Odds are we haven’t talked much. This year has been a bit weird for that. It at times felt like the lack of in person activities just stuck and transferred itself to online. That or just virtual meeting fatigue.

Regardless of how often we have or haven’t interacted, I’ve been thinking a lot about others and how they are doing thru this crazy year. Part of it is because of my focus on Buddhism (without belief) and meditation.

All that say is that even if I haven’t reached out, know that I care for you, I miss you, and I hope we’ll be able to meet again in 2021.

In the last few years 3 people I knew who were my age died. Twice of cancer and one suicide. I’m still at an age where any death is tragic and death has a way of putting things in perspective.

I remember having a close call with someone very close to me who was suicidal. Those times really helped me put things in perspective.

I’ve always been good under pressure (which confuses folks because of the anxiety) and I remember a time working at VIP when some site went down and we may of caused data loss. I remember telling a coworker who felt anxious that they didn’t need to worry because no one died and no one will die from pageviews missing, even if it goes into the 100s of thousands of pageviews. I’m lucky in that I’m in a field where the chance of my mistake causing death is minimal and I feel for those who day in and day out have to accept that the consequences of their actions may be death.

Death also minimizes everything else. Being frustrated with a friend, a lover, a relationships (of any type) that broke down, all these things seem, unimportant. Why hold on to that pain? Why hold on to that resentment and anger when things are so fragile? Why choose to stay hurt and to not move forward when we’re a heartbeat away from nothingness?

I’ve been guilty of this, In the past and even now. So why is it that it’s so hard to let go and to make amends? Not only with others but with ourselves.

To radically accept what happened and see it for what it is. A lifeless memory from the past that shouldn’t take precedence on the living moment.

I know some folks will, rightfully, point out that there is a reason for this pain, that it’s purpose is to teach us a lesson. It’s there so we don’t just keep putting our hand on a hot stove or keep engaging in patterns that harm us. I think that’s distinct from accepting the past (or the present) and to make amends with it. It’s not that you forget what happened. It’s that you accept what happened and become at peace with it and the people involved.

Editor’s note: I actually wrote this in like March or something and somehow never posted it

I’m currently reading Buddhism without beliefs which is basically what mindfullness has become. There is one difference, while mindfullness usually only incorporates the practices of meditation under a different name, Buddhism without beliefs advocates for a bit more introspection added. But it does this without any of the dubious religion-y aspects of Buddhism.

One of the things they recommend to meditate on was this question:

“Since death alone is certain, and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?”.

At first, it feels quite Nihilistic. But it’s in a way just a re-framing of “Will it matter in 3 months”. Where as anything that won’t matter in 3 months isn’t worth ruminating about. (TED talk)

After a while, this sense of liberation comes in. In that, So many things become trivialities that we don’t need to bother with or worry about.

A former colleague talked about his experience applying for jobs:

I wrote a bit about this on Twitter, but thought it could be a useful post. You can see my original reply and the conversation on Twitter.

I think that this forced universal positivity will kill your ability to reflect and improve. Too many leaders (and I have been guilty of this in the past) believe that we can fix all problems with encouragement. I myself haven’t fully moved past this.

I think it relates to accepting things for what they are and to the Buddhist Noble Truths. It’s much easier to diagnose overly optimistic / forced positivity in others. Once in a while, when I’m doing it I catch myself. But most often it’s in retrospect or it’s when I see someone else do it. When I catch it in myself or in others I try to refocus the conversation. Step back and re-read our shared goals. What’s our vision and mission? If that’s the case, are we truly achieving it? Am I, or are we deluding ourselves with vanity or proxy metrics?

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their true names.”

Maybe Confucius or something

Lying to yourself and others that things are great seems like a good strategy. I mean, if we’re positive about it, it’ll be easier to climb over this actual obstacle. We won’t despair, we’ll keep marching on and eventually we’ll get there, right?

But if we don’t see things for what they are, if we don’t find the truth and tell the truth, we’re postponing the pain and suffering. And not just postponing but increasing it. When we’re finally forced to come to terms with the outcomes we’ve helped create, the pain of having wasted all this time and energy in the wrong path is crushing.

We can only build good relationships with neighbours by calling things by their name.

Paraphrased from Angela Merkel

That being said, that’s not a free pass to just shit on everything you see. Some use radical candour as radical honesty, but the key part is to care. Radical candour, the book, talks about caring personally and challenging directly. I think, in many cases, you can’t care personally. You can care about the mission of your organization, if you deeply care about a mission and challenge directly…. You can perhaps shorten the amount of time spent lost in the wilderness.

I say and write all these things like I know what I’m doing. that I’m able to at all times act in the way I wish I could, as some sort of Aristotle or Buddha, asking questions to people and helping them come to the realization of the truth themselves.

But as a human, I exist in the real world, I’m right at times, wrong at times. The real world is messy and unclear. We don’t have a scorecard at the end that tells us if we optimized for the outcomes we aimed to achieve.

“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Shakespeare

I’m reading (actually listening) to Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed because everyone keeps raving about it, and while it is an interesting book and it does a good job at setting the premise, and is great at showing the hubris behind believing one can mast complex systems (as opposed to complicated systems) it has the same problem most books have, which is that it’s needlessly long.

Now, of course, this was exacerbated by the fact that I was listening to it in the car and it’s not really easy to skip ahead.

But still it has the same problems I find in many books, it takes a chapter to repeat over and over the same point. Yes with varying anecdotes and the like, but it’s the same thing. And it’s not like there is more “proof” in the extra pages in each chapter, it’s just repetition of data points and examples.

I feel like most books could be cut by 80% but then have links to supporting evidence and supporting examples.

I loved the part about the architecture disasters of trying to instill order by Le Corbusier vs the embracing of complex systems of interdependence by Jane Jacobs.

But it just belaboured the point. It went on and on about the visuals from the sky metaphors and just kept repeating itself. I got it, your premise is that this is bad and this is why. Giving me 3 more anecdotes about how it was bad in other circumstances is not actually giving me real evidence of this, so I’m not going to change my perception of the truthiness of what you’re saying based on you repeating it 4 times with 4 different examples. That’s not actually giving me real evidence, it’s just showing me more cherry-picked examples to prove your point.

What it should do, it give the premise, give an example to understand context and get a sense of the ramifications of the premise and then, if you have any, link to supporting evidence in the annexes. No one needs to read the same thing 4 times.

I suspect part of the problem is that, if this was a 50 page book instead of a 500 page book, people wouldn’t pay $15 for it. One thing I like about Sam Harris((note that this is not an endorsement of Sam Harris, I disagree with some of his opinions)) is that his books are “short”((relatively speaking)), around 100 pages for Lying (Which is an interesting read about how you should just tell the truth) and Free Will((I’d suggest also reading the critical review by Daniel Dennett and Harris response). Taking away your thoughts on the content and the arguments in the book, I much prefer this method of reading and understanding someone’s thoughts vs the traditional model of a book.

I suspect there are reasons (be it just that the system is set out that way, that people won’t pay for content in different forms, this is a proven form, etc) But I feel like there needs to be something that’s a bit longer than Blinkist, but shorter than a 16 hour audio book / 500 pages of repetitive text.