Month: August 2025

The Convenience of Privacy

As I walked into the restroom at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, I did a double take.

Gone were the sticky floors and uncomfortable noises. In their place was something more humane.

Each toilet sat inside its own private room, with a floor to ceiling door displaying a red or green light. Red meant occupied while green meant available.

Similarly, the urinals were arrayed in cubicles. Each one sat fully out of view from the next one.

This was all a welcome surprise to me. I went from dreading this restroom trip to relishing it.

A few hours later, I stepped off a plane and into the Chicago O’Hare Airport terminal.

Once again, the spirit moved me. And once again, I found myself in the nearest restroom.

This experience was far less pleasant.

There were no private rooms for the toilets. Just ubiquitous metal stall dividers, with latched doors that were barely hanging on. And the urinals sat in a row, without any partitions between them whatsoever.

I solemnly did my business, washed my hands, and trudged over to baggage claim. But as I waited for my luggage, my mind was racing.

How costly would it be for Chicago O’Hare Airport to upgrade its restrooms? Or at least put some partitions between the urinals? Don’t they understand the virtue of privacy?

Alas, I fear they do not.

It’s often been said that death and taxes are the only certainties in life. But there are really two more.

To survive, we must take in nourishment daily. And we must also rid ourselves of the waste from that process.

Eating and drinking do not require an audience, per se. But over time, a communal audience for those activities has become close to obligatory.

But the other activities? They’re meant to be solitary. They’re too messy and unsanitary to be considered otherwise.

Some of this solitude is self-provided. Most homes contain bathrooms, allowing us to relieve ourselves in peace.

Yet, much of our day is spent outside of our homes. Namely, in communal settings where nature’s call might still arrive. Because of that, many public spaces include restroom facilities.

This might seem obvious to the point of being an afterthought. But consider the implications.

It costs money to maintain public restrooms. Toilet paper isn’t free. Neither are janitorial salaries or maintenance bills.

But it’s also nearly impossible to charge money for restroom use. People would revolt at such a notion.

So, businesses and government entities are left to take a financial loss on restroom provisions – hoping, at best, to make up the shortfall somewhere else.

This explains the haphazard look of some facilities, such as the Chicago O’Hare Airport restrooms.

But it doesn’t explain everything.

Some time ago, I was driving down a Texas highway when I noticed a series of billboards.

They appeared every 10 miles or so, each featuring a smiling beaver with a mileage countdown. They also included clever puns about restroom usage.

The billboards were for Buc-ee’s, the now famous travel center chain. But back then, Buc-ee’s wasn’t national phenomenon. If anything, it was gaining regional notoriety for its restrooms.

You see, Cintas had given Buc-ee’s an award for maintaining America’s Best Restroom. And the company was celebrating this accolade by begging travelers to try their restrooms out.

I eventually found myself in a Buc-ee’s restroom. And it did not disappoint.

Toilets were in their own private rooms. Urinals were in secluded cubicles. There were ample supplies of hand sanitizer and soap. And janitors were steps away, ready to spring into action if needed.

It immediately dawned on me that this arrangement was not financially sustainable – especially when you add in the cost of all those billboards advertising the restrooms. But as I walked out of Buc-ee’s moments later with $50 worth of merchandise and Beaver Nuggets, I realized where the funding really came from.

Still, I had no complaints. I’d spent a lifetime relieving myself behind roadside shrubs or in grungy gas station restrooms. Buc-ee’s seemed much better.

I imagine that this was the spirit behind the restroom revamps at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. By ponying up for facilities improvements, airport management could make travelers more comfortable — and more apt to spend money before boarding their flights.

The leaders of Chicago O’Hare Airport clearly felt differently. Hope was not a business plan for them. And they maintained their facilities accordingly.

Privacy, it seems, has a double standard.

But should it?

How much does a urinal partition cost?

My mind was still pondering this question as my bag appeared on the luggage belt in Chicago O’Hare Airport.

A quick Internet search provided the answer. Roughly $300 per partition.

That means, in a typical restroom with 5 to 7 urinals, partitions would cost $1,200 to $1,800 to install. A decent amount, no doubt. But hardly an exorbitant one.

And yet, the amount of establishments refuse to claim that cost is staggering.

I’ve started adding these overly public restrooms to a Demerit List. A list that now includes the restrooms at Chicago O’Hare Airport.

