Judge Not, Lest… – The Daily Stoic – Part 21 of 366

When philosophy is wielded with arrogance and stubbornly, it is the cause for the ruin of many. Let philosophy scrape off your own faults, rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others.

— Seneca, Moral Letters, 103.4b-5a

It pleases me to find this particular quote in the section on acceptance. You can not and should not set out to change and judge others. People come with many faults, and I think people dwell on that very deeply without reminders from others. Sanding down your rough edges does not make you better than anyone else. We are all works in progress, and the only garden to which you can actually tend is your own.

This lesson applies well outside the realm of philosophy as well. Your lifestyle is not better or worse than most others. The books you read are not superior to others. Your hobbies are not, the media you consume is not, your schooling is not, and so on. Your lived experience differs from those around you, but that does not diminish or enhance anyone. Given long enough, we all share the same end regardless of how the time was spent.

Focus your energy internally instead of externally. Chase your goals and your truths. Live the life you want and are proud of. Refine your thinking, build up your strengths and scrape off your own faults as best you can. This is a continual process done over the course of a life time.

Along the way you must accept others where they are and as they are. Do not wield your wisdom like a sword or a bludgeon. Instead you must offer it freely and without judgement in the hope it may be of some use to others.

Effort Is Attractive

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

~Heraclitus

Life is hard, and for most of human history it was much harder. There is no doubt that advances in technology have come with many pros and cons. As a society we have become used to comfort, distraction, and immediate gratification. We have also become inundated with constant, incessant access to the best among us. We constantly see and share those who have seemingly impossible, unachievable skills, wealth, knowledge, lifestyles, experiences, and so on. This is demotivating for most humans since you do no see the years of work that goes into producing 30 seconds of greatness on TikTok, and the primal brain thinks, “I could NEVER do that!”

But you can, and you should. Nothing is more attractive than people who love the game they play and give it their all. People who are on their grind because they want to see what they can achieve and what they are truly capable of. People who want to know that, at the end of the day, they left nothing on the table in pursuit of the things they actually care about.

Success and growth requires a willingness and dedication to experience prolonged discomfort, and the human mind actively does not like to do hard things for long periods. This is actually extremely smart biologically and extremely dumb mentally and spiritually. Your biology does not know that its time on this planetary spaceship is limited, but your brain does and so do the brains of others. This is why people putting in the effort stand out in our distractable and comfortable world.

Overnight success is based on luck, and durable long run success is based on effort. You must have the right skills and confidence to capitalize on the opportunities life provides you, and someone relentlessly chasing their passions will be best positioned to make this magic happen.

Put down the phone and chase what matters to you.

You don’t need to the be the best to ever do it. Just be the best you can be and let that be enough.

The Most Important Step A Man Can Take

Some folks consider fiction books a waste of time and liken them to junk food for the brain. This has always confused me because study after study shows that people who read fiction often gain a variety of mental benefits besides partaking in an enjoyable hobby. I can also think of many fictional characters who taught me not just valuable life lessons, but profound lessons about myself. They have provided a plethora of thoughts and traits I cherish and hold dear, points of view I consider novel and pivotal to my world view, and acts of service and fortitude so grand it boggles the mind and challenges me to do better.

I have been marinating on this as a colleague of mine is reading through the Stormlight Archive and rapidly approaching one of my favorite sequences in all of fiction in the book Oathbringer. If you have not read it, this is a fair spoiler for a book that is now over 7 years old, so carry on at your own risk.

Continue reading →

Turbo and Throttle

Most of the time the processor in your computer is doing very little work. In fact, as you read this, it is probably sitting close to idle. The work demanded of it is often tiny compared to what it is truly capable of when it runs full tilt. Modern processors have base clocks and turbo modes to reflect these dual demands.

When work is light a processor sits at its base clock trying to be as energy efficient as possible. When work is hard it runs at its turbo frequencies for as long as it can manage until the work is complete. This often results in a very spiky existence for the processor as it oscillates between dreadfully long periods of doing nearly nothing and often relatively brief (but sometimes continuous) bursts of all out demand for optimal performance.

On the other hand, if a processor has insufficient cooling or suffers from other environmental factors (like being directly in sunlight for a long time), it will begin to thermal throttle. This is a feature designed to prevent the chip from harming itself, and potentially other valuable components, if it is going to exceed its thermal capacity for too long.

