Purpose – Page 19 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Ant, The Grasshopper, Tim Ferriss, and Ben Franklin.

“Do you want ants? Because that’s how you get ants.” – Archer

Thankfully I’m not alone. Stupid Grasshoppers.

There are occasions when a simple question can punch you in your gut like a rabid Mike Tyson reacting to a paper cut that you just poured lemon juice on. Here’s a question that hit me last week:

“What do you do with your money?”

“I keep it in the bank.”

“Then why do you do so many things you dislike to earn more of it?”

The above quote is from a conversation between Tim Ferriss (an author with an unusual fondness for the letter S) and Ryan Holiday (I’ve mentioned him before) –you can read the rest of the article here (LINK). Holiday puts this exchange first in his piece – it’s pretty powerful, so powerful that it might even relate to issues we face as a country – not that I’ll solve those. That sounds like it would be hard.

Working is good for you. Producing value is good for you. It says so right on the label. But I worry sometimes about money being my goal instead of a way to allow me to work toward my real goals. When I lived paycheck to paycheck, I was fixated on money – as a single dad with little savings, it was tough. Did I focus on fulfillment? No, I focused on keeping enough money in my bank account so I could pay the electrical bill, which is why it was 40°F in the house in the winter and 85°F in the house in the summer – air conditioning was for closers, and the kids were awful about closing. Mainly awful about closing the window, but I digress.

I had Alec Baldwin give the kids a speech about cleaning their room. He fired them, but only after they cried. But Pugsley got a set of steak knives.

When you’re in that condition, life is about that struggle for money. I remember we’d eat Kraft® Macaroni and Cheese™ on the nights we weren’t having Hamburger Helper©. On really good nights, we’d have actual hamburger in the Hamburger Helper©. If an expense wasn’t absolutely required? I’d avoid it. Oil changes? Why would you do that, there’s still some in the car? What do I look like, a Rockefeller? Stitches? That’s what Super Glue® is for.

At that point in my life I viewed money as the end. Everything was about making more of it or saving what I had.

When I really think about it, maybe the only common value we have left as a country is this secular religion of chasing money. It’s like the old fable of the Grasshopper and the Ants, where the Ants work all summer to store food for the winter, but the Grasshopper uses a leveraged buyout to get money to buy the mortgage to the Anthill from the bank and bulldozes the Anthill to put up a Starbucks®.

Okay, that’s not the way the fable ended. The first time I saw the Ant and the Grasshopper, it was the 1934 Disney® cartoon version. They showed it at school on a field trip because movies are easier than teaching. The end of the movie version of that fable had the Ants inviting the Grasshopper into the Anthill for the winter, provided that the Grasshopper played music for them and voted for FDR. I was a horrible child – six year-old me thought the Ants were just incentivizing negative Grasshopper behavior and I thought he should have been left out in the cold. Why? Because even at age six I was heartless.

I would have enjoyed the original fable more. In Aesop’s version, the Ants work all summer, and the Grasshopper plays all summer. When it comes time for winter, the Grasshopper comes begging from the Ant, and the Ant tells the Grasshopper to die in a fire. I find that a bit more satisfying than the Disney™ version, but I guess Disney© didn’t like the idea of having a cartoon turn into Silence of The Grasshopper where the Ants eat the Grasshopper with some fava beans and a nice chianti. It could be that hordes of traumatized and crying six year olds isn’t good for business, unless you’re a therapist.

Thankfully, if the story of the Grasshopper and the Ant were real and happening today, the Grasshoppers would form a Grasshopper PAC and would vote in a pro-Grasshopper Congressbug that would immediately introduce legislation to tax the unfair profits of Ants. Additionally, the Grasshoppers would also denounce the Ants for the culture they created that was the source of all that wealth. It’s only fair, right?

Me? All kidding aside, for most of my life I’ve been an Ant. Working huge numbers of hours to try to provide for the family, build up some financial resources for the future. Some years I worked in excess of 3,000 stressful hours to provide for the family – that’s an average work week of over sixty hours, every week for a year. Some people work even harder. The kicker? There’s an alternate view of the Ant: some felt that the Ant isn’t always the good guy, that his very industriousness was driven by the love of money. In the words of dead-guy-with-a-comic-book-worthy-name-from-1690, Roger L’Strange (I swear I didn’t make up that name) about the Ant (spelling and capitalization in the original):

“Vertue and Vice, in many Cases, are hardly Distinguishable but by the Name.”

In L’Strange’s oddly capitalized view, working too hard was itself a vice. The poor Ant can’t get a break – everybody wants his stuff, but now he can’t even work hard without people piling on.

But L’Strange was right. Maybe I worked too hard. And maybe I am too stunningly handsome.

Okay, he’s not L’Strange, but Dr. Strange is cool. And Benedict Cumbereberbatch Bandersnatch Cumberdoodle plays him well.

But the Ant and the Grasshopper might be the one fable that encapsulates the American dichotomy. Are you a spender, or are you a saver? Something tells me there might be another way.

There is a very important role of money in a free market economy. It gives incentives for behavior that fills the needs and desires for others. It’s a scorekeeper – resources flow to those who best used them to create economic prosperity. It’s a rationing system for goods and services that doesn’t require the hand of government to make it function. There are some pretty negative roles of money, too, but I’ll skip those for this post.

There is a way to be neither Ant nor Grasshopper. If you’re working hard and understand why you’re working, that’s a start. Paying bills is important, but trading your life away for dollars is really selling your soul.

As Ben Franklin said, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”

And I don’t think Ben was talking about the magazines Life and Time. If he was, I guess that makes the quote stupid instead of powerful, and it’s unlikely that Ben read either Life or Time, since he spent most of his time on his phone or watching Netflix®.

The powerful question remains and is really a restatement of old Ben’s comment: “Then why do you do so many things you dislike to earn more of it (money)?”

I’m blessed now to be able to view money is a means, not an end. The results of the Tyson punch? Spleen ruptured. Thankfully it’s not something serious, like having to examine my life choices . . .

The Six Steps to Excellence, One of Which Involves Me Being a Huge Jerk (for a small fee)

“I’m Bill S. Preston, Esquire.” “And I’m Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan.” – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Be excellent to each other. Oh, and party on, dudes.

Why do you want to get better?

The better you are, the more you can do. The more you can do, the more lives you touch. This provides more life satisfaction – the idea that you’re good at something is one facet of meaning. And if you’re good at the right things, it also means more money.

Let’s look at Amazon©. Jeff Bezos was a huge help in writing this post tonight. I got the following from Amazon®:

Ink for pen that I took notes with.
Notecards that I put my notes on.
Laptop that I wrote the post on.
Extra charger for the laptop because the dog eated the first one.

Let’s look at Microsoft©: Bill Gates and Paul Allen were the founders and leaders of the company that made:

The operating system on my laptop.
Microsoft® Word™, which I wrote this post on.

Together these three men during their lives have touched massive numbers of people. Oh, wait, that was Harvey Weinstein. But when you create a business that legitimately touches people’s lives and fulfills their desires? Yeah. You’re going to get money in addition to the satisfaction of sending notecards to a guy who ordered them on his couch at midnight.

When Bezos goes grocery shopping, Bezos goes grocery shopping.

I know that there are reasons to be concerned about both companies, but that’s not this post. The principle remains that the economic way to make money is to make people happy. And the only way you can do that is if you’re excellent. The more excellent? The more money. And it’s Wilder Wealthy Wednesday . . . so . . .

So how do you get better?

Step 1 –Study. And Do. And Study.

I’m not sure which one comes first. And it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I read a book about a subject before trying it. I’m sure that The Boy would have preferred I just jumped into diaper changing, but reading the book only took two hours. Man he could yell.

Sometimes I try something without reading about it. Say, programming an infinite loop into the school’s mainframe that caused it to store zeros until its memory overflowed – this actually happened. You should have seen the printout. Good times.

Practice and study are critical. Practice without study is just action. Study without practice is just academic. You have do both together to make meaningful progress.