And once a restroom makes the list, I’ve tried to avoid returning it ever again.

You see, I find the situation unconscionable. Why would entities avoid paying a grand or two for some urinal partitions, when they’re likely paying twice as much to arrange the toilets in stalls?

But more than that, I view this no-partition arrangement as a broken promise.

For if I were to relieve myself out in the open, I would be — rightfully — assessed a ticket for public lewdness. But somehow, in a communal space, I’m expected to have momentary amnesia for that warning?

No.

I’m owed convenience. I’m owed discretion.

And so is everyone else who sets foot inside a public restroom.

It’s time that we set some standards for privacy. And it’s time that we invest properly in those standards.

Put up those partitions. Install those doors. Do all we can to protect the sanctity of solitude.

This is more than an obligation. This is a right.

Let’s ensure that it’s properly honored.

Raising the Bar

Our first encounter was a strange one.

I’d just completed a Five-Mile race. And as I reached for the Gatorade and bananas past the finish line, another racer asked me how I’d done.

I flatly mentioned my accolades. Sixth overall, top in my age division. An age division it turns out we shared.

Wow, the other racer replied. I bested my time from last year, when I won the division. And yet, I wasn’t able to catch you.

This race keeps getting faster and faster.

I immediately felt a twinge of guilt.

This runner had clearly set his sights on this race. He was aiming for a first-place divisional medal.

I, on the other hand, had no idea what I was doing. I’d never raced anything longer than a 5K before. And I’d shown up at the starting line in a pair of trainers that were past their prime.

Things didn’t exactly click either once the starting horn sounded. I decided to keep pace with a blonde woman in a sports bra – who I later learned was a local elite racer from a different age division. I was unwittingly setting myself up for an epic meltdown, miles from the finish line.

But that meltdown never came. Despite huffing and puffing, I maintained my pace past mile three, and mile four. Meanwhile, the blonde elite dropped back. At the end I was running all alone.

And so, by blind luck, I’d wrestled a spot atop the medal stand from someone who had worked hard for it. I was an imposter. A thief.

Or so I thought.

A couple months after the race, I showed up at a high school track well before dawn.

I was training for a half-marathon at this point. And a friend had convinced me that joining Track Tuesday workouts with the local elites would help on race day.

The blonde woman I’d bested in the five-miler wasn’t at the track. But several other top-notch athletes were.

I’d heard their names atop race leaderboards before. And I was intimidated.

What if I wasn’t fast enough to keep up? Would I be invited back?

The anxiety was First Day of School level.

But then I saw a familiar face. The guy I’d talked to after that five-mile race.

He joined the group for the warmup laps, before peeling off to start his own workout. And my anxiety disappeared.

The next Track Tuesday, he joined us on our warmups once again. The same for the Track Tuesday after that.

I eventually approached him and explained that I was training properly now. My days of bumbling into races and stealing podium spots from him were over.

His response floored me.

Oh, don’t worry about that. That was my first race back after a hiatus. And what you did there helped set the bar for me in terms of what I need to do to get back in race shape.

I’d never considered that competitors could help each other in this way. That they could inspire each other to dig deeper and aim higher.

That together, they could raise the bar for everyone.

This revelation set the stage for my training with the local elites. It provided the impetus for me to keep showing up.

I knew I stood no chance of besting these amazing runners in a race. But they inspired me to get the most out of myself. And they inspired each other to do the same.

While my competitive running career was ultimately shortened by injuries, that group has kept on inspiring the running community. They’ve continued to put stellar race performances on the board.

They’re still raising the bar.

I am the firstborn of my generation.

My sister and my cousins are all younger than me. Many by several years.

Growing up, I had a sense that all eyes were on me. If I were to mess up, I could send an entire generation of relatives down the wrong path.

This was a heavy weight to bear. And I carried it solemnly.

That is, until my father started his family tree project.

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These were the days before high-speed internet. And the concept of consumer-facing DNA test kits was still a ways off.

So, my father interviewed most of his living relatives to fill out the tree – either in-person or over the phone.

And the stories that came out of those discussions captivated me.

For instance, I learned that the paternal branch of my family tree — the one that has carried my last name through the generations — is essentially a rags to riches story. My great grandfather was raised by a single mother who peddled goods along the beach.