This means that the processor eventually finds equilibrium at maximum sustained performance given its thermal realities. In a perfect world (with good cooling) it can and will run at full tilt forever as it sheds heat into an environment capable of dissipating it effectively, but in the worst case it will shut down all together (such as when the heatsink is removed) which stops any work from being done.

Technology often mirrors life since it is made by humans for humans, and these concepts translate directly into how people operate. In knowledge work the demand is often spiky like that of a processor. We may be chugging along performing our work as normal before a new initiative kicks off and soaks up all of the available bandwidth from a team. Depending on the circumstances, this may cause people to go from from their normal work output into turbo mode. If teams or individuals run in turbo mode for too long, they burn out unless throttling is introduced.

This scenario is actually an example of optimal stopping theory. If a team or individual operates at 100% of their ability at all times then there is no scenario in which they can respond to a spike in demand or change of circumstances without dropping something else they were doing which was already important. However, you also don’t want anyone sitting around idle.

How much capacity should generally be utilized? When do you introduce throttling?

This depends on the nature of the work and the environment the team or individual finds themselves in. If the work is well understood and consistent then maybe you can survive closer to the 100% threshold, but the less clear and less consistent the work the more you need to build in some reserve capacity. This idea was somewhat infamously explored by Donal Shoup‘s book The High Cost of Free Parking. He proposed the idea that parking utilization should be around 85% to be optimal, and that introducing parking fees to achieve this this would reduce traffic congestion, fuel waste, and time waste (thus saving more than the fees paid) while raising revenue for the city by removing free parking. For the cities that have tried it, it appears to work.

This seems close enough to the 80/20 rule (known as the Pareto principle) to help us here. We should strive to consistently operate around 80-85% of our possible capacity. This leaves us room to turbo when necessary, but also means we are never idle and not providing value. When I say these numbers I don’t mean just at work, but your total capacity as a human being. When one of my team members had a sudden loss in the family that obviously demanded many of his cycles, and that meant he had less cycles to use elsewhere for a time. Try to quantify the demands life has of you and be realistic about what that means for where you spend your cycles.

If an individual or team is consistently above this threshold then they (and leadership) need to consider two things:

Throttle before you burn out. This will feel impossible when the workload is at its peak with no end in sight, but it simply must be done for the good of all. Take some PTO, find ways to relax and de-stress, and see if any of the work can be better balanced among teams and individuals.
Increase capacity and/or shed workload. For a team this is obvious: if there is important work not getting done then see if you can delegate this (or less important) work or hire more people. For individuals this is a little harder. Are there improvements to the workflow or process you could make? Would training help you be more efficient? Is there other low value work eating up your cycles that you could stop doing? Can you partition the tasks differently such that more people can contribute?

America treats working yourself to the brink as a rite of passage, but as a recovering workaholic who has gone beyond all limits several times I assure you it is sub-optimal just like free parking and infinite turbo. When you run out of juice and force a shutdown you halt everything, and the damage of this scenario can be extreme.

You do not provide value to your team, your organization, your family, or yourself if your burn out.

To be a consistent high performer you must learn and respect your actual capacity. To be a good leader you must stop individuals and teams from running too hot for too long while also making sure no one is idle.

If you are turboing right now without an end in sight, consider when to start throttling. Taking care of yourself is not defeat. On the contrary, it is the most optimal thing you can do.

This Should Be Quick & Easy™

During a recent lunch conversation with my colleagues we discussed the idea that you often cannot easily see the world from another person’s perspective because you cannot unlearn what you know or remove your biases completely. In engineering this sometimes manifests with senior team members (including me, to my shame) sometimes saying, “Oh, this is will be quick and easy” without necessarily explaining why because the answer seems so obvious.

But it isn’t obvious. Not to everyone. And if you quickly chime in that a problem is trivial then you’ve potentially set off spurious thoughts in other team members that are unhelpful. Wait, why is that easy? It doesn’t seem easy. I must be missing something. Or maybe I just suck.

Obviously this is not the intent of the comment. In fact, we think we’re helping! We assume in a perfect world people will always ask questions and feel safe in doing so, but the senior team members have transferred the onus to the junior team members in this scenario. Worse still, they have potentially robbed them of a learning opportunity based on their personality and gumption.

