Month: December 2022

How Little We Know

I stood in the shadow of the Hotel Sam Houston, trying not to shiver.

Corral A of the Aramco Houston Half Marathon was packed. Half marathoners brimmed with anticipation.

And then, there was me.

I had never run a half marathon before. I had no idea what I should have been doing or thinking. I hadn’t even brought throwaway clothes to protect me against the 33-degree temperatures.

Fortunately, I didn’t have too long to dwell on these details. The clock reached the top of the hour, and suddenly I was off.

It took about a few blocks for me to recognize that I was actually doing it. I was running a half marathon.

And it took a few miles for me to realize that I was running it a lot faster than anticipated.

I thought about dialing back and saving my energy. But I felt good running in the crisp morning air and decided to keep at it.

I passed a pace group and dozens of other runners, and I didn’t even start to fade until the last mile. I rallied to cross the finish line just over 90 minutes after I started running. My time was a full 10 minutes ahead of my goal.

As I caught my breath and headed over to claim my finisher medal, I was still in disbelief. I had never run that distance in that time before. It must have been a fluke.

But it was no fluke.

I bested my time at another half marathon in Fort Worth six weeks later. And then I went to Oregon two months after that and set yet another personal best.

It turned out I had a knack for distance running. But I had no idea this power lay within me as I waited in the frigid corral that morning in Houston.

How little we know.

That memory from Corral A in Houston seems distant — a sepia-toned postcard from another era.

In truth, it occurred less than a year before I put these words to paper.

Yes, a year ago, I had no idea I’d become an accomplished distance runner. I was just hoping I’d cross the finish line without running out of gas.

These days, I’m hoping for the same thing.

A rash of injuries has put my running adventures on pause. And after a series of interventions to help those maladies heal, I’m hoping I can return to form someday.

Many in my circle are bullish about my chances. They’ve seen what I’ve accomplished and have no doubt I can do it again.

But I’m far less confident.

This sport can bring you to new heights, but it can also break your heart. I’ve experienced both outcomes in less than twelve months’ time. And what comes next is anyone’s guess.

I hope my will remains strong and my body gets stronger. I hope to make it through the grueling rehab cycle without major setbacks. I hope to fly again, my strides gliding over the pavement with a burst of speed.

But I expect none of that.

How little we know.

As I write this, the world is preparing for one of my least favorite rituals.

The calendar is set to turn over again. And we’re set to stay up until midnight, watch fireworks, and pour champagne. Again.

New Year’s Eve is always quite the party. But it’s also something of a last hurrah.

We might speak broad platitudes about the year to come. We might erroneously muse about how we’ll be different when the clock strikes 12. (Seriously, stop that nonsense!) We might put on a brave face, sharing tidings and cheer.

But deep down inside, we’re terrified.

There’s no clue what’s to come in the next chapter. There’s no proof to validate our gut instincts.

The road ahead is shrouded with fog, and there’s nothing to clear it away.

We hope for favorable outcomes. But we cannot count on them. Millenia of history prove as much.

How little we know.

This New Year’s seems more fraught than many.

Spiking interest rates, rising prices, and a spate of high-profile layoffs have many Americans concerned. Violence and divisiveness continue to hound our society. And a spate of health crises remains ever present.

It certainly feels like we’re up against it. The pessimistic responses to various opinion surveys certainly bears that out.

But there are others who remain cheery and optimistic. Even amidst the spate of dark clouds, they see brighter days ahead — and soon.

It’s a classic conundrum — glass half-empty vs. glass half-full. But both sides are wrong.

For the mindset we bring into the upcoming year won’t impact our fortunes. The future writes itself the same way, whether we approach it with a smile or a frown.

We might think we have a peek around the bend. But these thoughts are nothing more than false prophecies.

How little we know.

I was obviously ill-prepared for the Aramco Houston Half Marathon. But it wasn’t for a lack of information.

All week, I’d checked the weather forecast. I’d looked at the hour-by-hour conditions, and I’d brought a variety of athletic clothes with me to Houston.