Their small family didn’t have much. And society looked harshly upon my great-great grandmother for being a single mother.

My great grandfather would overcome these modest beginnings. He would graduate from high school and go on run a grocery store. One of his sons — my grandfather — would become a doctor. And one of his sons — my father — would become a businessman and then a private school teacher.

In less than a century, my family had worked their way up through society.

After hearing all this, I started to look at my de-facto role differently.

I didn’t need to be the perfect guiding light for my younger relatives. I just needed to raise the bar a little more, so that they could have something to eclipse.

I’ve leaned into this task with gusto. To this day, my most frequent advice to my sister and cousins is:

Don’t try to be me. Be better than me.

And they have.

My sister and my cousins are all amazing people who have done incredible things. These days, they inspire me twice as much as I could ever inspire them.

This is raising the bar at its best. In the right circumstances, achievement can become a flywheel. And the rising tide can lift all boats.

There’s a lot of discourse out there these days about the dangers of striving.

While this country was built on the spirit of upward mobility, its promise has seemingly faded.

Giving more effort no longer leads to the promise of achievement. Instead, it saddles you with more expectations and higher demands. It sets you on an intractable course with your breaking point.

At least that what the critics say.

There is some merit to this argument. After all, it’s harder than ever to keep up with modern society. And burnout seems to have become a more ubiquitous affliction than the common cold.

Yet, I still reject the premise of this theory.

Sure, raising the bar is hard, demanding, and often unfulfilling. And it can dent our ego to see our hard work get erased by those who come before us.

But without that first step, there can be no leap. There’s no spark. There’s no inertia. There’s no possibility of stretching beyond the horizon.

We need that hope, that inspiration. We need the push to meet the moment.

Our families need it. Our affinity groups need it. Our society needs it.

So, let’s keep striving. Let’s keep giving our best. Let’s keep raising the bar.

We’ll all be better for it.

The Twisted View of Risk

There’s still time to get Apple Care on that new iPhone.

Those were the associate’s words, as he handed the man across the table from me his new iPhone.

But the associate wasn’t finished.

We now have monthly or yearly plans. You can add it for as long as you own the phone, unlike those old two-year Apple Care plans. And if you break your phone, you’ll be covered.

The customer was unmoved.

If my phone gets messed up, he said. I’ll just buy a new one.

The associate looked perplexed.

You’d rather pay another $800 on a new device, than $30 on a screen repair? The math doesn’t add up.

It didn’t add up to me either. After the iPhone owner left the store, I told the associate that I would have gotten the new Apple Care plan.

And yet, as I left the store, I started to doubt my certainty.

After all, I’d made some travel arrangements the night before. Airline tickets, rental cars, hotel reservations — the whole deal.

Each of those purchases came with an option to buy insurance for cancellations, delays, and other mishaps. And in each case, I’d declined that coverage.

I was no better than the guy with the brand-new iPhone. Risk did not factor in.

There’s an infamous scene in the sitcom Family Guy that sticks with me.

The dim-witted protagonist — Peter Griffin — opens his front door and encounters a salesman hawking volcano insurance. Even though he lives far from any volcanic zones, Griffin uses his wife’s rainy-day fund to pay for the coverage.

Predictably, this ends up landing the Griffin family in financial ruin.

I think many of us look at insurance this way. We see it as a scam — one that leeches our hard-earned money in pursuit of bad outcomes.

We don’t want to think that we’ll get in a car wreck, or break our smartphone, or get food poisoning and miss our flight. And we definitely don’t want to throw money at those possibilities ahead of time.

We’d rather delude ourselves into a false sense of security, floating down a river of cost efficiency and good vibes.

I, more than anyone, know how ridiculous this is.

I’ve worked in the insurance technology space for more than a decade. I’ve seen the data. I’ve learned the nuances of coverage. And I know that the overall system — while imperfect — is far from a scam.

Plus, I’ve seen the benefits of insurance in my own life. Car insurance helped make me whole after a Dodge Ram smashed into one of the doors of my SUV. And event insurance reimbursed my entry fees when I had to drop out of the New York City Marathon due to injury.

Yet, I still find myself declining event insurance these days. And I still tend to favor cost efficiency over broad coverage when it comes to my car insurance policy.

The risk is there. The logic is not.

I don’t know much about the man who walked out of that store with a new iPhone.

