work

Quiet Quitters

| jaylazzo

I learned about Quiet Quitters browsing Youtube today.

Quiet Quitters will not open emails after 3 pm. There may be good reasons for that, but in their case they do not read emails because they are afraid to confront what’s might be there.

Doctors, who usually don’t have a clue anyway, wish that the symptoms will disappear by themselves; we all wish our problems will just disappear on their own. It is right to postpone deciding if a decision is not needed right now (Falkland’s Law).

Quiet Quitters, however, procrastinate. They discover that an “urgent” task needs doing, or they find a reason to browse Youtube, as an excuse. Yet it’s just so much better to be over with the d**n thing, in whole or in part, delegate if needed.

Decisive action requires accepting the pain, not fighting it.

Steve Magness in Do Hard Things describes an experiment. Subjects (athletic coaches) were paired and pairs were seated facing each other, knees almost touching. The researchers instructed them to stare into each others’ eyes for a minute. To cope with the discomfort people looked at foreheads, giggled, fidgeted. As one minute turned to two, the unease became even more unbearable. However, as the minutes turned from two to three and three to four, subjects became more and more relaxed as they accepted their condition. The experiment ended in five minutes with a heightened sense of camaraderie.

Magness describes a similar experiment with male and female pairs. The researchers got the same results, and a bonus: some of the couples fell in love and married! Magness then described his personal attempt to replicate these results during a date but failed.

The experiments show that we can get enormous control over ourselves if we accept pain rather than fight it. Pain, in many ways an emotion like any other, is not compatible with action. If AFRAID, you SPEAK LOUDER. When in pain, act, don’t procrastinate. Open that email. Make that phone call. Say sorry.

Quiet Quitting can be unethical. You cheat others, you cheat yourself. And for what? A temporary reprieve from pain, which only returns for the issue that caused it remains unresolved.

Quiet Quitting makes you less useful to others. A mindset fixed on avoiding pain ends by avoiding service. A Quiet Quitter might look intense at work, but in reality may just be going through the motions. He will not have many ideas about how to improve the work place, though he might have detailed options about where to eat that night. Facebook, Instagram and cell phones make it possible to do a lot without doing anything.

Understand that many people have become Quiet Quitters during the pandemic and may be in a worse mental or emotional state than it appears. If you can help them now with firm, gentle reminders, just do it, now, don’t procrastinate.

(QC, 230122)

i met old friends at a wake

| jaylazzo

A friend of the family passed away Christmas of 2022.

He was my dad’s friend and father to 7 children who were also our buddies. We one by one went our different ways as we graduated university. Some went to the US, others stayed, some married, had kids. One from our side briefly dated one of theirs, and my brother is a neighbor to two of them in the US. But, on the whole, I haven’t seen most of those kids in over 30 years.

Until the wake of their dad.

I got to see all of the 7 back home, in the Philippines. The middle boy, M.V., was one of my best friends in college although we were from different universities. I got to meet his him, his wife and one of his daughters in 2015 in the US. Seven years later, today, I got to see the full extent of what my “nephews” and “nieces” have become, thanks to the hard work of their dad.

This is how his kids turned out. They all went to the best schools: Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, all on full scholarship. The two oldest girls, newly married, are employed as software experts in Google and Disney, one of whom is credited with a published VR technology. The oldest boy was offered scholarships in several top schools and chose Harvard.

M.V. though very intelligent was not what we call “academic”, but he in an extremely hard worker. He also had a little something to prove: middle children often do. I recall him telling me that he solved all the problems in one of his engineering textbooks and shared the answer sheet to his classmates. He married young right after college and migrated to the US, where he worked for a software company before founding his own consulting firm.

They never had a lot of money and they still live in a rented apartment. To raise 6 kids and give them good education they had nothing but hard work to rely on. It was not easy.

Education in the US is very expensive. The yearly tuition of just one kid could nearly wipe out one’s yearly salary. The only way his kids could get the education he wanted for them was through full scholarships. This is hell to process.

Aside from showing exceptional scholastic performance, there are tons of documents to fill out. This grueling chore has to be repeated every year. And every year, M.V. is audited by the universities, a process requiring even more paperwork. It was so hard that M.V. has closed his business in order to work full time administering the scholarships for the kids who are still studying.

The boy, M., in particular, is something. His SAT scores are perfect in math and nearly perfect in verbal, stratospheric enough to be offered full scholarships by several top schools including Harvard and Princeton. One question on the application form for Harvard asked “What did you in the summer, and what did you learn?”