Yet, in the moment of truth, such prognostication meant little. As I dressed for the race, I had little confidence that the forecast would hold. And even if it did, I had no idea what those temperatures, wind speeds, and humidity measures would feel like as I ran.

So, I scrapped any plans to predict what came next. I committed to embracing the gray.

And while that left me underdressed at the starting line, it didn’t cost me at the finish.

Perhaps I can repeat this feat as I stare down the future. Perhaps we all can.

It might not make the events that lie ahead of us any rosier. It might not make the outcome any clearer. And it surely won’t leave us any readier to hit the ground running when they occur.

But it will save us the disappointment of dashed predictions. It will spare those around us the toxic effects of pessimism. And it will shield all of us from the futile temptation to write tomorrow today.

We gain acuity through our experience, not our musings. And the best way to gain that experience is with an open mind, a full heart, and a courageous spirit.

How little we know today. How much we are yet to know.

Let’s make it happen.

The Extension Trap

The images were horrifying.

In the heart of Chicago, railroad tracks were on fire.

This seemed to be disastrous for America’s third-largest city. Track fires would jam up rail traffic, disrupting commuters and putting a halt to freight deliveries. And the flames could easily threaten nearby structures — a possibility that had literally burned Chicago before.

But appearances can be deceiving.

Indeed, the flames were no accident. Maintenance crews had intentionally set the tracks ablaze to preserve them.

An arctic blast had hit Illinois, sending temperatures well below 0. And in those conditions, exposed metal can shrink.

Narrower tracks cannot properly hold train wheels. They make derailments likely.

Setting the tracks on fire caused the metal to expand, canceling out the damage from the biting cold. The trains kept running, and life kept churning.

Those blazing railroad tracks kept everything in equilibrium.

Several years later, another picture of fiery metal made the rounds.

This time, a metal dumpster was on fire. And the image of it was all over the Internet.

Now, an inferno of a trash receptacle doesn’t mean much on its own. Burning trash is still trash.

But what those bins represented? That certainly struck a chord.

The dumpster fire images were referencing WeWork, a once ballyhooed company that had hit a rough patch.

WeWork had started as an office co-working company — one of the first of its kind. It was a darling of the start-up world and a tempting target for venture funding.

The ingredients for success were there. And the company began to scale.

But once WeWork announced plans to incorporate as a publicly traded company, the wheels fell off.

Investors started diffing into WeWork’s finances, and they didn’t like what they saw.

The company appeared to be spending far more money than it brought in, and there seemed to be no end in sight for this pattern.

WeWork’s CEO and co-founder dismissed these concerns, stating that the company was doing far more than running a business. It was sparking a movement — a physical social network that replaced Me with We.

To this end, WeWork had already created a co-living brand called WeLive and an education concept called WeGrow. There were plans for banks, shipping, and airlines as well.

Venture investors had long looked beyond these red flags of excess. But public investors were less easily mesmerized. They wanted a return on their investment, and they saw right through the house of cards.

The fallout was brutal. WeWork saw its valuation plummet, canceled its Initial Public Offering, and laid off thousands of its workers. WeLive and WeGrow were put on ice. And the CEO was forced to resign.

There are plenty of reasons for WeWork’s collapse. Case studies and TV dramas will likely cover them for years to come. But I’d like to focus on just one.

WeWork’s failed, in part, because the burgeoning company fell into The Extension Trap.

WeWork expanded too fast, without a plan for sustaining such growth. Worse still, it pitched itself as a lifestyle movement before ensuring its core business was viable.

There was only one way out of this trap. WeWork was forced to shrink like those Chicago rail tracks, simply to get to where it should have been at all along.

The company does still exists today, and it’s now publicly traded. But that damage from its foray into The Extension Trap? It’s likely to linger for years.

The WeWork dumpster fire and the Chicago track fire have each been on my mind recently.

For as I write this, winter is setting in. And as the temperatures plummet, the world around us gets visibly smaller.

