Conflicted Progress

Read these two articles:

• How To Be So Disciplined It'll Look Like You Have Superpowers
• Mental Model Winner Take All

How can these two exist at the same time? One must cancel out the other like antimatter/matter annihilation. Or can they both be right?

Interestingly, I think both are possible, though the “Superpowers” article is mainly writing from the viewpoint of survivorship bias. That is the author is saying that because they did it, so can you, and because you are reading it then they succeeded wildly by following their own rules.

The Farnam Street Blog looks at several cases of Winner Takes All, but doesn’t tell you how to overcome that, except maybe buying several thousand copies of your own book. Does it cancel out the rule-following concept in the more positive article? No, but I think it tempers it quite a bit.

When it comes down to it: We can all improve, maybe even the top performers, but really the only person that would have thought we have superpowers is our former self. Let me frame it with the Recency Effect.

Let’s say that you are a hotdog eating contestant and you can eat ten hotdogs in a minute. You are so good that you have sponsorships and tour the country. Then someone comes along and introduces a new technique and is able to eat one hundred hotdogs in a minute. At the behest of your sponsor you learn the technique and are able to eat one hundred plus one hotdogs, reclaiming your crown.

Being at the top and then reclaiming the top certainly looks like superpowers to folks lower in the pecking order, but even the lightweight packing away only eighty per contest would scoff at your old record of ten due to your new achievement. You might appreciate the difference, but you only really have your initial reaction to gauge just how monumental a jump that is.

All’s good in hotdog-land, but what about starting from the bottom like removing a bad habit? Initially people may notice if it is an obvious habit, but soon it will be old history. Good changes are like a differential for people noticing and hopefully a integral in improving life. That is: people will only really notice as the change is happening, or if asymptotic like a haircut, right after, but then that will be the new normal. But maintaining a good habit like brushing your teeth might literally improve your life expectancy, and no one runs away from conversations anymore.

Self-set rules will only get you so far in becoming the best, the rest is how they relate to your goals, but I think they are a huge step in getting you away from the worst. Rule-following has another name: discipline.

The Only Odd One is Me

Not to stir up any fears, but here we go. That in-the-moment feeling of everyone watching, while everyone else says they are not. Can we be real for a second? If you are not staring at a screen in a crowded place, how observant are you? Do you notice when someone does something, at least innocuous such as tripping on flat ground and then looks around to see if anyone saw? Yeah, sorry, I saw that one. Shall we just share a smile and keep going forward?

The problem is that there are so many non-innocuous situations that anything from dumb to malevolent. Going to this World Life Expectancy site can be a bit eye opening, plenty of malevolence, but plenty of stuff that I could classify as dumb, but really it is just sad. Not sad as in “those people should have seen it coming,” rather maybe it could have been prevented by better/earlier treatment or just better friends. Maybe in my age group the traffic accidents could be helped by smarter cars…

Anyway, there is a point to this: Whatever I am suffering that is not acute AND terminal, there are possibly a few thousand people suffering of the same thing. That is true of post-graduate online masters degrees. Of artfully procrastinating by practicing writing. Of making bad lists with weird sentences. Though that last might be just me at the moment. But there are people suffering, or...  Oh, how odd am I?

I am odd, there are so many things that I am bringing to the front of my mind through biases where I haven’t really met many people that do, or have done, a permutation of different things that I have. This is the deal with permutations, even if someone else has done everything I have, but flipped the order of two events, then by definition we are not the same, because we experienced those two events with different views. Twins can be a prime example.

You are odd as well. I have found out, somewhat too recently, that I have no idea what is going on inside your skull and trying to understand every nuance is impossible and/or maddening. I spend so much time with my wife, yet it is better to have a model than to be “sure” of what she is thinking.

What frustrates me more is how odd I feel in trying to make people understand my thoughts. I think my thoughts are pretty good, the problem lies where your thoughts conflict with mine. Either I am too dismissive because I am too absorbed by my thoughts, or I have already considered it thoroughly and have a ready answer. Though that seems dismissive too because I cannot explain it well enough.

