I read over http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/todays-political-partisanship-is-hurting-canadas-best-and-brightest/ (full disclosure I’ve met Ian at least once and chatted with him a bit on twitter and had offered to do non-partisan [but values driven] work with him in the past). And I was struck by how close to home it resonated.

The toxic culture of Ottawa where you can’t disagree with anything the party you support does. You can’t have a nuanced opinion on anything. I remember exploiting this often. We created so many petitions. With https://web.archive.org/web/20130817152228/http://petition.liberal.ca:80/abortion-debate-woodworth-harper-canada-reproductive-rights-pro-choice-lucie-pepin/ being one of the most successful (I mean just look at the SEO of that url) with good intentions but certainly not fair, we intentionally positioned Harper as being in support of this motion, while in fact Harper voted against it. And on top of that, the motion calls for “a 12-member, all-party committee to study the definition of when a newborn can legally be considered a human being.” You can disagree with it, but this was a far cry from “opens the possibility of re-criminalizing abortion.” As we put it.

The people who are promoted and idealized in party politics are unwavering zealots that senior staff could count on to repeat the talking points. It’s very sad in a sense. But while lot’s of people will blame politicians, or the staffers, I think we should look inside ourselves to see where the problem lies.

Everytime we jump to conclusion, everytime we stick to what we know and dismiss the other opinion out of hand, everytime we try to shout down things we don’t like and stick to things we do, we enable it. This can be very simple things like pressing like on a FB post that by reading the title we know we agree with to arguing with others and not leading with compassion / giving them the benefit of the doubt.

It’s easy to blame others for this. But the media, FB, twitter, are just giving us what we tell them we want by our actions. The only way for this to change, is for each of us to change.

I was talking about the positive aspects of religion with someone and they kept coming back to community as the best aspect of religion. I thought that was really interesting and something I could definitely understand. I personally have a skeptical view of the benefits of religion but the community aspect is something I hadn’t thought of and that I feel is missing living in a big city. In a small town, it’s relatively easy to find a community. I’m not sure why that is, but folks are very welcoming. In a large city, if you approach folks, they think you “want” something. Religion does seem like it could help people join a community of like minded people.

Now all that being said, I’m not sure if rather the conclusion shouldn’t be that we should be more open and willing to accept new people into our daily lives and incorporate them into our social circle. Why is it that it’s so hard to find a good circle of friends outside of work or school? If you think about it, a great majority of people share the same values. Most of those are actually the same shared by folks who are religious. Helping others out, compassion, friendship, making the world a better place.

And yet, when we meet people, do we assign those values to them? Why does there need to be something that links us (be it school, workplace, religion, board game community) before we open ourselves up and are open to people? Why are we so “scared” of the “others”? Is it really all the negative media? If so why do we keep wanting that kind of media? I’m a big believer that media doesn’t tell us what to think with what it gives us but rather that we tell media what we want it to feed back to us (especially online, where we can easily tell the difference between what people say they want to read or see vs what they actually decide to read or see).

All that to say, how can we create better communities? Thoughts?

I’m working on hiring recently. I’ve come to think that many things people base themselves on when judging applications are pretty useless.
There seems to be this focus on a few checkboxes. I understand why. there’s a sea of candidates, if you don’t have a list of objective criteria it’s hard to decide.
That being said I think most people go for criterias that don’t really mean much. For example years of experience or having a degree. One that really bothers me is people who ask questions about a gap in job experience. I don’t even understand why someone would think that not working for a few months or a year would be a valid indicator.
If someone took time for health (physical or mental) issues for themselves of a loved one, that’s a good thing in my books.

The most important thing that I look for in a CV is did they really want to apply here. Is their cover letter generic? on each job posting we ask 3 questions and we clearly state applicants who don’t answer the questions in the cover letter will be rejected. Still, only ~30% of applicants answer the questions.
It seems those candidates are at least qualified enough for an interview.
The interview is tricky and while it can weed out some folks, I worry it’s too hit or miss. Does the candidate know the answer or have they encountered the specific technical problem you ask about?
The interview stage is the one I’m the less certain about right now.

The one that gives the most insight is the trial. Seeing someone work in action is so much better. In a way I wish we could send folks directly there after the application but I suspect it would be too time consuming. At least in how we currently do it.
Perhaps there’s a way to implement it in a way that makes it scale-able.

I think part of why I don’t write blog posts is that often I don’t have the answer.
I don’t have a good way to finish the post.
It’s just a ramble of thoughts and ideas with no conclusion.
Perhaps that’s useful…

I seem to write more blog posts while on a plane.
Perhaps it’s the notion of being disconnected.

I feel like that’s something I should look into. Am I more productive while not connected to the internet? Would setting my phone on airplane mode for a few hours a day make me happier?

Right now I’m procrastinating. I have work I would like to do, or at least I think I should do. Work that I want to do that would help me grow. And yet, I’m not motivated to do it. Why is that? Is it that I feel I’ve already done enough work? That pushing myself more would be detrimental? That I should accept that I will want to play video games a certain amount of hours a week?

Oh sure, I know I need to accept that I’m enough and I’m working enough and doing enough learning and the like. But is that true? Or more accurately how do I know and find that balance? Mark Manson mentioned in an AMA that he feels the answer is to focus on specific things in your life one at a time. I understand the appeal of that. It’s how I focused on getting healthier for the last few years (with great success).

But if that is the answer, then I guess it means figuring out and prioritizing what I want to achieve. Something I know I should do, but still not easy.

It seems like many of my posts are really about my inability to write and just post it.

I’m hoping that by starting with one mediocre post like this I can get the ball rolling and just keep posting mediocre posts. We’ll see how that goes.