Indeed, signs of withering are everywhere. The economy is teetering, with high interest rates and higher inflation spooking off investors. And several companies have started to lay off many of their workers.

As the cold, hard reality of these cuts sinks in, the rationale remains consistent. We expanded too fast, and now the winds have changed.

On its face, such an explanation makes sense. This is the way modern markets work; investors and businesses are simply operating within those parameters.

But, come on.

Is this really the way we want to live? Are these really the values we want to espouse?

I would say not.

When it comes to eating, a cycle of binging and purging is labeled a disorder. It’s a problem — one not to be practiced or written off as trivial.

So why do we give a free pass for this behavior more broadly? Why do we keep taking the bait when we clearly know better?

Its maddening. But it doesn’t have to be inevitable.

The start of winter, with its shorter days and location at the tail end of the calendar, can seem like the lean times.

Paradoxically, it’s also the season of excess.

This is the time of the year where we overextend ourselves. Where we fill our calendars with gatherings. Where we indulge ourselves with sweets. Where we empty the coffers while shopping for gifts.

For several weeks, we lure ourselves into The Extension Trap, in the name of holiday spirit.

Of course, we can’t sustain this behavior. So once the holiday lights dim and the ornaments go back into storage, we adjust back to our regular patterns. And we do our best to ignore the pain this readjustment causes us.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We can resolve to stop this madness. To say No more often. To choose not to overextend ourselves.

It’s a singular action, a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. But as more and more of us head that direction, that ripple can become a wave. And perhaps, these expectations of overextension will go away.

And it doesn’t have to stop there.

Investors are people. So are members of the C-Suite. They too have lives outside of the office. They too have families and social circles.

If our movement crosses the tipping point, it can influence their decisions. And it can shift the contours in which we operate.

That would truly be a paradigm shift. But it can’t happen unless we make the first move.

So, let’s be bold. Let’s be brave. Let’s be smart.

Let’s practice moderation and steer clear of The Extension Trap.

It’s our best path forward.

Playing it Back

As I picked up the cup, I felt it slide.

My grip seemed strong, and my focus was top-notch. Yet, gravity was inclined to foil my efforts.

My reflexes took over, clutching the cup tighter. My hands trembled momentarily, but I was able to steady myself.

Crisis averted, I thought. Or maybe not.

I looked down at my custom football jersey, now splashed with beer. When my hands had trembled, some of the liquid had left the cup — and ended up on one of my most expensive pieces of clothing.

It was the cruelest of ironies. I don’t drink; I was bringing the beer to my mother, sitting at a table nearby. And yet, I’d paid the price for chivalry.

Back at the table, with the beer now handed off, my mind began racing. I was counting the seconds until I could get home and carefully place the jersey in the wash. And I was reliving my quasi-disaster, playing it back over and over to see where things went wrong.

I was stuck on a road to nowhere.

If I could turn back time.

This is more than a famous Cher song. It’s a common lament. A wish with no chance of being granted.

For time moves in but one direction — forward. Attempting to re-litigate the past is foolhardy.

And yet, we continue to try.

There’s a reason why time travel movies are so popular. There’s a reason fashion trends cycle every few decades. There’s a reason why songs about regret — including that Cher tune — persist.

We are obsessed with playing it back. We are consumed by the thought of one tweak yielding a different outcome.

We’d rather not look at the spilled beer on our cherished jersey. We’d rather not sweep up the shattered glass from the kitchen floor. We’d rather not face the conundrum we find ourselves in.

Far better to picture an entirely different reality.

Even if conjuring such illusions amounts to little more than wasted energy.

I sat in the classroom, staring at the whiteboard.

My business school professor was introducing the concept of decision trees, and I was mesmerized.

Not by the myriad probabilities and the complicated math. All of that was over my head.

No, the concept itself had me enthralled.

You see, I had long dreamed of seeing all the possibilities in front of me and choosing the optimal one. For I had obsessed over the moments that caused bad outcomes, imagining how they could have gone better.

I tended to do this more with the little things in my life than the big ones. I rarely played back my decision to move to a new state or to jump to a new vocation.

