Robots and Riots

You do not see union workers holding benefits for robots. — Stephen Colbert

There’s a Doomsday scenario where machines take over all jobs and everyone becomes unemployed. Evictions, hunger, and illness ensue. Riots in the streets. Calls for a guaranteed national income. Legislation to prevent robots from being built at all. Political calamities. A real mess.

French police unleashed tear gas and water cannons on demonstrators Tuesday as tens of thousands packed the streets of Paris in an outpouring of opposition to the government’s anti-labor agenda. — news item

If workers will riot over incremental changes to employment, imagine how berserk they’ll go if all the jobs disappear.

“But robots will never take every job!” Oh, yes they will. We humans are clever — we’ve invented countless labor-saving gadgets over the centuries, devices stronger or faster or more precise than people can be. We’re also clever enough to invent mechanical brainpower that’s stronger, faster, and more precise than our own. In fact, we’re developing this Superior Artificial Intelligence as we speak. Such an intellect will eclipse our own poor powers and take charge. Soon.

(Which would you rather buy, something dirt cheap but excellent from a machine, or something flawed and unreliable and expensive from a human? Hmm.)

This could easily become a bad thing, since people thrown out of work generally don’t have money for food, rent, gasoline, and doctor visits. Also, most of us derive meaning from our labors, and without a job — a way to contribute — people might find themselves existentially adrift. Combine a lack of purpose with a lack of cash, and you get street riots and the other disasters.

And it also could be a good thing … if the automata serve us faithfully and make us all wealthy. We’d have endless free time to pursue our interests, with no need to convert hobbies into jobs. In that world to come, what matters would no longer be how rich you are, but how interesting you are. I call it The Star Trek Future.

(Yes, I’m well aware that this very blog could be replaced by automation. I’d have to find some other way to amuse myself. Tennis, anyone?)

A solution that lately has gotten traction is a guaranteed national income — a stipend for every adult citizen. If all people were unemployed, only those who owned investments would have regular income. The corporations would need to donate money to the unemployed, or none of them would buy any products.

The problem with this plays out as follows: I own a store, and you come in to get a candy bar but don’t have any money. I give you a dollar, and you hand it back to me for the candy bar. Essentially, I’m performing a short ceremony with you, at the end of which I give you a free candy bar. At this rate, I’ll go broke.

Another idea involves a kind of fiscal land reform: the government confiscates corporate stock and hands it out to everyone. We’d all become owners of the robots that took our jobs. Automated production would go to our bottom line, and everything turns out fine.

Except this would basically destroy the market economy. Nobody would invest in companies anymore, lest their hard-won gains be taken from them abruptly in some similar, future upheaval.

But what people aren’t talking about and what’s getting my attention, is a forthcoming rapid demonetization of the cost of living. — Peter Diamandis

What to do, then? It turns out there’s a solution that will likely unfold as a natural consequence of total automation of jobs. It’s called demonetization, and it will cause most prices to plummet. After all, robots don’t take vacations; they don’t need healthcare for their kids; they don’t go on strike; and they perform their tasks vastly more efficiently than can humans. They work much better and much cheaper.

Thus, though we may all one day find ourselves unemployed, our expenses could decline by as much as 90 percent. A meal at a fast-food restaurant would cost 50 cents, and a ride in a driverless taxi would set us back about 30 cents per mile, less than half the cost of car ownership. Dirt-cheap housing will be built using 3-D printing. Meanwhile, online education already is basically free, and the smartphone in your pocket comes with a slew of products and services that 30 years ago would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Given a small stipend from the government and/or a small stake in the big corporations, people would have more than enough cash to pay for basic necessities even if they were out of work.

It’s also important to bear in mind that non-human employment will likely emerge over time and not all at once. Economic downturns in recent decades have tended to resolve themselves with “jobless recoveries” as businesses bought new software first and then hired real people. This hints at workforce automation building momentum slowly over several decades.

Instead of being eliminated, your job might merely get cut back, bit by bit: they’d offer to keep you on at reduced hours that drop even further over the coming months and years. Of course, your pay would decline, but meanwhile your personal expenses will have plummeted due to all that cheap automation everywhere in the economy. So who cares? You just got a bunch of extra hours away from work while retaining essentially the same lifestyle.

(If you’re worried this optimistic scenario won’t play out according to plan, there are a number of ways to adapt your work life to reduce or delay your risk of being replaced by a machine.)

If business and government can coordinate properly (and that’s a BIG “if”), automation might supplant us gradually, so we retain a declining level of employment while prices also decline. We could actually achieve a soft landing into a life of prosperous leisure.

That’s not Doomsday. That’s more like Paradise.

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UPDATE: Will we control AI?

UPDATE: Jobs are already disappearing as robots take over

UPDATE: Automation begins to clean out white-collar jobs

UPDATE: The rise of the useless class

UPDATE: How to get paid in the Age of Layoffs

UPDATE: David Byrne on eliminating humans

 

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How to Multitask

The multitaskers perceived that they performed better, because their brains were more stimulated, but in every single study they performed worse. — Chris Bailey

When you are in a hurry, you are in danger. — airplane pilot’s adage

There’s an old Buddhist story where a businessman visits a Zen temple and says to the Master, “I need to become enlightened. How long will it take?” The old Roshi answers, “A minimum of one year.” The businessman says, “That’s way too long! I have a company to run.” The Roshi replies, “In that case, it’ll take five years.”

Many of us are busy and harried, and we cast about for productivity tools to help us get more done in less time. One of the most tempting techniques is multitasking, or doing several things at once. Pretty soon we’re driving while shaving and talking on the phone and texting and grabbing quick sips of coffee. It’s exciting! We’re getting things done.

Except we aren’t. Our brains are poorly suited to thinking about more than one topic at a time. It may feel as if we’re accomplishing more, but in fact we’re performing worse.