M. could have done a regular summer job like most kids. But instead, the dad suggested that 1) his son design and build a product; and 2) that he shadow his dad in his consulting work. For the product part, M. designed and programmed an educational app that used virtual reality technology, with the help of his sister. For the shadowing part, he wrote that he spent the summer dusting the innards of computers.

For someone in high school to design and build a virtual reality app is impressive. But what I found more impressive was what he said he learned from shadowing his dad. M. wrote on his essay that he learned the value of preventive maintenance.

There’s a management adage called the 1-10-100 Rule. It says that it costs $1 to verify your work, $10 to repair a mistake, and $100 to control damage from use of the product. Preventive maintenance is that job, least glamorous, but that makes all function efficiently and effectively. It’s a minuscule investment all things considered.

Preventive maintenance summarizes the whole of M.V.’s strategy. He invested in the unglamorous job of filling out the tortured paperwork, but by doing so he also demonstrated what great work really involves. Work is grind, grind pays.

As to not having a house? “What does a house add to all this?,” M.V. asked me. “Nothing”. You don’t own a house until it is fully paid for, and until then it is a liability, not an asset. Grant Cardone, wealth consultant and author of The 10X Rule, has never owned his own house either.

Today their eldest daughter’s family lives in their own house. On Lake Tahoe, of all places. That’s very expensive, but it’s also very Google if you’re a top performer.

I’m so glad to have met M.V. again.

Then my phone rings; it’s his brother. M.V.’s siblings were downstairs in a shop called Marketplace, and were about to go to a karaoke bar. Could I drive M.V. there? I said, “Sure,” but changed my mind. “We’ll be done in about 15 minutes. Could you guys wait?”

They did. So M.V. and I went down to the ground floor, passing for cheese rolls first chez Mary Grace, which does not exist in the US, and I was able to say goodbye to the whole gang: Some of the Best Friends I’ve Ever Known.

On procrastination and dreaming of bicycles

| jaylazzo

Is it the case that having many interests promotes procrastination?

It would seem that having interests makes it painful to consider other tasks. According to this reasoning, having an interest other than the task at hand distracts. But this reasoning is nuanced. Although it may be true that having many other things in mind can be distracting, the problem is not with those other things but with the task one struggles with. This new task may be too large, too “difficult”, too complex. The mind protects itself, and puts a barrier that makes it easy to decide to postpone action.

It’s safer to run away, to procrastinate. The mind stays clear of danger. Let’s just not do anything. It’s a wise strategy sometimes. Perhaps the problem will disappear by itself, or somebody else will handle it. That is certainly something to hope for when one has too much on one’s plate. Which would be a problem in itself: not knowing how to manage priorities. And to manage emotions. Casually hoping a problem would go away when one’s priority is to deal with that problem is a problem of mismanaged emotions. Deal with it. Deal with it not by thinking about it but by acting on it.

Accounting is not an easy skill. I used to find Accounting very painful just to think about. But I came to love it. How? I acted, starting small. I bought a basic textbook, did all the exercises, and saved them as Excel templates that I still use today. On the other hand, intermediate accounting is daunting because I never studied it; I did not need it for my regular work.

Many other things cause pain, such as thinking about repairs in the house. I don’t have a system. A system would involve, say, scheduling a repair and preparing the materials the night before. This is an example of breaking the daunting task into familiar fragments — how much skill does it take to gather tools?

In short, the hard part is to begin, and the solution is to begin with a simple fragment of the whole and let momentum do the rest. In other words: “When you feel lazy about going to the gym, just think about putting on your gym clothes.”

Leadership roles are certainly more complex. They involve objects, people, how people relate to objects and how they relate to each other. But even for a CEO, a very complex work can be cut into fragments. Divide and conquer.

Another way out of procrastination is to obey. One can obey other people, or one can obey one’s to-do list. We often obey against the grain, sometimes even against our perceived self interests. But we can see why acting from obedience — whether it is in response to a boss’ demand, or to one’s own to-do list, works: action kills pain.

I do not know why action has that effect. It appears that action and fear are incompatible. A hunting dog does not feel its fleas. There, alone with one’s thoughts, one will soon discover a million reasons not to act where risk and difficulty are involved.

So, act. This is no way guarantees success. But even failure is relative — it’s just feedback. Failure is essential to success, for who can do anything well without feedback? One is almost sure to fail when one takes on too big a task. It’s still feedback, but it is reckless to set oneself up for failure. Again, the problem is not having too many things on one’s plate, but in poor planning and mismanaged priorities.

