It’s been my experience at work that productivity is sought at the cost of random acts of laughter.We should have more laughter and randomness, but not planned.I love the surprise element of humor. Good humor defies expectation. It leads you down one path and denies you the ending you wanted to tell and shows you something better or more real. I suppose that’s a matter of taste. Perhaps, my more universal thought is, try to take yourself a bit less seriously — a little (appropriately timed) laughter always helps… sometimes.

I don’t have a college degree. And, I’ve achieved quite a bit of success without one. Besides my attitude, I believe (with reasonable confidence) that a Jesuit education gave me key tools. I am not especially religious. I’ve given some critique on the Catholic church in a previous post. However, there are elements of the education that make it valuable. And, transferable.Jesuits practice what’s called Spiritual Exercises, based on Ignatian spirituality. The first principles of these exercises are secularized below:We are created for something bigger than ourselves.We have everything we need within us to make that something bigger than ourselves.With what we have, we must do all we can for what we are made to do. We must rid ourselves of that which does not help us achieve that end.Ultimately, the only thing that matters is what helps us serve others.Compliment the first principles with the Ratio Studiorum — the Jesuit guide for education. The Ratio prioritizes philosophy, logic, rhetoric — very Aristotle — and later science, mathematics, and other subjects that help the student engage with the world as it is not as it is hoped to be — very Machiavellian. And in this way, I believe this is why the education is so potent. To see and know yourself as an agent of great change, to see the world as it is and not as you hoped it would be, and to have the intellectual capacity to engage in that world and make your impact. To distill it down even more: develop your mind, develop your eyes, become fearless, and take chances. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

I’m noticing the overwhelm re-surfacing. A feeling that there’s some kind of weight, pressure, or heaviness upon me.I usually experience it around this time. And I typically find pulling back and getting outside to be perfect antidotes. Let’s see if this season turns around better and faster for me. I remind myself: slow and steady.

If you took a statistics course in your life, you might know that a flip of a coin does not yield heads or tails 50% of the time until you’ve flipped a coin ~9,604 times (assuming a 1% margin of error). That’s insane. Let’s assume you flip a coin twice. One flip yields heads and the other tails. Suppose someone says that you’ll flip heads 50% of the time based on what your two flips. Well that’s wrong. If you figure out the standard error, you’ll discover that yes, a person might flip heads 50% of the time — plus or minus 69.4%. That 69.4% represents a tremendous amount of uncertainty. Why care about any of this? Because it’s probably worth increasing skepticism towards claims and allowing for margin of error. And that’s advisable because not accounting for the margin of error and being skeptical for sake of skepticism may cause you to reject useful claims and ideas. At the same time, I do not suggest you reject the things you see. I try not to invalidate my own experiences. Instead, I try to interpret what I see through a lens of likelihood. A silly example: “How certain am I that the person cut me off in traffic just to get under my skin?” You would need to survey the driver who cut you off and a thousand plus more drivers to become reasonably certain. Instead, I prefer to quantify my ignorance: “I’m not even 5% certain that was the cause, I am 100% certain that it’s on me to get over it.”Model your ignorance with confidence…. more or less of the time.

When everything clicks.When information moves from one thing to the next without friction.When we are riding the exact same wave length.When you’re sharing the moment with another, make eye contact, and you suddenly realize that you’re both making something special — so special that it can never happen again in the same way no matter how hard any one tries.When words fail.Such was last night’s gig.

Note: I’m not much of a football fan. I read a story today that what contributes to Patrick Mahomes being an ultra-effective quarterback is his ability to pass. That got me interested.American Football evolved from being a tackle game to a game about the pass. Some claim that the disincentive of penalties for hitting defenseless players created a pressure to evolve the game to being one about passes. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know that quarterbacks receive a ton of money and there’s quite a bit of selection pressure to find people who are skilled at executive passes, assessment and decision making, and an ability to run. Let’s focus on the pass.Passing in sports is no different than passing in music is no different than transmission in communication is no different than energy transfer in physics. It is about the efficient movement of a thing between things. And there are many ways to maximize the movement of a thing for optimal transmission. I think about delegating work. For an effective delegation of work, a leader must have situational awareness of the work (and constraints) of the person they intend to delegate to. The delegatee must signal their openness or their constraints so that the delegator knows how/if to execute or move on. If it’s clear that delegation is possible, then the delegator must effectively communicate the task, responsibility for completion, and assert their own accountability for the outcome. My friend, Sean, often says “everything is communication.” And, I continue to believe in that claim. While I may not fully appreciate football, I certainly have a deeper appreciation for quarterbacks and other great communicators.

