Good Ideas Delivered Daily

Every day of the year treasures fall off the Good Idea Delivery Truck and land at your feet. The cargo is different each day: Today's ideas were not available yesterday, and they may be useless tomorrow. Like manna from heaven, good ideas may appear just in time but have a limited shelf life. They spoil quickly. You don't need to make every good idea your own. Some you will choose to let go; others you'll want to seize and act on. Don't think that every good idea must spring from your own mind--we dream up some ideas on our own, but often they come from other people. What happens if you encounter a fresh idea, a new opportunity, but fail to act on it? Don't worry: tomorrow will bring more good ideas. When a good idea falls off the Good Idea Delivery Truck and lands at your feet, pick it up and admire it. If it fits, put it in your pocket. Tomorrow, watch for the Truck as it appears just over the horizon.

Foreground and Background

Everyday situations are complex, interweaving social relationships, physical context, and purposeful activity. What do you focus on when there is so much to attend to? You have choices: Sometimes the social reality jumps to the foreground: People and relationships become primary. At other times, the physical environment assumes first importance--natural landscapes, works of art, or physical hazards. Often, though, we focus neither on the social nor the material, but on the the purposeful activity set before us. Everything else--the social and material realities--becomes context that might aid or hinder our work. Any reality can generate positive or negative emotions, but social relationships are especially potent. Ideally, we go about our business within a background of positive human relationships. Yet, as we know, the human dimension can be suddenly and powerfully negative. Worse, it can emerge to the foreground and claim our most focused attention, draining energy from our work. When this happens, we do well to do whatever we can to make it positive again and to regain attention to our purpose.

The DPDO Dilemma

Today I again experienced the DPDO Dilemma, though I have never called it that. Pronounced as if you are saying "tiptoe" with a cold, it is the Daily-Progress Daily-Observation Dilemma. The Dilemma is that to make regular progress on any dimension--whether skill, fitness, weight loss, or character quality--progress is usually not detectable when observed daily. Yet to improve over time, daily adherence to practice is necessary. The consistent application of effort lacks crucial motivational feedback for two reasons: (1) Daily progress is so tiny that it is undetectable, and (2) Daily progress is interspersed with losses, forming a sawtooth trendline. The DPDO Dilemma threatens discouragement to goal chasers, as it did to me his morning. I thought, "I should be running faster by now; I should be losing extra pounds faster." The DPDO Dilemma defeats many, but if we recognize its false implications ("I'm not making progress.") then we can cast it aside.

Fractals

Some years ago, the public became aware of mathematical progress in modeling complex systems, such as weather and ocean currents. Emerging models popularized under the banner of chaos theory showed that very complex, even chaotic, phenomena are often composed of simpler patterns. One interesting here insight is the fractal. Consider a coastline: Contours taken from a great distance above the earth have a certain random-walk look, yet photos taken much closer look essentially the same. Whatever pattern defines a coastline seems to be consistent no matter what the scale. Repeating patterns, called fractals, also show up in ice crystals. Like coastlines, the crystal patterns hold across scales large and small. Human lives, too, are composed of fractals. The pattern of single day bears similarity to the pattern of a week, a month, a year, and a lifespan. We can use the concept of the fractal: Compose each day so that it looks something like the ideal pattern over the long term. Repeat tomorrow and the next day. A pattern emerges that holds across time scales and defines a life.

The Big Rocks Go In First

My friend, Scott, teaches in a law school in southern California. During a recent breakfast together, I learned that he would teach the last class of the semester later that day. When I asked what he was going to teach, he said that he would conclude with a parable. In the parable, a professor brings to class a large glass fishbowl; inside the bowl, the professor gently places some large, heavy rocks until they reach the rim. "Is the bowl full?" he asks the class. "Yes," the class responds. The professor then pours in gravel. Again, the professor asks if the bowl is full, and again the class responds, "Yes, it's full." Now the professor pours in fine sand and poses the same question. Now the class is not so sure. Lastly, the professor pours in a pitcher of water until it reaches the brim. At this point everyone agrees: the bowl is full. But what does it all mean? After several students give their interpretations, the professor answers with his own: Life is rich and can accommodate a great variety of experiences, achievements, and commitments. But for life to work, the really big items--those that are essential--must go in first. Everyone else fits around the important things.

Degrees of Freedom

I once read about a man whose commitment to exercise was fanatical. The extent of his zeal was most clear when he became incapacitated, whether through disease or an accident, I can’t remember. Several times daily, while lying on his hospital bed, the man performed wrist curls with hand weights. He used whatever limited movement he could achieve to becomes stronger, if only in his forearms. Like him, we all face limited degrees of freedom in life opportunities. Those limitations reflect many different causes: the boundaries of our innate potential, the institutions of our culture, and our individual life histories and circumstances, favorable or unfavorable. Do we use whatever degrees of freedom remain to the maximum? Metaphorically, if we can do “wrist curls” but no more, do we reach for the hand weights?

Denver on Foot

Today I hit the pavement of the Mile-High City, whose thin air challenged my already depleted red blood cells. I stuck to the scenic areas: The 16th Street Mall and vicinity. When I got to Larimer Square, I looked to the west saw a magnificent snow-covered peak on the Rockies. The run made the view possible. Though the going was slow on account of reduced atmospheric O2, and even with having to manage stop lights, passing traffic, and a little cigarette smoke, I enjoyed being on the streets. I understood, again, why some sneer at the mention of running on treadmills. While on the pavement of Downtown Denver--yes, even in the tourist district--I felt that I got to know the place a little better than many of my fellow conventioneers.