tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68421967633058376602024-03-14T08:20:58.759+01:00Not your mother's codeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-63319778807516974492016-10-25T09:36:00.000+02:002016-10-25T09:37:34.477+02:00Literary hypocrites and the plagiarism business<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I enrolled to an <a href="https://www.coursera.org/learn/advanced-writing/home/info">advanced essay writing course</a>. About 30 percent of it dealt with plagiarism. So I read articles after articles on it, and I got the impression of watching a debate in a kindergarten. "He pulled my hair." "No, she started it, she called me a sissy." Finally I turned in my essay with (hopefully) proper citations.<br />
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J. D. Salinger used to be my hero, although my favorite was his less popular <em>Franny and Zooey</em>. When a Swedish writer wanted to publish a post-modern paraphrase, <em>60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye</em>, Salinger sued him <span class="citation">(Sulzberger)</span>. A similar narrow-minded attitude prevails in academy where the greedy business exploits the good intention of honest academics. Fighting literary plagiarism in the US now is mostly about money.<br />
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There are many examples of how being plagiarized have a similar effect on different kinds of people. <span class="citation">Gladwell</span> tells the story of Dorothy Lewis, a criminal psychiatrist. Her friends told her about a new Broadway play she should see. She grabbed a copy of the play, started to read it, and noticed some strange coincidences. She began to underline some lines, and the whole story became more and more suspicious, there were too many similarities between the script and her own life. She felt "robbed and violated in a peculiar way, [...] it was as if someone had stolen [her] essence.” <span class="citation">(Gladwell pp 223-224)</span>. <span class="citation">Weinberg</span>, the computer scientist tells a story when a consultant published a chapter from his book and even argued that Weinberg had stolen his article. Weinberg showed evidence to the consultancy's attorneys who paid a nice penalty without any question. But "the penalty didn't begin to make up for [his] feeling of being violated" <span class="citation">Weinberg</span>; he had no idea what rape felt like, but he felt raped.<br />
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Plagiarism affects both the author, and the audience. Above all, being plagiarized is an emotional shock for the author. Some authors, like the afore-mentioned <span class="citation">Gladwell</span> and <span class="citation">Weinberg</span>, find it quite distressing. It is as shameful as being violated, this may be the reason why many authors do not mention this aspect. Its other effect is that it robs the reader of being able to follow a reference. We research a topic by reading some seminal articles on it, then following the articles referenced by them. If an article or an author is referenced by many others, it is a sign of importance. This is the basis of how academic work is evaluated based on its impact factor. Finally, it can have financial and professional consequences for the author too. It is awkward to get into a debate of who the original author of a paper is. A publication brings professional reputation and occasionally a fee, so copying a paper means lost profit for the original author.<br />
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To get over being plagiarized is a complex emotional process which has multiple stages. It is hard to process being raped even in an intellectual sense. It involves different stages and emotions, including the urge to take revenge on the perpetrator. "If it hurts to me, it should hurt to him even more", this is the thinking behind. A substitute for revenge is compensation, it is getting something in return to compensate the pain. Parents use this tactic with children too; they buy an ice-cream to the child when his puppy just passed away. Since the compensation addresses only one stage of the emotional process, it is not very effective, but it seems to be working in the heat of the moment.<br />
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The methods people use to fight plagiarism don't address the problem. First of all, there is an increase in the number of plagiarism at colleges. <span class="citation">Roberts</span> explains "10 percent of students surveyed in 1999 admitted [copying] without properly crediting the source. By 2005, the percentage was almost 40 percent." In spite of all the efforts to educate students about it, "the number who believed that copying from the Web constitutes 'serious cheating' is declining" from 34 percent to 29 percent in a decade (<span class="citation">Gabriel</span>). Besides, many who fight plagiarism use a strategy of deterrence. The main message students learn is how severe consequences copying can have. According to iParadigms, the company behind Turnitin, consequences include destroyed reputation as a student and as a professional; and legal and monetary repercussions. This message does not foster empathy with the authors and the readers. Finally, educators over-emphasize the moral aspect of plagiarism. <span class="citation">Fish</span> refers to it as a "learned sin", <span class="citation">Gabriel</span> calls it a "serious misdeed". This makes it more difficult for students to understand the situation rationally. However, plagiarism is essentially not a moral issue, it is "a breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe" (F<span class="citation">ish)</span>; making it look so only fans the flame.<br />
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Fighting plagiarism is a good business. There are many fields where business outgrows and exploits the original need it wanted to fulfill. It is a common tactic to artificially generate and inflate a business need. <span class="citation">Poulter </span>claims some mineral water producers disparage tap water, then they turn out to sell bottled tap water themselves. Lawyers are no exception, they have to ensure they are needed, especially in a country that has the most lawyers per capita in the world. Divorce lawyers have a smart tactic, they ask their clients to make an exhaustive list of their belongings and walk it through with their spouse checking each item. This is a good way to ensure a long and painful process with less chance of a mutual agreement and more legal fees. The most well-known software company in the plagiarism business, iParadigms has grown quite powerful. They are behind Turnitin, most colleges use; they are behind plagiarism.org, the site that pretends to be a neutral NGO. Students are supposed to check their papers before handing them in, but one document costs almost 8 USD, "so much, that the ordinary student can’t afford [...] it." <span class="citation">(Scan My Essay)</span>. There are free alternatives, but colleges don't accept them officially.<br />
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There is no easy way out of the current situation. Business has overruled the field. But it is time now to forget about inflated morality and address the real problems. It is time now to deal with the authors and the readers.<br />
<h1 class="unnumbered" id="references">
References</h1>
<div class="references" id="refs">
<div id="ref-scanmyessay2016">
Fish, Stanley “Plagiarism is not a big moral deal.” <em>Opinionator</em> (2010). 23 Oct. 2016 <<a class="uri" href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/plagiarism-is-not-a-big-moral-deal/">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/plagiarism-is-not-a-big-moral-deal/</a>>.</div>
<div id="ref-gabriel2010">
Gabriel, Trip “Lines on plagiarism blur for students in the digital age.” <em>Education</em> (2010). 23 Oct. 2016 <<a class="uri" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html</a>>.</div>
<div id="ref-gladwell2009">
Gladwell, Malcolm <em>What the dog saw: And other adventures</em>. Little, Brown, 2009.</div>
<div id="ref-poulter2012">
Poulter, Sean “Tap water straight from the mains sold on shelves at asda and tesco.” <em>Daily Mail</em> (2012). 24 Oct. 2016 <<a class="uri" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2190027/Asda-Tesco-selling-tap-water-bottled-water-confusing-customers.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2190027/Asda-Tesco-selling-tap-water-bottled-water-confusing-customers.html</a>>.</div>
<div id="ref-roberts2007">
Roberts, Joel “Technology sniffs out student plagiarism.” 17 Mar. 2007. 23 Oct. 2016 <<a class="uri" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/technology-sniffs-out-student-plagiarism/">http://www.cbsnews.com/news/technology-sniffs-out-student-plagiarism/</a>>.</div>
<div id="ref-sulzberger2014">
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<div id="ref-fish2010" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<div id="ref-scanmyessay2016" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Scan My Essay “FREE turnitin alternative - a real alternative to turnitin.” 2016. 23 Oct. 2016 <<a class="uri" href="http://www.scanmyessay.com/turnitin.php">http://www.scanmyessay.com/turnitin.php</a>>.</div>
</div>
Sulzberger, A. G. “J. d. salinger’s suit over ’the catcher in the rye’ sequel goes to court.” <em>Books</em> (2014). 24 Oct. 2016 <<a class="uri" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/books/17salinger.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/books/17salinger.html</a>>.</div>
<div id="ref-turnitin1998">
Turnitin “6 consequences of plagiarism.” 1998. 23 Oct. 2016 <<a class="uri" href="http://www.ithenticate.com/resources/6-consequences-of-plagiarism">http://www.ithenticate.com/resources/6-consequences-of-plagiarism</a>>.</div>
<div id="ref-weinberg2005">
Weinberg, Gerald M. <em>Weinberg on writing: The fieldstone method</em>. Dorset House, 2005.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-5563629786732770472016-10-10T10:35:00.002+02:002016-10-10T10:35:57.755+02:00Don't trust me, I am a manager<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Management is part science, part art. The remaining eight parts is deception. It is similar to astrology in this regard. Oh no, I can hear you gasp, astrologists are different. They suck poor people’s blood, not poor in a literal sense, but people who believe in medieval superstitions refuted by science decades ago. I wonder if there is any serious research on the effectiveness of management in general. There are researches that compare management styles and approaches, a number of business magazines (the shiny version of tabloids printed on more expensive paper) publish articles on the most successful managers of the year, of the century, of human race. But the higher price of a business magazine doesn't make it different from astrology.<br />
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Managers claim the company would collapse if it were not for them. No surprise this is what they say, no one in her right mind would say, “my job is useless, it produces no value, but luckily there are enough people around whom I can talk into paying me.” It would be a financial suicide to make such a statement, at least in the public. We don’t know what managers tell each other when they are having fun at a pretentious restaurant. Part of their fun may be how successfully they deceived their employees and employer. The higher on the rank, the more sure managers are about their necessity.<br />
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When you start to work for a company or start a career in management, you don’t understand what is going on. You feel inferior, you ask for advice, you rely on your more experienced peers and supervisor. You read books and go to trainings to improve, but you don’t feel a tremendous leap in your progress. In those dark moments of despair you should recall management is like astrology. For astrology you need elementary knowledge of how planets move, that stars are not little lamps nailed on the crystal firmament. You need basic psychology to talk with your customers, to gauge what kind of people they are and what they want to hear. You can improve your knowledge by enrolling to an astronomy or psychology class at the nearest college, but it will not help much after a certain point, because you can’t predict a person’s future. You can make certain predictions, a single mother possibly wants to re-marry, an old trader is probably closer to death than his young mistress. But other than that common sense, no amount of knowledge about the orbit of the Mars will improve your predictions. In a similar vein, managers can’t improve after a certain point, because it is based on a pseudo-science (and pseudo-art) too.<br />
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Don’t get me wrong, astrologist and managers are usually well-intentioned folks, they don’t want to deceive anybody. It would be pretty difficult for them to live a life of an impostor, they have to be convinced how beneficial their contribution is. When you meet an astrologist, you don’t want to engage in an argument with her about the usefulness of her profession. You may want to challenge her, but chances are, she will not break into tears that she has wasted so many years on such a valueless vocation. Similarly, when you enter the office, don’t challenge the importance of managers. If you want to navigate in the murky waters of office life, just nod your head and learn the rituals of the tribe. Just don’t take them too seriously. When they dance in the morning to wake up the sun, join the circle, swing your hip with them, but don’t let it lull into thinking it has any relation to the sun rising.<br />
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What keeps this whole mechanism working? The ancient motives of humanity: fear and uncertainty. We don’t understand the world around us, we have no clue about the forces of the universe that affect our lives most. We have deep technical knowledge about some mundane details that don’t matter, we know the names of great baseball or football players, we know how to switch on the light and send a message on Facebook, but we don’t even know how Facebook works, how our typing on a keyboard is transformed to a piece of text, how it travels to a far-away country. We have absolutely no idea about the ranking algorithm of messages on your Facebook wall which is still a minor detail in the greater texture of life. We have even less clue about what really matters: how to live a happy life, how to have a meaningful relationship, how to live in peace with others.<br />
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We are uncertain about the world around us, we are even more uncertain about our future. We wish there were somebody to comfort us! Oh, mommy, give me a hug, I had a bad dream of a monster, I am so afraid. And mommy came when we were children and she gave us a hug and it made the worst fears go away. We are adults now with the same squeaky voice inside us, but there is no mommy to come to the rescue. Even if she came and told us the old stories that used to be so soothing, it would not work anymore, because we don’t believe in tales. We need someone else with more credibility. They are the experts and the managers. We need them instead of mommy and daddy.<br />