Yet we’ve seen people do multiple things simultaneously with apparent success. And, after all, we can walk and talk at the same time. Brush our teeth and listen to the news. Play the piano with both hands.

The piano: you read the music while managing keys simultaneously with both left and right hands. Heck, it’s like those super-geniuses who can write two separate sentences at the same time, one from each hand, on a whiteboard!

But it takes time to learn a new piece: you begin to memorize phrases and sections so they become automated as you study the next segments. Basically, you’re transforming each section into “brushing teeth”, where you don’t have to think about it anymore.

If you’re going to multitask, you must do it deliberately. Take the time now to automate small physical tasks — turning them into consistent routines until they’re memorized — so your brain is free to concentrate. The effort will pay off later. Remember: multitask rote physical stuff, not mental stuff.

Here are the main ideas:

• Do one mental task at a time: Resist the temptation to do multiple mental jobs at once. (Examples: reading and talking, talking and texting, conferencing and texting, anything and texting.) Instead, calmly go through your list, one item at a time. No panic! You’ll get there.
• Automate physical activities like making copies, brewing coffee, changing your tie, driving. (But be careful! Nearly any activity can require full attention on occasion — especially driving — so stop with all the texting!) Go watch a good bartender mix drinks automatically while chatting with patrons, and you’ll get a sense of it.
• Slow down to speed up: If you hurry, you tend to perform poorly. (Remember that time in the parking lot when some bigwig was waiting for you to pull out of your space so they could use it, and they honked their horn, and you rushed and dropped your keys under the car, and hit your head as you got in, and dropped the keys again, this time between the seats? You get the idea.) Anything you rush gets worse, including multitasking.

So now you’re at work, and your boss yells, “Where’s that report, Jenkins?! And get down to Receiving and find those overnights! Also, Simmons got sick, so grab someone to fill in!” You take a deep, calming breath and say:

“It’s on my list.”

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Expertise: Complex or Simple?

Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time. — Arnold Glasow

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. — Pablo Picasso

Beginners hardly know anything, while experts know a lot. Thus skills start out simple and get complicated as you learn them. Right?

Oddly, it’s the other way around. Beginning efforts are inefficient, arbitrary, and random. And randomness can generate enormous complexity. Expertise, on the other hand, is simple and straightforward. The expert knows what to do directly and effectively.

A professional will know many more things about a given skill than an apprentice, but those things are discreet and focused. The beginner’s mind casts about in all directions for a way through a situation the expert has already solved.

The first time I tried a crossword puzzle, it took two hours and a dictionary. Within a year, I was tossing them off — in pen no less — in five minutes. (Competition puzzlers often can complete them in less than two.) My crossword skills went from inefficient and ignorant to knowledgeable and focused. Beyond the puzzle-solving techniques I’d learned, I’d also internalized a vocabulary of special words for filling in the odd corner. But those skills and words were specific: instead of struggling with a dozen approaches, I had particular ways forward; instead searching through reference books, I could call on a short list of words from memory.

Blood-flow studies demonstrate that beginners’ brains are much busier than those of professionals: learners are all over the map, while masters are homed in. “ . . . [E]xtensive practice over a long period of time leads experts to develop a focused and efficient organization of task-related neural networks, whereas novices have difficulty filtering out irrelevant information.”

Basically, the pro sees the problem as a pattern with a solution, while the newbie sees a jumble of noise. One sees a map; the other sees a maze. The expert finds pathways; the beginner wanders around.

Expertise, then, tends to be elegantly efficient and simple, with few wasted moves — it’s economical — whereas students must slog slowly through their own ignorance.

Think of the inexperienced marketer or administrator, who takes too long to explain a situation, and the seasoned pro who encapsulates the problem in a phrase. Or the office assistant who makes a series of mistakes that his boss clears up with a couple of quick decisions. Or your golf partner’s swing, with its inefficiencies, compared to the fluid power of Rory McIlroy or Jason Day.

Of course, no two problems are the same, and even the experts must slow, sometimes to a crawl, as they approach new questions. In that respect, everyone is a beginner. But the pros have tools of experience they can wield at all times to cut quickly through the randomness of novelty.

What about all that knowledge and lore, the sheer number of facts to be learned? Doesn’t that make expertise more complicated? True, your acquired skills involve a library of facts a beginner won’t have. But those facts greatly simplify the process, enabling you often to see at a glance into the essence of a problem, turning it from a puzzling predicament into a process quickly fulfilled. Your store of knowledge makes things easier, not harder, and you complete tasks more quickly, with less total energy expended.

To attain the simplicity of mastery in any field or profession:

• Relax … and practice: Your brain will find its way through the maze of ignorance to the exit of competence, and it will do so automatically — all you have to do is practice. There’s no need to force things; your mind will grow the particular skills it needs in good time. (Still, it’s possible to “master mastery”, as with the suggestions that follow.)

• Find mentors: Don’t re-invent the wheel if you can befriend an expert who will teach you how it’s done. Of course, you can also study books and other media that describe the skills you’re learning. All these resources will speed things up tremendously.

• Find the general principles: Every skill has a set of fundamentals which serve as shortcuts to learning. If you can master these, you’ll become expert faster. (You’ll know you’re becoming competent when you discover how to break the rules now and then for even better results.)

• Find simpler ways: Once you have the basics down, think of how you can do them more efficiently — how to perform the action with fewer steps, how to say it in fewer words, how to focus in on the important data. This will move you quickly toward the end goal of polished mastery.

• Find the 80/20 Rule in your field: As you practice, you’ll discover areas where your efforts generate much higher returns. If 20 percent of your work gets you 80 percent of your return, then increase the 20-percent activity.

