Nothing much

The calm before the storm.

Over the weekend I mainly kept to myself. I was feeling annoyed, or maybe vulnerable is a better word, on Saturday that my back injury had reared its ugly head (I think the issue actually was the sumo deadlift high pulls!), but by Sunday had recovered enough to go play with some weights. I also enjoyed a sleep in Sunday morning …. It had been a loooong time since I literally slept as long as I wanted to. Obviously I have a bit of sleep debt to work through.

On the way home I was noting the continued police presence along the N2. There are cars every 200m or so, facing the townships, after the protest on Friday that tied up the highway for hours. One of the things I learned at the emotions of the brain talk is that the best way to generate the rage emotion is to put something someone wants within their sight, taunt them with it, and refuse to let them have it. Sisyphus, anyone? Well, this has very interesting implications for a country like South Africa. It just made me think, two days after watching Batman, what on earth would happen if the masses decided to rise up in a violent manner. Which is why I got into social enterprise to begin with, to provide hope. But that’s a subject for another blog post.

Saturday night I went out to a VERY dead Long Street for a few drinks with my pal Jaco, who is moving soon to Amsterdam. Another person I am really going to miss, and the conversation was interesting because it made me vocalise something I’d never quite admitted to myself before, which was the set of conditions (other than aging out or career-ending injury) that would cause me to stop competing at CrossFit. Well, knowledge is power, right? I’d say that starts with self-knowledge.

Speaking of CrossFit, Monday night’s workout very nearly killed me. It’s been a while since I had a workout that trashed me so much that I couldn’t walk after. By the fifth round my legs would literally NOT move, it was crazy. But on the positive side, I’d say I didn’t leave much on the table in that workout. Always a good thing.

I think I should start a “funniest thing to happen at Virgin Active” account, along the lines of the hilarious Daily Driving Disaster blog. It does have its own charm, and enables me to socialise outside of the CrossFit circles, and some days schedule conflicts disallow me from attending the advanced class, but sometimes I just have to throw up my hands in despair.

Like this morning. Firstly, there is some guy monopolising one of the squat racks for his 40kg reverse bicep curl (which he probably thinks is a clean), and press. Oh, and something he was doing with dumbbells. I think there should be a rule: if you can easily clean the weight, don’t hog the squat rack if someone else actually wants to squat.

Then, I wanted to go do my alternating chest-to-bar pullups and handstand pushups but there was some guy on the one pullup bar, so I asked if I could work in with him for some quick sets. He said sure, as long as I did 50. When I came back for my second set he apologised for being a bit snarky, saying that he’d never seen ‘a lady’ do one pullup before, let alone multiple in a set. Then he asked me if I was a gymnast. And see, here this whole time I thought the strict handstand pushups were more impressive.

Yesterday I finished up some deliverables at work, and wrote a letter of recommendation for Olivia. The best letters of recommendation are the ones where you are sincere and mean every word. Man, I have had some fantastic interns in my time here, I’m not going to lie. Here’s a girl who took a very difficult challenge with both hands, and not only found a market gap in the disadvantaged communities, but did all the cost modelling around how to actual fill that need. That’s applied business skills right there, folks. Thomas, who was here at the same time, did work at a similar level of quality, albeit a higher level of confidentiality. Awesome sauce. There’s nothing on this earth like talent combined with enthusiasm and hard work.

And also too (Tina Fey reference to Sarah Palin, in honour of Paul Ryan, Romney’s VP candidate and even more of a complete non-sequitor than Palin might attempt), the Olympics ended. I didn’t watch too much because I was busy living my life, but a couple of comments of Olympic-related thoughts I’ve had above and beyond watching Jean and witnessing the sheer countrywide joy at each and every medal won by South Africa. Honestly, a huge proportion of people can tell you the at least the events that SA medalled in, if not the athletes themselves (tough for lightweight men’s four rowing ya know…). Anyway here goes:

• Oscar Pistorius … it’s one thing to see him run a race, it’s another thing to see him accept a relay baton. They may have finished eighth, but damn that was sweet.
• The U.S. women’s 4x100 relay. I’ve run this relay before, so I know perfection when I see it.
• Speaking of which, sprint athletes (400m and below) look like CrossFit athletes. Enough said.
• I missed all of the gymnastics. All of it. Hope to see some on video, because I love and respect the hell out of that stuff.
• It’s a shame that no one pays much attention to Athletics the other three years.

