reverse scavenger hunts

earlier in 2016, i had dinner with my good friend, erin, and he told me about a project he started a few years bad that really resonated with and inspired me. it’s called a reverse scavenger hunt and i think about weekly. not only is it an interesting idea on its own, i think it also has some broader implications for ways people can positively engage with their surroundings.

the general idea, just like a standard scavenger hunt, is that he would create a list of tasks that teams of people had to complete. the more things you do/get on the list, the more points you end up with. the team with the most point at the end of the game wins. the flip is that instead of taking things, the tasks encourage positive actions with people and places nearby. so instead of buying or stealing an item, like might be on a normal scavenger hunt list, a task might be buying flowers and giving them to someone on the street.

i really appreciate the idea that groups of people can run around the city doing little acts of kindness or funny stuff in a way that randomly but positively impacts the people and place where they live. from a systems perspective, maybe ideas like this could be critiqued as being too small or not having enough impact. but the way i see it, how people feel in public is a big deal and has serious implications on culture. if things like reverse scavenger hunts were more common, maybe people would come to associate random sidewalk encounters with more positive experiences than negative ones. and then maybe the safer people feel in public, the more likely they are to engage in positive social change work or be more empathic.

a new friend, nick, just told me that he heard or read something that indicated that empathy might behave just like cognitive budgets. you can use up your empathetic capacities over the course of a day just like you can use up your cognitive ones. if that’s the case, maybe reverse scavenger hunts could be a way to replenish and even grow people’s empathetic capacities… that’d be cool.

update: resources from nick

• is it possible to run out of empathy? 
• is the internet killing empathy?

writing: 13:17
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 4:48

put your house in order and discover what you really want to do

a few weeks ago, i tore through marie kondo’s wildly popular book, the life-changing magic of tidying up. i think i finished it in like four days… it’s the 2nd fastest i’ve read any book this year (only giovanni’s room was faster).

my old landlord and adopted dad, roy, was the first person who actually made me want to read it. i’d heard a lot about it in the media, but roy’s recommendation made me actually get it. i’m really glad i did, but even as i think about what i’m about to write, i can already hear it coming out hokey…

the dominant narrative (subtitle included) about the book is that it’s about cleaning. her methodology gets mostly talked about in a frame that’s about how to get rid of things. however, as i read it, her actual point is that by using her method to clean up, it’s possible to be happier and​ discover your life’s work (this is hugely important, imo, and will only continue to increase in importance as work and economy continue to behave like shifting sands…)

her signature question, “does this spark joy?” is a question that’s meant to help you decide whether you should keep a particular item or not. taken on an item-by-item basis, it’s a very useful question. however, the undersell is in the application of that question to literally everything you own. “the magic,“ then is that by getting rid of all things that don’t spark joy, you actually allow yourself to remember, rediscover, or discover for the first time what you actually want to do. kondo believes that our passions and true selves are surfaced when we only have possessions that bring us joy.

the most concrete example she gives of this is how it shows up in book collections. by going through your book collection, taking each book in your hand and only keeping the ones that bring you joy, you will end up with a much smaller library. the books you have at that point usually will be the subject matter that most excites you. it’s likely that you should be focusing your energy (career, hobbies, etc.) on those things. i think that’s an pretty incredible idea.

definitely added going through my stuff, konmari-style, to my list of things to do over winter break. there’s always room for more magic in my life.

ps - marie believes that the things we really enjoy and are passionate about don’t change over time. i’m not so sure about this, but i’m interested in her perspective because she’s been doing this work for way longer than me. i am definitely curious, though, if my coaching practice and jungle’s SNaP work will surface the same or a contradictory insights.

writing: 17:02
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why overwork is a flawed strategy

i think overwork is a flawed strategy for two reasons:

1. it creates a perception of a volume of work that is unsustainable
2. it undermines strategic thinking
   

on this first point, people who overwork make it look like it’s possible to do more work than is actually sustainable. this happens at the level of individuals all the way up to top-level leadership.

when individuals low in hierarchies do it, it just creates false expectations of how much work one person can do. this, in turn, creates perceptions in other people’s minds about what someone’s capacity should be and that influences how much people rely on or expect from someone.

when leaders do it, this effect is magnified. because people high in hierarchies tend to do lots of delegating, when they overwork and overcommit, they spread their excess work onto the people who report to them. this embeds the people around them into the same cycle of overwork. it then creates a perception that an organization’s capacity is higher than it actually is.

the result of this is that it creates the necessity for more overwork because now that’s where everyone (culprit included) thinks operational capacity should be.