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When mommy said, “no worries, this is just a little cough, you will be fine in a day”, she didn’t know it, she just made something up. Even doctors are wrong 30 percent of the time, let alone poor mothers with no medical background. It gave us comfort even when it took three days for the cough to go away. Experts and managers are no different. All they have to do is sound confident and they have to tell us a tale, because we actually believe in tales, if they are tailored for adults, elaborate and convincing tales with numbers, charts, and greek phrases. I just heard a manager the other day, he projected a slide with three data points, the sales figures of three months, and he told us about the growth tendency he saw. He said it to an audience of smart people who pointed out that three data points is nothing, you can fit any curve on them, you can whatever you fancy. He said it was a valid point, then continued with his story, “ok, it’s not for sure, but I find this trend interesting.” Numbers and charts, and greek phrases.<br />
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We are uncertain as employees, we love to have a confident boss who can tell us what to do. We have dignity too, we rebel against too bossy managers, we are grown-ups, hey, let us do the work our way. But when the going gets tough, we need daddy to take care of the mess we got into, oh, daddy, come and give us a hug. Ironically being a manager is the same, we are expected to know things we don’t know, we are expected to do things we have never done before, we have no idea how to do. But boys don’t show their weaknesses, boys don’t cry. We sit down and watch two Clint Eastwood movies in a row to numb our nervous system to the point that we can radiate confidence to our trembling underlings. There are some phrases banned in modern offices, such as “I don’t know” and “I can’t”. Pull yourself together, dude, and show some can-do attitude.<br />
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Humans have devised many ways to deal with uncertainty, we have a long history of rituals to make the world a safer place than it actually is. We had ceremonies to please the angry God, we carved protective signs in the marble, we murmured incantations in dead languages, we even sacrificed humans if that was the request of God. The tools changed, but the rituals remained the same. Now we use numbers, charts, and greek phrases projected on the screen. We sacrifice humans too, we just call it layoff (and I don’t want to go into the bigger scale political variants of human sacrifice). Of course, we think we are different, we look back at the dark centuries before us and laugh hard how primitive our ancestors were, but now we know the proven scientific method how to overcome the uncertainties our ancestors failed with. Our great-grandfathers and -mothers laughed just as hard at the dark ages before them. We can see our stupidity only in retrospect.<br />
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Managers have a good intention, they think they are a necessary part of the system. If you remove them, you have to make sure to handle the mountains of uncertainty added up by the little brown piles every one of us carries in his or her pant. There was a great king who ruled over millions of people and thousands of acres of land. He had a court astrologist whom he consulted before difficult diplomatic decisions or before entering a war. His empire kept growing. Then one day the astrologist was gone. Nobody knew what happened to the poor guy, some suspected he was kidnapped by the king’s greatest enemy. The royal PR commented the story as a step to the modern ages when the enlightened few realize astrology is a superstition of the past. That was the day when the empire started to decline and it fell apart in a year. Does this story prove astrology is a powerful tool to lead a country? I don’t think so. That astrologist had good coaching skills disguised in zodiac signs, he gave emotional support to the king, he asked questions the ministers were afraid to ask. Management may be the superstition of the twentieth century, but be careful when you get rid of managers. You have to replace them with a new magic. Or better yet, face the uncertainty of life.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-64665297127117963082016-10-05T20:42:00.000+02:002016-10-05T20:42:55.246+02:00The diamond cutters' rules of editing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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All I have is a question I want to walk around: how to edit what I have written. I do not know the answer, I do not know the way, so I will digress for sure. I will digress, because it is worth stopping sometimes on the road and look under a bush, it may hide an unexpected treasure. <br />
<a name='more'></a>I will turn in one direction sometimes that looks a rational choice when I make the turn, but will prove a digression in retrospect. I am already digressing, and this is what I want to do first, explore the two kinds of essay writing, what I call the English and the Continental.<br />
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The English essay is a part of the formal education in the USA and in the UK from high school to colleges. It has a clear structure (an introductory paragraph with a thesis statement, a body of 3-4 paragraphs, etc). It has its types (compare/contrast, cause/effect, etc). You can always be sure where you are, what to expect. If you ever get lost, you just jump to the beginning of the paragraph and find a topic sentence there. Easy to read and easy to write, because you do not have to think, so to speak. Of course, it takes work to come up with a topic, then outline it, then put flesh on the skeleton. It is a “write by numbers” experience.<br />
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The Continental essay is practiced sporadically, it has no schools, no rockstars, no fan base. It goes back to Montaigne’s tradition, to the original meaning of the French word <em>essayer</em>: to attempt. It has no uniform structure, because it is about discovering a topic, sometimes even the topic is a bit hazy, the writer does not exactly know where to start, it will unfold only during the journey of writing. It is exploratory in nature, it digresses, jumps, and dances, it sometimes sits on the grass to watch the sunset. (Yes, you are reading a Continental essay now.)<br />
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Writing an exploratory essay takes more courage, because you do not know if you will end up in a swamp or you will find a satisfactory conclusion. It is like exploring a foreign town, you cannot tell upfront if it will be a renaissance statue or a cozy restaurant you stumble upon, all you know is you want to look around, and given your curiosity, you must find something worth the long walk. Unfortunately, not all towns have the treasures you are open to. I still remember the city of Epidavros in Greece, a vibrant town in ancient times, now the home of a cement factory. No amount of walking could reveal any exciting secret to me, although it could have been an amazing location for someone with an eye for industrial buildings. I may write an exploratory essay that leads nowhere, and I end up trashing hours or days of work.<br />
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This is the danger that takes courage to face. If you face the unknown, you better prepare for it by practicing activities you think could serve you. For the big journey a discoverer needs an iron body, knowledge of snakes to spot a venomous one. He does pushups to prepare and run a few miles every day; he studies books on biology. Similarly, a writer needs to practice with the tools of their profession before a more ambitious undertaking. She enumerates arguments for breakfast, she compares and contrasts items in the grocery store. And this is what college essays are for: to practice. They are only tools that will hopefully help you when writing a <em>real</em> essay, an attempt.<br />
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We explored the bush, now let’s get back to the road. Here is the reason why I started this essay: I do not like editing. I have a friend who published many books, he says he can use his energy either to revisit the book he finished, or to start a new one. He chooses to start a new one. How tempting! Then I read his books, I can almost hear his voice while reading. He describes an idea, then looks at it from a different angle, he rewords the same thing over and over again. It is pure exploratory style I enjoy so much when talking with him for hours over a single espresso. But reading it is cumbersome. It is editing his books need.<br />
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I know editing is useful, but I still do not like it. When it comes to editing I am stuck. What are the exercises I have to practice? Where do I start? When do I finish and say it is good enough? Some writers say editing is the best part. For them writing is when they dig up the raw material from the ground, it is dirty and amorphous, it does not resemble their original vision. Editing is the act of taking the raw material, removing what is superfluous, and polishing it until it shines, until it reflects the creator’s light. How convincing! Now editing feels a different profession than writing (which it actually is in professional publishing), like diamond digging is different from diamond cutting.<br />
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There are many professions we can use as metaphors for editing. Take software development, it has two phases, writing the code (this is what you can see in movies) and refactoring it. Refactoring means the programmer is trying to keep the functionality intact while making the internals of the code more understandable for her fellow programmers. There are no professionals who specialized in code refactoring, some even question its usefulness, because it doesn’t add to the value of the code. The law of diminishing returns is applied ruthlessly at IT companies, you can hear an hour long heated discussion whether or not it is worth putting in a ten-minute extra effort. If we use programming as a metaphor for editing, it will be a second class citizen in the writing business.<br />
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Or we can use the metaphor of the diamond cutter. She examines the rough first and makes a plan. She has to balance a number of factors, the weight, the shape, and many others. She wants to keep as much as she can, while giving it an ideal shape. What an ideal shape changes by the current fashion, and by nature too. The octahedron crystal of the diamond is easier to process in a certain angle, this is how a sculptor thinks who is cautious not to carve the material in a direction it doesn’t like, because it may cause a rapture. Modern 3D imaging techniques can reveal flaws and inclusions in the rough which the diamond cutter also takes into account. And this is only the planning. Then she sits down and starts to “just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like the Koh-i-noor” she had in mind (to paraphrase Michelangelo, a sculptor of larger scales). In this case, chipping away can mean up to 50 percent of the weight of the rough.<br />
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I like the diamond cutter’s metaphor, because it tells me I cannot add anything to my raw material. My draft has its potential, it will shine if polished properly, it has its flaws that I have to remove or workaround or just compromise to leave. But adding to it is not possible. After all diamond is the hardest material in the world, writing is more flexible, but this metaphor teaches me to exercise self-discipline and follow some rules,<br />
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<ul>
<li>Find what lies hidden in the rough, the shape that needs the least chipping away. Yes, using those restrictive essay and paragraph types taught at college.</li>
<li>Find the best parts that are to be highlighted. How can you highlight them without a pencil, using only an eraser?</li>
<li>Identify the flaws. How will you handle them? Cut them mercilessly? Or move them to a darker corner of the text?</li>
<li>Chip away at least 10 percent of the material, but not more than 30. Clench your teeth and remove that 10 percent even if your text is crying.</li>
<li>Do you really need to add a sentence? Perhaps it’s enough to rewrite one.</li>
</ul>
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This is the end of our walking tour, we have arrived to this lovely square where a marble tablet stands with the diamond cutters’ rules of editing. All I have to do now is go back to the beginning of this text and follow the rules.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-6551691976018776022016-09-28T17:50:00.000+02:002016-09-28T17:50:09.105+02:00The write side of the brain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Since I quit eating sweets, my brain needs another source of joy. So I learn. I enrolled to online courses, now I do two in parallel. I eat sweets occasionally, to be fair, but at most a few times a day. But it is learning that gives me the kick, I practice a small language every day, I finish my assignments for the essay writing course on time, I practice and practice. “No pain, no gain” says the workout mantra which emphasizes the less important part of the experience. Learning and practicing can be sheer joy, let me share my examples.<br />
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<strong>Public speaking</strong>. I have been a member of <a href="https://www.toastmasters.org/">Toastmasters</a> for two years. It is a international organization that has as many members worldwide as half of Amsterdam. Its goal is to help its members become confident speaking in the public; the fear of public speaking is presumed to be worse than the fear of death. I didn’t find it dreadful when I joined the club, I was comfortable to speak my mind in front of people, but they had difficulty to follow my thoughts that jumped from topic to topic. It was a gradual progress, I hardly noticed it, but I am more confident now. The club has a strict schedule, every evening is structured the same way, we clap a lot. First it felt as alien as stumbling upon a gathering of the Alcoholics Anonymous. Then I got used to it, even realized how much this warm atmosphere helped me: I could experiment with seemingly stupid ideas, I could make mistakes, and all I got was a round of applause and a nice piece of feedback what I could do differently next time.<br />