But that trek down a muddy path that got my shoes dirty? That money I wasted because I forgot to use a discount code? I’d chew on those missteps for months.

Now, I had a visual aid for this fixation. I could draw the branches and vividly explore the alternatives.

I could make the imperfect art of playing it back a bit smoother.

And so, my games of what if intensified. What was once an arcane exercise turned into a data driven endeavor. One whose futility was masked by ferocity.

Nothing could deter me from this sorry crusade. At least not until the day I spilled some beer on my cherished football jersey.

For my mother caught me in this sad spiral. And she would have none of it.

Stop reliving it, she scolded me. We’ll get the jersey clean and move on.

It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering advice. But it changed my approach entirely.

For my mother’s words exposed an underlying truth. This obsession with playing it back, with decision trees, with alternatives — it wasn’t about hiding in the past for me. No, I kept going to the tape as a means of control.

If I could find the root cause of bad outcomes, I could avoid them in the future. At least that was the thought.

But things happen, regardless of my attempts to avoid them. It would be far better for me to focus on my response than to keep digging for the root cause.

With that ethos in tow, I find myself playing it less often.

In September 2008, the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots met for a football game in Massachusetts.

The game was billed as a massive mismatch. New England had won 21 straight games in the regular season, had dominated the division both teams played in, and had played in the most recent Super Bowl. While the Patriots were missing their injured star quarterback, they still had Bill Belichick — the best head coach in the National Football League.

In the days leading up to the game, Belichick prepared meticulously. He watched hours of game film, noting the Dolphins’ patterns and tendencies. And he formed a game plan to exploit those tendencies.

But once the game started, it was Belichick who was exploited.

The Dolphins rolled out a new offensive formation. The running back would line up where the quarterback normally did, taking the snap directly. He would then rush to the outside behind a convoy of blockers. Or he might zip it to a nearby wide receiver if the defense left that receiver open.

Miami hadn’t used this formation — the Wildcat — in any of its prior games. Belichick hadn’t prepared for it, and neither had the New England defense.

The Dolphins ran roughshod over the Patriots, earning the victory on the way to a division title. New England ended up missing the playoffs.

This game showed how playing it back has its limits.

Video footage has revolutionized football, taking coaching, scouting, and player safety to the next level. But it can’t tell all.

There’s always a surprise looming that the tape can’t find. A Wildcat formation, if you will.

How teams react to that sudden adversity makes all the difference. The players, coaches and staff who can steady themselves through the fog tend to be the ones who claim victory. Those attached to the past find themselves weighed down by it.

The same dichotomy awaits us. Memory is a potent tool. But it’s not all-powerful.

Past doesn’t always make prologue. And dwelling on what’s written can lower the horizons of what we’ve yet to write.

So, let’s move away from playing it back. Let’s get off the what if carousel. Let’s swap out the rehash for the response.

We’ll be better for it.

Against The Grain

Just say no.

If you turned on your television back in the 1980s, you likely heard those three words.

They came from First Lady Nancy Reagan. And they were part of the War on Drugs campaign.

The United States was in plenty of shadow conflicts at the time. The Cold War was ever present. The War on Poverty appeared to be a lost cause. The War on Inflation had yielded a brutal recession.

But the War on Drugs was getting plenty of outsize attention. Because the future of our kids was at stake.

Now, the future of our kids was at stake plenty of times before. Teenagers tend to be rebellious, after all. And those signs of rebellion – rock and roll music, dancing, roller blading — those have traditionally come under fire by buttoned-up older generations.

But this was different. This time, the offender was a public health hazard. One that we’d turned a blind eye to for far too long.

So, our nation took dead aim. Arrests for possession accelerated. Sentence lengths for dealing skyrocketed. And the crisis abated.

Or at least that was what we told ourselves.

For we were already onto the next frontier — big tobacco. Over the course of the 1990s, the sight of teenagers smoking went from normal to noteworthy.