I once met an engineer who handled about 30 projects; he seemed to be doing a good job. He does have a good team. Teams multiply action. In fact, I’ve been thinking how one might write a hundred books in 10 years, and the answer is “ghostwriters”. But even a system of ghostwriters will get a poor share of one’s resources if one also employed assistants in so diverse fields that teams don’t benefit from the work of other teams. It’s still better to focus on related tasks, and leave the unrelated tasks few and for purposes of rest and recreation.

I like to bike. But last night I dreamed I was on a bicycle that became more and more difficult to pedal even though the ground was flat. The fact that failure is essential to success is an uncomfortable thought that sometimes shows in dreams.

But even in the dream I’m on the bicycle. That’s what matters.

Do the right thing and the thing right

| jaylazzo

Action is the teacher and guide and all that makes things right. Once we start thinking we usually tend to overthink, but it’s more than that. Buddhism provides an interesting insight as to the point where we overthink. In Buddhism, when we try to be honest we cease to be honest; brave cease to be brave; diligent, diligent.

That is, in certain things there is no need to rationalize or explain. Every time we have to explain, we are likely to be telling a lie anyway. We may be required to explain our actions sometimes. Buddhism says that the attitude to take is that the action we took is part of the natural course of events. Meaning, there is a natural response to a situation, a natural solution to a problem, a natural decision to a matter at hand. There is objective morality in the situation itself, without at the same time being casuistic about it. The situation is defined by Aristotelian moral components: the matter, the intention, and the circumstances, and there is no faster way to think through that besides intuition. I intuit the expedient then go. Simple as that.

Thus, the best explanation for a decision is to describe how you envisaged the event to develop. This requires data. It also requires estimating where the decision is within this continuum we call the EVENT.

The I Ching is another case in point: it provides one with randomly generated models. That is to say, all models are valid! But, choosing an oracle means choosing the path an event will develop. And here’s the great beauty of it: each oracle describes a “logical” or natural sequence. Once an oracle is chosen, one also chooses the natural sequence. Since there is no concept of time, one can think of looking forward (prediction) or backward (analysis) or at the here and now (perspective). The point that I find most interesting about the I Ching’s oracles is that there is not fixed “objective” nature to an event. Rather, the event is conditioned by how we look at it plus the matter, the intention and the circumstances.

I add a final component to that equation. The two points of view I mentioned about, Aristotelian and Taoist pertain to doing the right thing. There is, however, the point about doing things right. This is more the subject of art, but the equivalent in moral actions I would put under the heading “ritual”. This could be Confucian, custom, legal, administrative procedure.

In short, to think wholly about a situation we have to do both the right thing and the thing right:

  1. Doing the right thing is to follow
    a. Aristotelian moral variables: matter, intention, circumstances
    b. Taoist natural sequence: I Ching oracles
  2. Doing the thing right is to follow Ritual: law, custom, protocol.

I said that the fastest way to go through all of that is to intuit the action. Of course, one must use all the science and skills at one’s disposal to synthesize available information etc. But I realize that one must not forget that one can choose any point of departure for the point of view and merely follow the sequence. Hence, the I Ching. I should be using the I Ching more often. I do have a notebook. I should use that to record my decisions. Again, “How to do the right thing and the thing right.”

This, however, is a rather personal kind of ethics. I do not imagine that other people will be comfortable with the I Ching, and I’m not eager to advocate its virtues.

The I Ching to me is not fortune telling. It’s all about setting the starting point. For a modeling exercise.

Magis

| jaylazzo

I gave some welcoming remarks at an event earlier. I didn’t really think much about it, faithful to the habit of not giving a fuck. People do not really remember what we say. Pointless, therefore, to ruminate. Next time I’ll get a timer, a person who will remind me. Having to think about time can damage RHYTHM, which is almost as important as the CONTENT itself.

But overall, not very productive today; but hey, one objective met is better than no objective met. I should be happy. I could strive for more tomorrow, which I think I will. Maybe read an article or three.

The hardest workers get the most rewards. Which would be a great thing if the reward they get is the reward they want. It’s not the same if the reward you get is not the reward you will enjoy. If getting a huge amount of money doing something you don’t like pleases you, then doing that thing is worth it. So my problem at this point is that I do not find pleasure in most of the rewards I get by being productive, mainly, recognition. I’m more interested in financial rewards, not because of the money itself, but because I like to keep a numeric score. My favorite video game has always been TAIPAN. It’s part of my shadow that I probably should integrate rather than reject.