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<strong>Drawing</strong>. I am not a Pablo Picasso (in his early years), but I am above the stickman-only level. It is not my hobby, but I had periods in my life when I carried sketchbook with me and my then favorite pen; I sat on a bench and made a quick sketch of a fallen oakleaf or an old lady in a purple coat feeding her snowwhite poodle. Well, showing these drawings to my friends would have been embarrassing. Then I heard of an application, <a href="https://www.fiftythree.com/">Paper by 53</a>. I thought drawing applications are for illustrators, for those who can draw, like a racket is for those who can play tennis or at least intend to learn it and take it seriously. After ten minutes spent with Paper, I had to admit this was something different. I don’t know if you ever had this feeling of immersing in drawing for an hour, then you come back to this sobering world, look at what you have done, and say, meh. It is not fair that so much effort adds up to so little. When I looked at my sketches with Paper, I felt the opposite, they looked better than what I had been prepared to see.<br />
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<strong>Drawing again</strong>. When I first encountered the book <a href="http://drawright.com/">Drawing on the right side of the brain</a>, I was skeptical. I didn’t expect more than what similar books on the same shelf had to offer: deep knowledge on how to make my aura colorful or how to have a happy life in 3-4-5 easy steps with just five minutes every morning before my breakfast cereal. I tried the first exercise in the book. Then I looked at my drawing and it made my jaw drop. Impossible, I couldn’t draw this well. And this jaw-dropping moment repeated more times while doing the exercises. I haven’t become a Pablo Picasso (in any of his years), but I enjoy drawing now and I am usually satisfied with the result.<br />
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Where is a toastmasters club for writing? What is the “write side of the brain” method? I have been looking for it, and I still don’t know. I know there are tons of books on how to write (I have a shelf full of them). There are courses on all sorts of writing from academic to creative to script writing. Writers’ groups, <a href="http://nanowrimo.org/">National Novel Writing Month</a>, and tons of tons of advice, “Just keep writing” being the number one of them. Oh boy. I want to have that jaw-dropping experience when I jump and yell, Impossible, I can’t write this well. I want others to have this experience too. Are you in? If so, let me know.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-76728151519308522382016-09-21T21:08:00.001+02:002016-09-21T21:08:34.449+02:00A taste of majority<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKMk2oMSdlrXBNXrPjr7401EHICQImGezDjO0-vIKp7yoTAiWC7Ba4oKgQfxRNtmliDj3eYKzGvGElqdelMqnluRBJgQKJ2WwB6j7dZJyHfv874n2UvMA_axuqnBdQQjZ8ufkFBk10/s1600/lambs.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKMk2oMSdlrXBNXrPjr7401EHICQImGezDjO0-vIKp7yoTAiWC7Ba4oKgQfxRNtmliDj3eYKzGvGElqdelMqnluRBJgQKJ2WwB6j7dZJyHfv874n2UvMA_axuqnBdQQjZ8ufkFBk10/s640/lambs.JPG" title="source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poddy-lambs-at-a-sheep-station.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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The master does not hit his slave anymore, the manager lives in harmony with his people. Our modern age reinvented the pyramid, organizational consultants never stop preaching the difference between management and leadership. The chain of command belongs to the past, like the steam locomotive and printed books. <br />
<a name='more'></a>Companies are led in a gentle way which is a combination of consensus building and the leader’s visionary skill to coach or cajole her people into the right direction. She switches to telling mode on rare occasions when there is really no other way. How it happens in the daily life of a company? The middle managers have a meeting around an issue which they have been discussing for a while now. The leader of the group is waiting for a solution to emerge, she is wise and patient, but the clock of the market is ticking, the Patek Philip on the investor’s wrist is ticking, it is almost audible. It is time to make a decision. Twenty minutes to the end of the meeting, ten minutes, still no unanimous agreement. The leader of the group is smiling, then she gives a brief summary with a conclusion. She just made a decision, based on what she senses as the opinion of the majority and what she thinks to be right. Don’t worry, they will iterate the issue and the decision made for a couple of weeks, but they have an agreement everybody can relate to.<br />
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This sounds the ideal way of resolving an issue, the endless meetings and discussions before the decision are viewed only preparatory work, the same amount of time and energy poured into it after the decision are viewed only as a refinement. The decision-making mechanism, this obscure mix of vote by majority and decision by the authority disguised as and with elements of consensus building, looks effective. But majority thinking is bad for the group.<br />
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The hidden assumption is that it is more likely the majority knows better. The outliers, the extremes are evened out, and the moderate truth is in the middle. This assumption holds true in some cases, when a group of people have to estimate the mass of the Moon, the best estimate is the average of the group. However in many practical cases the majority of the group makes a wrong decision. The Salem witch trial or Pearl Harbor are prime examples of what is called groupthink in psychology. This is what happens when members of a group avoid conflict and strive to come to a consensus, resulting in an irrational decision. They can see this irrationality only in retrospect.<br />
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The majority does not always make irrational decisions, but by the logic of majority, the differences fade away, and what remains is something dull and mediocre. Groundbreaking inventions were not made by committees.<br />
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At the early stage of an idea most people don’t know yet what their opinion is. They need to gather information, they need to calibrate what important stakeholders think, not necessarily to agree with them, but to have a reference point. It takes time until most participants have an opinion and they are convergent enough. Like it takes time until water freezes, it doesn’t happen instantly, the water molecules may have different opinion whether or not to form ice, then there is a point in time when we would say it is frozen, even though there are still molecules that think otherwise and are still in a liquid state. The majority opinion forms faster if we leave the system intact. If we open the door of the freezer to check our bowl every five minutes, if we stir, the whole process will take longer. This is why there is an unspoken rule in communities that nurture majority thinking: do nothing until a consensus is built. Given how long it takes, the problem with majority thinking is not its dull results, but its stifling effect most of the time. Organic growth is a nice idea, a forest in the wild has its amazing beauty no painter can beat. But do we have decades for an organic decision to be made?<br />
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“Guys bashing majority thinking are a nuisance. Guys with a minority opinion are annoying. Why don’t they use their talent and energy on more useful things that support the group? Why do they want to hinder the progress? Why do they keep asking irrelevant questions and throwing stupid ideas at us? It would be a lot easier without them.” It is tempting to sweep the minority under the rugs. It is so tempting that it happened many times in history. Get rid of them and move on. The main problem with this is that it does not work, as soon as you get rid of the most uncomfortable opponent of what the majority thinks, someone reveals her objections. She has been one of the majority so far, but now she steps out. The example of the French Revolution shows if you make the minority disappear (by executing them, for instance), the massacre will never stop. There is always an uncomfortable minority.<br />
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Majority thinking is not really good for the group. It is like taking water and syrup and fix a beverage. Its majority is water, but plain water tastes so different. I mean it is tasteless.<br />
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<i>(to be continued)</i><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-11299030741487195202016-09-14T10:41:00.001+02:002016-09-14T10:41:43.203+02:00The dirty secret of being funny<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYPtyc60S2FGQT5twzJ35ReT2jP-klWSUcnEC1N9v-fPBF1zZzrT_PhWx7J9dR5-yT3SDKO8Sxwm-BO_HwMnfPVDbV9BLBf2GpMtW1REMviNmWwh1u0WyMDlYs6Kt87OiUd6L7Dcwf/s1600/whisper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYPtyc60S2FGQT5twzJ35ReT2jP-klWSUcnEC1N9v-fPBF1zZzrT_PhWx7J9dR5-yT3SDKO8Sxwm-BO_HwMnfPVDbV9BLBf2GpMtW1REMviNmWwh1u0WyMDlYs6Kt87OiUd6L7Dcwf/s640/whisper.jpg" title="source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/3929959851" width="640" /></a></div>
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We sit on the cozy couch, watch soccer players or politicians, and we nudge our partner, “hey, I could do this too”. There are some professions though that we are less confident about, we probably would not climb the stage, make fun of ourselves, and enjoy being laughed at. Being a comedian seems to be more challenging than being a soccer player or a politician. <br />
<a name='more'></a>There is a number of theories about how humor works. Most of them have valid points, but they are interesting for serious academics only who study jokes without a smile and who can list an amazing amount of bad jokes in research papers on humor. If you really want to climb the stage and have a humorous performance, you will need a more easily applicable theory. My thoughts I am presenting here are based on the most widely accepted theory which says laughter is a mechanism by which psychological tension is released. My theory goes a step further and says revealing a secret causes relief in the audience.<br /><br />Witnessing how a secret is revealed reduces stress. The dirty secret shared is something most of us share as well. We all want to see our dearest wife or husband dead in some rare moments (yes, I am looking at you in the second row, I bet you are no exception). We all have sexual fantasies that are outside the current cultural norms. And we are afraid facing those uncomfortable thoughts and emotions. When a comedian shares his or her secret, we can see the source of our deepest fear in daylight. It is less scary now, our fear gets reduced. Having a secret is not only scary, it makes us lonely too. We do not know about anyone else who hides the very same secret, we tend to think we are the only ones. Then we hear someone shares it in public, and boom, we realize we are not alone. We belong to the same group of others in the audience who sit silently or laughing which shows they were hiding it too. And we belong to the same group as the comedian. On top of that, the comedian has a higher rank, she is up on the stage, she is a more important and impactful person, she even gets paid for exposing herself. If she is hiding the secret, it is suddenly more acceptable for an Average Joe to have it too. This is why we love to sneak in the private lives of celebrities and learn they are the same fallible humans as we are.<br /><br />When we sit in the audience and witness a secret revealed, it is even greater relief than in the privacy of our living room. It does not find us off-guard, we are prepared. The same joke we may find disgusting in another setting suddenly becomes hilarious, because we lowered our emotional shields. We came here to hear uncomfortable topics, we probably even paid for it. We are safe in the crowd, it is someone else who takes the risk. This is a watered down version of public execution that people loved to attend even a century ago. Not only is the risk taken by someone else, it is a greater risk from her perspective. The more people witness a behavior that does not fit the group norm, the more likely it is that the person is singled out by the group. The bigger the group, the more unpredictable its behavior. Frantic selling and buying of stocks that can lead to crashes are examples of the herd behavior even in modern times. But a successful punchline directs the audience to a different way. We just heard the secret and have not punished the person who shared it. Now we are together, we showed our fellows we accepted that questionable behavior, we actually laughed at it. We are privy; if you betray me, I will betray you.<br /><br />The relief we experience is not completely passive, seeing an example of coping with a dirty secret improves our coping capabilities. The lesson we learn here is social rules around this taboo are not so strict. This guy on the stage just told a joke about masturbation and he is still alive, no thunderbolt came from the sky to teach him proper conduct, no stones were thrown at him by righteous members of the audience. The rules can be bent without those consequences we feared of. We learn it is possible to survive having this secret and sharing it with others. Our fantasy plays the most dreadful movie what would happen if we did the same. The guy not only survived it, he seems to be in control. It is not a forced public confession, it is not his conscience breaking loose and he cannot resist it. He knows what he is doing. Even more, he can make fun of the monster which is the highest form of being in control.<br /><br />There are other ways of being funny, at least there are other theories. But sharing a weakness, a dirty secret with the audience works. It will reduce their stress, give them a relief, and encourage them to try it at home. Just don’t take yourself too seriously.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-20403755167419917252016-09-07T09:38:00.002+02:002016-09-07T09:38:44.864+02:00The tiger and the manager<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEr4jrxAZXOT_qbjL_XrGQV59074roReB9pr1-NMEyfqrFdYN4J5pEqL4LB0ctjtJZ-iGbVHwVe7teURV7cUb3K3X0jd_GWa1Waud1FKRUj8ChAsXktfU0YYDimLNCfbdvx4-1BMLS/s1600/tigers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEr4jrxAZXOT_qbjL_XrGQV59074roReB9pr1-NMEyfqrFdYN4J5pEqL4LB0ctjtJZ-iGbVHwVe7teURV7cUb3K3X0jd_GWa1Waud1FKRUj8ChAsXktfU0YYDimLNCfbdvx4-1BMLS/s640/tigers.jpg" title="source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Temple" width="640" /></a></div>