Is study limited to books? No. Studying the results of your actions is studying. I study the results of my blog:

Which posts are most popular? (Ones where I use the word “booger”.)
Which method of writing brought the best quality post? (English, rather than a language I made up myself, regardless of how musical it sounds when I throat sing a translation of Poker Face.)
Is blocking out the post on notecards better than writing it out on loose paper? (Yes. Better still? Bake it into a clay tablet.)
Is Ben Affleck better in The Accountant® than he is in Justice League™? (Yes.)
Am I getting tired of listening to Ben Affleck as I write these posts? (Yes.)

Step 2 –Get Feedback. Honest Feedback. (Or, better living through jerkishness)

Honesty is hard to find. Unless you know a horrible person like me. Let’s go into the wayback machine to when I was in college. I may have written this story before, but follow along anyway – this will be a better version.

I was a sophomore in the Humanities Honors program. It was like the regular classes, but you got a B instead of an A for the same quality work. Part of the rather chaotic curriculum was giving speeches. I can’t remember the topic, but the speeches were long. Really long. Twelve minutes to fifteen minutes long.

One student got up to give a speech. I’ll call her Sandra.

She was nervous. Horribly nervous. The speech was halting, and punctuated with “uh” throughout. At the seven minute mark of the speech I started counting the “uh” content of the speech while I timed it. Every time she said “uh”, I put a hash mark on a piece of paper. As she continued speaking, I kept putting hash marks on the paper in front of me.

At the end of the speech, I tallied up the number of times she said “uh”. It was in the hundreds. Really a huge number. I then divided by the number of minutes I’d been counting them.

I have no idea why the instructors went around the room to ask for critiques from the students, but they did. Most people said, “good speech” or some vaguely worded praise.

Not me.

“You said ‘uh’ 221 times in the last seven and a half minutes of your presentation. That’s 29 times a minute. That made it really hard to listen to.”

The room went silent. If a stare was dangerous, Sandra’s eyes would have been coveted as a weapon of mass destruction by nation states that use handfuls of brightly colored tissue paper instead of actual money. I think the United States developed a “hate stare” weapon during the 1960’s, only to shelve it due to the Geneva Convention banning its use as a war crime.

Anyway, it was that kind of stare. Ever make a woman really, really, really mad at you? That stare.

The next person then gave a vague “good speech” comment.

Fast forward a month. It was the next time for a presentation. Sandra got up to speak.

And it was amazing. Eloquent. Perfectly pronounced, not a single “uh” to be found. Not one. It was certainly the best speech that day. During the speech, when her eyes looked up from the podium, they looked directly at me. They were not happy eyes.

Once again, the professors turned to the students for critique. My turn. “That may have been the best speech I’ve heard this year. Great job, Sandra.”

Not a bit of emotion crossed her face. But her eyes said, “I hope you are nibbled to death by flaming diseased miniature poodles in hell again and again and I want you to have to watch Ben Affleck movies while they eat you.” That was oddly specific. But, hey, she was on a roll.

I’m sure she hates me to this day. But she’s better because of me – I changed her life.

Real friends give real feedback. And at least at my house, we’re pretty honest. Do a good job? Praise is coming in. Whine and make a sound like a coyote in a blender? It’s gonna be a long day for you as we mock you. But it’s universal. It’s meant in love, and a requirement of feedback is trust. My kids know I’m on their side even when I’m being critical.

Did I have that bond of trust with Sandra? Not so much. But don’t let anyone tell you that hate isn’t a performance enhancing drug.

The poet Robert Burns said it best: “O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” But based on the typing? He was drunk.

Seek honest feedback. And treat it earnestly – it’s a gift, or a “giftie.” Or I can provide the feedback for a small fee. For a larger fee, you can hate me. For an even larger fee I’ll watch a Ben Affleck movie with you while you hate me.

Step 3 –Get Better Each Time. A Lot at First, A Little Later On. (As proven by a graph on a sketchy blog.)

The Mrs. mocked me when I bought little notecards that were graph ruled.

“When would you ever need to use those?”

Well, tonight:

See the pretty graph? I did it myself, bet you can’t tell! And, see, I DID SO have a use for those notecards!

This is an S-Curve. An S-Curve is a particular curve that describes several natural phenomena. It’s also known as the “Logistics Curve.” Here I’ve applied it to learning.

Several studies have suggested (not that I necessarily take them as gospel) that it takes ten years or 10,000 hours of constant study, practice and effort to become world class at something. That’s reasonable. I mean, not reasonable, that seems like an unreasonable amount of work. Maybe realistic is a better word.

But Pareto taught us the 80/20 rule: 80% of the work is normally done by 20% of the workers. 80% of a need words in a foreign language is learned in 20% of time required to master the language.

And that’s the good news: in two years (or less) you can get to an 80% competence level. And that’s good enough for most people. “Meh” is most of what we really need in our daily lives.

But the last 20% is where greatness is. Yes, you’re not going to get world class recognition if you don’t have at least some talent. Unless you’re Ben Affleck.

Now the fine print: this world class thing does not apply to the talentless or stupid or physically unable. You’ll just never get there unless you have some basic ability in what you’re doing.

But beware: talent can be your enemy. I’ve seen some talented kid wrestlers start out winning early on, say “state champ” at age six. But they’ve got a great move, say a headlock. Headlocks are like Sesame Street®. They work great on kids, but are ineffective, no matter how well they are done when you hit high school. So the “state champ” who had a talent for headlocks . . . now can’t win a match. They never had to work to learn to be fully competent in wrestling. And Marcus Aurelius used wrestling as a metaphor, so that makes me smart.

Remember, the core tenant of Buddhism is “babes are excellent.”

Step 4 –Experiment. Each Moment Is A New One.

I was listening to the radio one night and an odd guest said one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard. “An infinite possibility lies between one word and the next. That space, that pause gives you the ability to change the future with your words. The space between the words is infinite. Own it.”

Okay, he didn’t really say that. But he did say something that made me think that. Each time I write is an experiment. An opportunity with infinite possibility. So I try new things. I even try things that didn’t work in the past. Maybe I just sucked. Maybe the audience was distracted by shiny things that day.

Every experiment is like that space between the words – filled with infinite possibility.

And don’t be focused on victory today. Like that six year old state wrestling champ, victory now is probably not as important as victory later. Sometimes focusing on victory now robs your ability to be daring and experiment, and because World Emperor or something later.

I’ve learned more from times I’ve lost than times I’ve won. Seek to push yourself to failure.

Experiment.

Step 5 –Experts. Find Them. There are Smarter and More Experienced People Than You.

We’re spoiled by YouTube. If I want to learn to lay tile, I can find video after video teaching me how. This dispersed knowledge and these teachers can help you get to 80% competence more quickly than ever. You can learn everything from floor tiling to making cookies to forging a sword to rifle shooting to melting aluminum cans into aluminum ingots in your back yard, although that’s probably not legal in California.

Lincoln was also a wrestler. I’m sensing a theme here . . .

But learning from these experts requires humility. And humility requires courage. The best advice I ever gave a new employee is in this story:

John Wilder: “So, did you get [that thing] done?”

New Graduate Employee: “Well, you see that I was working on trying to . . .”

I held up my hand. “Stop right there. What rank did you graduate in high school, top of your class?”

NGE: “Yes.”

John Wilder: “And in college, you were near the top, right?”

NGE: “Yes.”

I gestured up and down the hallway. “Every one of your coworkers was best in their high school class. Every one of them was near the top of their college class. Each of them is smart. Some of them are smarter than you. When you were in elementary school, they always asked you the questions, because you knew the answers, right?”

He nodded.

“You’re not expected to know the answers here, you’re expected to be honest, work hard, and learn. You’re smart, so you can do those things quickly. My boss? He’s smarter than me. And I graduated at the top of my class. The crazy thing is, when he doesn’t know something, he asks people to explain it. No hesitation. So when I ask you a yes or no question . . . answer yes or no. Don’t tell me a story. Answer the question. And for heaven’s sake, if you don’t know something? Ask.”

Best advice I ever gave, outside of never engaging in a land war in Asia. Why do they never listen?

Step 6 –Never Give In, Never Give In, Never, Never, Never . . . (Unless You Should)

Giving up on the excellence graph is easy. Working for years is hard. Even worse? Working for years at something you don’t like that you’ll never be good at. I’d love to give you some sort of meter that told you which was which, but that’s life – you have to figure it out. But see Step 5 – you can ask.

Again: for most things in life, a “Meh” competence level of 80% mastery is awesome.