• Search for expertise in others: When partnering or hiring, look for people who have an easy grasp of the topic, who respond to challenges in a relaxed and confident manner, and who ask questions and incorporate the answers quickly into their process. Effective mastery depends, not only on your own skill set, but on the competency of your co-workers. Leverage each others’ contributions to multiply the results.

The goal is to be effective — to arrive at the solution without wasting time, energy, or money. While the student puts in hours, the master gets results. A few well-placed words, a stroke of a pen, a simple phone call, a single idea that solves a dilemma, an elegant motion by a craftsperson — these are the home runs, the three-point baskets, the hat tricks in the game of expertise. Practice the simplicity of mastery, and your scores will soar.

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UPDATE: The seven fatal thinking flaws, and how to transcend them

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How to Reduce Event Attendance

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. — Charles Caleb Colton

Most of us go to events from time to time — festivals, concerts, conventions, street fairs — and many of these get promoted by email. If you’re on a list for, say, a monthly swap meet, you’ll receive a notice in your Inbox from the promoter, and it’s often written in a breezy, upbeat and chatty style that’s sure to charm and attract customers.

Yes, making money is probably one of the main purposes of the promoter. No problem with that, of course. The trouble lies elsewhere. Here’s an example of what you might get:

“Okay, our regular meet is all set up for the end of the month! Get ready, because it’s gonna be a great one. Usual start time, but we’ll have some extra-special guest vendors that you’ll love. Admission is $20 this month because of extra expenses, but rest assured you’ll think it was worth more. We look forward to seeing all of you. Do come to the main tent and say hi.”

What’s wrong with it? … Yes, you in the back.

“There’s no date listed.”

Exactly. I’ve lost count of how many announcements I’ve received that bubbled with excitement about an event but forgot to mention the date. Or the time. Or the address. Or the price.

The above sample omits nearly every particular. This is surprisingly common. Promoters seem to assume that their list members already know the recurring stuff, so why bore them with the same details?

Here’s a why: List members themselves often need the basic information. Your regulars are a motley bunch, some of whom have not been with the group long, or have poor memories, or have always caught a ride with someone else until now. Etc etc.

Here’s another why: Your regulars may want to forward the email to friends and new recruits, but they won’t if it’s an embarrassment of non-information.

If the promoter fails to list everything anyone might need to know about the event, attendance will suffer — not merely from missed opportunities for marketing to newbies, but from regulars unsure about the date or time or address or cost. Instead of the hoped-for increase in patronage, the turnout drops.

A big difference between professionals and amateurs is that pros tend to be methodical and detail-oriented, whereas amateurs are in it for the fun, confusing enthusiasm for competence. If there’s money involved, the event organizer needs to behave like a professional. But if thoroughness makes them impatient, they’ll hit “Send” too early … and prove they’re an amateur.

When it’s a one-person operation, that person will write the announcement, and then proof-read it … if she or he has time. The problem is that most amateur writers think if they understand what they’re writing, so will everyone else. They believe they’re communicating simply because they’re typing.

I’ve received unclear or incomplete email announcements, replied asking for clarification, and been scolded for not reading the email. This tells me the promoter sincerely believes all the info is included even when it isn’t. This illusion can be very persistent; amateurs fall prey to it all the time.

Also, it’s extremely poor practice for promoters to get huffy with their customers about anything, especially communication problems, which could easily be the promoter’s fault.

If organizers simply assume they’ve announced events properly, they’ll never connect the dots between incompetent emails and lost gate. Besides, with so many variables — weather, time of year, competition, economic conditions — who can prove that it was the weak email announcement that put the brakes on attendance?

The announcement is one of the variables you can control. It is, after all, a part of marketing, which is critical to the success of your event. It’s hard to imagine it not affecting attendance.

SOLUTIONS:

Always include the basic details:

—Date and time (“Saturday, March 12, 8:00 a.m.”)

—Event and location (“Monthly Swap Meet, 123 Main St, Anytown”)

—Cost and benefits (“$20 gets you admission and a free raffle ticket.”)

—Any special notes (“Be sure to bring a warm jacket” / sunscreen / bug spray / box lunch / etc)

If you must issue an update or correction, be sure to include the basic details again, revised as appropriate. Do these things and it becomes easy for people to pop the event into their calendars … and forward the message, with its complete event info, to those they want to invite.

Always write for the first-timer. Read your own writing as if you were a newbie who doesn’t know the least thing about your event. This exercise can show you what you’re omitting that you’ve assumed everyone else knows. (And you’d be surprised how much the regular attendees don’t know about what’s going on.) Assume that your list members are like students in a classroom, where most of them aren’t paying attention. Be clear, and always include complete event information, so a beginner — and any regular who’s unsure about the latest event particulars — will have no doubts or hesitations about when and where to attend, what to bring, etc.

Always have someone else check your writing. Well-constructed sentences give off a professional air, while goofs and awkward phrases reek of amateurism. It’s easy to scan your own work and see no problems: you wrote it, it looks good to you, it must be getting the point across. We’re all a bit blinded by the majesty of our own verbiage. But be warned: our writing, unchecked, can and will rise up to humiliate us, the lovely words betraying confused or embarrassing meanings we never intended. Meanwhile, punctuation and spelling mistakes can slip past the best of us. A second pair of eyes will catch a lot of potential problems.

Don’t be the one left standing in the middle of a sparsely attended event, shrugging his shoulders — “But I told them about it!” — oblivious to the amateur mistakes he made. Let somebody else make those errors. Get your email promotions in hand … and watch your gate improve.

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Victory or Profits?

Popular business theories often rely on the notion that success is binary: that you either defeat other businesses or you are defeated. This idea enables sports coaches to consult with Fortune 500 companies, but does it really cover all the bases? 