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A few companies ago I had a wise old manager, the big belly of Buddha, the white beard of Obi van Kenobi, and the management skills of Steve Jobs... no, Jeff Bezos, no, he was an experienced guy anyway. He invited me for a beer one afternoon (I'm not sure if Kenobi would do that). I asked him what his top priority was (this is a question managers eat and drink). "I have a bunch of great people," he answered, "I'm working on how to set them up for success." What a noble soul, I thought, he's obsessed by how to make others successful. We tasted our craft beer, it was bitter, so it must've been excellent; I shivered. He continued, "People are like tigers, they have a lot of power without direction. How can you use that power?"<br /><a name='more'></a><br />I didn't grok it first. The tiger has the power, he can use it, he eventually has to use or he'll starve and die. What needs to be added to it? I was a beginner at that time. My very own Obi van Buddha smiled. "Untamed tigers attack any animal, including humans. It's a real problem in rural India, for example." Yes, but it's our problem, not the tiger's. They are fine attacking a gazelle or a girl. "This is very analogies break down" my manager said. "There is an old Japanese saying. What matters is not the power you have, but the power you control. Untamed tigers waste their energy. Unmanaged people pursue their dreams unrelated to the goal of the company."<br /><br />It was an important lesson and it didn't cost me a dime, my boss paid for the beers. I spent the following years taming and training tigers. My thoughts circled around these questions, How to set up my people for success? How to give direction to them? How to use their power? How to teach my tigers to hunt? They came as young, undomesticated, wild animals; I spent months with them training every day. I pruned some of their useless habits, like jumping around in the cage. We practiced how to sit in silence waiting for the right moment to jump on the prey. We practiced the jump itself. By the end of the training my sweet tigers could catch a dove with ease.<br /><br />Catch a dove. A four year old child can do that without any training. This is organizational physics: the more you direct a moving object, the less energy it will have. It loses some of its energy by every bounce at an obstacle you put into its way to direct it. The question that had showed me a way led me astray. How to set up people for success? It's a wrong question to ask. My people are adults, I don't have to set them up for anything. Treating them as children and helping them grow big is a mistaken mindset. Here's the thing I learned about tigers. You can't encage a tiger and teach it to hunt.<br /><br />I changed the way I deal with my people and my tigers. I follow them to the jungle. I teach them what I know about hunting and they teach me a few tricks too. It's scary. It's more dangerous in the jungle than in a cage. And it's more dangerous to walk with an untamed tiger than with a tamed one. But we are friends, I trust him. I watch how gracefully he catches a gazelle. He uses his power. And he uses a few tricks he learned from me.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-55811637617717735882016-09-04T10:06:00.002+02:002016-09-04T10:06:50.352+02:00Across the Authentic Ocean -- why you don't want to be true to yourself<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCCTMCZRr7uA8_9V9-ZlqNiNiOnjvlUxTVV66ekiScVwsfqPvRhWjvjoThMi4yllOpzri_LgnomB7_c1PVM6RslP11zU9HOjiMVEOfhQYQpPkMTdqXBXV4Ril63nSZbgotfzt6_d5F/s1600/mask-and-man.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCCTMCZRr7uA8_9V9-ZlqNiNiOnjvlUxTVV66ekiScVwsfqPvRhWjvjoThMi4yllOpzri_LgnomB7_c1PVM6RslP11zU9HOjiMVEOfhQYQpPkMTdqXBXV4Ril63nSZbgotfzt6_d5F/s400/mask-and-man.jpg" title="source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asaro_Mud_Man_Kabiufa_PNG.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I wish I lived in a softer world where I could jump around without bumping into the sharp edges of the cupboard or the windowsill. A world where I can be myself, express myself freely without a fear of harsh consequences, without people punishing me solely for being who I am. The world as we see it is far from this ideal. No coincidence we fall so easily for promises of such a wonderland. The hardest lesson we learned as children was the difference between the land of fairy tales and the land of the angry neighbor. It's not much easier as adults either, we're just more used to it, but we are willing to pay a fortune to get a taste of that other world. This is the business model of movies, drugs, and religions: they take us to Utopia.<br />
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I'm sitting at a boring lecture. I imagine a more courageous version of myself who stands up in the middle of an endless, meandering sentence, and proudly walks out of the room. Listening to the big boss who is about to set a new record of business clichés per minute? My real self would count aloud each utterance of "at the end of the day". And honestly, I wouldn't waste my time on taking that girl to fancy restaurant and schmoozing with her for hours. Straight to my place, maybe gulp a drink, and have sex. This is my real self speaking, I'm usually careful enough not to let it out without parental control.<br />
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But I stay seated during the lecture, I keep my mouth shut while the boss rants, and I smile, oh boy, I really smile when the girl tells about how she picked the right shade of pink for her nail. If my real self was speaking before, who tells me to stay and keep my mouth shut? It must be another self in me. A self that wants to learn the subject of the lecture or at least get a good grade. A self that wants to keep its job without the risk of being fired. A self that wants to be laid tonight -- this seems to be a pretty physical self. I have a legion of selves, each has its own agenda, and pulls me into a different direction.<br />
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I can appoint one of the selves as the real one and say I'll let this self rule my world, I'll follow it wherever it takes me. I can express myself fully, try and live in Utopia. I can leave the lecture, have a conflict with my boss, and show my disinterest in the woman's petty stories about her nails. It feels a relief. For a while. Then bang! bang! I'm hit by the consequences. Hey, baby, don't leave me in the middle of the dinner, I just wanted to have an open and frank relationship with you. Hey, boss, why so serious? I just wanted to have some fun together. Letting way to your emotions and thoughts without a leash is called impulsive behavior. If taken to the extreme, it can even ruin your life.<br />
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There are people who live this way. They are our children. They are born with strong desires and needs, they want the food and want it right now or they throw themselves on the floor and have a tantrum. Do you tell them it's nice, it's their real self at work? No, you teach them how to behave, how to delay gratification, how to control their impulses. Sometimes you are wrong, you are overcautious and want to avoid a consequence that wouldn't be so bad after all. Sometimes it's good to let the impulses run without a leash.<br />
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Your job as an adult is to know all the forces within you and navigate your ship like a captain navigates a ship in the winds of the sea. You don't want to stick to a single wind direction, because it would land you on a coral reef quickly. You let one self speak and the others listen, then you turn to another self. You want to be true to your selves, all of them. Aye aye, captain!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-24106128568403919532016-08-31T18:32:00.000+02:002016-08-30T18:34:37.552+02:00Digging deeper in garbageBurger is not the first on the menu, because it starts with a B. Crafting a menu has its science based on what thousands of customers selected previously. Wherever you see items on a shelf, tooth paste and pop music magazines, you can be sure a team has already analyzed what people had selected. Then you bite into that burger and find the onion spongy, you leave it on the plate. You try a new brand of tooth paste, but its too strong, so you end up not using, off to the garbage bin it goes after a month of hesitation. Is there a big team analyzing what's left on the plate and what half-full packages land in the garbage? Yuck.<br />
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Things have a lifecycle just like a relationship. They arrive on the shelf fresh and new and sexy, they feel at least a bit different than anything you ever touched and tasted. You look at it from the corner of your eye, it's a teasing glimpse, you are not committed yet. You take it from the shelf, ready to put it back in case it's too pricey, not organic enough, too this or not enough that. Hm, shall we try it? Maybe. It finds a cozy place on top of your cart between a sliced bread and a pair of good old grey socks. You drag your prey home, take a first bite. It tastes a bit different than back then in the shop, it's slightly salty, not suave enough. Maybe try again later. You get used to after a while, it becomes a part of your life, like sliced bread or the annoying bark of the dog in the neighborhood. Time passes and on a sad Saturday afternoon you realize the story is over. If you had more sensitive ears, you could hear the thing squeak as your hand moves it to the garbage bin. Plupf. It finds a pathetic spot between a rotten slice of bread and a sock with a hole.<br />
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Some relationships last decades until death do the parties part. Other relationships finish as a one night stand or just a wistful glimpse on the bus. It's the same with things. We watch movies about how a boy and a girl meet each other, fall in love, marry, and live happily ever after. These stories energize us, we hold our partners hand stronger on the street, we quickly send a text message "I love you". Movies about divorce, death, and loss are far less popular. They are about a period after the peak in the lifecycle of a relationship. Again, it's the same with things. Shopping stats, software applications that deal with recommendation are sexy. Researching what people left on their plates or threw out of their lives? "I'm an expert on decay" -- not the perfect pick-up line.<br />
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Your first conscious thought after your gut reaction is you can't learn anything new from old stuff. It doesn't matter how we learn what items most customers prefer, whether we learn it by what they select or by what they get rid of. If people prefer Dent-o-dream to Mouth Magic, it doesn't matter if we learn it by seeing in the stats more purchases of Dent-o-dream, or we find more half-full tubes of Mouth Magic in household garbage. But this thinking is wrong. Purchasing more Dent-o-dream means it looks more appealing, it has an elegant thin tube and a playful picture of a unicorn on it, it has better placed ads, it's advertised with an actress who has bigger tits than the competitor. Purchasing more Dent-o-dream does not necessarily mean people actually like it more. An expedition to the garbage can show us what people actually think after the honey-moon period is over. If Mouth Magic had the best ads ever with the biggest tits ever, but it tastes horseradish mixed with horse dung, annoyed housewives and bachelors and students would toss it to the trash can without hesitation. Garbage tells us the real story.<br />
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Exploring garbage is interesting not only for market researchers. It has a symbolic meaning too. The Western way of thinking tends to understand the world in big terms. What is your biggest achievement? What is your wildest dream? What was your most epic failure? These are the questions asked at a job interview, these are the questions you ask when you at a party when introduced to your partner's colleague, these are the questions you ask yourself. This is Dent-o-dream thinking, it considers what looks sexy. Even the biggest failure is related to something big you wanted to accomplish and failed. For a change, you could have a look at the other end of the lifecycle of things that's closer to decay. You could approach the garbage in your life with curiosity. Explore what you do when you're too tired to be a top performer. Explore how you waste your time. Explore what you've left on your plate. The bigger part of life is not golden nuggets in the sunshine, the bigger part is leftover. It's time to make friends with it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-67803376756814570272016-08-24T10:50:00.001+02:002016-08-24T10:50:40.359+02:00The slow success of Holacracy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm so excited about this new idea, I can't wait to give it a try -- after a few friends have tried it and found it okay. This is the usual way of thinking in business. Managers are eager to find solutions to their problems, they'd call a tarot consultant to help in a difficult decision if they are desperate enough, <br />
<a name='more'></a>well, they won't tell you unless you are close friends, they'll show you the spreadsheet full of numbers to support the decision they made based on drawing the four of spades. Managers are cautious at the same time, they don't take risks, they have a bigger ship to navigate, they can't afford a minor mistake to sink it. Holacracy is one of those shiny stars on the sky of management that some of us want to try as a leading star, but it's sooo scary.<br />
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The approach may be new, but this scary feeling is sooo old. When the whole agile movement started, and people met Extreme Programming, it was a similarly thrilling experience. XP practices sounded shocking and counter-intuitive. The short iterations of scrum sounded plain impossible. Most agile concepts sounded like conceived by a Philip K Dick kind of hallucinatory science-fiction writer, you couldn't decide if you like the idea or despise it, but you definitely felt it running down your spine.<br />
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Then the brave ones tried the least worrisome parts, like writing unit tests. It could be done without your boss seeing it. The brave ones sat together and tried the most stunning ideas, like pair-programming. What? Two programmers working on the same piece of code at the same time? What a waste? I can still remember the first reactions, the endless discussions when I did my best to convince managers. And I remember the first pair-programming session on a Saturday morning, there was no one else in the office but us. Four eye balls stared at the same monitor and we started our secret activity: pair-programming.<br />
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Holacracy has some radical components too. It's scariest part is that it goes the opposite direction compared to many other management practices. It's easy to introduce a new method when it says, "exercise more control over X". It makes people busy, it gives them something to do, it makes them feel safe, because they'll have one more knob to turn, they'll have more control over the whole complex system. Holacracy does the opposite, it gives you a framework where you can let go of control.<br />