Morpheus would have been awesome in Bill and Ted! Oh, wait . . . maybe Bill and Ted is the prequel to The Matrix?

So, that’s it. Follow these six steps and you can be excellent.

Parting thought: Ryan Holiday (link) wrote that passion is about you. Purpose is about a mission that’s bigger than you – and that’s a reason to drive and strive for excellence. So, have purpose, not passion.

But passion is forged in competence. If you get better, it breeds passion. And if you can have your passion and purpose? Why not both?

The Search for Meaning Might Drain Your Bank Account

“They haven’t said much about the meaning of life yet.” – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

So, is the meaning of life having a super sweet car like this? If so, would having a Bat Cave be like double extra meaning? If so, count me in!

One tragedy of our current culture is lower amounts of social interaction leading to meaning.

So what do I mean by meaning?

Meaning is significance. Meaning is working on something important. Meaning implies actions that change the world for the better, or at least change someone’s life for the better. Ideally, this work is something that you are uniquely suited to do and that you’re good at, but those things aren’t absolutely necessary. The idea is that you have some way that you can actively change the world for the better. And you don’t have to paint the world to make it better, because the world is really big, and it would take a very long time to paint it, kind of like my house exterior, which, at last count, has taken me 10 years to paint, mainly because I haven’t started yet.

But meaning takes time. And it takes persistence. And sometimes it takes money.

Those things can be difficult, especially if you’re lazy like me.

So where can you get meaning?

Your job. A job is a good and admirable place to find meaning, and ideally yours is such a place. But it probably isn’t. Some people, like those at the IRS, actually have a job that implies they will make others angry with no real discernible benefit to society. How about being a prison guard? Tough duty. And how many jobs are, well, just plain BS? If you have one of those or aspire to one of those, you’re in luck! There’s an entire web page dedicated to generating job titles for you! (LINK) Chances are better than even that your job is just that – a job. It’s a job that people pay you to keep doing rather than a saintly crusade to save the planet. Hey, at least you get paid, right?
Your family. This is a great place to get meaning. But if you’re a dad like me, your main job is to produce independent and tough children who view the world as a challenge that they want to beat. It’s like you light a bottle rocket and then . . . off it goes. After you’ve done lit the fuse, well, it’s gone. And it doesn’t need you anymore – it has a purpose and a path. I apologize to anyone who really desires to make dependent children who are needy basket cases, but that’s not the way we roll at Casa Wilder. So, by definition, my children need me less each and every day.

What are the alternatives if you don’t get meaning at work, and need more than family can provide?

In the United States we used to take part in civic organizations to do meaningful work, or at least drink and smoke cigarettes, pipes and cigars while we pretended to do meaningful work. Or smoke and talk drunkenly about the meaningful work that we really, really intended to do. But those civic organizations really did accomplish a lot – from scholarships to the foundation of hospitals and clinics to funding zoos and draining swamps to get rid of disease-carrying mosquitoes. And our forefathers accomplished all of that with a hacking cough and a buzz on.

Sadly, one last civic organization I attended spent more effort complaining about other members of the organization that weren’t there than it did changing the world. And they didn’t even drink. I don’t go to meetings anymore, though I did suggest beer would be good at the meetings. If we’re not going to do something to help humanity, at least we should drink, right? I don’t smoke, but I’d be willing to learn, if it helped. Alas, this sober and smoke-free organization does little to change the world.

As a nation, our civic participation is down overall – the book Bowling Alone recounts how membership in groups that meaningfully participate at the local level of communities is . . . down. Rotary. Lions. Boy Scouts. Knights of Columbus.

It even reaches from structured clubs to bowling leagues. Bowling leagues? Well, the author used that data to show that social interaction was down across the board. The overall number of bowlers is up, but the number of participants in bowling leagues is down. We’re bowling, but we’re only bowling with people we already know. We’re not using any sort of social energy to meet other people and forge new friendships and relationships that strengthen the civic core. But at least you can drink and bowl.

If I was a cynic, I’d say the system was designed to do decrease civic participation – if we’re not actively making our community better ourselves, well, we can leave it for government to do. Government likes this a whole lot. Things that used to done by ordinary citizens in the community, say, being on the volunteer fire department, can now be replaced by professional firefighters who get paid. Government wins both ways – the fire department employees like to get paid and vote for the people that pay them, and government has assumed another duty that it must tax for. A win-win!

Unless you’re the guy paying taxes.

Regardless of why civic participation is down, it is down. The reasons might form a future post. And that removes a very significant opportunity to be, well, significant. Thankfully there are other outlets. Me? I write this blog. I know it’s seen by nearly every person on the planet right now. Okay, okay, it’s not. But traffic is heading that way. At current growth trends in the year 2371 everyone on Earth will be doing nothing but reading my blog six hours a day. Which is as it should be. Then I will be officially meaningful.

However, there are other outlets besides writing that are preferred by other people:

Gaming. I think I’ve told this story before on the blog, but keep in mind, when I originally wrote it I was getting about 1/10th the traffic I’m getting now. So, if you’ve heard this story before, pretend you haven’t, because I’m going to tell it even better this time:

In the 1990’s, I remember watching the HBO™ series Dream On. In this series, a newly single guy in New York had numerous adventures. Since it was on HBO®, many of the adventures involved scantily clad females. Or completely naked females. But I turned away from the set and read my Bible during those naughty, naughty scenes. Thank heavens the VCR was recording.

The main character had an office job in New York. He also had a secretary, Toby. She was written as a nearly worthless secretary with an attitude. In one particular episode, she does nothing but play a video game on her work computer. You could do that before the Internet and the IT department tracked every keystroke.

The game involved a supermarket. Toby started the episode as a stock boy in the game. Then she worked her way up to bag boy a few scenes later. Then, cashier. Then a few scenes later? Produce manager.

Finally, at the very end of the episode, she yelled:

“I DID IT!”

“I’m the MANAGER!”

“Of a supermarket . . . that doesn’t exist . . . .”

With each phrase, her emotions changed. At first, joy in achievement! Secondly, a questioning voice . . . a manager. Finally, her voice got very small. She realized her accomplishment was really no accomplishment. It lacked meaning.

If you like games, if you like escaping in them, that’s fine, more power to you. But remember, they’re not really a substitute for actual achievement. Plus, this is Wealthy Wednesday – how much money do you want to spend on games, anyway? And how much time do you want to spend on them? Yeah, I know, I spent two hours today. But . . . umm, I’m sure I had a good reason.

Consumption. Yes, this is Wealthy Wednesday, and as such we finally have to get around to this.

Consumption is used as a replacement for actual significance and achievement. It’s even encouraged. Why does it work?

Where else can you go, hunt for something, find it, and then get it. It’s certain to work, every time. You can’t fail. Yet you get the opportunity to experience the flush of success, the dopamine rush from having found and purchased what you were looking for. And if you bought it off the Internet, you get a second rush when the little brown box from Amazon shows up*.

That purchase gives the same feeling as accomplishing something that has actual meaning, and there’s none of the work and none of the uncertainty. It almost doesn’t matter what the thing is. It could be shoes. It could be books. It could be lightbulbs. It could be PEZ® dispensers. As long as it’s something that you can actually do, your brain can take this stimulus and turn it into a replacement for actual achievement.

And it has been culturally jammed into our heads – we’re not who we are, we are the sum total of what we own. We are our car. We are our house. We are our slacks. We are our PEZ® dispensers. This consumption has replaced civic virtue. It has replaced the Lions Club. It has replaced the Rotary, the Kiwanis, and the Knights of Columbus, but unlike those groups, you can do it alone, at night, downstairs in your underwear, after a few beers. At 2AM, feeling like you haven’t lived up to your potential in life? If you’re tired of being the manager of a supermarket that doesn’t exist, well, perhaps you can check in at Amazon.com® to see what you can buy to fill the achievement and meaning-sized hole in your heart?

This post is about wealth – and the first requirement of being wealthy is that you don’t spend thousands of dollars on useless crap to replace meaning in your life. Especially if you don’t have the cash to spend. If you don’t have the cash to buy that new truck and you buy it anyway? Now you have debt. And the debt removes your peace of mind and you go in search of more meaning, so you buy the boat. And you and your wife have to work for years of your life to pay for it all.

