Month: January 2022

I stopped reading a book this week—removed my yellow post-it note bookmark and returned it to the library with roughly two-thirds of the text unread, and this a work of fiction too. I have stopped reading nonfiction idea books after I read the same idea presented three different ways. Such books really should have been articles anyway. But with fiction I have persevered, stubbornly adhering to my initial decision to read the book even after it fails to grab my attention after multiple attempts. Though I derive no satisfaction from such a slog, it’s difficult to admit an error, even one based on incomplete information that has been rendered obsolete.

Several of the contemporary thinkers I most admire pride themselves on how many books they start or skim, not how many they finish. These people place books into three rough categories: books to be read and enjoyed for their own sake, mainly fiction and biography/memoir; books to be read to absorb a writer’s main ideas, encompassing most nonfiction works; and books to be studied and reread many times.

My own nighttime reading is intended to fit into the first category. I want to wind down and relax without resorting to the television screen, not send my mind whirring. It is self-defeating to persist through page after page of drudgery in what is intended to be pleasure reading. It is true that some books start slowly and build. To account for this, there is a little heuristic I once heard that you should read 100-minus-your-age pages (currently 70 for me) before setting a book aside. This particular book was well past that threshold and still hadn’t drawn me into the story.

I have been contemplating how this stop-loss ethos might apply to other areas of life. There are certain realms where it has no place, but maybe the principle extends beyond leisure and even into certain professional projects where neither results nor pleasure are forthcoming. It is something I will keep in mind anyway.

I’m going to introduce another of my favorite YouTube channels. This one is in a completely different genre than the last I mentioned in these pages (Great Art Explained), and instead focuses on the construction industry. The channel is The B1M, a channel that produces the sort of 6-10 minute episodes that entertain me once a week when I eat breakfast. Its slogan is “The definitive video channel for construction,” but it is more entertaining than that description indicates. Trust me. Besides, the host is British and so all of the videos are understated in a way that would not be the case if the channel were American. Recent videos have covered Russian port development in the Arctic, a Chinese crackdown on new skyscrapers, the Second Avenue subway extension in New York, and a video on the world’s largest observation wheel in Dubai.

I am not an engineer. Even in our childhood, my brother was the one more interested in Legos. I am someone who enjoys a broad exposure to ideas, though, and I am always searching for additional inputs to improve my own communication and presentation style. Exposure to different presenters is one way I achieve that. Many of our clients are engineers anyway, even if they build software instead of buildings, so listening to an engineering brain at work helps me empathize with my clients in a tangential way.

The channel is often sponsored by software companies involved in supporting these massive construction projects (such sponsorships being a necessary intrusion given the economics of YouTube—control of distribution means control over money), but even their paid bits offer a glimpse into a world I know very little about. We have done some legal work for a company that is developing software in this industry, but a demonstration of the technology has not yet been an aspect of our legal representation. The curiosity in me wishes it were; perhaps that can be a policy moving forward. Part of the fun in working with technology startups is getting a look at the future before the rest of the world sees it, and injecting more fun into the workplace is rarely bad so long as the work still gets accomplished.

Perhaps you have already failed at your resolutions for the new year. Perhaps you are still on track. Perhaps you never set any at all. Whatever your situation may be, I want to propose something. Put real numbers on whatever goals you have at present and write them down. If you don’t have any goals, then I encourage you to sit for a few minutes and think about how you want things to be different in three or six months and what might make that world a reality. Vague goals unhelpful. I need numbers, clear benchmarks against which I can measure my progress. Having numbers also makes it clear should I fail. It is this painful possibility that keeps many goals vague, but if failure isn’t possible then success probably isn’t either.

I make my goals visible so that I encounter them several times each day. Maybe it is a desire to avoid cognitive dissonance, but the comparison between the present and the state of the world as posited by those written goals offers a dangling carrot for me to chase. When I sit at my desk, my three overarching goals for the first quarter of this year are staring back at me scrawled in my own poor handwriting on the whiteboard above my desk, a whiteboard purchased for that very reason. I have juggled more than three in the past, but if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority so I am being more selective at present. The three are in different categories—one physical, one financial, and the third personal. All are achievable if only just, the sort of stretch goals that I need.

If you want to just start, start small. Take a half-hour walk once a week without talking on the phone or listening to music or a podcast. Cook a new recipe once every week for a month. Read a chapter of a book each day for two weeks. Whatever it is, aim at something you believe you can achieve, write it down so you can track your success to build positive momentum, and get started. And when you accomplish the task, make that visible too. Get a calendar for the task, use those little stickers teachers put on children’s homework, make a simple string of tally marks, whatever. You will feel better about yourself when you can see how you are stringing together the little victories that will add up to accomplishing your larger goals. We all know that “new year, new you” isn’t a real thing, but that doesn’t mean we can’t each get a little better in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

The turning of the calendar from one year to the next is a time of reflection. As part of my reflection process, I read a short blog post that I heard referenced in a podcast episode I listened to on one of my afternoon walks. The post is titled “Climbing the Wrong Hill,” and reading it a few times has beaten me over the head with a mental model I will be carrying into this year.

The blog’s starting point is a conversation the author had with a young employee of an investment bank. The young banker had decided he had no interest in being in finance long-term and that he wished to join a technology startup. When he told his bosses this, they responded by telling him about all of the additional responsibilities he would soon have (and the accompanying rewards) if he stayed. The young person decided to stick it out instead of leaving Wall Street, leaving the author disgusted.

The blog then goes into a discussion of computer algorithms to describe a more optimal solution to the problem of how to spend one’s professional life. Instead of merely climbing whatever hill/ladder/other metaphor on which you happen to find yourself, you should engage in some exploration to determine if there is another hierarchy where you could reach a much higher level. In the parlance of the post, this is the highest hill. The way to do this is to explore many different options, especially early in one’s career when the feelings of sunk costs are less, before committing fully to climbing in a single domain. And this does not preclude reaching the top of one domain after a period of several years, deciding that you no longer want to participate in that domain, and choosing another pursuit.

I have already experienced this phenomenon myself. After I clerked for Judge Siler, the greatest job anyone could have in the legal profession, I was an associate at a large firm in DC. It paid very well, I worked on cases that made national news, and I wanted no part of the lives I saw my bosses living. So I left. No, it wasn’t easy. The golden handcuffs are notoriously difficult to unshackle. The period since hasn’t been straightforward either, but leaving was the correct decision then and remains so today.

Now I’m a corporate lawyer who handles mergers and acquisitions in the lower middle market and acting general counsel for a few tech startups. Will any of this last forever? Given my own work history, probably not. At least now I’ve decided that that’s okay.

If you wish to read the blog post for yourself, it is available HERE. If you do, I hope that you incorporate the thinking into your strategic goals for this year (and those that follow) and that you aim for those goals that will bring you the greatest achievement and satisfaction.