Author: Nick

An Iowa nerd with an almost irrational passion for good stories, tasty burritos, getting good at things, and writing amazing software.

Following The Doctor’s Orders – The Daily Stoic – Part 7 of 366

Just as we commonly hear people say the doctor prescribed someone particular riding exercises, or ice baths, or walking without shoes, we should in the same way say that nature prescribed someone to be diseased, or disabled, or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone’s healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.8

Doctor’s orders. Somehow this simple phrase does carry enough weight to get people to accept unpleasant things. There is the promise that in following through with the unpleasant course of action we will find ourselves in a better place. And yet we often don’t apply this same thinking to fate or destiny.

Again, as in part 5, this one is harder for me to swallow. It implies that there is a destiny for each and every soul, and while I agree that each creature in this universe will follow a path to an eventual conclusion, that conclusion may not be one we readily desire and accept.

Many people are dealt an unfair and uncaring hand by the universe. Should you accept and welcome a destiny where you are permanently disabled and nearly die in a car crash in your 40s? That is what happened to my father. Although he survived, he lived another 20 years of declining health and ability, and he gradually watched as the world he was leaving to his kids seemingly became worse at every turn.

Perhaps the stoics would say that his destiny was in fact to have a family and be lucky enough to watch his kids grow up — a gift this universe did not grant my mother — and that this is enough. Framed in this light I can accept what Marcus says. I generally think being a good parent is by far the most important thing most humans will do with their lives.

It took me what feels like a long time, but I have come to appreciate my life experiences even though my younger years were extremely challenging and frequently consisted of loss and hardship. These experiences have indeed helped me become who I am today, and I know I would not be where I am without them. They have made me more grateful for what I have, and they have motivated me to stay on my purpose in a way that seems very uncommon amongst my peers.

I am still amazed at how insights into life from 1800 years ago are still incredibly poignant today.

Binding Our Wishes To What Will Be – The Daily Stoic – Part 6 of 366

But I haven’t at any time been hindered in my will, nor forced against it. And how is this possible? I have bound up my choice to act with the will of God. God wills that I be sick, such is my will. He wills that I should choose something, so do I. He wills that I reach for something, or that something be given to me — I wish for the same. What God doesn’t will, I do not wish for.

Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1.89

In the description the book describes a letter Eisenhower sent to his wife on the eve of the invasion of Normandy. In it he writes, “Everything we could think of has been done, the troops are fit, everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the gods.”

This is a powerful statement. No matter how much time you have spent thinking and preparing, you eventually have to pull the trigger to see what happens and bear the consequences. The code you write doesn’t matter if it never makes it into the hands of users. The rocket ship you built does no good rusting away on the launchpad.

The better you get at doing your best and then decisively acting the more you will accomplish even if there are some stumbles and falls along the way. It is better to be moving forward and course correct than stand completely still agonizing over the choice in front of you.

You must prepare, but you must also act. The outcomes will be what they are, whether we like it or not.

Accepting What Is – The Daily Stoic – Part 5 of 366

Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will — then your life will flow well.

Epictetus, Enchiridion, 8

It is easy to praise providence for anything that may happen if you have two qualities: a complete view of what has actually happened in each instance and a sense of gratitude. Without gratitude what is the point of seeing, and without seeing what is the object of gratitude?

Epictetus, Discourses, 1.6.1-2

The book mentions that in Stoicism this is called the “art of acquiescence” — to accept rather than fight every little thing. Indeed, when considering an event we wished had not occurred it is only possible to change our opinion and perception of the event since what has occurred is already in in the past.

After a very long break from writing this seems a to be a poignant topic to return with. Few would argue that 2019 and 2020 were not years utter chaos and disappointment in so many ways. Political turmoil, frequent natural disasters, a war on science, and a global pandemic all seek to occupy the mind and destroy all sense of stability, control, and happiness.

And yet, as consuming as these things are, for most people these things are still largely on the periphery of life. The worry over these things has far more damaging effects than many of these things for most people. Although it is not easy in times of turmoil, there is a great deal of virtue and value to be had in accepting the things you cannot change.

Integrate your learnings from these events into the decisions you make going forward, and then move on. Do not linger; dwelling on the past does not change it. There is more life ahead of you to live.

Interestingly the book also discusses the mental hack of wishing for what has occurred. Wishing for fate to play its hand never results in disappointment, and may very well be a source of joy by avoiding frequent anguish over any and every negative thing that occurs.

I personally find this a bit of a stretch. Wishing fate to play its hand and accepting it are two different things. It is not an inherently bad thing to experience disappointment or regret over something that has happened. In fact, I would consider this a primary source of empathy and solidarity that is important in society. Regretting that someone has cancer and expressing your sadness and disappointment seems a more human response than telling them that it was fated to be. But perhaps the point here was more in dealing with acceptance of one’s own experiences specifically. If you get cancer then regret and frustration would be natural feelings, but they do not change what has or is about to happen. In such a scenario I can see the virtue in acquiescence to the situation and focusing all effort on the future.