That’s okay, it’s not like you can become a slave to your own consumption based on your search of meaning, is it?

Nah. I’m sure that doesn’t happen.

*I refuse to say how I learned this.

Opportunity – Like The Truth, It’s Out There

“This technology has been falling to Earth for centuries. All it took was the right mind to use it properly. Oh, the advances I’ve made from alien junk. You have no idea, Doctor. Broadband? Roswell.” – Doctor Who

Business Cat is ready for another adventure . . .

As I’ve made clear in previous posts, (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse, More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck, Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)) I think that our financial system is in trouble due to debt, currency debasement, and structural benefit issues with things like Medicare®. In fact, I think that it’s mathematically certain that we’re going to have at least one more catastrophic dislocation (fast or slow), and my bet is that it occurs between 2024 and 2040. Could it come sooner? Sure, you stunning optimist!

However, none of that means that you can’t give yourself the means to be comfortable despite the decline. And if I’m wrong about the decline – which I really hope is the case – then you’ll be in better shape. I mean, round is a shape, right?

So, how do you make a bunch of cash so you can snort Cuban cigars, or do whatever it is the kids are doing with Tide® Pods™ while being flanked by surgically enhanced Instagram models?

Start by doing something.

Action leads to opportunity. Inaction might help your video game scores and Cheeto® consumption, but to really create a situation where you’re going to have opportunity, you’re going to have to do something.

Living in a big city is great for creating opportunity. But living in a big city also involves living in a big city. And the last time I lived in a big city, it was Houston. Houston was great – I met a guy who gave me baseball tickets. Baseball tickets that were right behind President Bush’s (the first one) seats.

Yeah, I took this picture. How cool is that?

H.W. and Barb were there that night. Then President Bush took us to his house and showed me the actual documents from Roswell while The Mrs. and Barb arm wrestled in the kitchen and then played some drinking/fighting game from Mexico that involved tequila, a bandana, and knives. H.W. shared the big secret with me in his study over snifters of brandy: turns out what they found at Roswell wasn’t aliens, it was just dolphins with spaceships off on a drunken joyride. No biggie.

The real cover up? They had actually found Eleanor Roosevelt’s underthings.

Okay, the Roswell stuff I made up. But I did get those tickets and President Bush was there that night. And nobody in Podunk, East Midwestia is going to have tickets like that. Big cities breed opportunity to build connections based upon the sheer concentration of people. If you’re young and looking for opportunity? Big cities are it. Although my brother, who is also named John Wilder, did meet Bob Denver when he stopped for gas in a town of 1,500 people. My brother was working at the station that day. Said he was the nicest guy you’d ever meet, so, yeah, random meetings will happen. But they’re the exception, not the rule.

If I were fixated on opportunity, yeah, I’d move to a big city. But it’s not my cup of tea.

Okay, this might be fake trivia . . .

When doing something:

Don’t quit your job, unless you already have a lot of money, or are certain your crazy scheme will work. Or unless you have nothing to lose. When Jeff Bezos quit to start Amazon.com, he had enough money and enough connections that he knew he could restart if Amazon failed. But for every Bezos, there are tons of people like Davos Riggins. Who is Davos Riggins? I don’t know. He didn’t do anything.

A minor bragging point – I found a name that returns zero hits on Google® on the second try. Ha! And apologies to Davos Riggins if you really exist. But you have to admit you’ve squandered your potential.

Don’t borrow zillions of dollars to put your idea into practice, unless bankruptcy can’t hurt you. And even if you win? The debt will make your company less profitable.

What can you do to create opportunity in life?

Depends on you. One of the things (not the only thing) I do is write. Before this post, I’d written 229 posts comprising 316,000 words in the last 18 months. Why? I enjoy it. Also why? It’s doing something – it’s using the Internet to create possibilities that didn’t exist before. And after 229 posts? I still have dozens of sticky notes with topics that I want to write about – I have more topics than time.

But that’s my thing.

What about you?

Build something cool. Sell it at a flea market. Or on EBay™ or Etsy®.
~~Start a company that to help people find PEZ® dispensers. Oh, that was how EBay© got its start.~~ This is a lie. A sweet, beautiful lie (see comment below), but a lie nonetheless. And now I owe doughnuts!
Start a social network that only allows communication via cat emoji – suggested name? Snapcat©.
Write a list of 100 things you’re good at.
Write a list of 100 things you like to do.
See how the lists overlap? I bet there’s opportunity there.
Go to conferences and meet new people.
Meet their friends, too. They know someone that can help you.
Learn from your losses.
Start again.

Regardless of the way the world is going, you can thrive. You really can. If you imagine the US economy as a swimming pool, each gallon of water in the 40,000 gallon pool would be worth $5 million dollars. And that’s every year. And it’s not counting all the pee in the pool from when you had your nephew over.

Would you miss one gallon out of 40,000? No. Nobody would. And just like the pool, the economy doesn’t care. Not even about the pee.

There’s room for you to be as successful as you want to be, if you’re willing to sacrifice your time and location and fail again and again. And even when you win, you won’t be satisfied. That’s the biggest gift yet – the quest. If you’re good at it, if you like doing it, if you can make money at it, and if it changes the world?

That’s a start.

A good one.

Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)

â€œBut they make wonderful patients: Â they have excellentÂ healthÂ insuranceÂ and they never get better.â€ â€“ Frasier

Fairbanks Memorial â€“ they didnâ€™t charge extra for ice.

Although Iâ€™ve discussed Early Retirement before here (Frugality, Financial Samurai, Mr. Money Mustache, and Early Retirement Extreme) I thought that it would be good to revisit the topic, primarily because I have a spreadsheet.

What kind of spreadsheet?Â A crystal ball spreadsheet, one that predicts the future, all the way until 2081 when the ice sheets have melted and the dinosaurs have returned.Â Iâ€™ve maintained this spreadsheet since 2014 or so, and itâ€™s been very accurate for predicting my net worth over the course of four years.Â I used it to decide (once upon a time) whether or not to quit one job and move to another.Â Spoiler: Â I didnâ€™t move jobs.

The real reason I didnâ€™t change jobs was fairly simple:Â the spreadsheet told me that within three years I would have enough money that if I decided to chuck it all and get a job as say, a school teacher for a few years, I could continue to live the dissolute lifestyle awash in PEZÂ®, long essays, and regret to which I had become accustomed with no changes.Â But there is a faction that sees a more radical idea:Â just retire early.Â They even have an acronym for it:Â FIRE â€“ Financially Independent, Retiring Early.

One of the biggest advocates of that is still Mr. Money Mustache.Â MMM as he is affectionately known to his â€œMustachiansâ€ retired several years ago, and has been blogging about it since.Â His blog is exceptionally popular (LINK).Â One secret of MMM is that he, by choice, has created a lifestyle of voluntary low-spending, i.e., heâ€™s cheap.Â By cheap?Â His family has only one car, which they rarely use.Â Mainly he uses a bicycle to go where he needs to go.

This is a fascinating idea.Â You gain financial independence not by having the biggest pile of cash, but by having the smallest pile of needs.

For example:

I have a stack of books that is literally over 12 feet (143 meters) tall of books that Iâ€™m planning to read.Â Theyâ€™re stacked up by my bedside.Â Theyâ€™re stacked up on a bookcase near the bathroom.Â Theyâ€™re stacked up on my dresser.Â And I get several new ones every month to replace the ones I finish reading.Â And this doesnâ€™t account for my library, which houses a collection of thousands of titles on every subject from tanning a hide to hiding a tan.Â When we moved from Alaska to Texas, the movers set a company record for number of boxes packed in one day AND amount of weight packed in one day.Â Reason?Â Books.

Mr. Money Mustache would (probably) say:Â â€œWhy are you spending money on books?Â Thereâ€™s a library not two miles from your house that has a decent collection, and if they donâ€™t have the book you want they can get it through interlibrary loan.Â You could even get your fat butt on your bike and go down there to get a book and lose some weight in the process.â€

Heâ€™s just that kind of party-pooper, but that would also impact my love of gadgets and gizmos that, ultimately, arenâ€™t worth the time and money that I spend on them . . . except the drone, which is really, really cool.Â Everyone needs a drone, right?