The lesson here is a simple one, but it is still hard for me. That is why I have it on a sticky note on my monitor during video calls.

Listen more and speak less.

Provide intent, not instruction.

Don’t chart the course, but course correct.

All Is Fluid – The Daily Stoic – Part 13 of 366

The universe is change. Life is opinion.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3.4b

When our hair grows long we cut it. If our nails grow long we cut them. When our cells die they are replaced by new ones. The skin on your body is entirely different than the skin you had 27 days ago.

Are you still the same person? Or are you a new one? Strictly speaking the matter that makes up who you are is entirely new. And yet I think most would all agree we are still the same person; these molecular changes do not change who we are.

But what about your thoughts and memories? Those are constantly changing. What about your job? That is likely to change several times throughout your life. Where you live? Where you live now is probably different than where you grew up or went to college. How much do these things define who you, your family, and your friends are? How much do these things inform how you think and act?

The book notes that, “Our understanding of what something is is just a snapshot — an ephemeral opinion.” This is exactly right. How you view something today is based on so many different variables it is impossible to list them all. How you think about something tomorrow could be drastically different than how you thought about it today if something changes.

And it will. It always will. Change is the only constant.

It follows then that the more fluid and malleable you are in your thoughts, actions, and opinions, the smoother your journey through life will be. Being rigid should never be a point of pride as it shows a refusal to acknowledge the weight of the universe, and that is a losing battle.

Actors In A Play – The Daily Stoic – Part 12 of 366

Remember that you are an actor in a play, playing a character according to the will of the playwright — if a short play, then it’s short; if long, long. If he wishes you to play the beggar, play even that role well, just as you would if it were a cripple, a honcho, or an everyday person. For this is your duty, to perform well the character assigned you. That selection belongs to another.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion, 17

Play the hand you are dealt, and play it well. It is the only hand you get. This is the lesson the Epictetus is trying to impart. The book goes on to mention that accepting and fulfilling our part is not at odds with ambition which is not obvious at first glance. After all, if we are assigned a part then why try rising above our station? If we must play the beggar then how are we not locked into such a poor life?

There are many stories where the mighty fall, and there are many stories where the less fortunate rise. You may be assigned a part when you enter the story, but the story itself is not yet written. The question really is this: what do you want your story to be? If someone tells your tale, what will they say?

In order to change your story you must first accept and understand the role you have been tasked to play. You cannot change where the story starts or where it has already been, but once you are in control then your story will go wherever you wish.

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.

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.

The Daily Stoic – Part 0 of 366

My life has been crazy. Like, really crazy. I would go into further details, but it is a long story (well, many long stories) that can wait until another day. The important takeaway is simply this: life is hard, stressful, unfair, and unpredictable. This isn’t unique to me, or to anyone else, so eventually I started to wonder: how the hell did people deal with the chaos of life over the past two thousand years?

I feel like it took me a long while to arrive at this thought considering people have been dealing with the stress of every day life since… well, literally as long as we have existed. While we have new modern problems, it turns out that many of the problems in our lives are not that different from those who lived thousands of years ago. Love, grief, wealth, happiness, success; a lot of time and energy has been spent thinking about these things over the course of human existence.

Now I know what you are thinking: didn’t you take philosophy in school? The answer is yes, and I enjoyed it. However, it never felt useful or practical. My goal when asking the question above was to find a framework that can help me deal with some of the bullshit life throws my way, and to help me de-stress my life. Researching how great people in history dealt with their problems led me back to something that was always on my “learn about this eventually” list: stoicism.

I’m not going to dive into the virtues of stoicism here, but I would highly recommend The Obstacle is the Way as a crash course that will get your feet wet and point you in the direction of what to read next. The main thing I will note here is simply this: stoicism is a timeless, battle tested, and, most importantly, practical mental framework about living a good life.

My goal with this long series of posts is to think about and practice these concepts regularly so they do not become stale, fuzzy, or worse, forgotten. Thankfully this is precisely what The Daily Stoic prescribes: read one specific stoic proverb or thought every day, and then articulate my thoughts and reactions. There is one for each and every day, so this will be a year long journey and thus very long series of posts.

Let’s get started.

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(Also, as a brief aside, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, considered a god by his people and the most powerful man on the planet during his lifetime, took the time to write in a journal about virtue and how he could become a better person. This writing survives to this day, and you would be crazy not to read it.)