High Performers Double Check Their Work

It seems simple and obvious. However, I seem to have this discussion with seemingly everyone, so I’m going to assume this is actually some secret sauce that I have uncovered: the quickest and easiest way to up your skill level is to double check your work.

I think math class burned the phrase “check your work” into our minds with some negative connotations. I also think people are just generally trying to move too fast, and attention to detail really suffers in an era of incessant multitasking. Doing something 80% or 90% of the way may be good enough, but good is the enemy of great. If you want to be a high performer and to have a sterling reputation then you need to set the quality bar high and keep it there. If you hand off work that is actually incomplete or wrong then you gum up the works, you look unprofessional, and you waste valuable time and money. Don’t make people double check your work for you unless that is what they are literally paid to do (i.e. editors, auditors, etc). Even then, your goal is to make their lives as easy as possible so they can work efficiently instead of cleaning up stuff you could have caught yourself.

One of the great things about this piece of wisdom is that it is universally applicable. Ordering, writing, cleaning, coding, building, planning, presenting, calculations. It doesn’t matter what you are doing, it will always be to your benefit to double check the quality before handing something off.

Should you re-read that email you wrote to make sure you don’t sound like an idiot? Yes, you should. Should you review your own pull request, or better yet, review your code before making a pull request? Yes, you should. Should you double check that everything in your Amazon order is correct before buying? Yes, you should.

Start building the habit, and eventually it will become second nature. It is amazing how many things you will catch and how many snafus you will avoid by simply taking a few extra minutes to look things over. And, if something is really important, then go over it three or four time for good measure. Call it quits there though. There are diminishing returns, and it will either be good enough or it needs peer review from someone else with fresh eyes.

Professor Scott Galloway’s Career Advice

Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business. His company L2 creates some amazingly funny and insightful content, including this video on Scott’s “unsolicited career advice”:

There is a lot of wisdom into what Scott says, and I will incorporate some of these ideas into the core values section in the future. I have taken his advice on many fronts, and I shown this video to direct reports as an example of things to keep in mind.

In particular, developing skills that differentiate you, are key to the success of the business, and your colleagues do not seem to want to do them will make you insanely valuable. One of these for me was focusing on being good at software engineering, project management, and people management. Most engineers are completely uninterested in the latter two which provided plenty of opportunity to shine.

I have marked all of my favorites in bold below.

  • Get certified
    • College graduates had half the unemployment rate of those with a high school diploma during the 2008 recession
    • College graduates will, over the course of a lifetime, earn 2x as much as those with just a diploma
  • Be remarkable
    • Develop not just one area of expertise, but two skills that don’t always naturally go together
  • Invest in variance
    • Look at the six or eight things that are key to your firm’s success, and identify one or two that you can differentiate yourself by becoming an expert in
  • Move to a city
    • 2/3rds of economic growth will take place in cities
    • Being in a city forces you to work with the best so you improve
  • Boring is sexy
    • The sexiest of careers are hard to get into and may not make you wealthy
    • A lot of money is in things that aren’t sexy
  • Delay gratification
    • “The power of compound interest is the most powerful force in the Universe.” ~Einstein
    • This is true not just for money, but for your own efforts
    • Invest in areas of your life where the payoff is in the future, but your efforts aggregate over time
  • Demonstrate strength and grit
    • Fortune 500 CEOs exercise every day
  • Don’t follow your passion
    • Be passionate about being great at something
  • Ignore the myth of balance
    • You are only young once. Take advantage and work your ass off
  • Fight unfair
    • What are you willing to do that the majority of the people around you aren’t?
    • What are you willing to do that your colleagues won’t?

You Were Born Good – The Daily Stoic – Part 4 of 366

The human being is born with an inclination toward virtue.

Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 2.7.1-2

I remember the very moment I moved from the religious segment of the population to the non-religious segment of the population. My family is Catholic on my mothers side, and I spent a decent amount of my childhood doing all of the traditional things: Sunday school, religious readings, countless church ceremonies, and painfully long services during the holidays. In general it seemed fine; it was even fun sometimes. And then one day it came time for First Confession, and I just did not understand the concept.

Why does everyone assume they are bad? Sure, maybe we have done some stuff we regret and we may want to talk about it, but why is the assumption that I need to confess that I did something wrong? I mostly felt like I was just being a pretty normal kid that did normal kid stuff. What was wrong with that? And then I started thinking more about original sin, and it pushed me away even further. Everyone is a sinner because someone screwed up thousands of years ago? That doesn’t even make sense.

But what Musonius Rufus says above does make sense. We are born with an inclination toward virtue. Evolution favors those who are willing to work together and be kind to each other. Our default mode of operation when we are born is to not be an asshole; that is something a few people learn along the way. That means there is hope in this too. You were born good. If you are no longer good, or perhaps just not as good as you would like to be, you have simply deviated from your baseline. It is not your destiny. It is a matter of seeking out better ideas and behaviors, and then spending the time and energy to focus on returning to the original you.

Who Get’s The Lion’s Share? – The Daily Stoic – Part 3 of 366

Aren’t you ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnants of your life and to dedicate to wisdom only that time can’t be directed to business?