But letâ€™s look at the major categories of spending and consider them through the soup-stained Mustachian paradigm.Â Each of these topics could be a blog post by itself (and some have) but weâ€™ll skim them today:

Mortgage:Â

Donâ€™t have one.Â You probably have more house than you need, which causes you to spend more on heating and cooling than you would need to if you had a house of human proportion.Â Pay it off so youâ€™re not paying interest to a bank and can keep the money yourself.Â But you still have to pay taxes and Iâ€™d still suggest you have insurance on the place, since it protects you in several different ways, especially from certain lawsuits that could dig deeply into your cash.

Home Location:Â

Why live in an area that causes you to have to spend a lot of money?Â Why live in an area (if youâ€™re still working) that causes you to drive lots of miles to a job, which eats up both money in commuting cost and your life in drive time?Â I know!Â Location!

This was an awesome location.Â Wonder why we sold it?Â Oh, yeah, piles of money.

Cell Phones:Â

Why have a big data â€œfull everythingâ€ when you can have a phone that costs less than $40 a month that gives you some data as well as more talking than anyone actually does on a cell phone?Â And the need for the newest iPhoneÂ©?Â Probably not so much.

Satellite/Cable Television:Â

We have satellite television, along with a DVR box that records television shows so we donâ€™t have to spend time watching them.Â But letâ€™s look at television . . . do we need a subscription to DirecTVÂ® and Netflixâ„¢?Â The number of things that I watch on satellite is dwindling â€“ Silicon Valleyâ„¢, Game of ThronesÂ©, Better Call Saulâ„¢, The Last ShipÂ®, sure I watch those when theyâ€™re on.Â But most of the year, theyâ€™re not on.Â And I can get most things on Netflixâ„¢ or AmazonÂ®.Â Do I even need satellite or cable anymore?

Landline:Â

When I was a kid and the phone rang, Iâ€™d jump off the couch, and run to the receiver to pick it up.Â It was an event!Â Now, in a day where communication follows you to every crevice of your life, when the phone rings, we rarely even pick it up unless the phone announces that itâ€™s Grandma.Â Wondering why we even have one . . . oh, yeah.Â Grandma.Â And the phone is free with the Internet.

Food:Â

Food is big business.Â And an even bigger scandal.Â How much food do we buy that we end up never eating?Â Since we have teenage boys in the house, the answer is â€œvery little.â€Â Itâ€™s been my saying (for forever) that the most expensive food that you buy is food that you donâ€™t eat.

The second-most expensive?Â Restaurant food, especially fast food.Â I can buy three pounds of delicious ribeye steak for about $30.Â Dinner for our family at Taco Bellâ„¢ (remember that we have teenagers) costs about $40.Â Full disclosure, I account for a chunk of that $40 myself, but steak is so much better than a Nachos Bell GrandeÂ®.Â And I can buy six pounds of ribeye for $60.Â And we can eat for several meals on that, versus one trip to a nice restaurant, which would cost about $120-$180, including tip.Â I maintain that I can eat better food more cheaply if I prepare it at home myself.Â And by myself, I mean (except for grilling) The Mrs.Â And as for high-priced Internet meal kits?Â Wal-MartÂ® is our meal kit.

Cars: Â

Mr. Money Mustache suggests having one or zero of these.Â And he has a huge financial point.Â Cars depreciate, so theyâ€™re crappy investments.Â Cars require taxes and licensing and insurance cost annually, so even if you own one, keeping it around so you can drive it costs you annually.Â And my family has an â€œN+1â€ philosophy about cars, where â€œNâ€ is the number of licensed drivers.Â Why?Â We drive used cars, and they need maintenance at a higher rate than brand-new cars.Â So we have a spare.Â If we were retired?Â One car would probably be enough (assuming we didnâ€™t have the teenage boys in the house).Â And, yes, a car is required for the rural area that we live in â€“ you really couldnâ€™t bike your Â ten year old kid to a wrestling tournament (in winter) thatâ€™s 100 miles away . . . so weâ€™d need at least one car.

Iâ€™m hoping this one is paid for.

Home Maintenance:

If you own a home, something will break.Â At my house, that seems to happen weekly, and itâ€™s more than me having my 19th nervous breakdown.Â Some things get fixed when I get around to it, like when one Wilder child broke the bannister.Â It sounds like Iâ€™m blaming the kid, but Iâ€™m really not â€“ if the bannister had been put together correctly in the first place (or fixed better than I did when last I fixed it) then it wouldnâ€™t have broken in the first place.Â This bannister got broken, oh, six years ago.Â It still swings loosely.Â Iâ€™ve never even been close to being motivated enough to fix it.Â But when the air conditioner pan rusted out and started leaking condensed water onto the bathroom carpet?Â Yeah.Â Fixed in 12 hours.

And I estimate that immediate repairs (not fixing the place up) that are required to make the place habitable are probably about 1% of the home value each year.Â If youâ€™re handy and can do it yourself?Â So much the better.Â When the hot tub â€œbrain boardâ€ fried?Â I consulted with a hot tub repair guy and swapped it out myself â€“ saving about $200 in the process.Â When the flame rollout sensor on the furnace went out in winter?

I paid to have that done, since the consequences of screwing that up involved mortality via explosion or asphyxiation if I screwed it up.Â $25 part, $50 in labor, and fixed that afternoon.Â My rule is:Â if it doesnâ€™t require real expertise and canâ€™t kill anyone?Â Sure, Iâ€™ll try that.Â Iâ€™ve saved thousands by doing that â€“ but I think (after putting two complete roofs on and fixing two others), Iâ€™m done roofing.Â Enough roofing.

Medical Insurance:

Medical insurance is the biggest variable to deal with for anyone attempting to retire early.Â I will say this gently:Â the health care system in the United States is the most unholy mixture of the worst parts of socialism and near-monopoly capitalism on the planet Earth, and thatâ€™s the planet that has the Department of Motor Vehicles AND school cafeteria lunches.Â How is it messed up?Â On the socialist side:Â A hospital is forced to treat anyone who shows up.Â Anyone.Â By definition, if you donâ€™t have any money, all the hospital can do is send you bills and not take the money you donâ€™t have.Â So, your incentive?Â To go to the emergency room whenever you get a sniffle, so everybody who has insurance can pay for you.

On the evil capitalist side?Â Hospitals donâ€™t have to let you know what theyâ€™re billing you, or why.Â Your ability to even remotely influence your bill is nearly zero.Â From Karl Denningerâ€™s post on how to fix healthcare â€“ emphasis in original (LINK):Â â€œ. . . Â the practice of charging someone $100,000 for scorpion antivenom in Arizona when theÂ same drugÂ from the same companyÂ is $200 for the same quantity 40 miles to the south and across the Mexican border.â€Â Denningerâ€™s post has a list of similar issues â€“ and common sense solutions that weâ€™ll never undertake.Â Why?Â Look at the stock prices of the drug companies and the insurance companies.Â Who would want to mess that party up?

MMM discusses his vexation with insurance in a pretty good post here (LINK).Â Since Iâ€™m working at a job and have crappy insurance from them, Iâ€™ve not scouted the market too much â€“ but my last look at the market mirrors MMMâ€™s.Â But in addition to the horrible composition

But up until you are ready for Medicare (and until your spouse is, too, which is a consideration for me, having married a younger â€“ but still legal in most states! â€“ woman) youâ€™ll have this risk.Â Medical insurance costs are estimated to rise between 15% and 30% next year.Â And 7% thereafter.Â Said simply, medical costs canâ€™t continue to increase at that rate.Â And when something canâ€™t continue?Â It wonâ€™t.Â The system will break.Â Insurance companies will go bankrupt, as every body . . . walks away.Â When people canâ€™t pay for insurance, they wonâ€™t.

But if youâ€™re retired, have insurance while you can until the system breaks.Â After that?Â The rules will change again.Â This will happen even if you are working.

So what does it all mean?

Retiring early has risks, but, so does life.Â One thing Iâ€™ve seen is we certainly donâ€™t know whatâ€™s around the corner.Â If you could retire early and found out later you had a terminal disease, wouldnâ€™t it be great if you retired early?Â No.Â Youâ€™d still be dead.Â Seriously.Â Dead is dead.

Retire early only if you donâ€™t find what youâ€™re doing fun.Â If youâ€™re having a blast at work and it has meaning to you, keep doing it until you die.Â Why retire from a dream job?