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I'm back in the old days sitting with a manager, painting them a flowery future I can so clearly see. The future is not agile in this case but holacratic, but their reaction is the same. The curious look becomes a confused gaze. I'm drumming on the table. I don't understand why they don't get the point, it's so simple and fabulous. And in certain aspects radical, counter-intuitive, just like writing unit tests or, oh horrors, pair-programming. You need to be patient, this is the mantra I repeat to myself. It takes a decade for a concept or approach to have enough mindshare, mental osmosis is a slow process.<br />
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I can't even tell if the flowery future will be Holacracy or something else. The agile movement started with the weird programming practices of XP and the strange ceremonies of scrum. Then joined a few friends, like kanban and the lean movement. It was impossible to foresee how these different methodologies would be combined into one. I bet Holacracy will be an important component of how organizations will be run in the future, but I have no idea about the other components. Until then I am trying to be patient and do my job telling about and exercising the strange practices of Holacracy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-86579676571820608162016-08-17T22:05:00.000+02:002016-08-23T16:56:07.409+02:00Storytelling Inc.<br />
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When I read <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0812993012" target="_blank">Ed’s story</a>, I felt inspired – then envious. My mother had many friends, she was the head of an internationally acknowledged institute, and she didn’t consider herself successful. I’m not even the head of anything big and important. I wish I had more talent or persistence, I wish I had been dealt better cards by fate. How is Ed different from the rest of us?<br />
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Walt Disney wore ties and a suit and he shared one of his many secrets every Saturday on the TV. Ed was his avid follower, he sat in front of the TV every Saturday waiting for his weekly fix of magic. He drew hundreds of pictures, he asked his parents to buy the best book to teach him how to draw. He wanted to become a part of the magic world he witnessed every Saturday, he wanted to become an animator at the Walt Disney Studio.<br />
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He was born to a hard-working, hard-studying family, he knew how to pursue an academic career and become a scientist. But the world of animation was an uncharted territory yet, nobody knew how to become an animator at the Studio, there were no clear rules. Walt Disney didn’t stop, he kept innovating, he applied the technological advances of his time, becoming an animator was a moving target. Young Ed made a decision and went to the University to study physics and another emerging field, computer science. It looks like a diversion from his original plan, but it turned out to be the way that helped him find his true calling. This was the era when computer graphics was born, he and his classmates were the ones who made the groundwork for it. Computer graphics was the field that combined science and art, it spoke to both sides of his brain. You may not know his name, but you’ve probably heard of his company. A decade later Ed Catmull became more than an animator, he founded Pixar, the first studio to create computer animated movies.<br />
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Ed Catmull had a dream when he was a child, a dream so unlikely to come true that many found it impossible. But he followed his inner guidance or followed a thread invisible to others and it lead him through all those meanderings to an exceptional accomplishment. Steve Jobs, another founder of Pixar had a similar career, he seemed to have followed an inner voice too. A voice that whispered him where to turn left and where to turn right until he finally implemented one of the wildest visions of the twentieth century. But many of us had such wild dreams when we were kids, some wanted to be the first human to step on Mars, some wanted to find the cure for cancer. And we, the rest, the legion of pipedreamers ended up in a 9 to 5 job where the only reminder of our childhood dream is a poster of Mars on the wall of the office cubicle.<br />
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We want to learn what those semi-gods of our modern era do. We read books about their seven habits, ten commandments, and twenty-two magic incantations. Our tribal, cargo-cult thinking says if we follow their footsteps and imitate their behavior, then we’ll become semi-gods like them. Ed Catmull gets up at 6:30; Steve Jobs got up at 6:00? You’ll find a best-seller how the early bird gets the worm and more. (Don’t follow this valuable advice, I just made it up.) There is even a special caste of semi-gods, those management and self-help gurus who became successful by writing books and giving seminars on how others became successful.<br />
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One book says focus is the key, the other emphasizes persistence. Many books talk about the power of setting goals and keeping to them no matter what. When these accomplished people share their secret, they tell similar stories. We, the legion of eager learners, read them and nod in agreement. Yes, we’ll need to focus. Yes, we’ll set a goal and stick to it. But staying focused and being goal-oriented are not so rare, many of us have these traits. We still don’t have much more to show than that poster of the Mars.<br />
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It doesn’t matter how many times we watched The Matrix, we still assume the world works by the same principles as a lawn mower or a mechanical watch. If we take apart a complicated device, and assemble the exact replica of its parts, we expect it to work just like the original one. It’s been a great model to improve lawn mowers and mechanical watches. But individuals, organizations, and societies seem to work in a different way. We can decompose Steve Jobs’ life and find some surprising elements. At the beginning he was not interested in computers, he just wanted some quick money to follow his real interest. The skill the Steve Jobs’s and Ed Catmulls share is something else. The skill they had from their childhood is to tell the story of their unlikely vision. To tell a fantastic story others want to live by and live in.<br />
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These visionary people worked a lot, no question about it. But it’s not enough. The power of Superman, the stamina of Sisyphos, the sharp focus of a manually polished Zeiss magnifying glass concentrated in a single person is not enough. Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull and the others were absolutely aware of this. They tell their stories to ignite your soul. They tell their stories to triage their people: if they can see the spark in your eyes, you will find yourself among the chosen ones. They tell their stories to share a vision, so the chosen few in the boat will row in the same direction. This small group of people will make the vision come true.<br />
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Painting an appealing future where you don’t have to sweat, you just push a bright silver button, and a gadget will bake bread, clean the house, water the lawn – this is the kind of story that traveling salesmen tell you. It works for those who are ready to believe. But to fulfill a vision, you need people with strong analytical and critical skills who will question the hell out of your firmest axiom. You have to tell them what has already come true of the dream. Storytelling has the power of shaping the future, and it has an even more amazing attribute. It can change the past. Time-machine is not invented yet, we don’t even know if it’s possible, but we know from movies how it would work: go back in time, make a minor change, and it will have a huge effect on the future. Storytelling is more powerful than that. It handles the past, the present, and the future as a single entity, and changes them together. Ed Catmull told his story that connects his childhood dream of animating films to his PhD in computer science at the University of Utah to his founding Pixar. It’s a stunning story. But what if take our time machine and make a minor change in his past? What if his family hadn’t had the money for University, what if he had been influenced by an uncle to study entomology? I’m sure we could read his amazing book, the Cricket Inc., where he recounts how his childhood dream of classifying insects came to fruition.<br />
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Does Ed Catmull lie? Does he forge his memories? Does he repaint his past to please the audience? Not at all. He’s just a master of playing his cards. A child’s brain has a built-in idea generator, it produces wild ideas all day: be one of the first settlers on Mars; find out how crickets can cure cancer; animate films at Disney. Ed sifts through his deck of thousands of his childhood memories and aspirations. He scans his deck of the thousands of options future holds for us. Then he picks a few cards from each deck, they form a straight flush. That is his inspiring personal story. It doesn’t matter for him if he’s dealt good cards or bad ones, he can pick the ones that form the best storyline. This is the skill we want to learn from Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs. To tell the story of your life that makes others inspired or envious.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-89238497802370820272016-08-17T21:39:00.001+02:002016-08-23T16:56:25.902+02:00The rich men on the other side of the fence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDXnD2JwOgu05cuwqod_zQlTqQIQgzD6MS1pBGv7YOnRQMQkIztyGjWOgOvvV38AKTmV4vFAIrb1AjktOf5KvfWWQiapKY0fHHDPSlK8Zkb1X_sgm13kT6kwgBCVZVX9B7kiiA6D3J/s1600/rich-and-poor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDXnD2JwOgu05cuwqod_zQlTqQIQgzD6MS1pBGv7YOnRQMQkIztyGjWOgOvvV38AKTmV4vFAIrb1AjktOf5KvfWWQiapKY0fHHDPSlK8Zkb1X_sgm13kT6kwgBCVZVX9B7kiiA6D3J/s640/rich-and-poor.jpg" title="source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rich_and_Poor_Serving_Inequality.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
We are a few hundred meters from the <em>Palais des Festival</em> in Cannes. This part of the beach is now closed to the public, big fat guards stand at the entrance and check if your name is on the list of the invitees. Your name is probably not on that list.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>A group of young and rich men play beach ball inside, they are having as much fun as money can buy, and it can buy a lot. Two boys stand at the sea and watch their game. When the ball leaves the field and rolls to the water, one boy picks it up quickly, dries it with a towel he holds in his hand, and throws it back. A sun-tanned richling catches the ball. He doesn't have to say thank you, the boys with the towel fade into the background, they are part of the elite service, just like the chilled bottles of <em>Veuve Clicquot</em> or the polar bear rugs on the ground.<br />
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It feels disgusting to look at this scene from the other side of the fence. Then I notice the details: it's a warm evening, the boys wear pants, but they are barefoot; the richlings wear sneakers, this is the beginning of a party after all. They should either play barefoot, or one of them should take off his shoes and walk into the sea to grab the ball. Uncomfortable. Of course not as uncomfortable as walking barefoot in the snow, like very poor people do in winter time, but uncomfortable at their level of living. We all have uncomfortable parts of our lives we'd be happy to get rid of. We all have chores. But someone have to do them.<br />
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We outsource many of our chores to machines. We don't pay for a cleaning lady, because we dump the dirty clothes into the washing machine, we turn on the vacuum cleaner. We don't pay for a secretary, because we can share our Google Calendar with our colleagues, we can send an email while commuting to work in the morning. We don't pay for a travel agent, because we can book our flight and accommodation online. We use dozens of machines and applications, and we don't have to worry or to feel embarrassed, machines and applications have no sense of being humiliated.<br />
A big part of what these applications do is automated, but it still takes an army of people in the background to do the manual work. There are clerks in the shop that sells home appliances, there are washing machine repair men. There are low-paid workers at call-centers around the world to solve your problems with online booking. Artificial intelligence still needs human hands, the services are operated by real, living people. We just can't see them, they are in the background, they are invisible like the ball-catchers on the beach. We don't have to feel bad about the voice at the other end of the line when we cancel a hotel room the day before.<br />
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Finally, there are chores we can outsource only to people with whom we need to have a face-to-face connection. Exclusive doctors and lawyers are subordinates of the rich, they are only at the higher paid end of the range. We all tend to outsource our chores, and we prefer machines to humans, we prefer invisible humans to visible ones. Our financial and power status determines what kind of "slave work" we find acceptable (OK, our taste and values play a role too). But don't worry, people who work for us will know our quirks, they'll share stories about our awkward side. There is always someone at the other side of the fence who judges our deeds and finds it disgusting.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-82998733913862733842016-08-10T22:22:00.001+02:002016-08-24T10:29:03.972+02:00The mother tongue of The Little Prince: Toki Pona<br />
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The turmoil at Babel resulted in hundreds of languages. Some speak English, some speak Gaelic (they don't have their own country); there are people who speak German with their partner and Dutch at work. The landscape of languages is complicated. To complicate matters more, people invented artificial languages from Esperanto to Klingon. You may think it's a pastime of the modern ages, but you'd be wrong. The first attempt at creating a better language dates back a few centuries. Why would people do that? Why don't they just have a beer instead of putting in tiresome hours of tweaking with irregularities of grammar? <br />
<a name='more'></a>Well, language creators had a variety of intentions. J. R. R. Tolkien was a linguist by profession, he wanted to dig deeper in his research and understand the inner mechanisms of languages by re-creating them. Zamenhof called himself Doktoro Esperanto, the Hoping doctor, because he assumed he created a language simple enough to learn so it can become an international auxiliary language. If the language of global communication was Esperanto, not English, it would be easier for non-native speakers to learn (and it wouldn't give an unfair advantage to some nations). Lojban and its ilk were created to get rid of the quirks and limitations of natural languages. Lojban means "logical language", its goal is to sharpen our imperfect words and expressions so we can communicate clearly without misunderstanding each other.<br />