I don’t enjoy science or administrative work as much as some people do. But at least I get the chance of doing things that are unique. Classes are often interesting, especially with very bright students. Making simple discoveries in science is itself a nice thing. It might have pleased me to remain a computer scientist; I tend to regret choosing biology, and then choosing a research career. But then again, maybe this is the best place. I don’t quite agree with that when I’m tired and frustrated.

Recall so as not to forget:

  1. Don’t give a fuck.
  2. Count 54321.
  3. Ask: What if I win?
  4. Ask: How can I do magis here?

These habits ordinarily presume that I have a good idea what the will of God is. That’s because the ordinary will of God is in the ordinary things comprising the usual roles and responsibilities. Occasionally that will is not clear, or it might require heroic action. And almost always, whether considering the will of God or the will of one’s boss, they are not comfortable for oneself. The 4th in particular proposes that I can always do more and better in whatever I do and for the glory of God (“magis” is the motto of the Ateneo De Manila University, a Jesuit school.). Doing better often means going out of one’s comfort zone, comfort methods, comfort standards.

I do not question the standards of my profession even if practitioners don’t see these standards in the same way. This is consistent with having values arranged in a personalized hierarchy. There is no question that being the best in one’s profession is a good thing, but that could pale side by side against being the best at running a family and raising children.

Perhaps in the end what is really important is that a person finds himself, and becomes genuine and truly expresses his values. In the end, that’s what makes destiny, and any other way of acting is living a half life. I’m perfectly OK with the idea that I will never be a great scientist, but at least I should strive to not be a bad one, and perhaps a very good scientist-administrator, and scientist-communicator. Most people could be among the best in these “hyphenated” fields, especially when they are already in the top quartile of the hyphenated components.

Start the day with writing blogs

| jaylazzo

I feel overwhelmed by the task of writing some reports. I want them to be great. But, how can everyone be excellent? Statistically impossible, so there’s no shame in doing only what one can even if that was not excellent.

But this report is different: I have only a few months to produce something that can be shown to Congress.

And there are others. This is the publication plan.

  1. Finish the imaging flow cytometry paper and send it to Cytometry first.
  2. Target publishing one of our bacteria (Asia’s) in MRA (GA) including epigenetic induction and BGC mining plus a few other characterizations. Frontiers might work, too. Target that everything for which she has a) antibiotic production phenotype; b) whole genome sequence; c) BGC mining; d) 16S showing novelty; and e) general features like growth curve and Biolog data will be published.
  3. Publish the agglutination assay with Poy and Roanne.
  4. Aedes.

Now, long term,

  1. Exploit the novel bacteria for publications in Frontiers and MRA.
  2. Use the malaria facility to get co-authorship in various papers.

These are where I will publish, and only in these areas.

Now, the plan to work using “work” as “distraction” may not be optimal if I put equally important work on the plate. I think, though, that it could work when one item is almost urgent, if I have a second item that is strategically important (publication), and one or two items of minor importance, for rest. A typical list would include

  1. Almost urgent reports.
  2. Manuscripts
  3. Minor important: blogs, music practice, cultural reading, administrative papers

Looking at this list I see that it is not optimal. The reason is that it begins with activities that, though urgent, are also painful. I think the optimal way is to start with a relatively simple and somewhat enjoyable activity that “sets the mood” for everything that follows. The first activity might therefore be to write for the blog:

  1. Begin with writing blogs then posting.
  2. Segue into the academic writing.
  3. Carry out research tasks as planned and as indicated by the writing.

And if I get engrossed with an activity, no worries. In the end, the point is to enjoy work.

Don’t Stop even when distracted

| jaylazzo

This method works for Elon Musk. He works on several things at the same time. When he gets tired, he shifts, then goes back. Maybe five things; I think that could be a max. I tried it, and I think it can work for me. It’s another way of resting. The point is to get things done. Rest allows one to get things done.

I used to draw everyday for two years. I worked on more than one drawing and learned to draw fast. I’m became less intimidated by drawing even complex stuff. The trick is to do work from big shapes to small beginning with the most interesting subject and then adding details, all without stopping. At the sketch stage, it also means not lifting the pen from the paper, drawing even while looking at the object.