I mean, who else would watch Johnny Deppâ€™s finances for him?Â By the way, whatâ€™s the best way to clean the money after having a money bath?

Asking for a friend.

The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?

“There are 7 deadly sins, Captain.” – Se7en

So, here are the movie versions of sin. Except Pride. Is Pride really blonde?

Some time ago I read a book that my friend wrote (there is a link below where you can get it from Amazon – I make no money from that) about sin. I enjoyed the book, as well as one can enjoy a book that makes you feel absolutely horrible about how sinful and wretched you are. And I mean that in the best way – how often do you have the benefit of self-reflection on your faults? Thankfully, the author doesn’t leave you hanging, and gives you a path forward on the whole salvation from sin thing (note: he’s a priest, so the word “Jesus” just might be a spoiler). I heartily recommend the book.

Is sin at the problem with current society? Maybe. But first let’s discuss the sins.

As I recall (it’s been a while since I read it) one construct that Father Joseph used for discussing sin was the Seven Deadly Sins. He used the mnemonic “PALE GAS” to go through them. I’ll do the same.

Pride – Pride is the big one, perhaps the source of all the other sins. An example: If you’re religious, you’d accept that your intellect was given to you by God. If you’re not religious, you’d accept that your intellect was a happy genetic accident. In either case, no matter how smart you are, you’ve done nothing to be that smart, so taking pride in your intellect is, well, bad. That’s why pride is the primo sin – it takes all the glory for who and what you are and wraps it up into your own ego. It puts you and your ego at the center of the universe, when in reality no one thinks about you as much as you think they do. Unless you’re Donald Trump. Then people (from both sides) totally obsess over you.

Anger – This is also known as Wrath, but PWLE GAS doesn’t sound so good, unless you’re from some Eastern European country that uses colored wrapping paper for money and has a vowel shortage. Anger is feeling and wishing for unjust or excessive punishment – execution for parking offenses, that sort of thing, or punishing the innocent, just because they are weaker than you. Again, Wrath separates you from both God and reality by making the righting of wrongs (real or not) not about justice, but about you. You can see how Pride echoes here . . . .

Lust – Lust isn’t love, it’s a deep and intense passionate desire that throws morality, propriety, and sometimes legality to the winds. As sins go, this one at least (in some forms) is mutual, so it’s not as strong as pure Pride. In some forms, it’s considered the least serious of all mortal sins, but, you know, it’s still a mortal sin. Outside of religion, allowing Lust to drive your life tends to lead to a lot of poor decisions – just ask anyone in Hollywood®.

Envy – Like any of the sins, Envy has various gradations. First you are jealous that your neighbor has a complete set of PEZ® dispensers of every United States Secretary of Agriculture ever. Then you find out he has all of the United States Secretary of Commerce PEZ™ dispensers. Then you go all Cain on his Abel. Yup. Envy brings you farther from God, but it also fills you with hate.

Gluttony – Generally, Gluttony is considered more of a sin when your consumption (or overconsumption) of resources will starve someone else – but it really boils down to an unbridled passion for selfishness. Eating and drinking as the purpose of life, rather than to support it. It’s fairly obvious how this is both bad for you, and drives you farther from God.

Avarice – This sin is also known as greed, but if we called it that, then the mnemonic would be PWLE GGS. And what does that even mean? Where lust is for a person, and gluttony is for food, avarice is for stuff. That just makes it worse. Pop Wilder described avarice best when he told me, “A farmer doesn’t want all the land in the world, son, he just wants that which adjoins his.” This pulls you away from God though making you focus on the things only of this world. This focus turns men into machines – focused only on owning (not creating) wealth. See reason number 53 that I don’t want to live in New York City . . . .

Yeah, it sucks to be a sloth.

Sloth – Sloth isn’t just about being lazy – Sloth is giving up. It’s abdication of responsibility for whatever reason, often as a result of the other sins, or through giving up due to depression or despondency (which used to be one of the eight deadly sins, but got voted off in the semi-finals). It’s obvious on how this sin hurts you whether you’re a believer or not.

I heartily recommend Father Joseph’s book, whether or not you are a Christian or an agnostic or an atheist. I think the truths that it speaks to are so fundamental in our society that this could be one of the better books on self-improvement available today. Seriously. I read this book, thinking I was doing okay. (Pride will do that to you.) Every page that I read I kinda cringed when it described me, something I felt, or something I was doing as tied into one of these sins. I promise you – there’s not a week that goes by that you (and I!) aren’t attracted to and tempted to commit each of these sins weekly.

Oh, and my copy is signed! (See, I just used my Pride to Envy all over you.)

And these sins are important whether or not you are religious because these sins and our universal-ish understanding of them in the Western world form the basis of Western culture. Are there analogues in Chinese Confucianism, Shinto, or the tribal religions of Africa? Or Islam?

I have no idea. And it would require like a zillion Google® searches to sort that out. But it’s irrelevant.

I do know that the culture of the West was founded on this shared concept of sin.

And we agree that these things are bad, right?

Have we managed to rebrand many of these sins as virtues?

“Check out my InstaFace® selfie!”
“He had it coming to him.”
“If it feels go, do it!”
“You deserve what the 1% have.”
“Have another piece of cake – YOLO!”
“We’re not Boy Scouts®, we’re here to make money.”
“Let somebody else do it. You’ve done enough.”

One of the virtues of the Seven Deadly Sins is that the common belief in them is the basis for a shared morality in a stable civilization. One can infer that that shared belief (beyond the salubrious Christian effects on your immortal soul, if you’re into that sort of thing) is beneficial because it evolved with Western civilization.

Can the West live without the concept of sin?

I’m not sure that it can. Let’s just take one of them: Envy.

The biggest evil of the twentieth century was communism. I’m not saying that because it’s an opinion – it’s an objective fact. More people died because of communism than any other ideological cause during that century – over 140,000,000.

Communism was built on Envy; the concept that “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” And Ivan needs Pyotr’s farm. And Ivan’s wife needs Pyotr’s wife’s new butter churn. And so on.

Nearly a billion people died from gluttony – it causes heart disease along with a host of other diseases.

Anger led to war and murder. 240,000,000.

So, deadly wasn’t a euphemism – outside of spiritual conditions, these sins actually lead to real and temporal misery and death.

So there appears to be some limited anecdotal evidence that virtue is better than sin.

Which brings me back to society. If society doesn’t agree on the same cultural precepts which have driven the creation of knowledge and wealth for several thousand years . . . nah, never mind. I’m sure it will be fine.

Increasing Returns or: Problems are our Friend

“Hey, I have a little expertise in government pensions. I could increase your annual return if you just let me invest a small portion . . . .” – Bones

My current computer techs. Yeah, I’m not kidding.

In my first job after getting my master’s degree I ended up in a department with 10 other folks, all of us technically minded. During college, I had built my own computer and had also done a fair amount of programming. I even knew DOS (no, I’m not yelling “TWO” in Spanish – DOS stands for Disk Operating System, and it was what originally put MicroSoft® into a profit making position). I knew DOS due to some patient friends, and I bought my original PC from a certain frequent commenter (GS) to this site for about $100. When I started my new job, I knew more about computers than most of the people in the group.

And when anyone in the group had problems, they’d ask Willie (the other guy who knew computers pretty well) or they’d ask me to fix it for them. This actually predates the company having an IT department or even a coherent IT policy. If employees with computers made more money for the company than employees without computers? Buy the employees computers. If the employees are too stupid to use/fix their own computers? We’ll get new employees.

So when I was asked a question, I generally (80% of the time) knew the answer quickly. About 20% of the time, I had no idea, but knew enough on what sorts of things to try that might get to a solution for my coworkers friends. (This job was generally sitcom-level fun. We were all recent college grads and we were constantly at each other’s houses for parties, dinners, and what-not.)

Soon, I’d seen most problems you could have with PC software – since I was solving my own problems plus the problems of 10 other people (Willie and I would collaborate on the toughest problems). The company finally got an IT department, but the first commandment was: Don’t Let John or Willie Know Where We Keep The Servers. I have no idea why they did that, since we didn’t know much about servers at all. Maybe they thought we’d take our trial and error methods to the entire company and erase the payroll files while we were installing new screensavers? Maybe they were wise in not letting us know where the servers were?