Over these last few days I also read my friend J’s summary of his first Ironman experience over the weekend. Well, by summary I mean 17 pages of narrative. I actually felt like I was slogging out that marathon alongside him. It was interesting for me to read this because he and I are so similar personality-wise, so it was interesting to hear where he had made mistakes, and what he’d learned as a result. He ended with a great commentary which is: ‘Undesired outcomes lead to lessons of what not to do. Life is about learning. Through this process, one must cultivate a pattern of doing the right thing and weed out doing the wrong thing.’

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

• “Rationality always wins.” – Jaco
• “If something’s going to happen, it’s going to f*cking happen.” – Ellie (my deterministic leanings come out while drinking, apparently!)
• “I should maybe exercise some discretion.” – Dominic
• “Most people know not to sleep while driving.” – Dominic
• “You’re too talented to be stuck here.” – Jaco
• “There’s not as much whiplash with chains.” – Howard
• “Leaving marrows in cars! What a strange society!” – Anton
• “It’s like you're my brain, but you just verbalise it better than I do.” – Anton
• “Pretty sure he’s going to ask you to show him that walk on water thing.” – Steve  
• “No, definitely not what I want at this stage!” – Doug
• “You do get around, don’t you?” – Matt 

Type I and Type II errors

Someone asked me a few weeks back if I’m a numbers person. I’m not, but I do like numbers and statistics. Couldn’t look at them all day, but my favourite MBA classes? Strategy, Marketing, Statistics, and Macroeconomics.  

Type I and Type II errors are very specific things in statistics but as with so many other things when they enter the common vernacular we go and broaden them almost to the point of unrecognizability.

A Type I error in statistics is where the null hypothesis is true, but we reject it. False positives are errors of this sort. Put more simply, when we believe something that isn’t true: here be dragons. A Type II error is where the null hypothesis is false but is incorrectly believed to be true. Like the sun revolving around the earth.

How and why we make mistakes is interesting to me. I guess when we see what we want to see is a Type I error, and when we don’t see what we don’t want to see is a Type II error. Ignorance is bliss, right? Unconscious incompetence? That would also be Type II.

I suppose if you broaden even further, over-optimism or hearing the same old story again and again and continuing to believe it (fool me twice, shame on me type mistakes) are all Type II. These seem the more dangerous mistakes to me. If you listen to the people around you and don’t dismiss information out of hand because it doesn’t fit with your existing world view, you’ll avoid most Type I errors.  

Type IIs are the ones where we really hurt ourselves, because we allow ourselves to fool ourselves. He didn’t really mean to hurt me, he loves me. If I just stay here long enough, they’ll give me the raise I deserve. I can never win the Olympics; I’m not good enough.

Thursday was a public holiday, National Women’s Day. In a strange example of procrastination getting you everywhere, I got myself a free ticket to a breakfast and lecture at Solms-Delta wine farm, by one of the owners of the farm who happens to be a famous professor of psychology. He gave what turned out to be a 90-minute lecture on emotions of the brain. I had no idea but they are now able to measure the results of certain stimuli on the brain and so what he described to us was all the more interesting because it is based not in theory but in fact.

So there are eight recognised emotions at the moment (apparently the eighth is a bit controversial but in my uninformed opinion it shouldn’t be): Wanting, liking, fear, rage, attachment, care, play, and dominance. Things like surprise and disgust are not emotions per se but are sensory reflexes.

I’d heard some of this before from books that I’d read but one thing he said really stuck with me – there are some things we are just wired to fear: snakes, spiders, lions, sabre-toothed tigers. Other things we must learn to fear, and that happens from a SINGLE bad experience. Fear is an imprinting system. Touch a hot stove … don’t touch a hot stove again. Ask a girl out and she laughs in your face …. Maybe you only go for ‘safe yesses’ after that. Lose control of a car in a snowstorm … respect that snow for ever after!

For myself I can think of a couple fear imprintings, because the event in question was so traumatic. Some are positive from a standpoint of learning a lesson; some are less so. If you’re afraid of certain things you can fight through that fear, and sometimes our other emotions force us to do so.

But have you ever been in a situation where you had to react quickly; instinctually? How did you move, what did you do, and were you happy with that? My tendency, for better or worse, is if you ask me a direct question I’ll answer it. Where I get into trouble is where you put me on the spot, where if I don’t have a ready answer I delay. But I guess that’s ok. I don’t like having a fuss made over me, unless I think I deserve it. Even then … I’m happy to win the event but I HATE the podium after. In any event, my mother always told me I thought quickly on my feet, and I think I do: the one time I can think of that I’ve been physically threatened I didn’t freeze, I didn’t pause, I just reacted, and reacted perfectly. But that was once. What I do fear? Failure in the face of the unknown.