“Do or die” has an elemental, romantic appeal to corporate CEOs, most of whom are highly competitive and love a good battle. And it’s true that the marketplace can be ruthless. But that’s not all there is, and out-and-out market victory certainly isn’t the only source of profitability. Let’s look at some of the popular shibboleths and see if we can improve on them:

• Grow or Die: This idea comes mainly from the 1973 book Grow or Die by George Land. The author described how all living systems, including businesses, go through growth spurts when they discover and exploit new resources, then stall out when those resources run dry, at which point new approaches to resource discovery and management must be developed. It helped publicize the S-curve, which shows how growth starts slow, speeds up, then slows down again. These concepts have proven popular and useful to business strategists. But still we’re left with that catchy binary book title, which seems to imply that all companies, and life forms in general, must constantly enlarge or they will be destroyed. By that reckoning, the oldest and most successful creatures would be the size of Massachusetts, generating their own Zip Codes and a sizeable gravitational field.
  • Better: Adapt or Fade. The point is profits, not constant growth. It’s not how big you are but how much you return to your stakeholders. To that end, especially in today’s innovative marketplace, the adaptive and creative firms will do best. That S-curve will show the growth of your margin, not merely your bulk.

• Go Big or Go Home: This is a metaphor from sports, where outcomes are always binary (except in hockey). But it’s not a solid match for what companies face in the marketplace. Competition is only one aspect of commerce, and second- and third-place firms often earn more profit than the leader. But “Go big” appeals to men, who are fueled by testosterone and thrive on competition. For many leaders, the only thing that matters is total victory, as if they were in a war where the loser submits to unconditional surrender. Markets don’t usually work that way.
  • Better: Own Your Niche. Find the spot in the market where your company has a natural monopoly because of its uniquely useful products. The focus is on serving the clients and making a profit, instead of trying for some arbitrary notion of “victory”. (But you can still feel dominant in your particular corner of the market, if you need that buzz.)

• Take or Give: Givers, says Adam Grant in his book Give and Take, prefer to give more than they get, and their team thrives. Takers, on the other hand, believe it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and they must grab as much as they can and give as little as possible, which disrupts group efforts. Clearly, you want a Giver on your team. But Grant’s thesis suggests a binary takeaway, namely, that the energy of your labor is exactly counterbalanced by the energy stored in the money you make. This is a zero-sum game, and it represents an attitude that goes all the way back to 17th-century Mercantilists, who believed that trade only worked if they “got more than they gave”, as if cash and product were worth exactly the same to both sides of an exchange that was more competition than cooperation. It’s also an attitude popular among fiscal liberals, who tend to think the rich got that way by cheating. In fact, Grant suggests that the only real flaw in a Giver is the tendency to give too much, as if he or she should pull back, now and then, and be a Taker — at least, long enough to pay for some nifty stuff. It makes the Giver look like the Nicest Loser.
  • Better: Create Value (rather than hijack it). Grant’s main point is that we work best when we’re not constantly calculating what we’re getting from our labors. If, instead, we focus on producing for the team, our pay will tend to reward us naturally over time. This seems a wise and fruitful attitude. And Grant — a Wharton Business School professor — no doubt understands exchange theory quite well. He’ll likely agree that when you make value generation your goal, you’ll do much better in the long run than when you act like a leech.

• Dominate the Market: If you control the market, you ought to be able to dictate price and guarantee huge profits. Or so they say. The binary implication is that you own your market or it owns you. In fact, giant companies with overwhelming market share often get trapped paying for their enormous infrastructure by cranking out low-margin items. Meanwhile, small competitors can adapt and innovate quickly, so their goods and services are more likely to be uniquely valuable and command higher margins.
  • Better: KIP (Keep It Profitable). Yes, a huge corporation with a low margin may take more total profit than a small company with a big margin. And, yes, a big margin on big revenue is better than a big margin on small revenue. But as a general matter, it’s more important to be profitable than large. Size, as scientists would say, is an “emergent property” of success. But it’s not required.

In short: stay adaptive, develop your own niche, focus your team on creating value, and point your firm toward profit rather than size, and you’ll sidestep most of the grinding headaches that come from trying to steamroll your competitors in a “do or die” fight to the finish. 

Let someone else take home the laurels, and you bring home the bacon.

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The Four Career Strengths

What we have to decide — once we’re okay, once we’re not living on three dollars a day, once we have a roof, once we have health care — is we have to decide, “How much more money, and what am I going to trade for it?” Because we always trade something for it, unless we’re fortunate enough that the very thing we want to do is the thing that also gives us our maximum income. — Seth Godin

A popular career goal is to find work you love and make a killing at it. And there are a zillion ideas on how best to balance enjoyment and moneymaking. Generally, though, the more of one you get, the less of the other. Fun jobs usually don’t pay as well. It’s a binary choice: pleasure or cash. 

Joseph Campbell famously suggested, “Follow your bliss.” But Stephen Pollan replies, “To search for work that’s fulfilling emotionally is noble but quixotic, especially today.” Pollan suggests you labor for the money and then fulfill your emotional needs elsewhere with friends and hobbies.

Each has a point. On the one hand, at the end of your life you probably won’t wish you’d spent more time at the office. On the other, it’s hard to watch your kids’ faces redden with shame every time you drive them to school in your rusty beater.

Most people take the cash and put up with the boredom.

We perform our work duties repetitively — over and over, forty hours a week, month after month — for decades. Even the most stimulating hobbies grow tedious at that rate of effort. If we search for pleasure on the job, we’re sorely disappointed. (As the saying goes, “That’s why they call it work.”) No wonder we’re exhausted at day’s end and can barely keep our eyes open in front of the TV set.

Even if we labor at something we love — an art or science, a sport, an outdoor activity — we can get caught up in endless paperwork and the constant hustle for funding or clients. The calling we once loved becomes encrusted with an overgrowth of dull chores.