Advertising for cigarettes declined — per government degree — and buying a pack became much more tedious. As a result, fewer young people gave it a try.

This seemed like a massive success. But there was no time to celebrate. For once again, it was on to the next challenge.

The new enemy arose around the time I reached my teenage years. This one wasn’t a pill, a powder, or a cigarette. It was online poker — a game my peers were flocking to, despite not having the money to back their bids.

Legislators had long dealt with this problem by restricting access to gambling venues, through licensing and age minimums. But the Internet opened a gateway for teens to walk through. And walk through, they did.

So, the authorities cracked down. They started going after the owners of poker websites, while putting out Public Service Announcements about the dangers of gambling.

It didn’t work out as intended.

For it turned out that the online poker fiasco was just the tip of the iceberg. Technology was opening a Pandora’s Box of issues for adolescents — including new ways to access drugs and inhale nicotine.

Fending off those myriad issues turned into a giant game of whack-a-mole. Those leading the charges were a step behind.

Just say no wasn’t quote as straightforward as it seemed.

Why did Nancy Reagan’s initiative go so awry?

Was it the messaging? The tactics? The inability to anticipate the whims of youth?

All these issues likely played a role. But I believe the biggest fault lies at the root.

Just say no trivialized the concept of abstinence. It made quitting seem as trivial as flipping a light switch — a simple task with instant results.

But it’s never quite that simple.

It turns out that abstinence campaigns are asking a lot of us. They’re demanding that we break with habit and go against the grain. All while ignoring the related challenges that are sure to arise along the way.

And those challenges are doubly prominent with adolescents. After all, teenagers are naturally primed to go against the grain. That’s the impetus behind the rule bending and troublemaking that gives older generations such distress.

Asking teenagers to rebel against their rebelliousness on a dime can be straight up delusional. Yet, this is precisely what we tried with Just say no.

No wonder it flopped.

How can I help?

These four words were meant to be my compass.

So said the internship coordinator at CBS News on my first day there.

I was meant to be continually useful, searching for projects to assist with whenever I had a free moment. Saying no was not an option.

I was barely beyond my own adolescence at this point. Fresh off rebellious years that proved to be anything but, I was keen to answer the call.

So, I set up green screen backdrops. I reordered archive tapes. I watched arcane news clips until I knew them by memory.

It wasn’t a glamorous role, but it fulfilled the mission. It proved I was helpful, useful, and perhaps worthy of a future job opportunity.

Still, I finished those eight weeks unsettled. For it seemed to me that finding a footing in TV news — or any other industry — meant never saying no to anything.

It didn’t matter if the pay was too low, the risk was too great, or life was getting in the way. Declining an opportunity might slam the door on your career before it could even get established.

This mentality is now pervasive in our society. Openness and flexibility are cornerstones of our culture.

That’s often a good thing. But not always.

You see, agreeableness requires sacrifice. We put aside our own needs to cater to the demands of others.

The benefits of this trade — acceptance, opportunity, prosperity — make it palatable. But we can only truly flourish if we look out for ourselves as voraciously as we do for others. And sometimes that means going against the grain.

It means just saying no.

Several years back, I got an invite to a fancy gala.

It had all the fixings. Black tie. Hors d’oeuvres. And a guest list that featured several friends.

I had every reason to go. I would get to dress up and live it up with people I cared about.

There was only one problem: I didn’t want to go. At all.

So, I went against the grain. I declined the invite, without providing an alibi. And I didn’t regret it.

That gala was the first time in a while that I remember actively saying no to something. But it wouldn’t be the last.

Indeed, I’ve declined all manner of invites and requests in subsequent years. I’m selective when I do this — I don’t want to jeopardize my career or my friendships. But the days of me being an automatic Yes have long passed.

And I have flourished as a result.

Perhaps this is the Just say no that we can get behind. One where our own compass guides the way, rather than one foisted upon us from others.

This method won’t be perfect. But it holds the promise of being better than the status quo.

Going against the grain is never easy. But sometimes it’s needed.

When it is, let’s do it right.