I won’t lie and said I did much the back half of the week. But I did manage some admin like extracting my Wild Card from the post office and started an oxtail stew. It’s still technically winter, and I loooove oxtail stew. Like good chilli though it takes days to make.

Other than that, just kind of caught up on my social life: dinner with Amy, Batman with John, lunch with Julius and hearing about his new business idea, and dinner with Hes & Ryan. Batman was awesome, by the way. I enjoyed it more than I recall enjoying the first two movies although I did laugh halfway through when he was not getting full range of motion on his pushups. It did cause me not to get sufficient sleep Thursday night, which I felt in my Friday workouts. The morning I felt weak even if I [apparently] didn’t look it. I must say, I make fun of it all the damn time and the equipment sucks but I actually love my globo gym. I left my jump stretch band there by accident and no fewer than three personal trainers made sure to let me know where they’d put it for me. And it’s great to be in a gym setting that’s not CrossFit, from time to time, and train with people who aren’t CrossFitters. I mean … where else can I accidentally insult the kung fu prodigy? Certainly not in his house.

Friday was definitely not a show off day as I failed a relatively heavy back squat (got to the bottom and when I started to strain on the way back up ditched rather than strain my back). Then my de-conditioning showed in the metcon where I just couldn’t maintain pace after the first 5 minutes or so. I still beat Norman though. Even though I know the conditioning comes back quickly, it’s hard to feel this out of shape. But I used it as good mental training to push hard and keep good form even while tired, so from that standpoint it was certainly fun!

Hopefully it was the sitting on the couch rather than the back squat that caused me to wake up Saturday feeing some strain in the back … shame, as I was really looking forward to snatching at open gym. Oh well. Discretion is the better part of valour. And I felt like a real dumb-ass when I then nearly burned my hand really badly right where you use the hook grip by grabbing the baking dish with my bare hand. Luckily I remembered to use hot water rather than ice and the burn is …. What burn?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about work-life balance and the weight of responsibility. Mental and emotional strain will take its toll on you physically. We watched The Devil Wears Prada which I thought would be a fun escape from reality but instead just made me re-think priorities. There are a couple of times in the movie where our heroine has to choose between her career and hurting someone else’s feelings. I was actually laughing at the movie a bit because honestly … I didn’t think the moral dilemmas were that rough. I would always choose the career.

• “Well that’s the thing. Skyrove really is.” – Helen
• “You can’t be afraid of a challenge.” – Helen
• “You’re an angel?” “No, I’m a friend.” – guy downstairs & Ellie
• “When you’re in your authentic self, these things happen to you.” – Amy
• “How you feel about something is your business.” – Mark
• “Labradors know the meaning of life. And they love it. Us? We think a lot.” – Mark
• “You’re just a couple of years ahead of what I thought would be the schedule.” – Steve
• “You can’t have any chinks in your armour.” – Ellie
• “I’m sure you didn’t!” – Kim
• “Everyone wants to be them.” – Bryony
• “We were just gossiping about you.” – Doug
• “He does have an interesting sense of humour.” – Ryan
• “I think you did so well with this opportunity because you were not attached to the outcome.” – Kerry 
• “Always pay attention to energy connections like that.” – Kerry 

Just stuff

Another few days, a whole brain dump of Hubspace operations, a bluescreen that cleared my Mindmap, a lot of progress on the acceleration framework, dinner at Carne, one VERY bad night’s sleep, four gym sessions, and a little bit less time spent feeling like a member of Falun Gong. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the inventor of compression gear, without which I would be having a very difficult time walking.

It snowed in Joburg, apparently. I saw a photo Henk posted of his chariot to Australia with snowflakes swirling around. Made me think of my days living in New England, and traveling for Exit41.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about both my time at Exit41 and leaving Cape Town. Because now, Henk is gone, and Susan is gone. I feel surprisingly empty, which is a bit strange thing when you consider how much I love it here, and all the amazing things in my life. I think why I feel empty is that them leaving makes me think of how I would feel to leave. Maybe I someday will, but I’m certainly not ready yet.

I felt like this once before, when I lived in California. But I moved anyway.