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All those wonderful initiatives -- and they didn't make it. We don't have movies and TV shows in Esperanto, we watch them in English. We still make mistakes in our communication which can lead to a laughter or a fight between family members or even people of a nation. There is this recurring idea of changing our behavior by changing our language. At a smaller scale, some think we can change the gender bias in our thinking if we modify certain parts of our language. At a larger scale, we would be more agreeable and cooperative if we spoke a more logical language that makes our hidden agenda explicit. Our language influences how we think and thus how we act. We just don't know to what extent. Are the best chefs French because of their language? Were there more Italian composers because Italian is so melodic? How would our lives change if we had a different language?<br />
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Toki pona is an artificial language you have probably never heard of. It was created by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona#Authorship">Sonja Lang, a Canadian translator</a> with a surprising goal: to make our lives good. Toki pona means good language. If language influences the way we experience the world around us, why not make it a happy experience? According to Sonja, our life is already so complicated and complex, it's time to return to a simpler, happier way of living, to forget about the pains of the past and false hopes of the future (or worries about it if that is your thing). I'm eating bread: "mi moku e pan". I ate bread: "mi moku e pan". I'll eat bread; "mi moku e pan". Toki pona is not obsessed about time and grammatical tenses.<br />
The second edition of the Oxford English dictionary had more than 170.000 words. Shakespeare had a rich vocabulary, he used over 30.000 words; an average native speaker knows more than half of them. You can pass a standard language exam in the EU if you know 1500 words. Toki pona has 123. It's not a typo, it's slightly over a hundred words. It seems impossible at first. How could you express yourself with such a minuscule vocabulary? If you enter that smallish grocery shop around the corner, it has more than a hundred different articles from monster-shaped strawberry candy bars to dry beef-flavored dog food. And you haven't even said, "Good morning, it looks like raining, but I hope those ugly grey clouds will be blown away." A mere hundred words? It must be a primitive language, oonga-boonga style, me Tarzan, you Jane. Well, this language is not suitable to describe a sophisticated medical process, nor can it be used for elaborate legal texts, but it can cover a surprisingly wide range of human experience. <a href="http://failbluedot.com/toki_pona/jan_lawa_lili/chap01">The Little prince was actually translated to Toki pona</a>.<br />
You can't be very precise with such a tiny vocabulary, of course. The expression "little prince" translates the same way as Napoleon (small leader), and you can't distinguish between a snake and a lizard. The question is how you handle these limitations. You can get frustrated if you ask for a knife and get a fork instead (both being tools for eating). Or you can choose to activate that half-dormant side of your brain inhabited by poetry, art, fun, and creativity. Then you will laugh at the misunderstandings, you may even smile amused when you realize what the other meant by "land of no water" (desert).<br />
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Here is my challenge. I want to learn Toki pona in a few days. It's 123 words and some minimal grammar. Yes, it's not only piling words on words, but you can imagine how minimal that grammar must be if its creator kept the vocabulary small. They say you can learn the whole language in 20 hours or less. I don't want to spend my whole day cramming, so I expect it to take 3-4 days. I'll also need a way to tell if I reached my goal. I'll take The Little prince as my measure. If I can read and understand most of it, I'd be satisfied. I read it many times quite some time ago, I remember it vaguely, so it's not completely fair to use it as my measure, but Harry Potter or Stephen King are not translated yet.<br />
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Sonja's goal with creating Toki pona was to help us get back to the Way, to the Dao. My goal with this challenge is not to see if I'm capable of learning a new language or exercise my brain. I wonder if I bend my language to a yoga position of simplicity, will my mind follow? Will I become as simple as the birds in the sky? Will I become as innocent and sensitive as the Little prince? I'll tell you in a week or so. "ni li nasin" -- let this be the way.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-16839547340187583922016-08-03T20:08:00.002+02:002016-08-23T16:56:55.406+02:00It's never too late to have a happy childhood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I love this quote. I don't exactly know what it means, it actually means more things at the same time and this is the reason I love it. It has a meaning related to nurturing your inner child. It doesn't matter how old you are, you can be a child at eighty. You can stop in a park at lunch time and gaze at the doves fighting for popcorn or at a nondescript bush covered by dirt. You can listen to the music of car brakes and horns in a traffic jam.<br />
<a name='more'></a>You can wonder and savor all the magic of the world and be late for a late meeting. You can be a child beyond being the son or daughter of your parents.<br />
And this quote has another, more magical meaning. Even you had the gloomiest childhood, you can kinda go back in time and sprinkle pixie dust on it. Elon Musk hasn't set out to create time machines in mass production, I know. But there is a way to actually do the magic, you won't need a thousand dollar gadget for that, you won't need to spend years in the Himalaya at the knees of an enlightened guru. All you need is the everyday pixie dust you already have: your imagination and your ability to tell stories.<br />
I don't know if someone actually conducted this experiment, but you use your imagination, it's a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment">thought experiment</a>. Suppose you have a vivid memory of your grandma giving you a cute plush bunny for your birthday when you were five. You remember the touch of the bunny, its long pink ears, your granny's smiling face. Now you start telling a different story of a bunny with funny short green ears you received from your dad for your fifth birthday. You keep repeating this story, you tell it to your friends. When you hear someone mention a bunny, you tell them, "hey, that reminds me of the bunny that ..." When your partner shows you a lovely set of green dishes in the shopping window, you can recall how this green recalls the color of that bunny. You get the point.<br />
A few months pass and you are back to the research lab. They ask you about those childhood moments of yours when you received the bunny. You may have an uneasy feeling it's not a real memory, but you can't help remembering your father giving you a bunny with green ears. Yes, you can even remember his smiling face, the hug he gave you. If this is a long-running experiment and they call you back after a couple of years, you'll have a changed memory and no real doubts about it.<br />
Now do the same with the whole gloomy childhood. Take a really depressing scene, sprinkle it with pixie dust, give it a twist, and keep telling the twisted version. Then take the next scene. You get the point.<br />
We tend to think of the past and of our memories as static and objective truths of life. They are not. They are subject to change. So it's never too late to have a happy childhood.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-31598612268461066482016-07-29T19:46:00.000+02:002016-08-23T16:58:17.937+02:00Be your own headhunter or how talent is found<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfWNFywo_Qf9NiO3dsutz_el2WxeBwbMaJVOzvuBpdfB8sv-M5AYBA3B4QI3aP7W0OrDpVVXXOmW11jtpZycHkRF9J7jlVVqdi2rfCNstKyoNHIsdkiacAtuOhNZUv-wV-JY0_mrKk/s1600/treasure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfWNFywo_Qf9NiO3dsutz_el2WxeBwbMaJVOzvuBpdfB8sv-M5AYBA3B4QI3aP7W0OrDpVVXXOmW11jtpZycHkRF9J7jlVVqdi2rfCNstKyoNHIsdkiacAtuOhNZUv-wV-JY0_mrKk/s640/treasure.jpg" title="source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Trine_2_-_Deadly_Dustland_Treasure.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
When I finished high school, I had no idea what the next step would be. Shall I study math? It was an obvious choice, I had won some competitions. Or shall I become a rabbi? <br />
<a name='more'></a>It was a somewhat provocative reaction to the pressure from my parents to seek higher education, but I was drawn to its spirituality too, not to mention I was looking for my roots. I had four or five serious ideas if I don't count the half-baked ones, like follow the traces of the main character of my favorite novel, The Tin Drum, and learn to become a monumental mason. I was really clueless, finding the right job or education was not easier than finding the right girl to date, but that's another story.<br />
It was a rainy day when ended up in the career counselor's office. I was given a bunch of tests to fill out to measure the different aspects of my personality, from intelligence to introversion. They added some gadgets to the mix to learn about my eye-hand coordination, monotony tolerance, and other arcane properties of my psyche. I spent a few hours excavating hidden corners of my mental and emotional landscape, then I had a long break while the counselor processed the test results. I had high expectations when I finally entered his office, now I would hear the voice of authority, I would have THE answer.<br />
<br />
The counselor wore a white robe that made him look more professional, his desk covered with my test results. After a little warm-up chat he started to convey the message, I was all ears. "You definitely have good analytical skills, you could pursue some sort of scientific career." I nodded. "At the same time, you seem to have a desire to express yourself in an artistic way." I nodded again a bit impatiently. No stunning news so far, I knew the bits, I just couldn't assemble the pieces. "You are also deeply interested in the philosophical aspects of things. My suggestions is, and this is only a suggestion, the decision is yours, of course..." I was sitting on the edge of the seat. "that you go to some university."<br />
<br />
That was it. Test results processed, final wisdom emitted. I tried to ask clarifying questions. He was a pro, he had published books on the matter, he could pretend to respond without giving an answer. In retrospect it was like Dorothy meeting the wizard of Oz. I expected him to show me the way home and he turned out to be only an ignorant Mini Mouse.<br />
<br />
It's easy and fun to bash him now, but it was not completely his fault. It's so easy to ask a short question. "What shall I do with my life?" "How shall I draw a five point star with a compass?" They sound so similar, they request for information on how to do something. I'd expect a simple answer in both cases, like do this first, then do that. The second question actually sounds more sophisticated, it involves special concepts. But this was only my naive teenager attitude. Ruler-and-compass construction may be challenging for some, but it's a realm of human knowledge with straightforward answers. Do this, then do that. Questions about the meaning of life and how Dorothy could get home are more complex. What both my counsellor, and the Wizard of Oz failed to do was manage expectations. They didn't tell upfront about their limitations.<br />
<br />
As a young man, I had a simple model of how career works, and I bet many people share this model. It can be summarized in a few sentences. If you are one of the few who was born with a talent it becomes obvious at a young age. You have nothing to do but use this talent, and you'll make it to the top of the world. If you were not born with such a talent, you are out of luck. You may have a little spark, the shadow of a talent, something that you can use to make a decent living. But let's face it, you belong to the masses, you are a loser after all.<br />
<br />
This is a powerful mantra, it has made the lives of millions miserable. Let me repeat it, before it gets quoted as deep wisdom, this mantra is utterly wrong, it's harmful bullshit. But this was the music that was playing in my head when I went to see the counsellor, and all I wanted to hear was a single sentence. "It may have gone unnoticed, but you have an immense inborn talent of X." It was not only a piece of information I requested, it was not only the missing piece of my life's puzzle I was looking for. I needed the whole sentence so I can devour it, tuck it into my chest, wrap it around my heart to keep my soul warm in those cold days that are so frequent when you are young or when you are old. I expected him to say I was special and I wanted him to say what my exactly my specialty was. He failed on both.<br />
<br />
He failed, because he jumped to solution mode right away, he didn't take time to lay the groundwork. He didn't ask me general questions to understand my philosophy, he didn't learn about my model, so he couldn't point out how mistaken I was. Talent is not a thing like a raincoat that you either have, or you don't. Talent is not an attribute like your body mass index that can be measured directly or calculated. Talent is not the ultimate answer to all your career-related questions.<br />
<br />
Maybe it was not his fault after all, it was in the air at the time. This was the bullshit mantra repeated by millions that inspired scientific researches on expertise and human potential. It inspired <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Seligman#Positive_psychology">Martin Seligman</a> to turn away from researching learned helplessness to exploring a field that later became known as positive psychology. It inspired <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/dp/0544456238">Anders Ericsson</a> to explore the nature of human expertise and performance which findings were later popularized by the book "Talent is overrated". It inspired <a href="https://www.tmbc.com/">Marcus Buckingham</a> and <a href="http://www.strengthsfinder.com/">Donald O. Clifton</a> to survey hundreds of thousand people to find out about their strengths and positive traits. There is a growing body of knowledge about talent.<br />
<br />
I'm as old now as the counselor was back then. I'm not so sure about my knowledge, but at least I have a growing body around my belly. I can imagine a rainy day when the streets are empty, I walk alone with an umbrella when the fairies come. They take me with their gentle power and fly me to an institute. They change my dress, they put a light blue shirt on me and a white robe, they fix my face to be stern. When I come to my senses, I'm sitting in an office, a worn out desk in front of me covered with printouts of test results. Someone knocks on the door and enters a young man with a desperate and eager fire in his eyes. He has come to hear THE answer which I don't have. I'm afraid the answer he expects to hear doesn't even exist. What am I to say?<br />