Four years of theater should have made me a better actor, if not in hiding what I think, at least in having the poise to articulate it better. Well no, I get cut-off when I need a moment to speak, but then ramble when someone should just cut me off. Can I have it both ways? Thinking, listening, and responding. How might I even practice that? How can I even find the place to practice that?

I would love to tell stories too, but I would for now settle with schooling on conversation. I have to say that I write better than I did back in this post, the first, from twelve years ago. Even so, I can improve my writing. Better to practice than to pine about not having practiced. Only a recent addition, that, maybe it will stick.

No one is odd in that everyone is odd. Maybe I will find some more odd people that we can be mostly mutually accepting of one another.

Wait, Prepare, Wait

What is probably the worst combination in the history of the world? Promising and procrastinating.

I do this all the time, I promise my wife I will do something, but if I don’t do it right away I forget, or just plain procrastinate. I would like to say that procrastination is doing other things while still having the thing that you need to do in the forefront of your mind, but then I think forgetting about things has just the same effect, although less stressful until you remember. Of course the disappointment in myself is pretty big, but that is dwarfed by the feeling of having disappointed someone else, especially my wife.

Right now, as I write this, I am procrastinating. Sort of. I’ve read through assignment 3 and I need to let it simmer. But I am also waiting for the peer feedback for assignment 2 to be uploaded so that I can get that done for the class. It doesn’t look good for “the drop” tonight. I am also using this moment to write, write “I” enough that I think I might need to edit this.

This is an okay equilibrium at the moment, because it has many layers of preparedness: I am early wanting peer feedback, I have read the assignment a week before it is due and it builds off of the previous one, I am practicing writing which is crucial for this class, and I will update my to-do list before going to practice my cello, then reading and then bed. Right now, everything is under control.

It’s a good feeling, but of course fleeting because this week is going to flit by one way or another.

So is this waiting any better than just getting things done at the last instant? It’s hard to say from this end. Is it temporary motivation that I am chomping at the bit? Have I finally begun to learn discipline? (Note: whenever I think this way I remember all the things that I would like to add to my disciplined schedule and how many things I have failed at already in terms of discipline.)

It’s going to be hard to say from the other end. There is something to finishing something all in one go. Something satisfying about having just finished, and it’s addictive (Wait But Why.) I remember one of my most exhilarating coding days, I knew I needed to write a user interface to test the new receiver in the telescope. I put it off until the day of, and finished, not well, that same day. Here is the description in passing. It made me realize that being an expert at a chosen technology can mean that you can get things out quickly. While that is an awfully nice thought, a better one is getting it done over the course of weeks, consulting with people, and being on-hand for the commissioning.

I still have a problem with discipline at work as distractions are plentiful, but I also can get quite a bit done just being that much more of an expert. Something about having worked for 10 years as of the 21st of January.

There is no perfection in my work. I strive to understand better ways of doing things, new things I come across, but I am much more confident. I wait quite a bit more, but on the other side. I find things to do, things that I should be remembering sooner, and things that may make at least one person’s job easier.

Suffering is Not for the Faint of Heart

In case you haven't read my byline, I am a Christian. It doesn't mean so many of the things that people think it does, sure some of the rumors are true, but really?

Anyway, I would like to broach the topic of suffering. It's a bit scary to look for a definition to back up my thoughts and find that Wikipedia has a pretty in-depth article on suffering. Most of the time suffering is all about physical pain, Sure I have my aches and pains. Many other times suffering is about the mental issues. People are generally focused on their own problems, and many have issues that need help, and need work.

I could talk about what Christians consider suffering, being persecuted for our religion, but I think that there is a suffering that everyone is subject to in life.

This week has been a tough one for our office. Who hasn't had a tough week at work? My previous job had four years with the possibility of losing funding. Our leadership was extremely supportive throughout the whole process, but I was suffering from a few related issues, despite the support. I was tired of the island, near the end, tired of possibility that I wouldn't have a job, and just all the thoughts about where we would go and what we would do.