Speaking of movement, I was having a devil of a time at CrossFit trying to do high repetition power cleans with decent form. Old habits are hard to break, and I was having some definite issues with my balance doing overhead walking lunges … that old sprained ankle still causes proprioception problems, as much improved as it is. Amazing. Oh, and my split jerk is absolutely abominable at the moment.

In happier news, the rate of healing of my back has been increasing, so long as I don’t do stupid things. Maybe it’s all the health qigong. A funny thing: when I find myself just naturally stretching, I find that I am finding my movement resembling some of the moves that we learned. They just feel natural, when you do them right. Getting to that point of virtuosity, of course, requires practice.

Speaking of natural, I’m feeling the effects now of some bodywork that is meant to get me physically aligned in a more permanent way than chiropractic, which works for a while then old holding patterns kick in. It’s complicated, but this definitely seems to be working. The most recent session shift involved a realignment of my entire pelvis into something that resembles the position you are supposed to have in the whole kung fu/tai chi/qigong squats. No wonder I had such a devil of a time doing it properly last week; my entire adult life, probably, I’ve had a restriction in my lumbar vertebrae. It is quite a thing to correct something like that, and to be aware enough of the body to be able to feel the difference. Because it’s dramatic.

And, just when I had stopped thinking about synchronicity, and as the internet is going up and down at work and driving me completely nuts, I happened to see this link pop across my Facebook feed. Interesting. My friends are also very smart. In recent weeks, and not in chronological order:

• Jean told me I can accomplish whatever I set my mind to.
• Michael told me we tend to accomplish things as fast as we decide we want to, meaning that we should set aggressive deadlines.
• Richard told me that it’s a conceit to say that we can only connect the dots going backwards, and we can in fact guide our own futures.

All conventional wisdom, rarely applied.  

I was also having a quite interesting conversation with my co-worker about conventional wisdom. Specifically, how the conventional wisdom around eating is almost all incorrect (Whole grains are good! Coconut is bad! Dairy is good! Fat is bad!). My opinion on this is that it’s not some huge industry conspiracy so much as just conventional wisdom taking a long time to change, especially in the absence of any real money behind getting the message out.

Similarly, Mobility WOD’s latest insight: icing is bad. Impossible to prove me wrong but I still credit Dr Lan with enabling me to recover sufficiently to compete at Regionals this year. Guess maybe the whole ‘3000 years of Chinese medicine might know a thing or two so you should shut your Western ass up and listen to me’ might have something to it.

It’s a fundamental question: when to take something on faith and when to try and understand why, so you can decide for yourself. No one has a monopoly on being right, and ad hominems of any nature are very dangerous.

Just like not knowing your own limits. The only thing worse than setting yourself up to fail is to set your team up to fail, which is why most good athletes have coaches, and most good managers have mentors, and most good companies have active, engaged, boards of directors. As I said, no one has a monopoly on being right. But sometimes you just have to make a decision.

For me, some of the decisions I’ve been happiest with are the ones I made in a split second, and almost immediately. The decision to leave school to work for Jeeves. The decision to go to Babson. The decision to start CrossFit, and do it properly.

The ones that haven’t worked out as well are the ones I ponder, and rationalise, and go back and forth.

Thanks to my interest in behavioural psychology, I understand why this is the case. Similarly, why we regret things more that we don’t do, and why we worship sunk costs, and why really, we’re stupid to listen to anything other than out gut most of the time, but at the same time, our brain deceives us.

But hey, that’s what makes life fun, right? Well, that and music, and food, and laughter, and wine, and relationships with other humans, and making progress, and handstand pushups.

Two things I know to be true: you have to like what you do, and be able to see yourself making progress. Whether that’s work, sport, a hobby … you name it. Someone asked me this week if I were sponsored if I would be a full-time athlete. I’m not so sure that I would. I don’t think that would be enough for me.

• “Just … don’t let it affect your CrossFit too much.” – Susan
• “There we have it: functional for drunken shenanigans!” – Karl
• “Every company has at least one elephant.” – Ellie
• “I feel like we could accomplish a lot if we would just focus.” – Jeff
• “I wonder how many people you could have hit today and it wouldn’t have been your fault at all. I’ve counted at least three.” – Jeff
• “And if not, that means they care about themselves more than they care about you.” – Susan
• “Too lazy to use the lift? Do you realise the irony in what you just said?” – Susan
• “Hehehe wish we could see your face.” – Hes
• “It’s quite a thing to realise that you live in paradise.” – Byron
• “Your Achilles heel is much better.” – Byron
• “He hasn’t forgotten to listen along the way.” – Kerry 

Emotions

There’s a lot of awesomeness in my life right now. Quite a couple of things that have been developing for a while are now almost here. Not counting my chickens before they’re hatched; not quite; but it’s a good feeling and an exciting time.