Maybe we’re looking for the solution in the wrong place. Perhaps there’s more to the issue than “fun versus money”.

One of the joys of life is to create value for others. And some of the sweetest words in English are “Thank you!” and “Good work!” We’ll gladly toil all day just to hear them. Besides, nearly every business produces things people want to have, so there can be at least some sense of mission, no matter where you work.

Another of the great joys is is to attain mastery in a craft or skill. The auto mechanic tunes an engine the way a woodworker turns a table leg or a stylist trims a head of hair. When we do it right, we get a type of “high” that’s hard to imitate — the well-thought-out brief; the artfully managed negotiation; the report that solves the production problem.

Most jobs have moments of social fun. I sometimes visit a fast-food restaurant where the workers enjoy each other’s company, joking and kidding, and are warm and cheerful to the customers. At most offices, you can get a similar experience during lunch breaks and around the water-cooler. 

Of course, the money we earn is fundamental. It’s a great pleasure (and often a relief) to deposit those paychecks into our accounts.

Since it’s hard to get too much positive feedback from others, and because we can never sustain ultimate perfection in the things we do, the creation of value and the pursuit of craft are two stimulating goals that can help meet our need for career satisfaction. The fun we find at work, and the paychecks we receive, begin to seem almost like extras.

It appears, then, that we have four ways, not merely two, to fill out a satisfying work experience:

1. Create value: The goods or services we provide — whether to a client, boss, or co-worker — add benefit to people and give meaning to the tasks we perform. Any way we can improve value will add to our experience in the workplace.
2. Master the craft: To do great work, we must test ourselves and rise to the occasion every day. A good job well done is like a badge we pin on our souls.
3. Have fun: We can look for and share positive social moments at work. Beyond the enjoyment, they help bond us to our cohorts and improve teamwork. 
4. Get paid: The more we emphasize 1, 2, and 3, above, the more our earnings can improve, either here or at the next job.

Notice that “fun” has dropped a couple of ranks, and “value” and “craft” now provide most of the focus.

When you stress value creation and high quality, your work morphs from “boring routine” to “meaningful calling” and your experience changes from “punching a clock” to “answering a challenge”. The job no longer feels like drudgery and, instead, takes on a sense of purpose. Both Joseph Campbell and Stephen Pollan would be proud of you.

The fun and money? They’re just icing on the cake.

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How Positive Thinking Works … and Doesn’t

Once you get past physics, reality is entirely negotiable. — Taylor Pearson

Positive thinking — or visualizations, or affirmations, or “imaging”, as they call it in sports — is an approach to problem-solving where the user imagines, or envisions, the successful outcome of a project. 

It’s widely used in athletics, hypnosis, psychological counseling, and in some religions. Professions with payoffs that are hard to predict — sales, sports, the arts — often dabble in this approach. Business, where results really matter, is an arena where visualization techniques might offer great potential.

The theory is that outcomes — both good and bad — are controlled by our thoughts rather than merely by environment or genetics. You may have a difficult boss or co-worker, but you could imagine yourself getting along smoothly with this person — and, if you do it correctly, your mental pictures would result in an improved relationship. If your sales numbers are poor, you might visualize future reports with strong numbers, and somehow that would translate into better results down the line. Or you might “see yourself” as a slender and fit person, and this would cause excess weight to melt away and a rack of abs to appear.

At the simplest level, this process has been called “skull practice” — you’re simply rehearsing in your mind the behaviors and/or results you want so that, in real life, your nervous system automatically seeks out resources and performs actions that lead to your objective, and good results follow.

The most important assertion is that this kind of mental rehearsal can affect a much wider variety of outcomes than we normally believe can be altered — personality, health, financial situation, friendships, love life, etc etc. Sure, you can rehearse a speech in your head, but can you rehearse a change in your personality or bank account? The theory says yes.

Really? Can this stuff work? Can we use positive imaging to improve our results in the workplace and elsewhere? Or is it all a bunch of malarkey? 

In America, visualization descends from a late-19th-century philosophy called New Thought, which taught that the spirit of God is in everything, and that failure to understand this leads to wrong thinking and illness. New Thought also asserted that “thoughts are things” that can generate new matter out of imagination. In the 20th century, several popular books moved the conversation along: Think and Grow Rich, The Power of Positive Thinking, Psycho-Cybernetics, Creative Visualization, and, recently, The Secret.

You can guess that there might be a certain amount of baggage and confusion accompanying these ideas. The entire field has an aura of magic, of the miraculous, that can turn off practical people. On one side we find enthusiasts making extraordinary claims, and on the other we have skeptics who believe the whole movement is a bunch of charlatans spouting unscientific rubbish. 

True, there are plenty of visualization coaches out there who are overweight. And studies have suggested that career criminals have strong self-esteem. On the other hand, formal research points to something useful:

1. Science hints at benefits from “positive thinking”: “ . . . some evidence suggests positive thinking might have a strictly biological impact as well.” And it can improve health through stress reduction. 
2. Emotional stress can influence gene expression: Soldiers with PTSD showed changes in the way their DNA controlled cellular activity. This opens the door for the possibility of changing ourselves at the genetic level through stress reduction and/or positive thinking. “ . . . it may be possible that positive thinking, through some physiological byproducts that, let’s say, reduce stress or lower blood pressure levels, could impact gene expression.” Your very DNA, then, may be malleable, and thinking might be the tool.
3. Optimism boosts health: “ . . . people who are optimistic about their health tend to do better.”

To add to the confusion, the literature on visualization and positive thinking is a mishmash of prescriptions, and some books contradict others. Here are a few of the many ways positive thinking has been presented:

–Imagine what you want, one time, and it will come to you

–Imagine what you want, over and over, until you get it

–Imagine what you want and make it intensely attractive

–Imagine what you want, then imagine the opposite, then choose what you want

–Imagine what you desire, then want, believe, and expect that it is true

–Imagine what you want and never allow bad thoughts to enter your mind

–Imagine what you want and then resolve any contradictions that arise in your feelings

At least they all involve imagining what you want. That’s a starting point.

