Is respect in the eye of the beholder?Someone I enjoy speaking with told me that he doesn’t need to be liked or to like others, he just cares about respect. Then I wondered if the concept of respect for this person is different than the concept for others.In the US, a person may address their spouse/partner’s parents by their first name if the family allows it. In some parts of the US, that’s not possible. Some people address strangers as “sir” or “ma’am” as a sign of respect; others don’t. What’s respect?In the Philippines, some families greet their elders with a special gesture called “mano”. Some families don’t do that. What’s respect?My unscientific conclusion is that “respect is a cultural device.” Why do we have that cultural device? Perhaps we have it for creating cooperation? Maybe it’s for micro-social cohesion? Whatever it’s for; it’s certainly not universal… and like beauty, it’s value may be in the eye of the beholder.

If you’re trying to develop an effective training program for your team, consider this idea.Tell the team you’re trying to get better at explaining a concept. Ask the team if anybody is interested in joining an impromptu meeting to hear you give the explanation. Tell the team that they win if they walk away with new insights and ideas, and you win if you walk away with suggestions for making the work better.Incorporate your team’s idea and ask them to join you again. Repeat steps 1-3. Keep doing it until your team can explain the concept back to you.Remarkably, it works.

There’s always noise happening in the world. Your sources of information optimize themselves for the noise you consume. If you consume noise from a wide variety of sources with a wide array of voices, you’ll eventually find something that could be a picture of the truth. What’s right in front of you, right now, is the truth. You can see it, hear it, touch it, interact with it… taste it (maybe), smell it (maybe). It’s real.Don’t allow yourself to get stressed with the pixels on your phone or tv screen.

Based on my little hour by hour analysis, spending time with friends is a net loss. Weird, huh? Perhaps. For me, there’s a high opportunity cost for spending time with my friends, I must be highly intentional and present with the friends I choose to invest time with. Why could I throw that time away? Why waste it on people who don’t help me be a better person?I love the friends I have. They’re important to me. There are more valuable things I could be doing; exercising or spending time with myself (something I don’t do enough). But, when I do invest time with them, I know that time is precious, scarce, and important. If you chose to see the glass as half full, go ahead. I choose to savor every drop.

No way around it.If you want your long term goals, you must sacrifice now via your work. You could think to yourself: ugh, what could I be doing if only I wasn’t working right now?You could also think to yourself: what more might I be able to do if I only focused a little harder in this moment?

I have used up about 53% of the hours I may have left to live; there may be 300k+ hours remaining for me. How will I allocate the scarce resource that is time?In order to answer that question, I thought about the value of time. How do you assign a value to an hour?Financial value — an hourly wage.Emotional value — a sense of fulfillment.Long-term impact — my life or health span are materially changed by that hour. I then assign a balance factor — some type of prioritization/weighting — to the emotional and long-term impact scores because I want to prioritize certain types of activity. Example: exercise, or time by myself to study. When I combine it all together I get the value of an hour. Then, I consider, if I am doing one activity, what is the cost of that activity? I look at opportunity costs.If I am working as a musician, I assign the value of 27, then I am not spending time at home with my family, value of 30. I have to increase the hourly wage of working as a musician so that the difference between the value of an hour as a musician and the cost of leaving home is greater than 0. Why do this? Because time is scarce. Because prioritizing and doing what matters, matters.

A band leader I work for did not organize himself and called me the day before a gig asking if I’d show up. I declined. I love the band. I get so much joy from playing with that group. I also love my time. I enjoy rest. I want to spend the time I have doing other things I care about. It may appear difficult to release yourself of things you care deeply about, but you can. The world didn’t end.The show went on.I got to see “Argyle” and enjoy some alone time.

Be careful not to complain about the behaviors of others. It’s possible you made a choice to allow, and or tolerate, their offensive behavior from the start.Instead of complaining, make better choices next time.

I needed a wake up call. I said to someone the most overrated set of words I’ve ever heard. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”I hate that phrase. I can’t believe I said it. Then I found this post from a few years ago. I needed the wake up cal.“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”Life requires action, but action requires energy, and energy is born from rest.Rest leads to boredom, and boredom is the friction required to act.That’s why inaction is as powerful action.You’ll be dead when you’re dead.You’ll sleep to stay in the game.We need you in the game.

I wrote this post on the Moral War around this time last year.In The Great influenza, author John Barry describes how viruses work. They attach themselves to certain receptors in the body. The virus replicates itself. It disguises itself. It destroys from within mercilessly. As much as we try to develop medications to cure them, the best advice is to let it run its course. The even better advice is, “the best offense is a great defense.”Moral wars are like viruses. When we battle each other on the field of morality, we battle for something intangible. That intangible is greater than us, it cannot be quantified, it’s deep, it’s often linked to power. Moral wars never end well.The problem with morality and righteousness is morality and righteousness. When everybody’s belief sets are different, who’s truly right? When the word looks different to everyone, who has the right to say their perspective is the most accurate?I believe the answer comes from reconciling differences — compromise. We observe the world and the brain reconciles what it sees with probability of how things are and creates vision for us. Why can’t we do that amongst ourselves?What’s the hard part about taking various worldviews and reconciling it into one view we all can accept? My working theory — who wants to admit their view wasn’t entirely accurate?