On the flip side, while this is the case I can’t help but feel a bit tentative; a bit unsettled, and super emotional. It may also be all the disruption recently; the travel across huge distances, the all-too-brief reconnections, and everyone back in Cape Town just treating me like I’d never left. I feel different but I look the same. A lot of people would ask if I was glad to be back, and for the first few days my answers were disingenuous. By NOW, I’m re-settled and happy but it took me a bit.

There were a couple of times on Wednesday when I just felt really small and petty. The first was in hearing the story of two young entrepreneurs who had already sacrificed so much, and their vision to provide a small but tangible beacon for disadvantaged young people and an example of an integrated, reconciled South Africa. I’m torn between empathy, a little jealousy, and guiltily wondering if they are naïve or if I’m jaded.

The second was at dinner with Susan when she was describing the incredibly tough choices that doctors at Tygerberg need to make on a daily basis … like literally denying care to patients because there is not enough available equipment and manpower to go around. So you think in theory, if a patient comes into the ER with mortal wounds, it makes sense not to put him on a ventilator if you know there are trauma patients coming in the next ten minutes who are likely to survive and are going to need those ventilators. Easy thing to say over a lamb shank & glass of wine in Vredehoek, but on a human level to deny care and look the screaming, crying, distraught families in the face and tell them why you cannot treat their loved one …. Well I guess I just have a whole new level of respect for the work she’s been doing, and that the doctors in this country continue to do.

But one person can’t solve all the world’s problems, nor is it our responsibility to do so, although that’s where the tragedy of the commons fits in. If it’s no one’s specific duty to address a specific problem, then it has a way of not getting done. So I’ve been very happy with my focus and progress last week. My decks were cleared by my vacation so I can now focus on what’s important. It’s almost a sprint in a way, to see how much I can get done how quickly (if you got the Agile pun, good for you).

It used to be that I preferred to work alone … give me my data, leave me alone to write the document, define the specs, and then I’d get annoyed with the engineers’ questions that were answered in the requirements or the functional spec. Apparently I’ve changed. I now HATE working alone. I would much prefer to sit with a group of smart people and solve a problem together. Guess what, apparently Babson was right and I’m a natural leader after all. Hopefully not the sort to lead lemmings off a cliff!

I’m quite excited for the next couple of weeks’ work with Greenpop to develop their business case into a business plan, and in a way even more so to work with Jeremy to put it together into a packaged form that’s not a traditional long Word document. Makes sense; they are not a conventional brand, so once we figure out the audience a non-conventional delivery mechanism may work well, and Jeremy’s brain works differently enough from mine that it’s going to be interesting for us to work together closely like this. Who knows, I might even learn a thing or two!

Last week was exhausting, actually. I can maybe blame the qigong, because while it didn’t seem very taxing physically it’s hard to concentrate on proper form and movement for three hours at a go, four days in a row. It took me a while to connect the two but I was also ravenous after class. Cause … effect? The health qigong we are learning is meant to stimulate the internal organs, so it might kind of make sense that it might not feel exhausting but would tire me out nonetheless.

Friday was fun: Lunch in a church (!), rooibos with Henk at his place in Woodstock, my first workout at Cape CrossFit since my return, and then dinner at Tao Yuan. I think they must put something in the food there because I had all of one glass of wine but I swear I was intoxicated when I left. Hmm, maybe it wasn’t the food. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the food. Unless maybe it was the fish eye I ate … wonder if those can have hallucinogenic properties?

But back to the kung fu cult; this cult leader not only drinks but actually requires it. Apparently you don’t say no to Shirfu. Yeah well, he may be able to kill me with merely a thought [no he’s not Darth Vader!!] but I can be very stubborn.

Saturday I woke up and went to CCF where I just played around, really. I’m still trying to be careful of my back. Did overhead squats which felt more awkward than they should (it has been a few months). I matched my PR but then had issues getting a heavier weight overhead so I switched to doing some cleans, and videotaping them so I could check what I was doing wrong. I found a couple of things, some of which were expected, some of which were not. Frame-by-frame replay is kind of awesome!! Then Jobst came by and made me get my new PR on overhead squat. Annoyingly, I didn’t video that. Well, it was a small jump. I’ll just have to smash it and next time capture it on video!