now, i could see this as a strategy to grow an organization (by operating over capacity, that could make the case for hiring more people to do the work). unfortunately, i’ve never seen hiring people (a) lead to less overwork and (b) not ruin people’s lives in the process.

now the second point is, imo, the most important reason overwork is a flawed strategy. spread attention undermines strategic thinking because, again imo, good strategy is creative and inability to focus undermines creativity. when you as an organization leader are busy being pulled in different directions, you don’t have time to step back and think. and as so many people have said before, breakthrough moments often happen in downtime when your brain is processing information in the background.

these two reasons are just more parts of why i’m committed to not overworking. i hope, over time, that this reality becomes increasingly clear to more people so we can shift this part of our culture.

writing: 14:14
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the story of the davy lamp and how some safety precautions make systems more dangerous/fragile

there’s a section in resilience: why things bounce back that explains how measures to create safety can backfire in the long-run. i’ve been thinking about that effect a lot as we get closer and closer to a full-on trump presidency. the story (pages 192-193) basically goes like this:

in the 1800s, mining was a super dangerous profession. in 1815, sir humphry davy created a lamp that allowed miners to better explore down in the caves. unfortunately, the net effect was that mining as a profession became more dangerous. turns out, the lamp operated below the ignition point of methane. before the davy lamp, miners were more cautious certain caves were just off limits. when the lamp was created, this allowed exploration into more methane-rich areas of caves. these methane-rich areas are more dangerous. in the end, this caused as net increase in injuries and deaths in the mining injuries.

this story brings up two points. the obvious one is that interventions don’t always have the consequences they intend. for me, it reinforces that notion that interventions really need to be designed from a systems lens. narrowly targeted solutions without attention to the system in which they’re being deployed can have catastrophic impacts.

the other point for me was an introduction to the idea of risk tolerance. there is a theory (risk compensation) that individuals, groups, and societies have a threshold level of risk that they equilibrate to. it’s why people started driving faster when seat belts were made mandatory. it’s also why when condoms are present, people engage in riskier sexual activities. this risk tolerance level can be measured within an individual and it seems like a group of individuals can find their by averaging everyone’s in the group.

whether or not this theory holds in all cases, if we started planning societal safety interventions with it in mind, i have a hunch we’d come out a lot better. we’d also probably spend less money on expensive but ultimately ineffective (and sometimes counter-effective) “solutions.”

writing: 11:08
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 9:32

valuing people for what is internal not external

letter XLI to lucilius from seneca has this passage that really resonated with me:

For what is more foolish than to praise in a man the qualities which come from without? And what is more insane than to marvel at characteristics which may at the next instant be passed on to someone else? A golden bit does not make a better horse. The lion with gilded mane, in process of being trained and forced by weariness to endure the decoration, is sent into the arena in quite a different way from the wild lion whose spirit is unbroken; the latter, indeed, bold in his attack, as nature wished him to be, impressive because of his wild appearance, – and it is his glory that none can look upon him without fear, – is favoured in preference to the other lion, that languid and gilded brute.

No man ought to glory except in that which is his own. We praise a vine if it makes the shoots teem with increase, if by its weight it bends to the ground the very poles which hold its fruit; would any man prefer to this vine one from which golden grapes and golden leaves hang down? In a vine the virtue peculiarly its own is fertility; in man also we should praise that which is his own. Suppose that he has… a beautiful house, that his farm is large and large his income; none of these things is in the man himself; they are all on the outside. Praise the quality in him which cannot be given or snatched away, that which is the peculiar property of the man.

i think what i really like about seneca’s letters to lucilius are the simple way that he expressed big truths. this insight, for example, isn’t a new point. in fact, it aligns with most of my christian upbringing where possessions are perceived as a liability. Jesus himself tells people that some of them are actually hindered on getting into heaven because they have too much stuff:

Truly I tell you, it is difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” —Jesus

but what seneca’s phrasing adds to it (which the bible says, just in other places and not that same passage) is that it’s ones internal characteristics that should be celebrated and praised. if our society could get a real handle on that truth, we’d be such a different reality.

on a similar note, my friend caroline, i were talking the other day and she came to a similar conclusion though from a different angle. she’s had a really tough year. when we were chatting she said something like: “at some point in life, everything external that we have will be stripped away or taken from us (if we don’t die first, which is the ultimate stripping). and yet, who we really are still exists in those moments of having almost everything taken away.”

both of these insights have reminded me this week that what’s internal is more important than what’s external. as much as society repeatedly tells us that material possessions matter, they really just don’t.

writing: 9:34
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 8:02