I am thinking about what it means to be unilateral. Unilateral mainly means “one sided” and the term can be applied in activities related to governance, leadership, and really anything that involves a decision. The opposite of unilateral would be multilateral — a “multi-sided” action. Unilateral actions are efficient and effective at forcing a system to adapt to the decision maker. Multilateral decisions are better when collaboration is required. One is not better than the other if consequences are not considered.Here’s the rub — there are leaders who do not consider the second and third order consequences of their unilateral decisions. And when those decisions impact large and complex systems, then whiplash and other forms of destructive system behavior can occur. It’s my experience that this archetype of leaders typically do not collect inputs from others before making a decision — and there’s the real issue. It would seem that in complex systems, multilateral decision making may be better. Or, a blended approach of collecting decision inputs collaboratively and then making a unilateral decision are optimal. It’s almost if any form of leader must intentionally design a decision making process where it’s easy for people to give inputs, and it’s even easier for people to sound the alarm if a decision could de-rail the system, and then it’s even easier for a leader to make their decision and learn as quickly as possible. That’s why I love music. The system that is music is one where many people make inputs, there are people who are unilaterally responsible for executing certain functions (drummers set time for example), and there are mechanisms for making changes mid-performance and guard-rails to prevent songs from going off the rails. What’s more, these types of systems are typically fun to play in and often show us something about ourselves that other activities can’t. Like most things in life — unilateral is not in and of itself a wrong thing. Application matters.

If you’re in a meeting and another participant is toxic or becomes negative towards you and your work — that’s a free lunch opportunity.You can allow that person’s interactions with you to not become personal. You can choose to see them as valueless to you. You can decided that spending nothing on engaging with that person’s interactions will give you back something much greater — contentment and energy. That suggestion might be hard to implement. I admit, I’m still working on it. What works for me is to find humor in the situation — laugh it off. Humor, for me, is a great mechanism to re-frame life’s challenges while costing me very little and getting a lot back. Like most things, more easily said than done; but with intentional practice, you’ll start seeing gains and peace.

There may be things in your life that if you do them, the amount of happiness received would be so high that any amount of trampling would be impossible.Would it be seeing your favorite artist? Would it be enjoying your favorite food? What is it? And, whatever it is, how big in scale is that thing? My hunch: it’s largely large scale. And if it’s large scale, it’s probably not easily attainable. And if it’s not easily attainable, then is the delay of achievement actually a form of trample? In systems, feedback delays can hamper or improve the performance of a system. And, in the system that is our person, I wonder how many delays to happiness we allow to persist? And if we reduced the delay to happiness, would we really need the large scale happiness things? I realize this post is more question than insight… but that’s what brings me happiness. I will not be trampled.

I heard Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University, say something that stuck with me:“Normally there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but actually, there are a bunch of free lunches. A lot of people waste resources in ways they don’t have to. If they just changed what they’re doing, they’d have a better life without giving anything else up. If you’re sitting in a bad movie, just get up and walk out—that’s a free lunch. You get your time back and avoid watching something you don’t even like.“Caplan’s point reminds me of system dynamics—one of the most powerful ways to improve a system is by changing the relationship between different elements. He’s saying something similar: if you want to improve your life, change your relationship with things that don’t bring you value.Of course, you could criticize this. Isn’t it fickle to keep changing course? Doesn’t it mean you’re wrong a lot? But Caplan flips the script: the person who learns fast and pivots becomes effective faster than the person who stubbornly tolerates what isn’t working. In the startup world, they call this failing fast.I thought about areas outside of business where this applies. Here are a few:Quitting alcohol. Why waste time and money battling gout, hangovers, and second-order health consequences? The easier path is to cut out the problem entirely.Leaving books unfinished. If a book isn’t delivering value, why keep reading? The sunk cost fallacy tricks people into wasting even more time.Ending bad relationships. Some cultures push couples to stay together at all costs. But forcing an unhappy relationship can lead to depression, resentment, and even betrayal. It’s better to recognize the mistake and move toward something healthier.Quitting toxic jobs. If your boss drains you, your work feels like a grind, and dread sets in every Sunday night, your time and talents are being wasted. Walking away is a free lunch—but, admittedly, one that not everyone can afford.Eating smarter. Same as quitting alcohol, but for food. If something is harming you, why maintain the relationship?Some of these are easier said than done. There are feedback loops, pressures, and obligations that make quitting harder than just flipping a switch. But that’s the point—these choices are free lunches only if you can see them clearly.If you want to apply Caplan’s lens to your own life, the trick is not just to copy his examples but to look at your system as it is, not as others say it should be.Personalization required.