Met Susan at the market afterwards, where we ate almost everything in sight. I then headed over to the martial arts studio, which really needs a shorter name. Even the acronym IKLWC is too many syllables. They were having kind of an open house so I kinda played around a bit. I guess yong chun reduces to one basic punch and three basic blocks (this makes a good party trick, actually, which is why I should stick to my internal martial arts for now). Had to excuse myself in a bit of a hurry to get to Camps Bay where Chris was having a braai/viewing of Jean lifting in the Olympics. It wasn’t broadcast on TV so we had to watch on the laptop which was kind of lame but whatever …. It’s still the Olympics!!

An amazing t-bone and ‘rabbit food’ later, I went over to Henk’s going away braai, which had the LEAST paleo-friendly spread imaginable. Thank goodness for Chris’ braai or I would have eaten God knows what …. Fun party though. It was kind of crazy, I saw some people that I hadn’t seen in ages, and some people I had met in the last week. But more to the point, I got to spend a few more precious hours with someone I have always liked and respected. Henk’s kind of a genius nerd, and a charismatic one at that. He’s a real game-changer actually, and he’s only getting started. I remember when I first met him I was so impressed to know the guy who had founded Skyrove. But …. Yeah. Fun party, and some damn good pinot noir compliments of Sir Chris Rawlinson.

Sunday …. Slept in, woke up and joined my friend Jo on a mission to Canal Walk (that place IS a mission). But I needed to buy some weights, so it was great to get that done. Then we went to Green Point Park to take a stroll and some pictures. I had no idea such a stunning park existed in Cape Town! You learn something new every day I guess. Or, you do if you keep your eyes open at least some of the time. Then dinner with Susan in Sea Point. I cannot believe this woman is also leaving in a few days …. My world is kind of getting rocked from all fronts.

Back to the emotions thing: I was unexpectedly emotional about watching Jean lift. I am not sure why it affected me quite as strongly as it did; I just really REALLY like the guy. We had a kind of crazy intense Facebook chat that night too. I’m looking forward to spending more time with him these next few months.

Then a few short hours later I was stupidly emotional to say goodbye to Henk. Like, I actually wanted to cry, which is not an urge I often get. I had no idea it would make me that sad to say goodbye to him as he leaves on his Australian adventure. Just one of those people I wish I’d taken time to get to know better before he left my physical presence (if not my life).

I’ve also had some hectic stuff happen to some people I care about. A mugging. An attempted mugging. A car crash. Everyone is ok but …. It seems to be an unsettled time. Guess the lesson here is don’t relax. Don’t take shit for granted. Don’t take people for granted.

But there are a lot of reasons for these strong emotions. Mutual lovefests are flattering and humbling at the same time. Across all areas of my life, I just want to be better.

As Kim’s rhetorical question goes: “Are your excuses more important than your dreams?”

• “That’s my kung fu stance.” – Kim  
• “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.” – Michael
• “Oh, you are. That’s cute.” – Jeremy
• “It’s time to up the ante.” – Jeremy
• “Push your own boundaries, Ellie.” – Jeremy
• “And this is why we seem to like you.” – Doug
• “You never have to explain tequila to me.” – Susan
• "You can be very persuasive."  – Ellie
• "Poaching happens." – Ellie
• “You’re gonna rock it!” – Henk
• “I appreciate that it’s your baby.” – Ellie
• “Just the truth.” – Jean
• “It feels like winter.” “It is winter!” – Ellie & Jo
• "That would be the VERY definition of awkward!"  –  Ellie

On big egos

I learned something in the last week. I love competent people with big egos.

Notice I didn’t say all people with big egos. You gotta be able to back that stuff up. Also, you can’t be an ass or I probably won’t like you very much. And you can’t claim a big ego as a cover up for massive insecurities …  because I can see through that sooner or later. That sweet spot where you’re a little bit arrogant but not too much so … yeah, that’s the place to be.

One time at Babson they separated us into groups based on results of a personality test, and MAN, were we happy campers. It’s so nice to have people who are mirrors of yourself. You can sometimes skip verbal steps but still ‘get’ each other, and you are likely to react to the same stimulus differently. That was the purpose of the experiment, of course, to show us how we work more easily with people similar to us and to warn us of the dangers of having too many people around us who are too similar.

Dissent and argumentation are critical to business success. The most dangerous thing is a charismatic person leading lemmings off a cliff. At least, I’m hard pressed to think of a MORE dangerous thing at this exact moment.

