Truthfully, this article is really just some scraps that I’ve had floating around for a while, yet couldn’t stretch into full-length articles on their own. For those interested, this article will follow the same format as Part I and Part II. TRIGGER WARNING: Minimal pitchfork-sharpening fodder ahead.
When You Deliver on Trust, You Get More Trust
Jocko Willink has a saying that he frequently uses on his podcasts if you break the rules, you get more rules. Willink is both absolutely correct and deeply profound in his assessment. He cites many examples throughout his Navy SEAL career, businesses he’s consulted for, and personal life examples to drive this point home. Recently, another truth similar to Willink’s wisdom dawned on me that essentially the reverse is true as well. If you deliver on trust, you get more trust. Warren Buffet says that “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it”, often people focus on the punitive ending of this verse. However the beginning is just as valid; one can absolutely acquire more and more trust as time goes on. In our common use of the word trust, it is often treated as a binary; we claim to either trust someone or not. However, trust is rarely dealt with in this way, but rather it is stockpiled over time.
“But Dan, what do you mean by deliver on trust?”, well I’m glad you asked. Essentially, when someone trusts you, they have a set of expectations (explicit or implied) that you’ll behave a certain way. When you deliver on (or exceed) that expectation, this closes the feedback loop and encourages them to trust you a little bit more for the next time. This effect works best when there are several consecutive instances of trust being delivered on. Eventually, after enough successive instances of delivering on trust, you’ll find yourself with considerably more leeway and privileges than you had before.
As Charles Duhigg mentioned in his book, Google performed an internal study about what creates high performing teams. What they found was teams that had a high-level of psychological safety were the most productive teams. Trust is one of the main components that make psychological safety possible. Trust correlates with happiness and resiliency, it also helps with creativity and can dampen stress too. High-trust environments are an overwhelmingly net positive.
When you deliver on trust, you get more trust.
In Critique of “Publish or Perish”
Within the isolated walls of academia lies a saying of graduate students, newly-minted doctorates and adjunct instructors alike; publish or perish. On its face, the meaning of the phrase is that these highly-qualified individuals must continually churn out peer-reviewed scientific articles that get published in a reputable journal. In order to advance in their careers, or in some cases, keep their jobs. This phrase is commonly accepted yet there is one element that few will frankly talk about; it’s a horrible idea.
With the phrase publish or perish, the incentive is made abundantly clear; keep publishing papers. As we all know, humans respond to incentives, however poorly crafted they may be. And since tenured professors can make up to $150,000 per year, the incentive is strong. The implied emphasis with publish or perish is the priority of quantity over quality. This leads to studies with either poor methodologies or ones that will lead to obvious conclusions getting published. It doesn’t take a doctorate to figure out that if you starve women, they’ll lose weight, or that a few dozen participants isn’t nearly enough of a sample size to make sweeping conclusions about a population. Anybody who attended science class would know that.
“Well Dan, if you’re going to point out a problem, then I hope you have a solution”, I’m glad you asked! Instead of this dated threat (oops, I meant to say model), we could focus the work of those in academia more towards result-oriented metrics rather than merely output metrics; scientists shouldn’t have the same work incentives as YouTubers. Rather than publish at all costs (which leads to a small industry fueled by unintended consequences), advancements could be conditional upon feats that move society forward, such as proposing a drug candidate that passes the FDA’s Phase 2 clinical trial, a minimum number of patents granted, spinning off a company based on your field of expertise, and so on.
Want better science? Craft better incentives.
An Ode to Tie Clips
I’ll let you in on an open secret; I love wearing ties, and will fish for nearly any excuse to do so. It’s also not a secret that I love non-destructive fasteners. And to borrow from The Man himself, I love when two unrelated ideas are combined. Early on in my adult life, I found that ties can dangle if one were to pick something up off of the floor or lean slightly forward, thus causing the tie to possibly get caught on something. However, we have a handy invention to prevent such a safety mishap from occurring while still being able to rock a tie; the overlooked yet ultra-handy tie-clip. The tie clip is the ultimate in both form and function. There exists the classic, clean look (my go-to) that do not detract from the tie. However, there exists all sorts of novelty tie clips for occasions that allow for a bit of humor or personality. Unlike cufflinks or pocket squares, tie-clips serve a practical function, yet are widely overlooked.
An Ode to Mr. Money Mustache
Peter Adney aka Mr Money Mustache has been one of my favorite bloggers for a long time now. On the surface, he is a financial blogger; after all, his website is all about early retirement and that is inherently financial. However, peel back the curtain and he is so much more than that; Adney is inherently a lifestyle blogger, one who wants nothing more than to spread his wisdom altruistically to anyone who is ready to receive it; no life coach would do that (though, I’d hire him as a life coach any day!). His biggest asset though is that he is basically a serial excuse-buster; seriously, him and Jon Taffer would get along great.
Fitness is one area where Adney dispenses truth to those who can withstand one of his patented facepunches. Adney loves to use his bicycle to go everywhere he needs to go on a day-to-day basis, all the while crushing the excuses of why it isn’t practical. He’s an avid weightlifter as well, though he eschews expensive gyms in favor of acquiring weights second-hand, thereby stripping away another excuse. He even tops it off with pushups and pullups; the ultimate no-cost workout! “But Dan, working out is only one aspect of staying fit!” the naysayer would proclaim, and they’d be right. However, Adney has us covered with nutrition as well. He frequently touts ways to pick up healthy groceries and not spend a fortune, thereby curb-stomping the excuse of eating healthy is too expensive. One of his gems is to visit farmers markets where English is not the dominant language (slappingly accurate advice).
Adney frequently writes about how he made his original nest egg from working as a software developer in the 90’s, without having equity in a start-up that went to the moon (another excuse busted!). Many of his articles discuss his index investing strategy, which requires almost no skill yet yields great returns (class is now in session). This eviscerates yet another excuse holding back the average American that believes that you have to have some unique day-trading strategy (no, you don’t have the special sauce) or need to take an obscene amount of risk to win in the market (yet another excuse squashed).
.Adney is a computer science graduate and survived for quite a while as a software developer (hint: that’s hard to do) shows some of his intellectual prowess, some of his true feats have occurred after his retirement. He is a rabid proponent of borrowing how-to books from his public libraries (they’re less judgmental than bookstores), which kills the excuse of I don’t know how to do X. He then immediately applying the knowledge; whether it’s installing solar panels, building an acoustic studio, or other sorts of information he needs. His ability to quickly gather information, internalize it, immediately apply it, and then share it with the world is almost algorithmic. Mr. Adney is an example a raw reservoir of human capital, all while stomping out the excuses we commonly tell ourselves.
While Adney doesn’t profess to be a life coach, he does occasionally write an advice column on his site. His answers are both informative and are filled with a zany humor that makes his hard truths more palatable. He often likes to facepunch his readers for their spendypants ways, while bemoaning those who drive their clown cars a quarter mile to the grocery store. The juvenile nature of his G-rated jabs is what make them truly disarming, thus allowing his advice to actually get through. His ability to lower people’s defensive walls prior to dispensing his advice is impressive; leading with critiques will only thicken the walls.
Excuses are expensive.
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