Belief Makers

Let me start by saying that I'm not sure where this one is going. Today's blog is a bit of an intellectual digestive process. It's all about me and not to be taken seriously.

The Users
When I listen to people, I tend to really listen. I follow their eyes, their gestures, their expressions. I really parse what they're saying. And more recently, thanks to my education from Alexander, I've also learned to interpret words based on how they feel versus what they mean.

One of the things I notice frequently when hanging out with a group of people is that many people don't do this. When the conversation shifts from one person to the next, the attention of the first person often doesn't follow it. As person B begins talking or answering a question, person A might drift out of the conversation (staring off, not reacting to what is being said, not interacting). My takeaway is that many people are interested in conversations when the focus is them, but not otherwise.

The Recyclers
Lately I've become less and less patient with the long and winding disjointed narrative threads that represent the inner workings of what substitutes in many people for thought, specially when the threads either have nothing to do with the stated intention of the speaker, or, when they've been replayed so many times they sound like the voice of an automated alarm system repeatedly saying "please exit the building."

The Conspicuous Consumers, et al
I long ago abandoned conversations with people who wanted to talk exclusively about their latest vacations or acquisitions or the latest gossip. More recently, I gave up on discussions of politics or business or education or the environment or psychology or medicine as I came to realize that oftentimes people are simply reciting well-formed (formed as in hardened cement) poorly-founded (thin on evidence and logic) opinions that they have little interest in changing. Even more recently, I've grown weary of diatribe of people who say they really want to change themselves, but simply can't because...

There are simply fewer and fewer conversations in which I want to engage. On Saturday, Mark K and Rachel J spent the night with us. As Mark was about 15 minutes into a 20 minute answer to a yes-or-no question, I stopped him asking him to drop the narrative and simply answer the question. If you're looking for rapid repartee and highly interactive conversation involving everyone at the table, talking with Mark can be like playing basketball on the beach.

Mark responded really sweetly curtailing his answers to yes/no and fill-in-the-blank questions to something under five minutes.

The Rigid
I approach most new tasks and challenges inductively, bottoms-up. I develop a strong intuitive sense of what I want accomplish (I can see it in my mind's eye) and then I jump right into the low level details and concepts; I skip all the stuff in the middle, all the hierarchical structures, all the frameworks, all the architecture.

If I'm working on software that requires me to learn a new language, I don't learn the whole language, just the parts I need to accomplish what I'm working on. If I'm writing a business plan, I first dive into the individual products and services to understand them and from that build the higher level structures. As I work with the lower level elements, the common threads reveal themselves and the overall structure emerges.

This approach has served me really well in designing and building new systems. The resulting systems are elegant from a design perspective, they easily adapt to change and new requirements, they work. This approach has also enabled me to be significantly more productive than my peers. While many are still trying to come up to speed on a new computer language, I've already finished the project. I won't be aware of all the nuances of the computer language that they've learned, but I'll have uncovered tons of undocumented features and capabilities.

The problem is this. When you work inductively, it's tough to collaborate with people whose thinking is reductive, top-down. They like to be handed the framework (the big picture) and a road map showing them where all the little pieces fit. If the framework isn't there, they don't know where to start. If you give them a framework without all the components, they'll start conducting an inventory and notice that some of them aren't there.

For me, the architecture just kind of pops out at the end; at least the left brain version of it. It's an artifact of the process, not the driver of the process. As a result of this, I can typically only begin collaborating with deductive thinkers as soon as I'm finished the project.

(Note: it's not that top-down doesn't work; it's just that it only works for well defined and understood systems, not novel ones.)

The Fearful
Since beginning this blog, Iris has received feedback on various occasions from some folks at the Option Institute regarding format, content and changes they would like to see. Iris incorporated much of this feedback, but not all of it. Apparently some of the folks at the Institute are of the 1% empty ilk and have therefore come to perceive Iris' efforts as not being supportive of the Institute.

Having spent time with venture capitalists and some fairly cutthroat business folks, and having witnessed firsthand what it can mean to be "unsupportive" (e.g., best make sure your D&O insurance is paid up), it's been a bit of a challenge to take this labeling of Iris' efforts seriously. But apparently there are people who have.

Over the past few days, I've witnessed several incidents of people who are distancing themselves from people like Iris and Joy, because they don't want themselves to be perceived as being "unsupportive" of the Option Institute. I had thought to post the emails themselves, but let it suffice for me to describe what happened.

For example, Joy from Denmark, who is one of the regular contributor to this blog, had asked a friend volunteering at the Institute for a month to bring back copies of the Adventures in Happiness book. When Iris contacted him to arrange his getting the books, he emailed Joy and her saying that he wasn't going to bring the books to Joy because he didn't want to be "perceived as being unsupportive of or disloyal to the Institute." He mentioned that he needed Option and couldn't afford to be cut-off as it were.

Another friend sent Iris an email wishing her a happy new year. When Iris responded suggesting that they might spend more time together in the new year, the response of her friend was that she didn't see them getting together any more, but that she hoped they wouldn't end up "enemies."

I can't imagine that there's any substance to their concerns, but it's amazing to see what happens when people (friends) begin to operate from places of fear. In this case, they end up being neither friends to Joy and Iris (from whom they've simply walked away) nor to the Institute (whom they end up portraying as some type of cult rather than the amazing place it is). It doesn't serve anyone.

The Nutritious
Over the years, I've learned to adapt to people no matter where they're coming from. I've learned to engage the users in broader conversation, divert the conspicuous consumers into the depths of philosophy and meaning, knock the fence-sitters off their fences, loosen up the rigid, and de-fear the fearful. But lately I find myself wanting more.

The more needn't mean other people. I notice that I'm continually more and more happy on my own than with others. However, I also notice that oftentimes being with others feels like running in deep sand with ankle weights. I even find myself drinking extra glasses of wine just to slow myself down to the rate of conversation.

In the end, I think it's just about time.

I'm already crazy busy and there are so many more things that I want to do, so many ideas and concepts that I want to explore, so many things I want to learn. Pete recently turned me onto an application that transforms the Mac into an amazing synthesizer and I've been writing new music like I haven't done in years. As I've learned more about sensory integration from Kat and medical devices from Jonathan, I've become really inspired to start working on device that could help kids with autism improve their sensory processing. The work I'm doing with relate to autism is just beginning to take off. On and on...

I guess, although I can adapt to and enjoy time with pretty much anyone, it's time for me to more actively surround myself with people who are nutritious. Of course, nutritious for me may be lethal for someone else, and vice versa.

But the main thing for me is to decide what that means (for me), and then to become more proactive in deciding with whom I engage (and with whom I don't.)

If you made it this far, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my musings. Do you think about the people in your life as being nutritious? Maybe you've considered them in terms of net energy flow... the people who take more energy than they give... the people who give more energy than they take... and the people with whom the combined energy exceeds the sum of its parts. Are you nutritious?

Thank you for listening.
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy