From Common Sense for the Healing Arts by Robert Duggan:

Our main task as we move between our birth and death is to learn to live peacefully day-by-day.

Living peacefully day-by-day demands common sense: eat moderately, breath deeply, drink wisely, get plenty of sleep, accept life as it comes.  And as we move through life we have a marvelous resource—our symptoms, which remind us to slow down, be peaceful, to care for ourselves.  It’s wondrous to think of the symptoms our bodies create as teachers, as wisdom rather than problems.

In a continuing theme this week, think about it: Is it really a problem?  Is it really worth getting bent out of shape over?

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If “everything is amazing, yet nobody is happy,” then the question is, “why”?  Perhaps this is the answer:

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This video from Coke illustrates a genuinely delightful experience.  Obviously, it’s not sustainable, but it raises the question: are you intentionally designing your product to deliver happiness?

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I was just thinking about the post I wrote on design by removal.  It occurred to me that this lesson may apply to life as well.

That is, if we want to improve our design, i.e. life, then we should be asking “what can be removed?” not “what can be added?”

This reminds me of a chat with James the other day:

me: Erin, who we work with…she has a great screensaver…have you seen it?
James: No I have not
me: It says…”Do more of what you love”
James: I like that.
me: Me too
James: I decided to quit my last job because of a guy’s Skype mood message. It was “Happiness is a choice”
me: Exactly!

In both examples, the amount of enjoyment is the same, but the proportion of enjoyment is larger in the second, so overall it feels like we have more enjoyment in our lives.

What we’re talking about here is changing the proportion of enjoyable vs. not enjoyable.  We want to get as close to 100% enjoyable as possible.

All too common, we try to maximize enjoyment by just getting more of it.  We fill our cups and fill our cups and fill our cups with more and more, trying to make it so that the enjoyable overcomes the not so enjoyable.  But, then we become over-worked, over-scheduled, over-committed and over-everything.

That approach has it it all wrong.  We don’t need more enjoyment…we need less not enjoyment.

So, there is another approach: remove the not enjoyable.  And, let the enjoyable, however much or little of it you may have, fill whatever time you have.

My grandma turns 91 today.

Ninety One.

Just think about how much has changed in 91 years.  Every single piece of technology that is being used for me to create this blog post, and for you to consume it…not a single one of them existed then.

There were no phones, smart or otherwise, no cars, no NFL, no…I wonder if they had radio in 1919?  Sure, they must of had radio.  Yes, absolutely they did.  But they didn’t have all these fancy kitchen appliances or fancy automobiles.

And, as far as I can tell from TV (which they didn’t have back then either) all their clothes were shades of grey.  Can you imagine that?  My grandma didn’t even have color!

Awhile ago I asked my grandma about The Great Depression and she said, “well, it didn’t seem as bad as it does now because nobody had as much of anything back then”.

More recently, she told me that her grandfather (my great, great grandfather) had a men’s clothing store.  I did not know that.  When I asked what ever happened to it she replied, “it went out of business in The Depression, [you idiot,] what do you think happened to it?”

My grandma comes from a different era; and era where ladies were far too polite to actually say, “you idiot”, but her tone of voice subtly conveyed the message just the same.

Thing is, I wonder if they had more happiness back then.

I had coffee this morning with a friend who is looking for work.  (He’s a great guy…10 years at Amazon.com…if you’re looking for someone, let me know!)

As we talked, we came to the subject of “job listings” which are so impersonal.  For a professional, they feel like a pretty bogus way of getting a job.  Or, at least, uncertain and unreliable.

Of course, my thought was that it’s all about who you know…networking.  Essentially, my view is that personal relationships are what will lead to the next opportunity.

After coffee, I came into the office, was reading the paper, and came across David Brooks’ most recent column that addresses the impacts of the recession on people:

Recessions test social capital. If social bonds are strong, nations can be surprisingly resilient. If they are weak, things are terrible. The U.S. endured the Great Depression reasonably well because family bonds and social trust were high. Russia, on the other hand, was decimated by the post-Soviet economic turmoil because social trust was nonexistent.

Brooks illustrates my point in a macro-way, and both of us are simply expressing the point Lisa made when she said people and relationships keep you safe.

Finally, Brooks writes about the impact that social media has on the situation:

Facebook is great, but social networking sites do not by themselves create support networks when jobs disappear and poverty looms.

and notice the exact words he uses: “support networks”.  A “support network” is something different than a “social network”.  The support network is what we’re really talking about here.

Following up on yesterday’s post about how to make successful New Years Resolutions, I wanted to add some wisdom from the Agile community.

As background, Agile is a software development methodology.  One part of Agile is that you take a big project and break it up into little pieces.  (Have you heard this before?  The journey of a thousand miles takes a million steps.)  Agile refers to each of these little pieces as “stories”.

INVEST is a heuristic for writing good stories.  In other words, it’s a way to effectively break the big journey up into little pieces.  What is INVEST?

• Independent
• Negotiable
• Valuable
• Estimable
• Small
• Testable

Let me try to illustrate each of these:

Independent — Make each goal independent of your others goals.  Simply put, creating dependencies makes things harder to achieve.

Negotiable — Don’t make your goals so specific that you’re locked into plans that can’t be made.  Be flexible.  Compare these examples, “I resolve to exercise for 60 minutes per week” versus “I resolve to exercise Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings for 20 minutes”.  Suddenly you’re too busy with work on Wednesday and now you’re beating yourself up for not keeping your resolution.

Valuable — One very good way of creating resolutions that will fail is to create resolutions that you don’t value.  Be honest with yourself: if you don’t care about improving your health, then you’re not going to exercise…neither “get in shape” or “go to the gym this week” will be successful resolutions.

Estimable — If you can’t figure out what it’s going to take to achieve the goal, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to find the time to do it.  When can you schedule “get in shape” on your calendar…between 5-6 on Tuesday?  Unlikely.  “Go to the gym this week” can be estimated…it will take one hour, so it can be put on the calendar.

Small — If you read this space, you know I’m an advocate of smaller efforts resulting in greater success.  “Get in shape” is a big goal, but “go to the gym this week” is small.  Small goals can be achieved, crossed off a list, and feel good…it feels good to succeed…success begets success.

Testable — How will you test or confirm that you’ve achieved this goal?  “Get in shape”….what does that mean?  When have you achieved that?  “Go to the gym once per week” is very testable…you can prove to yourself and others that it has been achieved.  (Be careful—Testable can cross swords with Negotiable leading to pitfalls.)

Obviously, there is no perfect resolution, but INVEST provides good guidelines for creating resolutions that will succeed.

Randy just wandered into my office, as he often does, and made the comment:

I don’t make New Years Resolutions because they’re bound to fail.  Look at it outside—how can you resolve to start exercising when it looks like that!  Perhaps in May or June, but not now.  They should be Mid-Year Resolutions.

He has a point: the weather is seriously ugly today, but I don’t think that’s why New Years Resolutions fail.

New Years Resolutions fail because we try to complete the journey in a single step.  After weeks, months or years of sitting on the couch, we resolve to “exercise daily and lose 20 pounds”.  Yeah, right…I’m sure that’s going to happen.

No, it’s not.  Let’s be honest with ourselves: that New Years Resolution is bound to fail, almost for certain.  You know the resolution that will succeed, try this:

Since I haven’t exercised in [weeks, months, years], I’m going to go to the gym once this week.

Now, that, my friends, is a resolution that will succeed!  It is specific and achievable, and small enough that know that you can fit it into your busy schedule.

If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times: the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Resolve to take the first step.  Don’t resolve to complete the journey, resolve to get it started.

Lately I’ve been thinking: what is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?  The answer lies in how they deal with adversity.

When an optimist faces a setback, a loss, or a failure they look at the specific situation and consider the setback temporary. It’s no matter, they think…next time will be a success.

In the same situation, a pessimist thinks of the setback as permanent and global.  I’ll never be able to do this, they think…I’m doomed.

When I’m feeling down—and let’s be honest, we all feel down from time-to-time—I remind myself: global and permanent versus specific and temporary, that’s the difference.

Then, I try to change my outlook by looking for the specific and temporary aspects of the situation.  When I am able to do this effectively, it feels really good.  I feel better knowing that clouds will pass and sunny days will come again.