Let’s try to remove the chaff. Then maybe we can get to the wheat.

First, there is what I call the “Stupid Brain Theory” of positive thinking. Basically, the theory is that “whatever we dwell upon we draw to ourselves,” so that if we focus on the problems we’re having, the problems get bigger. This is based on the idea that the mind is attracted to anything with strong emotional content. Why else would we fuss and worry about some issue, only to have it turn out badly? We must, perversely, have been attracted to the very thing that causes us pain. Therefore we should counteract all negative thoughts with positive ones. (This notion carries weight with evangelicals — many of whom are drawn to positive thinking — since it can be explained as “tests from God”.) 

More likely, we wallow in failures because we don’t realize there are better options. We try to make the best of a bad situation, and end up with … a modified bad situation. We’re not stupid; we’re just ignorant of the possibilities.

Then there’s “The Secret Theory”, which basically states that the great people of history all practiced positive thinking, but for some reason this tremendous power has been kept away from the mass of humanity. (That is, until the book The Secret came out, of course.) But the idea that billions of people have been so foolish and limited as to have failed after all this time (and access to the Internet) to find for themselves this wonderful tool … well, it beggars belief. 

It’s much more probable that we’re simply brought up from birth to “know our place” and to refrain from daring to imagine more. As well, many difficult roadblocks crop up in our lives where it’s hard to imagine workarounds, so that we sometimes adopt the stance that “it can’t be helped”, and we give up.

Also there’s the “Try Hard Theory” that says you’ll get everything you want if you just want it badly enough and are willing to work super-hard (and do your affirmations every day for 30 minutes). It’s possible this is true, but it’s also a distressingly difficult method. The whole point of visualizations is to get what we want, and it kind of cancels the benefit if we must suffer and struggle endlessly in the process.

Now let’s see if we can distill the core principles — the useful stuff:

The evidence:

• Stresses of life sometimes leave us with pessimistic attitudes about our potential
• Parents and authority figures often straitjacket us into their systems of struggle
• Modern technology opens up possibilities for solving nearly every human problem
• Optimistic attitudes are correlated with good outcomes
• Sports stars, business leaders, and great artists often swear to the benefits of visualizing

The process:

• See in your mind the outcome you desire
• Choose and expect that outcome
• Allow the outcome to arrive as it will
• Refine the process to suit you

All you need see in your mind’s eye is the result you want. (If, instead of visualizing “I am worth four million dollars”, you focus on the process — i.e., “First I get a job, then I make money to invest, then I peel some off to start a business, then I hire an accountant …” — you’ll become lost in details and never get to the result.) 

Then you make what you desire into a choice, not a wish; this will charge your mind with the expectation of obtaining the result. You’ll start to notice yourself taking an interest in things you previously ignored; this is your mind running its search for the contents of the result you’ve chosen.

In fact, the act of daring to choose what you want, despite the apparent odds, may be key to the entire process. We yearn for what isn’t ours, but we choose what belongs to us. Perhaps it’s the simple act of choosing that makes things possible, that brings our desires to fruition.

It’s important not to limit yourself to what you think is practical or logical. This kind of worry will cause you to edit your desires until they resemble what you merely assume is available, and you’ll be back where you started. There’s a big difference between “It can’t be done” and “I don’t yet know how to do it”. You’ll be surprised at what is attainable.

By the way, if you imagine “I’m great at sales” or “I’m a terrific administrator” but you still have an old belief like “I’m not allowed to have my own success” or “I’m a bad person”, the old attitude will sabotage the new one. So address the deepest concerns first, then work your way down the list to the smaller items (like that Tesla roadster you have your eye on).

As you practice, you’ll find that some approaches work better than others. Perhaps bedtime is a good moment for you to do visualizing, or maybe the morning is better; it could be that reciting aloud your affirmations works well — or, instead, silence is golden. Try various ways and see what works for you. Every brain is different, so tailor the process to fit yours. And there is a TON of literature on the topic, so there’s plenty of counsel. (See above for links to the most famous works.)

The great lesson of modernity is that nearly anything is possible. The old days of restrictive tribal loyalties and self-abnegation are gone, replaced by endless possibilities opening up for us in the future. Rather than staying trapped in the old attitudes of scarcity and impossibility, our task now is to engage that future. And this is the moment when visualization — affirmations, “positive thinking”, call it what you will — can serve us as we create wonders. 

A wise person said, “When you take a stand [for something in your life], the world will arrange itself to agree with you.” You might as well try it and see.

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UPDATE: “We can make ourselves more or less vulnerable by how we think about things.”

UPDATE: Choose your role in life

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Attack the Problem … with a Monkey Wrench

A problem is a terrible thing to waste. — Peter Diamandis 

We don’t want to have to overcome unnecessary hurdles. But . . . we need to gain a bit more appreciation for the unexpected advantages of having to cope with a little mess. — Tim Harford

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. — Wendell Berry

Saying “I feel stuck” is never true and it’s also unhelpful. In reality, a single part of my life or business feels stuck and if I can define it more specifically, it becomes easier to get out of. — Taylor Pearson

Problems are guidelines, not stop signs! — Robert Schuller

I learned that there is an incredible beauty to mistakes, because embedded in each mistake is a puzzle, and a gem that I could get if I solved it, i.e., a principle that I could use to reduce my mistakes in the future. I learned that each mistake was probably a reflection of something that I was (or others were) doing wrong, so if I could figure out what that was, I could learn how to be more effective. I learned that wrestling with my problems, mistakes, and weaknesses was the training that strengthened me. — Ray Dalio