But I would imagine he holds a few stocks and bonds. And if he were to find himself in Las Vegas, he’d likely take a turn at the slot machines.

This is not typecasting. It’s oddsmaking.

You see, there’s been a surge in recreational investors this decade – particularly in the wake of the pandemic. And Vegas casinos have always been popular with young adults.

I’d be hard pressed to imagine Mr. I Don’t Need Apple Care bucking those trends. Despite his insurance frugality, he seems to be in the peak audience for them.

Investing and gambling share common traits. Particularly the dopamine high of making a windfall, and the delusion that such happy outcomes will befall us frequently.

That’s what draws people in. That’s what keeps people at the table. And that’s what leads people to believe that risk is negligible.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Risk is multiplied in the each of these forums, in great part because control is out of our hands.

We don’t get to run the companies we invest in. And gambling is nothing more than a game of chance.

It’s likely that we’ll lose at least some of what we put in. And it’s unlikely we’ll be compensated for that loss.

Insurance might not be popular. But it turns out to be much more practical than the cool activities.

If only we’d come to our senses.

A great many historical figures are known for only one thing.

Sigmund Freud is not one of them.

The father of modern psychoanalysis helped people around the world discover their unconscious, unveiled the Oedipus complex, and redefined sexuality. And along the way, he introduced us to The Pleasure Principle.

The Pleasure Principle is an instinctive drive to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It guides us as we work to satisfy our biological and psychological needs. And it might explain our twisted view of risk.

You see, The Pleasure Principle aims to insulate us fully from bad outcomes. But in a world that’s often random and cruel, that mandate is in impossibility. Risk is always lurking, like a shadow. And pain is never far behind.

Our brains can’t square with this reality. After all, we can only keep our guard up so long before we wear ourselves out.

So, we let the The Pleasure Principle cast a spell of delusion. We get addicted to the prospect of winning while turning our backs on the mere mention of losing.

This dynamic is what draws us to invest, to place bets, and to chase dreams with vigor. And it’s also what leads us to get repulsed by mentions of warranties and insurance policies.

Simply put, we’d rather wish away the bad outcomes than have a plan for mitigating them.

Such thinking is foolhardy. But it’s a Freudian principle. It’s darn near inevitable.

That is, unless we lean into the skid.

Yes, it we play Jedi Mind Tricks on ourselves, we just might cajole ourselves back to our senses.

That means treating insurance like an investment, rather than a nuisance. It means expecting the worst, rather than the best. And it means treating positive outcomes as a happy surprise.

Such a shift requires some emotional jiu jitsu, and a fair dose of pessimism. But hedging our bets in this way, can help keep us from losing it all. It can keep us from losing it all.

That seems like a winning strategy to me. Let’s make it a reality.

The Regression Fallacy

In June of 2000, the greatest golfers in the world gathered in Northern California.

One of the sport’s four major events – the United States Open – was being held at the Pebble Beach Golf Club that year. And these elite golfers were seeking to claim the $800,000 winner’s prize.

The stage was set. The players were in place.

And the golf…largely underwhelmed.

You see, Pebble Beach Golf Club is as treacherous as it is picturesque. Its location atop steep oceanside cliffs leaves it susceptible to wind, fog, and the rest of Mother Nature’s fury.

These factors can cause a flying golf ball to go awry. And they were all in full force that week in June of 2000.

For all their greatness, the world’s pro golfers simply could not contend with the elements.

Indeed, after four days trekking around the 18-hole course, all but one golfer scored worse than the club average — better known as par. The second-place golfers were three over par, the fourth-place golfer was four over par, and the fifth-place golfers were five over par.

But that first-place golfer? He didn’t just break the average. He obliterated it.

Tiger Woods finished the tournament a whopping 12 under par. He made it around the golf course in 15 fewer strokes than the second-place finishers.

The performance set a record that still stands in professional golf. A record for margin of victory in a major championship.

Tiger’s tournament seemed to break all the rules. The rules of physics. And the law of averages.

It was truly a unicorn event.

Or was it?

Regression to the mean.

If you’ve taken a statistics class in your lifetime, you’ve likely heard this phrase.

The idea is straightforward. Anyone taking on a task can perform it exceptionally well — or exceptionally poorly — one time, or even two. But given enough opportunities, their overall performance will average out about where that of others do.