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that neither Willie nor I knew all that much about computers when we started, but we knew just a little bit more than our friends. A little bit of knowledge combined with solving the problems of 10 people builds the foundation for a LOT of knowledge.

I know a little bit (tiny bit) about making computer chips. Intel®, however, knows a LOT. Intel© has been making computer processor chips for nearly fifty years. So they have fifty years’ worth of experience, right?

No. Intel™ has about 100,000 employees. Let’s pretend that 10% of the staff solves problems in production – learning how to make chips quicker, more reliable, minty smelling, etc. at any given time. That’s 10,000 people. For fifty years.

Doing the math, Intel® has invested up to 500,000 man-years into making awesome chips. To catch them? You’d have to duplicate that level of investment. Numerous examples exist where entire geographic areas become excellent at doing some sort of manufacturing – Japan led the consumer electronics boom. China makes I-Phones® faster than any other country could. Detroit. Well, it used to make cars. And as much as I kid, Detroit still has amazing technical skills when it comes to cars. Silicon Valley? Yeah. They’re the current bright spot for information innovation. Southwestern Art? Go to Santa Fe. Really good at lying? Try Washington D.C.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. If you look into the trash piles of ancient Britain, you find that during the Roman period, the dishes used by the common man were – pretty nice. (And archeologists LOVE dishes. They break, and you have to get new ones, so they tell you a lot about what’s going on with a culture.) Dishes were shipped to Britain from Southern Gaul (France) where they specialized in making plates. Once Britain was cut off from the collapsing Roman Empire? The dishes got crappy – the British hadn’t had to make their own dishes in hundreds of years.

When Rome collapsed, dishes got bad, not only in Britain, but everywhere. When the trade routes and common currency collapsed, the plate makers had to do something else to survive. The trade routes, currency, had created a center of excellence that disappeared pretty quickly once the Empire was gone.

Solving problems to get better works for Nations. It works for Regions. It works for Companies. And it works for Individuals.

If you want to be awesome, solve hard problems. Sometimes the biggest problems are the biggest blessings . . . except that DOS is about as familiar as hieroglyphics nowadays, so solving that problem is probably not important.

Did I mention that you should learn to solve important problems? Yeah. My bad. Important problems. Solve those . . . .

Russian Wrestlers, Pylometrics, and You’re Probably Not Trying All That Hard

“When the game is on the line, a winner wants the ball in his hands.” – The Replacements

A miniature version of The Boy prepares for a match . . . he now weighs 200 pounds.

The other day I was on Amazon. Yes, I know. The fact that I cannot walk into my living room because of all the little boxes shows I might spend too much time there. Anyway, I was looking for hair regrowth tonic that actually works and carbohydrate free sugar cookies options for fitness equipment for Pugsley and The Boy. One of the things that I saw was . . . a box. You can buy it here (LINK).

I don’t get any money if you buy a box. But you do get a box. One box.

The idea of the box is that you . . . jump on it. That’s it.

What led me to the box I was watching a video of Александр Александрович Карелин. Oh, sorry, you don’t speak Russian – that’s Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Karelin spelled out in the strange chickenscratch that Russians use as a secret code that Putin and Trump devised so we can’t decipher their messages. Karelin was an internationally ranked wrestler for a while. Like for five Olympics. In fact, his career record is 887 wins and two losses. His nickname is “The Experiment.” Because he could do 42 pullups. And he weighed 285 pounds. His signature move? Lifting 285 pound people off the mat and tossing them up into the air so they landed on their shoulders.

The Experiment.

Yeah.

A quote from Aleksandr: “They call me The Experiment because they cannot conceive that every day I train harder than they have ever trained in their lives.” He might be just a bit intense.

Aleksandr was being interviewed in the YouTube® video I saw, and they showed the obligatory clip of him working out. One of the exercises he was doing was repeatedly jumping on a box that was 24” or 30” high. I was impressed. 285 pound guy jumping that high? Wow.

Here’s a picture of Aleksandr. Yeah, that’s a 285 pound human he’s going to toss into the air like a ragdoll. Not sure why they need tanks if the Russians have more guys like this around. Oh, and he’s buddies with Putin and has both a doctorate and a law degree. Don’t you feel like an underachiever now?

It turns out that “jumping on boxes” is known by the $250 per hour consultant word, “pylometrics.” From the Latin root Pylo for “pile of” and the ancient Greek word “metron” which means “communist measurement system.” Pylometrics came to world attention when the Soviet track and field teams of the 1970’s were turning in absolutely amazing performances. One trainer thought, “hey, it must be all of the jumping on boxes stuff that they’re doing,” and completely disregarding the simpler theory of, “win Olympic medals or we’ll shoot your family.”

Regardless, as noted above, he renamed it pylometrics so he could charge $250 per hour to talk about it.

Well, if one of the best wrestlers ever to live thought that pylometrics should be a part of his routine, well, why not? (Previous post: Pugsley decided he wanted to be an NCAA champion in wrestling. (LINK)) If you’re going to try to be the best, you emulate everything you can about the very best people you can find. Everything. Pugsley even has a poster of Putin up on his wall now.

So, I was on Amazon, totally not looking for hair tonic when I found the boxes shown above. Did I say boxes? Yeah. I saw the picture and expected three. Turns out that a cube exists in three dimensions, so they delivered just one box with three heights – 16 inches, 20 inches, and 24 inches. It turns out if you rotate the box . . . well, you get the picture now.

The Boy put it together when it arrived, but then he had to leave, so that left Pugsley and I in the wrestling room with the cube. To be frank, I was concerned that Pugsley wouldn’t be able to jump up on the 16” side and we’d have to get something smaller. I was hoping that it wouldn’t hurt his confidence to have to jump on the “short box.”

He set it with the 16” side facing up. He jumped, and stuck the landing on top of the box like an Olympic® gymnast.

John Wilder: “That was awesome. Okay, try 20 inches!”

He tried once, twice, and was up on top on the third side.

John Wilder: “That was amazing!! Try 24 inches!

Pugsley: “No, I can’t do that.”

John Wilder: “Try.”

He jumped up. Not quite.

Again. A miss.

Third time? He stuck to the top of the box like there were magnets in his feet.

Also this month, friend was doing Crossfit®.

Things you never need to guess about a person: if they are vegan, if they drive a Prius®, or if they are in Crossfit©. Now if you find an actual human that does all three of these things, you might have found a smug singularity – beware or you might get sucked into the smug . . . . (my friend isn’t smug, just often sore after working out).

Anyhow . . . when working up to a max in the deadlift (the king of all lifts) my friend tried to stop at 100 pounds. She thought that was enough. Too hard.

Her coach encouraged her – and she maxed out at 180 pounds.

Most days we have no idea of the things that we are capable of, if only we try. The thing that generally limits your life is . . . you. If you want to be the best, you have to start by working like the best. And believing in yourself.

You might not get there, but you’ll know that you didn’t hold back. You’ve put the game in your hands.

I know where you could go to buy a box . . .

Mental Illness, Dunbar’s Number, and the Divine Right of Kings

“I thought I alone considered your boyfriend a narcissistic moron, but the whole galaxy does.” – Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

The Tribe begins its annual war, an ancient rite known as “dodge ball.”

What if we’ve been looking at mental health . . . all wrong? This may be the most interesting thing you read all month, maybe all year. But that’s just what a narcissist would say . . .

I was thinking the other day (a dangerous thing to do, I know, thinking is something to be left to those that work at universities and in congress) and had an idea. Maybe (some) mental illness has a purpose. I’ll explain, but first I have to explain Dunbar’s Number, which, of course, is named after Kim Kardashian. I’m kidding. Dunbar’s Number is named after Caitlyn Jenner.

Robin Dunbar, British Psychologist, looked over the size of the human neocortex (not Neo-Cortez, who would take over the Neo-Aztec) and after playing with a particularly plump and pleasant neocortex, decided that brains just might have something to do with how humans relate to each other. The neocortex is actually the newest (in a biological sense) portion of the brain, and allows humans to do complex things, like talking, snorkeling, and making microwave ramen.