Yeah, big egos can be the charismatic leaders of lemmings. But they can just as easily be the people who really move the needle. In fact, they are usually the ones that do. The ones that say “Well shit, someone’s gotta take a stand here and it may as well be me. Someone has to found this company. Someone has to turn this company around. Someone has to speak truth to power. Someone has to rock the boat. Why NOT me?”

It’s like the guy (or girl) who’s good looking and knows it. Not anything wrong with that per se. There’s only a problem when you start taking advantage of the situation.

I was actually having this exact conversation in New York and then kinda partially repeated it Friday evening in Cape Town. That was mainly epic because after specifically emailing my mother that I hoped the 27dinner didn’t turn into a booze fest, a few glasses of Sauvignon Blanc later I found myself at the Waterfront continuing to drink. With yet another super smart guy with a big ego who lives (or soon will, close enough!) in another far-flung corner of the world.

And then Susan made a very similar comment about how the two of us got along so well because, among other things, we have a lot of great stuff going on in our lives, and we know it, and we appreciate it.

That ego drives you, and keeps you resilient in the face of criticism or getting beaten about. It can get in your way, surely, if it keeps you from listening to criticism or committing ad hominems or putting yourself into risky situations where you might be stretched or doing things that you feel might be beneath you.

As I was saying the other day, the most useful week I ever spent at Exit41 was the week I spent working in a Wendy’s. That gave me insight, and context, and street cred I could use with the developers: “Oh, you think that situation would never come up in practice? Let me tell you why you’re wrong.” But in a way you kinda have to leave your ego at the door to be working alongside minimum wage workers who know what they’re doing a hell of a lot better than you do. It was also one of the most fun weeks I spent there, and damn my feet hurt at the end. But it was totally worth it. The grind, right?

So I am back from vacation with only one big task on my plate for now: how to systematise multi-dimensional assessment & problem-solving. I can’t help but think someone, or some team, has solved this problem before but I’ll do the best I can for a V1, and will definitely take this as a learning experience. I’ve definitely already learned that not everyone sees the value in starting with the big context and working down to the details. Maybe this is the curse of a big picture thinker; that I think SO big that it’s sometimes hard to figure out where exactly to start!

The adaptation back to Cape Town was a bit rough. I felt a bit out of sorts the first couple of days. I don’t blame jetlag because I don’t really do jetlag, but the sheer physical exhaustion of the plane ride back to Cape Town did take its toll on me. Friday night I went to the gym to do mobility (aka stretching) and it was dreadful. Everything was stiff!

Followed that up with a 27dinner, which is a regular dinner/networking/drinking event for techies. This time around we met at a place called Frieda’s where I caused mass confusion by ordering a salad with a burger on top, met some cool new people, and after the aforementioned Sauvignon Blanc found myself at Ferryman’s at the V&A Waterfront not watching the Olympics opening ceremony but instead … well, drinking, yes, but also thoroughly enjoying myself. Geez, it’s going to be sad to think of a Cape Town without Henk.

Saturday post-plane bodywork session, followed by double lunch at the Biscuit Mill (I didn’t eat enough on the plane … and drinking doesn’t count as eating either), then I went home to take a nap with my kitty. Met Susan & friends back at Ferryman’s for a little bit, dinner, picked up Jon Jon at the airport and watched some Olympics with him (on NBC, no less … when outside of Rome, bring it with you!). Man, NBC’s Olympics coverage sucks compared to the standard South African coverage. Less chats with the athletes and more action in primetime. Seriously, guys. At least have two feeds: one with the action and the other with the fluff.

And while I’m on the subject of the Olympics … South Africa has so far won two gold medals, both in swimming (and one of the swimmers beat Michael Phelps). As much as I am American and do root for America in pretty much everything except for ice hockey, I obviously also now root for RSA and it’s quite cool to witness the genuine excitement and pride of South Africans when their country wins anything. I mean if you come from the U.S. or China or Russia it’s all about “how many more or less medals did we win than X or than last Olympics” not “oh wow, we actually won something.” Spreading the love a little.

Love this from twitter: Let's make it a phrase. "You've been Le Clossed," Definition: "If u think you've got something in the bag and someone sneaks up on you and wins."

Sunday was an awesome day! Firstly it was beautiful and warm although you wouldn’t know it as we froze our bums off in the martial arts studio. There is a qigong Master from Beijing in town right now. I am attending a four-day course this week with most of the instructors and a couple of the other students, and Sunday was the intro.