I follow a similar technique with writing.,

Why am I bringing this up? Because it positively impacts work. I just need to be a tad more productive per day to be much more productive in the long run. And I should not be stopping projects! I should be writing an health technology assessment (HTA) report, an imaging flow cytometry paper, other stuff, without stopping. I should be managing the school, setting visions, strategizing, talking to people, putting the HTA and the Cell Society (PSCB) work into it as well, without stopping. Sometimes I can compartmentalize, telling myself that this day and hour I will only do PSCB or HTA or my research. I should be capable, when appropriate, of doing several things, keeping totally focused for a length of time on whatever it is I’m focused on at the moment. At some point I will get tired and I will appreciate the rest provided by the other projects. And if I walk, it is to manage by walking around.

It all works for the greater good of all. I know it worked for me with weightlifting, drawing and guitar. I could fall into overworking some activities, but I think I’ll know when I’m not giving sufficient attention to some. Everything should work out in the end.

Conclusion: it’s not important how I got to where I am, but how I work now that I’m here. That’s protection against lack of talent and energy. I’m not the best manager or researcher or teacher, but maybe when we combine any two I might turn out to be quite OK. What else can explain the fact that I still have a job?

Still, there are some things that I probably should work on that will improve my chances of growing in all those areas. I’m trying to be productive by NOT THINKING. That is: to fully focus not by thinking, but by doing. That’s like not lifting the pencil from the page. When I plan, things slow down and sometimes stay slow. There are times when planning speeds things eventually, but that’s usually when I plan the day itself, or when I’m planning a complex procedure. Still, even when planning, the focus is not so much on thinking while thinking but thinking while doing. I guess that’s what all the productive people do.

And it’s what I hope to do. Perhaps this would involve some kind of kinesthetics. Some of my colleagues would stand up, talk louder, say jokes. I could walk around while I let discussions take place at the table. As long as I’m doing something, maybe even if it is not obviously productive. The whole hour or day can be viewed this way. I’m typing now, but I’m also thinking. And I think better. It’s like a conversation, which often leads to good insights, just because I have those conversations. In big matters or in small, writing, conversation, walking around, performing procedures lead to insights because one thinks while doing.

And praying. True prayer is not planning, or daydreaming, but conversation. Praying while writing is like writing to God. That could be true for activities other than writing. One can pray by working.

Whatever I do, many of them are beautiful; more often, they are mediocre, and sometimes they are bad. But that’s not so bad. The more I fail the more I succeed.

So, the real point is to keep working.

(21 Jan 2020)

Deep Work

| jaylazzo

How much time do I think is deep work?

  1. Writing, 2h/day on weekdays
  2. Reading, 1 article/day for 1h/article at least
  3. Cultural, 1h/day everyday

Why deep work?

The ability to work undistracted for 2h at a stretch is superpower. Furthermore, it’s beyond what most people can do. This means, one who can has a distinct advantage at work.

Writing and reading are closely related. Reading scientific articles is necessary to stay on top of one’s field.

Cultural reading, i.e., novels and non-fiction not related to one’s work, mainly give pleasure. The classics are most suitable for learning good English, for exercising the imagination, and for learning models on how to deal with people. Non-fiction books are excellent for all kinds of models. With an app like Evie I can “read” while painting or driving.

But the real WHY of deep work is to learn the language of the world, expressed through science and art and through work itself. Thought and action, not all thought as armchair theoreticians believe. But work has to be concentrated for it to be productive and for it to significantly affect one’s mind and morals. Even when I’m enjoying a leisure activity such as reading cultural books, painting, or music, I wish there to be absolute no other thing on my mind.

The real job here is the focused attention. It’s like prayer, an activity of the spirit. It is prayer, and it is meant to be a prayer that involves no other conversational partner. When I read, especially, I’m conversing with another writer. When I paint I converse with the subject.

Why mix painting and reading? Because they are part of the same conversation. Painting is one side of the brain, reading is the other side, at least the way I see it. Another way I see it is that working with one’s hands improves cognitive skills. Even a light activity like cultural reading that does not involve deep thought is deep work. Bring these learnings to conversations with real people and one will see why reading has often been recommended as an exercise to improve interpersonal communication in general.

As to music, isn’t that hand work? And it’s something I truly love.

Deep work is done alone. So what about class work? Giving a lecture is not deep work. Deep work is also creative. Thus, editing or checking papers is not deep work. But they can be meditative.

The goal of deep work is that for at least 4 hours in my day I am in total concentration. The conversations, lectures, and other matters in between are not only rest, but the application of the fruits of deep work.

(QC, 3 April 2021)