For me it’s about using your troubles for perspective and then for momentum. — Mary-Louise Parker

Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself. — Vilfredo Pareto

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Think for yourself and question authority. — Timothy Leary

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order. — Wislawa Szymborska

I move towards The Resistance. I am always moving away from my comfort zone into growth opportunities, into my stretch zone. — Taylor Pearson

This is action, this not being sure! — Jordan Ellenberg

You add randomness, early on in the process, you make crazy moves, you try stupid things that shouldn’t work, and that will tend to make the problem-solving work better. . . . The trouble with the step-by-step process, the marginal gains, is they can walk you gradually down a dead end. And if you start with the randomness, that becomes less likely, and your problem-solving becomes more robust. — Tim Harford

So much of our human resourcefulness comes from having multiple ways to describe the same situations—so that each one of those different perspectives may help us to get around the deficiencies of the other ones. — Marvin Minsky

An idea or image comes to you not only in the office but also in the shower or in your dreams. — Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

What you know then will solve what you need now, even if you can’t even imagine how that’s possible. — James Altucher

The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. — Marcus Aurelius

Actually, they solved the problem quite a lot more effectively. . . . But . . . they were full of doubt. They didn’t think they’d done a good job even though they had. — Tim Harford

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it’s supposed to do. — Robert Heinlein

My center is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking. — Ferdinand Foch

 

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UPDATE: How to get past the seven fatal thinking flaws

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How to Deal with a Minimum Wage

If $10 is so great, why not $20 or $50 an hour? — Matt Palumbo

Not long ago, I sat with friends in the patio of a fast-food restaurant, munching on desserts and enjoying gentle conversation. One of the servers, whom lately we’d befriended, joined us. We discussed his experiences there, and at one point he mentioned a raise he’d just received due to an uptick in the state’s minimum wage. “It’s ten bucks an hour now,” he said. “So when things get slow, the manager sends me home early.” 

…Oh. 

Apparently the new minimum wage costs the restaurant money, and the manager sidles around it by reducing work hours. Our friend the server got a raise in name only. In fact, if he loses enough hours, he could end up making less money.

The political Left insists a minimum wage is (1) just, (2) affordable, and (3) not a factor in unemployment rates. Why, then, are businesses trying to wiggle around it? Are they simply greedy and heartless?

Poke a Progressive and you open a deep well of resentment against the affluent. You also find a reservoir of outdated ideas about economics. Left-wingers tend not to be the most financially successful among their fellow citizens, and they often find it hard to imagine how anyone can get rich without stealing it. (Once, as an experiment at a gathering, I recited the old saw, “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,” and a left-wing acquaintance practically jumped up and cheered.) 

What’s more, most liberals seem to believe the gilded gentry stash their wealth in huge piles of doubloons in their basements … and the rich should jolly-well share it, as they must have hijacked it from the rest of us, who could sure use some of that coin, especially when it isn’t doing any good down in the cellar.

Liberals fail to understand, or ignore, the fact that finance has come a long way since the Middle Ages, and that most wealth today is held in the form of investments — stocks, bonds, etc. — that help firms raise money so they can hire workers. Taxing those resources and handing them out to the poor may give the less fortunate some spending cash, but it extracts that money from businesses, which must then reduce worker hours or lay them off altogether. Society as a whole isn’t exactly coming out ahead.

The other thing the Left fails to grasp is scale, another trait that modernity brings to the marketplace. When someone comes up with a great product or service, and people scramble to buy it, that someone uses the profits to scale up the business so it can sell to larger and larger numbers of patrons. The first sale multiplies into tens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of further sales. That is how most wealthy people get rich, not by holding up banks or pulling a Bernie Madoff. They made money because they earned it by scaling up a successful product. 

And (unless they received special advantages from government regulators) they didn’t get wealthy by forcing patrons to pay a higher figure; they got rich because they offered an attractive product at a competitive price.

Which brings us back to the minimum wage. If you push up the price of anything, customers will go away. This is just as true of labor as it is of autos or TV sets or candy bars. Every worker who benefits from an increase in the minimum wage has gotten a windfall profit at the expense of her company. The cost of doing business went up but there’s no improvement in productivity or product. Companies respond by laying off workers (or, in the case of our friend the server, shortening his hours), or raising prices. This results in fewer customers, which further increases layoffs. And that doesn’t work out well for anyone.

The Left will argue that the stinking-rich business owner has restricted the worker’s natural right to a certain amount of pay, and he ought to shell out from his ill-gotten gains to provide that “just wage”– Say what? Is there a gigantic piece of parchment floating above the Earth with the exact pay rate scratched into it by God? And who’s gonna pay for it? The most garishly overcompensated CEOs receive teensy fractions of the total value of their corporations. Massive wage increases would dig huge holes in company revenues. Layoffs and bankruptcies would ensue.

Meanwhile, most businesses are run, not by fat cats, but by hard-working middle-income owners. Sure, the boss drives a Mercedes, but he bought it seven years ago and it badly needs detailing.

“Fine, but minimum wages don’t hamper employment!” It turns out research shows the opposite: minimum wages do hobble hiring: “ . . . after one or two years, fewer businesses will open, existing businesses will close faster, and fewer jobs will be available.” Worse, minimum wage increases hit minorities harder, thwarting their job search. White supremacists would applaud. 

In fact, the first minimum wage campaigns, a century ago, were explicitly for the purpose of keeping people of color out of the job market. The ideas was that no one would hire them at an artificially inflated wage, leaving the field clear for the more experienced and costly white workers. Back then, Progressives understood enough economics to know that a minimum wage was tantamount to a hiring freeze on the lower classes. And they supported this crusade as a form of eugenics! Liberals hadn’t yet heard the news about racism, and many promoted minimum wages as a form of slow genocide. Amazing, but true. (Woodrow Wilson, get back in line.)