<br />
I'd say talent is like treasure, finding your talent or your edge is like going for a treasure hunt. You suspect something valuable is buried in the mountains, because that's what mountains are like. In tales they hide the golden of the goblins, in reality they contain limestone or coal. You just don't know what kind of treasure you are after and you don't have the faintest idea where to find it. What do you do? There are as many strategies to go for this quest as people in the world. Some start digging where the ground is easy to dig. Some go to the next village to ask the locals. Some take a sample of any mineral their shovel hits and try to sell it to see its value.<br />
<br />
These are the first steps of a life-long quest. You may find a nugget. Was it due to your perseverance or you were lucky enough to have been born near the right mountain? You can't go back to be born again at another mountain, so you can never be sure. If a decade of dedicated work resulted in a nugget, does it mean there are more in the ground? You can never be sure. You'll face a nagging question time to time: Is it worth digging deeper or is it time to move on to another locality? And the answer is again, you can never be sure.<br />
<br />
Talent is elusive, my friend, now you see it, now you don't. But one thing is for sure, there is treasure in the mountains. The golden of the goblins or limestone or coal.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-68470697540910777772016-07-27T11:22:00.000+02:002016-08-23T16:59:37.584+02:00What's the problem you are trying to solve?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ2uwdQpluzkunbEgpEUjEaVMZH5FXhBfgOxN36-yQe11IqlOaxbUposQyGjLWf5xD-0vJbLhBcATUG_2xXIw4YJ62V6mdFdH1Lzi1OcmBjAPIDmPatn2eoilRP5U5d0tF0iVTDnkI/s1600/Pulp_Fiction.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ2uwdQpluzkunbEgpEUjEaVMZH5FXhBfgOxN36-yQe11IqlOaxbUposQyGjLWf5xD-0vJbLhBcATUG_2xXIw4YJ62V6mdFdH1Lzi1OcmBjAPIDmPatn2eoilRP5U5d0tF0iVTDnkI/s640/Pulp_Fiction.JPG" title="source https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_Fiction" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The meeting room is dead silent, people are standing in a shock unable to grok what just happened. A few minutes ago I shared my idea with them. Mark glimpsed at me and asked a short question. “So what’s the problem you are trying to solve?” The next moment I jumped over the empty chair between us, grabbed his head, and bumped it to the desk. Two times, to be precise. There was an awful thump sound. Now we are waiting for something to happen. Mark looks up, blood smeared all over his face, his nose stands in an acute angle that doesn’t suit the original plan of the human face. He’s trying to say something, but he has difficulty breathing. He finally collects himself to utter a sentence, “I’m sorry I asked that question”. I smile and pat his shoulder, “it’s OK, dude, we are over it”.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Rest assured, it didn’t happen and it never will. This is the movie that runs in the dark chamber of my mind every time I hear that question. Bump, bump, silence, apology. I should go and see a shrink to find out why.<br />
<br />
No, I should not. It’s a perfectly normal reaction to corporate bullshit. If you are hungry for human interaction and I offer you a bunch of low hanging fruits at the end of the day, you’ll go mad I bet. There is a list of clichés, some are just innocent bla bla bla to your ears, you unconsciously filter them out. Some are boring, even slightly annoying. And yes, I am absolutely sure there is a phrase or two that could transform you to a raging monster. Now you know my trigger sentence. But why does it go under my skin? And more importantly, what can I do about it?<br />
<br />
After some soul-searching I realized this sentence has two meanings. The first meaning translates to “You have been talking about something that made me curious, but I can’t connect it to anywhere. Please, give me more context. Help me understand how it fits into the rest of the world I know.” This is an authentic request for information that shouldn’t make me upset. But it does.<br />
<br />
Logically, every situation where I want to perform an activity can be formulated as solving a problem. It just feels contrived or absurd in some cases. Suppose you are queuing at a fast food booth to buy a ham and cheese sandwich. I come and grab your elbow and say “Stop, my friend and tell me what’s the problem you’re trying to solve by buying this sandwich?” Well, the problem of being hungry? Or starving? Logically, they are valid answers, but they don’t ring right. You don’t have a problem–unless you are actually starving, in which case buying a sandwich wouldn’t be a great idea, you probably wouldn’t even engage in a conversation with me. This question forces you to operate in a problem-oriented mode.<br />
<br />
Noticing and facing problems is great, trying to solve them even greater. There is nothing wrong with this approach by itself. It just doesn’t cover the whole world around us, there are huge areas of human endeavor that won’t fit. When you have to shoehorn an idea into a framework of problems, what can you do? Admit it’s not really a problem? You don’t want to do that because it still matters to you a lot. So you’ll tend to overdramatize it, maybe by telling a shocking story of blood and violence in the office which didn’t actually happen but highlights your point.<br />
<br />
This is the first meaning of the sentence. I don’t like it but I can live with it because it shows some genuine interest at least. The other meaning is “I see you care for this topic, but based on what I’ve heard so far I don’t care. If you think I should care, then tell me more about how it would affect me. If it doesn’t affect me, make it explicit and make it short. I’m happy to listen to what you care about but I have limited resources of time and attention.”<br />
<br />
I’ve put a lot of effort into sharing my thoughts with you and you don’t care? Now this is what brings out the furious beast in me. And after the second round of my soul-searching I realized you have the right to not care, however bad it hurts.<br />
<br />
If we move out of the realm of personal relationship into the jungle of business, not caring is the norm. I go to the grocery store and ignore most of the shelves and the products on them. I don’t care about the special offer on the pink gadget the removes the hair in my ears, I don’t care about the chocolate-covered Siamese chicken noodle. It doesn’t matter how much energy and money went into developing these products, I do not care. If you want me to buy them, the burden of proving their value is on you, I don’t even have to explain my indifference.<br />
<br />
Hollywood film industry is one of the very competitive areas where a script has to go through many gatekeepers to land on the producer’s desk. Screenplay readers and their ilk handle numerous manuscripts every day. They want to save their time and energy to the most promising ones and recognize subpar work early. One of their strategies is to look for high concept, an idea that’s easy to grasp and to communicate. What if dinosaurs came alive in our times? What if people were stalked and killed in their dreams? Jurassic park was shot more than 20 years ago and we can identify by a single sentence. The success of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” started over three decades ago, it saw a line of sequels, TV series, and a remake.<br />
<br />
Not all Hollywood blockbusters are high concept movies but they are the easiest to pitch. They don’t need pages of elaborate prose, nor expensive visuals to show their value. They need only twenty seconds of the gatekeepers’ or the producers’ time, and bang, they can recognize the potential right away.<br />
<br />
When you ask me, “What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?”, you look for the high concept. You hear dozens of ideas every day, you have your own little idea generator in your brain, you’ll need a quick method to tell them apart. Looking for a high concept is one of those methods.<br />
My apologies, Mark, for being so arrogant and violent with you, even if only in my mind’s movie theater. I should’ve been grateful to you, you just expressed you couldn’t see the high concept in my idea. I’ll need to work on it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-57716576596658087552016-07-20T10:06:00.000+02:002016-08-23T17:00:27.227+02:00The long story before "the end": How to finish a narrative essayIn the beginning there was nothing, no internet, no iPhone, no pizza, and no microwave oven. In the beginning it was easy for God to create something. He could create anything and fail, no big deal. Let there be dinosaurs, for example, if they prove to be too big and slow, we can get rid of them later. The whole creation was a six day long, non-stop party, nothing prevented God from letting his imagination loose.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGeEyvRDAyXN3XDYPCxRcx0Aji7LLRXSyXcmiqfVi3o-V0VU9hq7Laul2W3_lBJju8hwO8tja3HyH-rCQEv656s_htCzzyafaqxTUYj4lpkgGviI7eowXa6lpZP0QagfX3wk6eZB3Y/s1600/creation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGeEyvRDAyXN3XDYPCxRcx0Aji7LLRXSyXcmiqfVi3o-V0VU9hq7Laul2W3_lBJju8hwO8tja3HyH-rCQEv656s_htCzzyafaqxTUYj4lpkgGviI7eowXa6lpZP0QagfX3wk6eZB3Y/s400/creation.jpg" title="Image from http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/a-theology-of-creation-in-12-points" width="400" /></a></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
It's easy to start a new project, a new essay. But how can we stop? How can we say after days or years of hard work, I see what I have made, and behold, it's very good?<br />
<br />
It can be seen as a psychological question. We know our skills are limited, we even ended up at a party last night, heavy drinking and bad jokes included. We know our creation is far from perfect, but it's time to let it go and see if it can stand on its own feet. If it falls, well, we'll be sad and use the learnings in our next project. We'll get feedback about the weakest side of our skills, for sure. It can't be avoided and it's still painful. If God had had so many critiques back then, he might have had a hard time at the end of the sixth day, he might have put in some extra hours to give the final touches to the world to satisfy all the different needs.<br />
<br />
But I want to approach this whole issue as a practical question. How to actually finish an essay? How to start it and how to keep going so it can be finished in a satisfying way?<br />
<br />
The end has to justify the effort both the creator, and the reader have put into it. They have to get somewhere else than they started; if they made a circle and come back to the starting point, they have to be a changed person inside. They have to say something like "now I understand", "now I know what to do differently next time". Then have a rest and start a new project.<br />
<br />
I know of 5 ways to finish an essay. I try each of them in turns, maybe even have a draft with some, then I select one. Here is my list<br />
<ol>
<li>Restate your main thesis and how you got there. This is the classical way of wrapping up an essay, however narrative, it still has a central statement that can be useful to reiterate.</li>
<li>Look at it from a different angle. We understand the microscopic world of the essay, we spent ten minutes of our life in it, now it's time to return to our everyday life. Make a connection between the small world of the essay and the big world around it. If it's personal, show its general human side. If it's more abstract or about someone else, show how you reflect on it.</li>
<li>Make a variation on your beginning. This is the artistic way, this is how pieces of classical music were composed. Take a theme, play with it, tweak it, turn it, change it until the listener doesn't remember the original melody. Then bring back the starting theme and add some variation that integrates the tweaks and turns. Words and sounds and even thoughts have their melody and rhythm, using their music can touch the reader's heart.</li>
<li>Say why this whole thing matters to the reader. You piqued the reader's interest at the beginning, they followed you through up to the end. You want them to leave with the feeling it was worth their time they spent with you. You want to show them how your essay enriched their lives.</li>
<li>Finish the story part. We want the story first and foremost, we are willing to read a hundred pages of the dullest prose of financial accounting if it also tells the story of a detective hunting down a corporate accountant who was bribed. Just concentrate on the story part of your essay, give it a nice closure, and the rest will take care of itself.</li>
</ol>
In a normal essay you would feel we are just past the middle part and getting close to the end. But let me eat my own dog food and try to close this essay in each of the 5 ways.<br />
<ol>
<li>What's my main thesis? It's easy to start an essay and more difficult to finish it. When you are stuck, generate 5 ideas and select one. When finishing an essay, take the 5 possible ways to finish, brainstorm, and select the best one.</li>
<li>There are three types of people, starters, continuers, and finishers. I am a starter. The closer I get to the end, the more uncomfortable I feel. I don't explicitly finish my things, I drop them, or rather I get stuck, then I let it sit for a while until it becomes so stale I can't even touch it. Termination by avoidance. I have this little theory, the more I can finish an essay, the better I become at closing things in my life. I think it works in both directions.</li>
<li>In the beginning there was nothing. We now have internet, iPhone, pizza, and microwave oven, thank's God. What else can we wish for? Let's call it a day.</li>
<li>What happens if you cut out the first 10 minutes of a movie? It happens incidentally too when you are late for it. Cutting out 10 minutes from the middle doesn't matter much either. This is actually what editors do before a film gets to the audience, keep cutting minutes from the middle. But what if you get a very important phone call just before the end and you miss the last 10 minutes? You'll get mad. It is the end you will remember. Make it last.</li>
<li>After God created the internet, the iPhone, the pizza, and the microwave oven, he had enough, he had nothing more to say. He watched a mediocre sitcom at the TV and had a good sleep. I wonder what his next project was.</li>
</ol>
In a normal setting you wouldn't see all these options, they would stay in the shadow, I wouldn't let them out into the open. I would triage the paragraphs and pick the one that's most alive and kicking (or most dead if it's that kind of an essay).<br />
<br />