— Seneca, On The Brevity Of Life, 3.5b

“I’m so busy! But it is better to be busy than bored!”

Hang around me long enough and you’ll eventually hear me say this. It is like a catch phrase. And, to a certain extent, I think there is some truth to it: I would rather have too much interesting stuff to do than not enough. I honestly don’t remember the last time I was actually bored.

However, I started to introspect this earlier this year. Sure, I’m busy. Everyone is busy. It is a chronic problem in America. Can I stop being busy? Am I busy with the right things? Also, if people are so busy, how do we find so much time for Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, and so on? Most people delegate their reading activities to be occasional, or a few minutes before bed when their brains are already tired, but this is backwards. We should make time for the important things, and that includes time to “dedicate to wisdom.”

Stop being busy, and stop making excuses. Take a look at where you spend your time, and be intentional about dropping things that do not add value and maximizing time on the things that do. In particular, make time for thinking about the biggest questions in life so that you are always working towards some answers.

Nourishment of your mind and soul are not second to anything else. Focusing on them will pay dividends into everything you do.

Some parting thoughts on this concept:

  • Reserve for yourself the lion’s share. Tend your own garden, and then give the rest of your time graciously to those people and things deserving of it. The remnants are for things that don’t matter, not the other way around.
  • Everyone has time to study philosophy. Maybe its a podcast while you are in the shower, a Youtube video on the toilet, a book before bed time, or an hour every weekend. The time is there, you just need to make use of it.

Character Is Fate – The Daily Stoic – Part 2 of 366

Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.

— Seneca, Moral Letters, 47.15b

Let’s say you are an engineering manager in charge of hiring a junior engineer, and you are considering two applicants. One is a student that went to a state college but didn’t finish. However, their Github account is quite compelling and it seems as if they have been writing code for many years. The other applicant graduated from Stanford with good but not amazing grades. Their resume shows one internship during their senior year, and there was no code provided with his application. Which do you choose?

Most people’s gut instinct is probably the latter. They graduated college from a top school and did an internship. However, they didn’t provide any context regarding their actual ability. All that code they wrote in their internship is proprietary; you wont get to see it. You have less risk in that they are credentialed and perhaps previously vetted by where they did their internship, but those are not necessarily indicators of ability.

On the other hand, the first student gave you information to de-risk their application: they gave you lots of code to look at. Browsing through it you can clearly determine they are not an idiot. However, they couldn’t seem to stick with a college program long enough to graduate and perhaps have no professional experience, so while their ability may be high you still have plenty of risk related to professionalism.

The real answer to the question is that you don’t have enough information. This is why we do tech screens, phone calls, interviews, and the like. We are trying to suss out each applicant’s character in addition to their ability. And they should be doing the same for the company.

Interestingly, most of the worst engineers I’ve worked with were senior and set in their ways. They all looked great on paper, but it turns out that you can do something wrong for ten years and still claim you have ten years of experience. You can also be a jerk who wields a masters degree like it makes you better than everyone else, but in reality it just means you have fewer years writing actual code that made it to production.

My point in all of this is to say that it is the character of these people that matters the most. Do not waste your time and energy on people who don’t deserve it. That said, give most folks a chance. Everyone has a different background and set of experiences, and that means they plenty to offer you.

Some parting thoughts on this concept:

  • Unfortunately, luck does play a big role in life. You could be the hardest working person in existence and still be dealt a thunderous blow that destroys your health, wealth, family, or career. And, on the other side of the coin, you may reap tremendous rewards without truly working to obtain them. On the whole, a person’s character is their most valuable asset over the long-term.
  • Remember that student above who dropped out of college but loved writing code? That was me. Always give young people a chance; find the ones who are worthy and let them earn their seat at your table.
  • Don’t be afraid to dump, fire, or otherwise remove people with poor character from your life.

We Were Made For Each Other – The Daily Stoic – Part 1 of 366

You’ll more quickly find an earthly thing kept from the earth than you will a person cut off from other human beings.

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.9.3

As the book notes, Marcus Aurelius and his fellow philosophers did not yet know about Newtonian physics, but it is still an apt analogy: the human need to be with other humans is more powerful than the law of gravity.

We are social creatures, for better or worse. As an introvert it took me many years to come to grips with this fact. Oh how tempting it is to cut out all others and just live a life of the mind! All day focused on solving your problems, reading, writing, and so on. And yet, as someone who has done this, I can say it does eventually wear on you and cause problems. You simply cannot overcome millions of years of evolution and your very own biology. I myself realized after many years that I’m not nearly as introverted as I thought, and I became much happier when I found a better balance between “me” time and “we” time.

Some parting thoughts on this concept:

  • The greatest things ever built were made by teams of people, not individuals. If you want to achieve great things, you must strive to work and learn from great people.
  • Invite that weird guy or girl you work with to lunch. It will be good for both of you.
  • It is not easy to care for someone else, but it is also not easy to be cared for.
  • As a general rule, be pro-people and pro-inclusion. Our society seems to have lost this concept along the way, but it is the only way we will survive.