I did not handle it well, my work certainly suffered and I regret that I could have done more. But how can we do better? Is there a way to suffer joyfully? I would say that the answer is yes and there is a belief system that could definitely help with this. However, if you don't want to listen to that from me, there are still a few things to consider.

First: Are the people causing you suffering really just trying to make your life miserable? This is a really tough question because most people don't want to think about how the people causing suffering could possibly not be doing it intentionally. If the answer is still yes, even after you try to figure it out, then there is another question to ask: Are they trying to make me suffer just to make themselves feel better? If they are you have much deeper problems and should be considering formal action or moving away from the situation. But in both situations you need to be joyful. There is no other way. Not so obviously "fake" happy, because then you are probably going to try to take things, like revenge, into your own hands. That bent means that you are going to do ridiculous, potentially dumb things just to be able to rub their face in it.

Second: Sitting around wondering what a weird exchange means and being crabby about it is not going to do anyone good. Unfortunately I suffered from this malady on Tuesday and have been a bit slow in connecting my recent knowledge about suffering to this situation. I became overly righteous, condemning the action, not realizing that some leaders aren't leading because they are trained leaders, but rather are in the position because they were there.

Some people are born leaders, sure, some people will get training and be good leaders, some will fail and make mistakes that may seem obvious, and then there are those who will never learn but still have more power than they know how to handle. To put a leader in the fourth category right away without any thought to situation, background, training or lack thereof, and experience, is to write them off. It is not recommended as humans are not perfect representations of their own abilities at all times.

In a situation where there can be no mistakes, maybe putting a new leader in the position will solve the problem. That certainly worked well for Abraham Lincoln after how many generals? The problem is when the leader is seen to be failing at many levels and we are suffering because of it. Is there insight we could lend? Experience leading, pointing out concepts and language that might very well cause suffering?

I could go on about leading, having some experience myself, but we need to get back to suffering.

Third: Are we, ourselves prolonging our suffering because we are comfortable? It sounds strange but it is much easier for us to deal with the current discomfort than to try to imagine stepping out and changing something. I am talking positive change, though there may be suffering in it too. Can we help to alleviate suffering? Can we take the demotivation and turn it into motivation and action? Can we ask for help? Can we leave?

The reason I left the last question to last is because I am afraid of some people answering that question with a "yes." But is is a possibility. To focus on the more constructive, grumbling and moving on is one thing, grumbling and never getting over it but prolonging it just to feel better about grumbling? I am guilty. In a previous post I said that I would not complain without result. I have complained all this last week so now it is time for me to push for the positive change. Learning leaders are just human means that people suffer, knowing they are can help us to suffer joyfully and then help to change the climate.

When suffering at a small scale, such as this is, can be done joyfully, then when the true suffering comes we will have better tools to deal with it. Don't be afraid to suffer, just don't wallow in it, please?

Growing Culture

A pre-post edit: I am finishing writing this and editing with the events of Nov 3rd in mind, which were certainly a hugely negative approach to motivating our team that my interest is a bit shaken, or maybe I just have to be more cynical, or less?

The Center for Open Science is growing, and its culture is changing. It sometimes seems like a confusing jumble of all sorts of not quite conflicting interests, but order has been coming to our controlled chaos. In some ways it is awesome, in others it might just deaden things.

I write this as one of our developers is leaving us. He was the first developer hired by the center and laid quite a bit of the groundwork that we use day-to-day. He has his reasons for moving on, but it is still sad to see him go. His enthusiasm really solidified my interest in working for COS, it was serious development, as well as being a serious cause.

I started in February when we had about 30-ish full time staff and many fewer projects going on. There was quite a bit of nebulous thinking with some really nice features that were making the OSF much more of a usable product. There was quite a range of ways to do things, different ideas and lots of freedom to learn and do.

At the beginning of the summer we brought in 35+ interns, doubling our staff numbers and blowing away any possible workflow. Some interns were working on small projects and others were working on large “R&D” projects that may never get integrated into the OSF. Essentially chaos ensued that we are still trying to dig out from under.