Dunbar looked at primate group brain sizes, and compared to the size of the neocortex to the size of the primate “group” or tribe. After running the math, he predicted that humans should have a group size of around 150 – it’s related to the size of working memory that you have about other people. The commonly accepted maximum stable group size (average) is 100-250, which explains why I need to have my children program the streaming box hooked up to my television – my working memory is full of details like the shoe preferences of the administrative assistant at work from six jobs ago.

Dunbar further theorized that larger groups could only stick together under strong survival pressures – you’d have to be pressed to work together by a fate as tough as death. Why? Because people are tough to deal with. And it takes time to deal with people, rather than strangle them.

One potential reason that the “Dunbar” number for people could be higher than predicted is language. Whereas other primates have to use non-verbal cues like body-slamming them, people, after the advent of language, can talk to each other so they can explain why they are body-slamming you. For that reason, especially when dealing with modern (the last 12,000 years or so) humans, I favor a Dunbar number in the 250 range.

There is some validity to the number. Anecdotally, I’ve been involved with a company that had two divisions in the same area. One had 120 or so employees. The other? It had far greater than 500 employees. I observed that the smaller division operated as a single unit. Every employee knew every other employee – and they knew about their families, their hobbies, and their history. Did that consume time? Sure. You couldn’t just go over to talk with one of them – the entire social greeting took at least 10 minutes. You had to catch up. And that’s the way that close relationships work – you can’t just say “hi” and walk on, you have to catch up with each other. That explains why when I come home, The Mrs. wants to talk and stuff. We’re engaging in a practice that’s at least thousands of years old.

The larger division had broken up into various factions based on job functions. These factions looked like little tribes – each had a leader, an agenda, and they fought against each other regularly, often over nothing. And each of these fights ended up hurting the company. Gore-Tex® found the same thing – they built buildings for 150 people. When the building filled up? They built a new one. They tried to keep the trust, the positive aspects of the tribes predicted by Dunbar from spilling over into intertribal warfare that happens at larger group sizes.

But ancient tribes didn’t have kid’s soccer, and FaceBorg®, and the myriad of connections that occur outside of work. So, the Gore-Tex™ number is smaller than the “actual” tribe size. Again, 250 seems about right.

So what does this have to do with mental illness?

Well, for a tribe to survive over time, while most members would be able to act as general “tribal” members most of the time (i.e., hunting, gathering) there would also be the need for specialist skills and attributes. Situations the tribe might encounter (and overall group cohesiveness) require different talents.

Let’s take schizophrenia. It’s prevalent in about 0.4% of the population. It often manifests with being able to hear things that aren’t there, see things that don’t exist, and believe in a reality that others can’t see.

Sounds like a Shaman to me. Every good tribe needs one, right? Well, 0.4% is 1 person out of 250. I got goosebumps when I did that calculation – the number seemed like a nice fit for the theory right off the bat.

Okay, what about another common mental condition? Anxiety. Anxiety is found in about 10.6% of the population. So, in our tribe of about 250 we’d have about 26 planners. 26 people worrying on a daily basis about how the whole tribe would die. These people are a pain in the butt, but this ability to dream up a constant set of disasters that the tribe could anticipate and avoid has huge survival value. In today’s world, not so much. Back 8,000 years ago? This was an amazingly important skill.

About 6 of our 250 tribe would be obsessive-compulsive. Mainly older folks. I can see the meticulousness compulsion of the older, wiser tribal member being infectious – and leading to greater spread of learning throughout the tribe. There are certain things you have to do right, you have to double check (think food poisoning) or else the tribe will die. Having these super process-driven people might have been quite a help.

About 6 would of the tribe would be paranoid. Again, like planning, it serves a purpose – but in this case the paranoia is about what other groups are doing and thinking. Very helpful to have someone looking for the hints that the tribe will be attacked from outside. Or, from inside. Are you threatening me?

Narcissism? About 1%. Only so much room for leaders. This would have about 2 of them in the tribe.

Psychopath/Sociopath? About 1.2%. So, 3 bold, direct, mean leaders of raiding parties/war parties. It takes a village to kill another village.

Pictured: Psychopath. I like the cut of his jib!

Outside of oral history, our hypothetical tribe had only one way to pass on information about required roles and how to do them – genetics. Genetics matter – many of these conditions are at least partially inherited, making it more likely that the leader was . . . the son of the leader. The shaman was . . . the son or daughter of the last shaman.

This genetic tendency to replace the leader with the leader is (likely) the source of the concept of hereditary royalty and hereditary nobility. And, genetically, those people were likely the best leaders around at that time, and they kept breeding . . . so, there was (at least for a while) some good reason to think that the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs might be pretty good choices for kings. They were bred to be kings. Now: perhaps a bit too much cousin-lovin’ (LINK)?

So, yeah, all of the roles required for a self-sufficient band are built within our genetic profiles – but some of them aren’t valued so much in our current society – we don’t need a half-dozen war-band leaders in every high school. And, as far as I know, this is an idea I developed (more or less) independently. Which is also something a narcissist would say . . . hmmm.

How much time do you have left? Not as much as you think you do . . .

“Ok, let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.” – Catch 22

Now 205 pounds and doing 180 push-ups and sit-ups a day . . . .

When I was 10, summer lasted a year. I would spend the time hiking in the mountains, making models (plastic spaceships, not the Donald Trump kind), reading comic books (sometimes the same ones, again and again) and looking forward to the next day. Each day was a bit of wonder, and they lasted so very long. It seemed like the longest days were those when we were wishing that the calendar would go forward – for a vacation – for a trip – for a birthday. Our life went slowest when we were wishing it away.

When I was 30, summers began to blend together into a blur. Time for the mortgage payment . . . again? Didn’t I just pay that? I’ll change the filter in the air conditioner. Oh, that’s been a year? No, two years??? How did that happen?

When I was 5, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was roughly . . . forever. Now? A blink and then it’s done. And after 30? Might as well spin the wheel – days blur into weeks into months into years. A decade between visits with a close friend? Hmmm.

A clock ticks off a minute after a minute. It ticks off an hour in an hour. That linear time is 1+1=2. It’s how we think of the world, but it’s not at all how we experience it. No. Our time sense is far different.

When we are born, after living that first day – it’s all we have ever known. It’s an eternity. It’s literally all the time we’ve ever known. To look forward after that day would be to look across a gulf of time that, to us, is nearly an infinite amount of time away.

A minute isn’t a minute. When you’re ten years old, half of your life is five years. When you’re forty, five years the amount of time you’ve been thinking about changing your shower curtain. But half of your life is twenty years, and that’s something substantial to you. Kind of like the five years to the ten year old . . . .

All of us experience time a day at a time, but the day is different to each of us, has different significance, different meaning. Your time sense is changed by the amount of time you’ve spent on Earth. The most significant time is doubling . . . rather than a year, it’s all about how many times you’ve doubled your experience. Let’s take an example:

Most people don’t start building memories until they’re two and a half or so. Double it? Five. Again? 10. 20. 40. 80.

Viewed from that vantage point, we’ve only got about five doublings in our life. Rather than 80 years (which seems daunting) think about it that the time between five and 10 will roughly correspond to the perceived duration between ages 40 and 80.

And I think it’s not just time perception – it’s learning. It’s achievement. You probably learn as much between two and a half and five as you do between 10 and 20. Or 40 and 80.

Does time seem like it’s going faster? For you it is. This is the same model that radioactive decay follows – a half-life. The half-life of a radioactive atom is based upon the stability of its nucleus. Your half-life is based on how many days you have lived. And each day makes the next day shorter . . . .

Fortunately, there’s a solution. When reading Joseph Heller’s book, Catch: 22, one of the characters, Dunbar, shot skeet because he hated shooting skeet. Whenever possible he did things he hated or things that made him uncomfortable so that he could have a life that appeared to be longer. I mean, nothing seems longer than doing something you hate, so why not just fill your life with doing things you hate?

Oh, we don’t fill our lives with doing things we hate because it’s stupid. Whew. Forgot.

I’ll throw out there, that when viewed in these doublings, you have much less useful time on Earth than you think. If you have five doublings (and nobody has ever made it to six) than you’ve only got so much time to do what you want to do.

Have a book to write? If you haven’t started, will you ever?

Have an apology to make? If you wait another decade, will that make it easier?

Whatever you do, don’t wish your life away – you’ve only got so many days. Make the most of each one of them.