Anyway, how can a business adapt to upward surges in the minimum wage?

• Hold off on new hires. Instead, increase the hours for your better employees.
• Send workers home early on slow days. (Sorry, my server friend! But the boss is trying to keep the doors open for everyone.)
• Hire part-timers instead of full-timers. This sidesteps paying overtime, healthcare, pensions, etc. Your employees will compensate by finding second jobs, which can make work schedules a headache. But it offsets, to some degree, the forced wage increase.
• Hire robots. Software, 3-D printers, robot vacuums, etc, don’t require healthcare or vacations … or minimum wages.
• Hire sales and marketing people. Your costs just went up; it’s time to reach out to new customers.
• Improve your products. You can charge a premium for specialty items. Roll up your sleeves and get creative.
• Raise prices. Do this gently! You don’t want sticker shock to chase away your customers.

(Before trying any of the above, check to be sure you don’t run afoul of local statutes. Your mileage may vary.)

In case some of you are working for The Man at minimum wage — and think I’m a heartless bastard — I have great ideas for you, too. And they’re much bigger than a one-dollar pay boost. Check them out here and here.

The minimum wage isn’t really helping, but it is costing businesses — and their customers — money. Still, there are workarounds. 

And the next time somebody buttonholes you about supporting a minimum wage increase, simply thank them politely, tip your hat, and run away.

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UPDATE: Funny if it weren’t true: DC activists now want minimum wage raised to $35-$50/hr

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How to Sneak a Power Nap

I stood on a beach with a large crew. We were filming a TV commercial for a major corporation. The plan was to put the ad into heavy rotation during the upcoming Olympics. I was the neophyte assistant to the prop master, who was in charge of making sure all parts of the set were properly assembled, positioned, working, and good looking. And I was tired.

It was 2:30 in the afternoon. We’d been there since 4:30 a.m., and we had hours left to go. We had labored on large props, raked sand smooth, hauled equipment hither and yon. Already I’d been hit in the head with a long metal pole. (I was fine. But still…) By now I was dog tired. I needed to shut my eyes for a few moments.

The chance arrived. We had nothing to do for a half-hour; the scene being shot didn’t need me. A group of people huddled around cameras fifty yards away; the rest of the crew sat, waiting. I plopped down wearily on an idle golf-cart jitney we’d been using for transport. I leaned back, covered my face with my hat, and closed my eyes.

Seconds later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I raised the hat and looked up. A crew member leaned in, whispering urgently: “The boss says no sleeping on the job! And the money people are here.” I sat up abruptly. I knew at once I’d committed a faux-pas. Shortly I learned that the “money people” were representatives of the corporation. My little time-out in front of these customers would reflect badly on the crew, and especially on my boss the prop master.

Oops. 

I got paid anyway. Years later I’m older and somewhat wiser. I know that, in America, naps are usually considered poor form, almost a weakness, and that no up-and-coming careerist would dare indulge in so lazy an activity at work. 

But I wanna nap!! 

A refreshed brain works better than a merely caffeinated one. And a quick bout of shuteye can give workers a leg up on the competition. Besides, a nap feels wonderful. So I did some research:

1. Naps are normal. Many cultures make room for an afternoon siesta. Studies show that people tend naturally to feel sleepy around mid-afternoon. It’s as if we’re designed to catch a few winks after lunch.

2. Naps are good for you. They freshen memory and cognition. They’re good for your heart. And you don’t need to indulge in a long session: a “power nap” of as little as 10 minutes can restore alertness and function. (In fact, long naps can make you groggy and slow you down.) 

3. Many successful people take naps. Edison took cat naps. So did Kennedy. Rockefeller napped his way to riches. Da Vinci engaged in polyphasic sleep. Charlemagne and Napoleon had long daily naps — and they each conquered Europe. Churchill napped during WWII — and he helped save Europe.

4. Many organizations promote napping. They’ve seen the wisdom, and the added productivity, of encouraging a quick snooze by employees.

Still, most businesses frown on the practice. And for certain occupations, including transportation and security work, falling asleep can get you fired and/or sued. So you’ll want to approach the workday nap with caution. Here are a few tips and tricks:

A. Learn the rules for your organization. Some won’t care if you nap, while others will terminate you merely for sleeping in your car during lunch. Be sure you know the ropes.

B. Find a good place to nap. If you have an office with window shades and a lockable door, you’re halfway there. If you can further assure yourself that no one will knock and insist you respond, then simply set an alarm for wake-up time, shut off the phone, lean back and tuck into a nice set of Zs. But most workers don’t have a separate office, so they’ll need to cobble together a time and place. The best times are lunch or afternoon break. Possible locations include: 

—Company nap room (if you’re lucky)

—Lockable room at work (if you can find one)

—Your car (look for a quiet parking space, and bring earplugs)

—Office library (use a carrel in a far corner)

—Your home (if you live nearby)

—Park bench or grassy slope (if you’re willing to brave the pigeons)

—Hotel room (if you’ve got enough dough)

—Office rooftop (bring a folding chair)

—A landing on a stairwell that nobody ever uses

—A little-used office bathroom (lock yourself into a stall)

—Some other place you can adapt (use your imagination)

C. Be stealthy! Don’t tell others about your napping plans. They might rat you out — or, worse, steal your nap location.

D. Bring a few things:

—Earplugs

—Alarm

—Pillow or folded-up sweater, jacket, etc (to prevent cricked neck)

—Blanket (for chilly locations)

—Coffee! It’s called a “stimulant nap”: if you drink coffee just before you close your eyes, the caffeine won’t kick in until after you’ve napped, and you’ll be zooming along for the rest of the day.

Remember: naps are normal! They’re good for you. They’ll perk you back up … And nobody has to know.

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