So I piled into my sun-warmed car, scarfed down some eggs & spinach (sooo nice to be able to eat what I want, when I want again!!!), and drove out to Somerset West for a powerlifting workshop at West Workout Gym. I very nearly didn’t go because I got all the way there and had no idea where the gym was in the strip mall. What looked like the entrance was behind a gate, and I’d been out of the country so long that it took me a minute to realise that just because the gate was closed didn’t mean it was locked.

Anyway this was very exciting not only because I learned a lot but because I got to play around. My bench press setup is apparently practically perfect, and I got some tips on my squat and particularly deadlift setup. Not sure why I find deadlift so difficult; it seems like every coach has a different opinion about the proper setup! We also learned a lot of the theory: how bands & chains work (and we got to experiment with using them), and some tips and tricks for how to train to push through sticking points. Like I said … the theory, and application of the theory, is what gets me off. Once a nerd, always a nerd I guess. It’s also quite exciting to see the sport of powerlifting almost devolve from an equipment-heavy sport where you have to go to extreme lengths even to get into the suits you need that assist you in lifting the weight (WTF, right?) as a splinter called RAW (i.e. no equipment) is forming and is now done competitively internationally. Call me old-fashioned but I think that’s awesome.

Oh and the other cool thing … this gym is properly old-school. Like it reminded me of my boarding school days, but sort of what I might imagine a South African version would be like.

… and speaking of squatting, I had a devil of a time at the first qigong session. It took me close on two hours to learn how to squat properly! They were having a bit of a laugh … but a CrossFit squat is not the same. I was much better by the second day … of course on that day we actually had to coordinate complex movements of both arms and legs doing different things at different times. Good old gymnastic activity messing up the circuits in my brain. Good stuff.

Our instructor has quite a sense of humour although his English isn’t the best, which I find quite endearing, especially considering how it’s almost infinitely better than my Chinese. But his funniest joke so far was not one he intended to make …. he was talking about the problems inherent in giving Bibles (he meant bribes).

I’m quite tired at the moment… these three-hour a night sessions are not so much physically demanding as they are mentally tiring, and I keep staying up late to see Susan. Last night was dinner @Beluga, for example, and then getting up early to train because I can’t do so in the evenings obviously. Have been trying to copy the CCF programming as much as I can, at least for now. Yesterday morning’s huge mental win was 5 sets of 3 strict chest-to-bar pullups (chin-ups, actually). This is a win because I HATE and am TERRIBLE at strict pullups. There is very little worse than a sticking point on a strict pullup, and I have not one but TWO sticking points on pullups.

One interesting tidbit from the week: the five senses came up on Monday morning, and then again made an appearance obviously in the qigong class. What we were talking about Monday morning was how sight is as much about insight into things as actual sight (seeing what is there, not what we want to see), and taste, for example, is as much about taste for life and experience as actual taste. So then that evening we were discussing the relation of each of the five elements to the five senses, and, what I didn’t know, was that each is connected to one of five major organs, AND to a season. Yes, you read that right.

In China there are not four seasons but five: autumn, winter, spring, summer, and late summer (which apparently is particularly hot, and humid). I love this, because it always bothered me how New England has six months with no leaves on the trees. In Vermont we used to say there was spring, summer, fall, winter, and mud season … which isn’t far from the truth. Spring, summer, fall, winter, late winter.

Change, and the changing of the seasons, seems to be a bit of a thing with me right now as a couple of realisations have clicked into place in the last even week or so. 

It's hardest when you realise stuff is true that you've been denying. Damn, yourself really is the easiest one to fool, isn't it?

• “Is that paleo?” – Elan
• “You need to drink more.” “Why?” “Because you’re making far too much sense.” – Henk & Ellie
• “Good. That fits in with my plans.” – Henk (ever feel like you’re a pawn in someone else’s game??)
• “So much for complete rest.” – Kim
• “It says I love San Francisco! And I do!” – Anna
• “I had a good time. I got to suture a man’s tongue.” – Susan
• “It’s no coincidence you had that dream last night.” – Debbie
• “I’m just laughing because it probably wasn’t the best decision on their part.” – Jeff
• “China.” – Jeronimo (in answer to the question: ‘Where did the sound come from?’ … the correct answer being the belly!)
• “It’s a good fit.” – Kim
• “Is that a promise or a threat?” “Take it as you may.” – Ellie & Jaco
• “Oh, I think they do.” – Derek