Next time you are about to finish an essay and you can't think of a single way to do it, write 5 endings instead. Just the way God did. He had an ending with the dinosaurs ruling the earth; he had another one with people before the Flood living happily ever after. I hope he selected this version we are living in right now.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-78962956782313072942016-07-17T12:32:00.002+02:002016-07-17T12:32:59.307+02:00The weekly post challengeWe entertained the idea for weeks. No, months now. Then it happened, my friend challenged me. This is what he wrote me.<br />
<br />I hereby challenge you to blog once a week, on the same day of each week, between midnight at the beginning of that day until midnight of the following day. We must announce on our blogs that this is our plan; that we will publish weekly on the same day.<br /><br />
It does not matter how long the posting is. Even a few sentences making up a short paragraph.<br /><br />
We will refer to one another's blogs in the first posting announcing weekly publishing. I choose Wednesday. It would be good if you would publish on Wednesdays too, but you can choose another day.<br />
<br />
Challenge taken. I hereby announce I'll publish a post every Wednesday... until September. Then I'll re-examine how much I like the idea. Follow me. And follow my friend at <a href="http://thedreamwarrior.blogspot.hu/" target="_blank">The Dream Warrior</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-34750323569738456192014-11-03T14:49:00.002+01:002014-11-03T14:49:32.940+01:00Morning greetingsI work for DreamWare. We greet each other with a handshake or a kiss on the cheek every morning (well, it's a kiss only when at least one woman is involved). There are occasional hugs, too. We are happy to see each other and we are not afraid of letting others know it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-48621009434678754812014-08-12T16:46:00.002+02:002014-09-01T17:56:13.545+02:00How we plan to use Trello for Scrum<h1 id="no">
No</h1>
<h2 id="trello-office">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/trello-office/adplchojbnceleieilggnpceikjeapjg">Trello-Office</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Time spent and estimated</li>
<li>Burndown chart</li>
<li>Last release: v1.3 2014-02-16</li>
<li>No website, no source</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="trellocrm">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/trellocrm/iamcbhenfmnimbmmomkopghmggakkpfh">TrelloCRM</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>No screenshot</li>
<li>Based on <i>Scrum for Trello</i></li>
<li>Last release: 1.87, 2014-06-11</li>
<li>Links to developers provided</li>
<li>Not really suitable for project management</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="scrullo">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scrullo/ecbnaelkpapldckopoinlbaolbccbbba/details">Scrullo</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Last release: 2013-01-02</li>
<li>Wrong github link provided</li>
<li>Looks inactive</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="points-for-trello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/points-for-trello/mkcpchladphoadhaclmnlphhijboljjk">Points for Trello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Points are not always calculated</li>
<li>See <i>Points for Trello - Combined edition</i> for a more stable implementation</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="as-an-addition">
As an addition</h1>
<h2 id="background-colors-cards-for-trello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/background-colors-cards-f/gbpnfdnpkiogmaicmknplgedbcjndaaf">Background Colors Cards for Trello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Uses only the six colors available for labels</li>
<li>When a card has more labels, the rightmost color is picked</li>
<li>Use it as an addition to a project management extension</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="kanban-wip-for-trello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kanban-wip-for-trello/oekefjibcnongmmmmkdiofgeppfkmdii">Kanban WIP for Trello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>You can add WIP limits to lists</li>
<li>The list becomes red when you exceed the set limit</li>
<li>Open source: https://github.com/NateHark/TrelloWIPLimits</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="progress-for-trello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/progress-for-trello/ihneehmaifakdfpbjmneobgeifcaddbd">Progress for Trello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Display a progress bar using cards or points from <i>Scrum for Trello</i> or checklist items</li>
<li>Open source: https://github.com/Cycododge/Progress-For-Trello</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="trello-card-dependencies">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/trello-card-dependencies/ddhnhdoghhfoeceiohphmjkcemlkkock">Trello Card Dependencies</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Graph visualization</li>
<li>Click on cards to add or remove dependency between them</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="projects-for-trello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/projects-for-trello/mholjhodapabhdbchonjjoecmfhobfoa/details">Projects for Trello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>A card can be tagged with multiple project names</li>
<li>You cannot view cards for a tag</li>
<li>Based on <i>Scrum for Trello</i></li>
<li>Open source: https://github.com/agebase/projects-for-trello</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="ogds-enhancements-for-trello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ogds-enhancements-for-tre/ionfplcjpbmgjipcpppgakhkbldeopmd">OGD’s enhancements for Trello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Summarize points</li>
<li>Different display of cards without points</li>
<li>Highlight cards with label color (they call it separator cards)</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="ultimello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ultimello-the-features-pa/hahbfgjfimnmogoinnenhheepfcphnmm">Ultimello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Sort cards by title, votes, due date, labels</li>
<li>Save cards in sorted order or revert to original order</li>
<li>Developer’s email provided</li>
<li>No source</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="maybe-in-descending-order-of-how-sophisticated-it-is">
Maybe (in descending order of how sophisticated it is)</h1>
<h2 id="plus-for-trello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/plus-for-trello/gjjpophepkbhejnglcmkdnncmaanojkf">Plus for Trello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Most sophisticated</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="points-for-trello---combined-edition">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/points-for-trello-combine/elfbcdococbdgeaolelhgdghjgkkhndf">Points for Trello - Combined Edition</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Add points to card title, sum of points are displayed for each list, grandtotal for the whole board</li>
<li>Three types of points, depending on the parenthesis used</li>
<li>Based on <i>Scrum for Trello</i> and <i>Points for Trello</i></li>
<li>Open source: https://github.com/jgraglia/Trello-Points</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="scrum-for-trello">
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scrum-for-trello/jdbcdblgjdpmfninkoogcfpnkjmndgje">Scrum for Trello</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Source: http://github.com/Q42/TrelloScrum</li>
<li>Summarize points for a list and for the whole board</li>
<li>Two types of points, depending on the parenthesis used</li>
<li>When cards are filtered, only the points on filtered cards are summed</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="the-selected-combination">
The selected combinatio<strike>n</strike></h1>
<ul><strike>
</strike>
<li><strike><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scrum-for-trello/jdbcdblgjdpmfninkoogcfpnkjmndgje">Scrum for Trello</a></strike></li>
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/plus-for-trello/gjjpophepkbhejnglcmkdnncmaanojkf" target="_blank">
</a>
<li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/plus-for-trello/gjjpophepkbhejnglcmkdnncmaanojkf" target="_blank">Plus for Trello</a> </li>
<li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/projects-for-trello/mholjhodapabhdbchonjjoecmfhobfoa/details">Projects for Trello</a></li>
<li><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/card-colors-for-trello/nodlpencjjlohojddhflnahnfpfanbjm">Card colors for Trello</a></li>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-21328452311356597202014-07-29T16:48:00.002+02:002014-07-29T16:48:50.989+02:00Big refactoringI started to refactor a file of a few hundred lines of code. I had a vision how clean it will look. It took more days until I realized it takes more time to refactor the whole file. My tech-lead suggested to cut the task which I did and refactored only one class. It became really cleaner. It could've been used as a base class but people didn't use it but continued to use the quick and uglier way of the other classes.<br />
<br />
I started to refactor a file of similar size now because it always takes some mental effort for me and for me coworkers to understand the structure of the file. It was written by one of the coding heroes of the company, it's dense and tangled and still verbose at the same time. It takes a few minutes to run all the tests for it so I made a relatively big change that didn't look harmful, I was just factoring out some helper functions. When I finished, I ran the tests and they failed. I got frustrated. It took me quite some time to find out that I had forgot to set an environment variable before running the tests. There was even a warning printed that could've suggested that but it was lost in the many lines of other logging output.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-65642900203085687662014-07-27T12:55:00.001+02:002014-08-01T21:38:30.974+02:00Who commits to deliver the least Kanban pointsWe set up a Kanban-board. We start every week with a commitment, team members make an estimate how many points they will have done by the end of the week. Points are not measured as working hours because it would be different from person to person. We try to have a common measure of complexity points, it doesn't have a specific meaning, it's just an abstract unit. We just had enough planning session together so that two team members will probably give a similar estimate of a task in complexity points. This is further reinforced by the weekly feedback session when we sum up the actual points we delivered and talk about what had caused the differences between the estimated and the actual values.<br />
<br />
The commitment phase is pretty frustrating and painful for me because it's usually me who says the lowest number. It makes me feel dumb and incompetent.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-35933239445327356022014-07-27T12:15:00.001+02:002014-07-27T12:15:48.923+02:00Programmers as seen by an HR managerI know these are generalizations, but...<br />
<ul>
<li>Good programmers tend to be good musicians</li>
<li>They give straightforward answers, sometimes at the cost of hurting other people's feelings without intending to</li>
<li>They grasp the general structure and the gist of complex issues</li>
<li>They want to find a solution right away</li>
<li>It's difficult to find out what they're feeling in a situation. It can be pretty difficult for their managers.</li>
<li>They avoid conflicts and other emotionally loaded situations</li>
<li>They don't want to be (perceived as) nosy</li>
<li>They are afraid of being seen assholes or using their power. That's why they lean on having a laissez-faire attitude.</li>
</ul>
<div>
If I attended a conference on programmers' psychology, I'd expect to hear some stories. For example how a newly appointed manager overcame a difficult situation. Or how an introvert junior developer can share his or her ideas with the team.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-36417895510825512832014-07-23T11:02:00.000+02:002014-07-24T10:35:21.460+02:00Important things I don't doI'm going home now because a guy is coming to fix the heating system. I'll work from home for a few hours. I'll take some notes for my research which I don't do at the office. It would be quite appropriate to take notes about my life as a software engineer while being in the office but I still don't do that. Just like going out to the gym to work out which I also don't do. I am considered to be a mature adult who can use his time, I'm free to come and go to the office any time. There are even some guys who have a special schedule like coming to the office only in the afternoon and work until late night. Another guy goes to late night parties one day, then takes a day off, then works two days without a stop. And I know of others who have similar issues as mine, they don't do things they find important.<br />
<br />
I also notice while eating that I had enough but I carry on eating.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6842196763305837660.post-10805760034649674602014-07-21T11:01:00.000+02:002014-07-21T11:01:18.026+02:00Research on programming psychologyI hereby declare that I started my research on programming psychology. It doesn't have a clearcut definition yet but there is probably a common understanding what it could mean. Software engineers prefer to talk about... er... software. They may even talk about how much they love or hate a notion, such as a programming language or a framework. They will list certain attributes to justify their love or hate but they rarely talk about their emotions per se. As one of my co-worker half-jokingly put it, he doesn't share more of his emotions because he doesn't have that much. So the psychology of programming deals with issues programmers don't deal with.<br />
I have two goals with this research. First, I want to get into the top ten of some area. Since I avoid competition, it has to be some really weird area where there aren't many competitors. I also want this area to include as much of my skills and interests as possible. There are many awesome programmers. There are plenty of great psychotherapists. But there are really only a handful of people who are good programmers <i>and</i> good psychotherapists at the same time. That's my territory.<br />
My other goal is to expand programming experience to include other sides of human nature. There is some talk about coding as an art, being in the zone, the importance of having fun while coding, etc. Some programmers even go to coding dojos or retreats or record a screencast of their performing a kata. My dream is that one day programmers will code love poems to their partner, dance a difficult algorithm to fully grasp it and meditate at the keyboard. One day a senior programmer will just set up a little game of castles and dragons and their junior will love to solve it which will be the resolution of an underlying software task. So my other goal is to make those days come a bit closer.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17085371229501857666noreply@blogger.com0