Blog / Leadership / Tips

Deciding right and wrong for others and causing them guilt and blame doesn’t help anyone

Prelude: this is about leadership (of others and yourself) Yesterday I outlined an essay on the counterproductivity of deciding right and wrong for people who disagree with you. Today I'm fleshing out the essay. The point of this blog is to help people lead -- to influence others, to work with them in teams, to negotiate with them, and so on -- even when you disagree. So I'll leave deciding right and wrong for others, figuring that, since some issues haven't been resolved for thousands of years, you might not resolve them before you have to deliver on your project (or while you improve your life if we're talking about leading yourself). Successful leaders ship while attract people to work with them. Today's post covers…

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May 8, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Leadership

The New York Times had a contest about my post

What a coincidence. The day after my long post on the counterproductivity of moralizing for leading people, using the example of deciding for others whether they should eat meat or not, the New York Times published the results of a contest to do exactly what I described as counterproductive. No contradiction here -- the New York Times's goal is not to lead people, but to sell newspapers and what works against leaders' interests (depending on how you want to lead) -- polarization and argumentation -- works for news media. Here is the statement of the contest Here are the submissions with the most votes Here is the winning submission This difference in interests illustrates a glaring bias inherent to news reports. Promoting division and argument…

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May 7, 2012
Blog / Fitness / Humor

Giant marshmallow dreams

People who have met me will recognize my favorite joke to start this Colbert segment, followed by satire on my favorite American things deserving satire -- corporate "food" and Americans' tolerance (passion?) for it. At least one of the products is right out of an Onion piece. I wonder how outrageous an Onion piece has to be that America can't catch up to it. Yesterday's post was long, so today's is a couple links to fun and funny videos.  

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May 6, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Tips

On the counterproductivity of motivating people with guilt and blame — aka moralizing

I liked Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, which people have suggested I read for years. I like his perspective on food and "food." I don't intend for the following to detract from his overall message, but his chapter 17, "The Ethics of Eating Animals," makes a great example for leadership. Leadership means motivating others, which means changing their emotions. Few of us like when others motivate us with guilt or blame, so I find using leading through those emotions counterproductive. Claiming to appeal to absolute measures of right, wrong, good, bad, or evil tend to polarize. Motivating through guilt or blame with appeal to absolutes has a name: moralizing. Morality, ethics, meddling, being holier-than-thou, self-righteousness, and so on work to some degree, but risking alienating, polarizing,…

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May 5, 2012
Blog / Freedom / NorthKorea

North Korea, China, Vietnam, Cuba — a case for humility and understanding

The major "Communist" countries my country invaded or fought during the Cold War without doing so well -- I just visited (or smoked a cigar from). It gives you the opportunity to learn. The dominant voices in the United States, especially during an election year, cheer that we're number one. You hardly hear anything else. I can't imaging a politician disagreeing in the slightest having a hope of election. Seeing how others perceive us is enlightening and humbling. Each has a major claim to victory over the United States despite overwhelming odds. China: An elderly Texan oil man in Beijing -- a man in any other context I would expect to praise God, country, and the great state of Texas -- bluntly told me he's…

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May 4, 2012
Blog / Fitness / Nature

Ecology, economy, population growth and Do The Math

I've written about Do The Math, the blog that takes a quantitative, scientific, and usually non-judgmental approach to understanding our impact on the environment. I posted on it today for the first time about some questions I'd been thinking about for a while but haven't approached in that blog's way. He has written about increasing his efficiency in using energy. I generally applaud that approach and do it myself, but I wonder about its value in the long-term, given population growth. I wrote the following on a thread on conserving energy in the home and persuading others to. Regarding efficiency, while I also try to improve mine, I can't help but put these gains in the context of population growth, mainly driven by having read…

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May 3, 2012
Blog / Fitness / Tips

Perhaps this blog’s most useful and effective advice

For all my lessons learned, the Model, the Method, and so on, if we want to improve our lives, little works more effectively than Eat well Sleep well Exercise If you do nothing more than the above, you'll at least have a stable baseline of neutral. Last I checked, no medicine works better than exercise at keeping yourself happy. This advice costs nothing, takes little extra time, and requires no equipment. If you can't figure out how to work the above into your schedule, examine your priorities -- I suggest doing so until you see how to incorporate those three things into your life. When you do fit them into your schedule, you will find yourself generally at worst neutral to generally happy, with the…

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May 2, 2012
Blog / Nature / NorthKorea

Food, joy, and values

A culture's food tells you its values -- some of its most important ones. I just had fresh squeezed mango and some mangosteens on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. They cost almost nothing here. They were as delicious as any fruit I've eaten. Two weeks ago I could barely put another oil soaked vegetable in my mouth in North Korea. We had little choice in where or what to eat. The meat-eaters seemed to enjoy their food more -- they gave them more variety -- but they couldn't seem to stop serving what I came to call "Oil soup with a touch of vegetables." It wasn't as bad as that, but after eight or nine days without respite, just the smell of oil…

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May 1, 2012

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