitzer prize for non-fiction.

NewJack, Ted Conover – the author worked for a year as a prison guard at Sing Sing prison and wrote a book about his experience. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize and a fantastic read for many reasons.

Dreaming In Code by Scott Rosenberg – Rosenberg followed Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus) and a team of programmers trying to reinvent calendaring applications. He also asks the question why is software hard to make? I enjoyed he book even though I disagreed with many of his answers. I wrote a review of DOC here.

I’ve also been reading many famous diaries / autobiographies. Diary of Anne Frank, My life in France by Julia Child, and Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London.

If you have any favorite company profile books, or exceptionally good books that followed a project, please leave a comment. Same for any books you can think of that use the diary or first person approach particularly well.  Thanks.

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Lessons learned from my bad habits

Since leaving WordPress.com to return to writing full time, a surprise has been the decline in my writing habits. It has taken taken months to get them back.

As an exercise in sharing what I learn with you here on the blog, here’s my recap:

Writing of any kind is harder than other work. A secret benefit active writers have is they write all the time. That’s most of what they do. They forget that doing other kinds of work is so much easier (and pays so much better). In a regular job, you show up, there are piles of things that need to be done and people to do them with, and off you go. But returning to writing after having a conventional job allowed me to remake a discovery: writing is hard. It’s harder than doing most other kinds of work because you have to make everything up: the page is blank every time you start.
When writing feels hard it probably means you’re doing something right. I stayed at WordPress.com for 6 extra months, in part, because leading, designing, and managing, as challenging as those things can be, are easier than filling blank pages. I worked with great people, which made every day fun and gratifying. And I knew returning to writing had less immediate, and more isolated, rewards. As obvious as this all sounds, it has taken weeks to fully internalize these lessons. There is no way around it: writing is challenging. I’ve had to remind myself that when it feels hard it doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong, it probably means I’m doing something right.
The fundamental rule of making things happen in any kind of work is simple: 1) If progress is slow, reduce your scope. 2) Repeat as necessary. That’s it. If you persist, eventually you have a small enough unit of work that progress is clear and easy. This sounds obvious, but it took me months to relearn it in practice. For weeks I was working on the new book without daily goals or a clear outline or any reasonable structure at all. It was like wandering around in a half-finished maze, in the dark, with one eye open. When blogging you don’t need much structure: you can’t get lost in writing a single blog post. But for bigger writing projects you need some scaffolding to make progress.
The next book is always the hardest. I’ve never worked on a book based on a journal before, and I expected it’d be easier than my previous book projects. WRONG. The current book is always the hard one. Writers are good at lying to themselves about this. It’s the only way to trick ourselves into big new projects. But past projects will always seem easier than current ones. Why? Because they’re DONE.
Blogging is snack sized writing: I love blogging, but writing 300-1000 word pieces requires different skills and discipline than writing 2000, 5000 or 50,000 word pieces. Skill at any craft is only as good as your frequency of practice.  I hadn’t written a book in a couple of years, and all the blogging had let those writing for long reading muscles fade. Like sprinting daily for a year and then suddenly trying to run a marathon, you’re confronted with how inadequate your habits are to the task. It takes time to relearn all the little things you have to do, including changing your habits, when the goals are larger.
Blogging is not a diary. Some bloggers confuse publishing with keeping a diary. It’s not the same. No matter how open a blogger is about what they will share, they will write about those things differently if they are writing for other people (blog) vs. writing just for themselves (diary). I’ve kept a diary for over 20 years. It’s where I go to safely explore my own thoughts and feelings free from judgement by anyone else. If I wrote those entries knowing other eyes would see them I’d I’d write differently, and lose some of my intimacy with myself.  While working at WordPress.com I was writing so much in so many different places, including keeping a separate journal with notes for the next book, that I didn’t write in my diary often. I missed the power I got from just writing for myself.

Looking back I see how I could have been more disciplined. But working two jobs was tough, and I don’t know if I could have done it all to some imagined standard and still have been a happy guy when I wasn’t working. There’s only so much willpower and discipline any of us have.

Looking forward, the new book is coming along nicely now. And I’ll be sharing more about the book itself as well as involving you in the process as it comes together. Stay tuned. A good summary of what is in the works is here.

Have questions about my writing habits? Ask away in the comments.

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