Regression to the mean infers that humans are interchangeable. It states that over the long run, no one is truly that exceptional or that inept. Our bodies, our minds, and the environment we inhabit are not designed to maintain such long-term deviation.

To borrow a phrase from a different stick-and-ball sport — baseball — all it takes is more at bats for the phenomenon to play out.

I want to believe in this concept. After all, it can simultaneously provide hope for those in a rut and humility for those on a roll. What a perfect balance.

But it turns out that it’s too perfect. It’s too neat and tidy for a world that often defies explanation.

I mean, think about it. The best golfers on earth had plenty at bats at Pebble Beach. They played 72 holes of golf over four days, in a variety of challenging conditions.

Yet, despite that fact, Tiger Woods refused to regress to the mean. Instead, he calmly lapped the field.

And he wasn’t done.

A month later, he went over to Scotland and won the Open Championship by 6 strokes. A month after that, he won the PGA Championship in Kentucky. Eight months after that, he claimed the green jacket at the Masters Tournament in Georgia.

It was the famous Tiger Slam. An unprecedented sweep of golf’s signature events, all within a one-year span. He would go on to win each major event twice more over the remainder of the decade.

The at bats didn’t matter. The law of averages was not about to catch up to Tiger Woods.

Nothing was.

Around the time Tiger Woods was making waves in the golf world, a different athlete was dominating that other bat and ball sport. But in a far different way.

Randy Johnson was an intimidating force on the pitching mound. Standing at 6 foot 10 inches, the left hander came after hitters with a 100 mile per hour fastball and a wipeout slider. When batters saw Johnson scowling down at them, with his long hair flowing in the breeze, they surely felt fear and doubt.

This aura was at its apex during the Tiger Slam era.

Indeed, in 2000, Randy Johnson struck out 347 batters and won 19 games. In 2001, he struck out 372 batters, won 21 games, and led the Arizona Diamondbacks to a world championship.

Johnson won baseball’s National League Cy Young Award in each of those seasons, as well as the ones bookending them (1999 and 2002).

I saw him pitch in person during that final Cy Young season. He proceeded to give up a home run to a batter taking his first swing in the big leagues.

Everyone in the stadium was stunned that the rookie could catch up to Johnson’s fastball. After all, the pitch was that much better than the rest of the heaters in the league. It took something special to drive it 400 feet.

Randy Johnson is long retired now. But these days, there are dozens of pitchers that throw as hard as the Hall of Famer once did.

And while some hitters do knock those blazing fastballs over the fence, most of them head back to the dugout shaking their heads.

The numbers bear this out. Back in 2000, the overall batting average for major league hitters was .270. In 2024, it was .243.

Instead of pitchers regressing to the mean, the mean itself is receding.

The thing is, it’s still difficult to blow a fastball past a major league hitter repeatedly. I couldn’t do it if I tried. And most likely, neither could you.

But a growing cohort of hurlers do have that magic in their arm. And they show no sign of returning to that label we call average.

Regression to the mean? It’s a fallacy.

So why all this talk of Tiger Woods and Randy Johnson? What does it mean for everyone else?

After all, 99 percent of us don’t play professional sports. Our “at bats” come in the form of emailed assignments, sales opportunities, and so on.

The law of average surely applies to us, right?

Well, maybe not.

You see, whether we shuck corn or trade stocks, whether we construct buildings or run companies, our performance is sure to vary.

Some of us will be savants, riding the tailwinds of innate skill and good fortune to prosperity. Others of us will be forced to iterate in the wake of challenging headwinds.

But regardless which path we find ourselves on, we’re unlikely to regress to the mean.

There’s just too much of a natural differential between those who’ve got it and those who don’t. There are just too many people predisposed to defy the norms.

This is the state of play we find ourselves in. And it makes our next move critically important.

We must do better than to count on regression to save us. We must do more than pray for our rotten luck to turn around, or to expect our good fortunes to fade.

We must instead lean into our strengths, and pivot away from our weaknesses. We must channel our inner Tiger Woods. And we must avoid attempts to catch up with the Randy Johnson fastball.

Following this strategy will only widen the gap. It will add data points to the edges of the graph, while leaving the middle ever hollower.

But that’s the whole point.

There is not much to gain in being average. So, let’s head full bore toward excellence.

We’ll be better for it.