We hired a Product Manager and she brought more Agile methods as well as Jira and other ideas. This is certainly still a work in progress but a better definition of how a feature or a fix gets defined, worked on, and merged is a huge improvement over the previous workflow.

Unfortunately with the recent experience and some burnout starting to rear its ugly head, especially with a negative motivation speech to seal the deal and thinly veiled diatribes against the method we certainly need a moment to collect ourselves and our thoughts.

There are two huge projects that are essentially due this month. The problem is with the approach to these projects that it was not managed in such a way that makes much sense.

• One project was given to an intern. Not that interns can’t do a good job, however, he can’t put in the time when it gets to the point where we need daily turnaround on code review response rather than weekly.
• This project is now up to 12k lines. By far the biggest chunk of code that has been “through” code review. Why wasn’t it put through in a more piecemeal manner as it was being written? Because it was an R&D project, and though it had people signing off on the proposal, no one was assigned to help the intern bring it up to speed until two weeks ago.
• Now they are trying to solve the crunch time by putting more devs on it. It may work, but really the fight was lost when it wasn’t converted from an R&D project earlier in the game with more code review done on top of that.
• Also the full time dev assigned is one of the three code reviewers, meaning that he hasn’t really been able to do code review for other smaller PRs coming through the system.

So I could go on about the negatives of how we aren’t experiencing management in a good way, but I think it is not malicious, just some line of communication was not very clear, and now we are rushing to meet a deadline that we have just learned about.

So my first suggestion is that if the R&D project is ever going to possibly be more than just a learning project then it needs to have definite code and functional milestones where code and functionality can be assessed and reviewed in order for the storm to be avoided when we find out just how close we are to a deadline, at least we will know exactly how the project is going.

We also need everybody doing code review. I know most people aren’t very good at it, but that is why we have more than one level of code review. But three people looking at code that nearly twelve of us produce means that they are always falling behind. Always playing catch-up.

If we have better incremental code reviews with better chunking of the tasks, then we get feedback on smaller bits of code that can be implemented for the next chunk. When 500+ lines of code are changed in a Pull Request, it starts getting troublesome for the more thorough code reviewer to trace down all the implications.

I was going to end this, before today, with an inspirational thought about how we all need to be one of a kind without breaking companies when we leave. But I would like to focus on the more practical. We have a much better, tighter approach than we had before, but we still have some major hurdles to overcome.

The Only Constant

I have no idea how many people read this blog, or rather I haven't looked at in depth stats recently. One thing I will tell you is that I certainly have an issue with consistently writing. So I will keep this short in order to motivate myself to write another post with more details about the specific things that have been keeping me from writing.

First and foremost: I no longer work for the Joint Astronomy Centre, it is no more. The telescopes were successfully transferred to University of Arizona and the East Asian Observatory. I did not want to transfer, and could give you many reasons which sum up to the fact that I am not enamored with Hawaii. (Nice place, but needed to move back to a larger bit of land.) I interviewed with two telescopes: NOAO in Tucson, AZ and NRAO in Green Bank, WV. Didn't get either of those jobs despite my experience, I think I definitely flubbed the NRAO one with choosing a topic I am only now becoming familiar with and of not much interest to them. But I also interviewed with Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, VA.

Despite having 7 years of pure telescope experience and seeing exactly how I could help the NOAO I didn't get an offer from either telescope organization. However, COS offered me a job despite my nearly complete lack of web development experience. To put it shortly: In the last 6 months I have learned a huge amount about the web as well as having a supportive environment to delve into interesting software engineering problems. Ironic, really.

I also started a Masters with Georgia Tech in January, and moved during my first big project for a class. I got a 20% but managed to claw my way to a B, including managing and coding for a group project at the end in which we got a 98%! I will go into more details at some point.

Oh yeah, we are set to buy a house tomorrow. Oh man, a bit of a vertigo moment. Am I finally an adult?

Maybe more on all this next time. I also read some of my sci-fi physics posts, I certainly want to edit and add more posts in that area, but homework. Hopefully soon.