We live in a 30 story building. In the summer the kids can run and play outside but in the winter they need to get their exercise inside the building.
So we started to climb the stairs inside our building. The building is 30 floors high so getting to the top is a nice workout. When Blake was about 3, he would climb to the top of the building with excitement. We even started learning numbers. We learned that there is no number 13 in our building — or is there? But as the boys got older they want to do something more exciting so we created a game called “stair war.”
The rules for stair war are the same as the card game of war but every time there’s a war you go up that number of flights of stairs. This makes climbing the stairs a bit more interesting. The game has a number of interesting properties:
Each time there’s a war you go up on average 7 flights assuming you go up ten flights for J, Q, K, A
One out of every 13 plays, on overage, is a war. There are 169 ways that cards can lay between hands 13 x 13. But only 13 of them are wars.
On average that’s about half a flight on average for each card flipped you go up 7 flights every 13 plays.
But there’s a lot of uncertainty which adds to the excitement. You don’t know when the war is going to happen!
Blake is 8 now so we can play more interesting games. Our new favorite is now Chemistry Fluxx (sample game) on the stairs. We play a game of Chemistry Fluxx and then go up 10 flights of stairs — repeat until exhausted. Chemistry Fluxx is part of the Fluxx series, a card game where the rules and goals of the game are always in “Fluxx.” Watch the sample game and you’ll get a good idea of how it works. We speed up the game by changing the initial rules to something to draw 2 / play 2 to speed things up. Also, Chemistry Fluxx teaches them a few chemistry facts while you play!
I’ve always loved going to the tops of towers. When I was at Yale we used to climb up on towers and look across the campus. This was before every door was locked.
Freshman year, my friends Lutz and Christine joined me in a quest to figure out what was at the top of the library. If you look at the top of Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, you can see something that looks like a tiny castle (you can see it if you zoom in on the roof). We spent a few afternoons trying to figure out what this secret castle was. As it turns out, it’s actually a castle! When the library was built, they thought it would be a nice way to hide the machinery on the roof. In the age of Facebook, we can actually see what the castle looks like:
Sterling Castle
More recently, when I’m up at SchoolPlus for the boys to take their Math and Science class, I found another tower. This is the view from the south tower at the Union Theological Seminary.
It’s a wonderful place for me to sit and do some writing.
Today the building is under construction. As I looked out upon the garden I couldn’t help but think that this is what Rapunzel must have felt like.
I’ve always been very envious of artists that decorate their spaces. I remember visiting Industrial Light and Magic and seeing all the different statues that were on top of peoples desks. In The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch shows how he painted his childhood bedroom — even including painting an elevator on the wall. It used to make me sad that I would never be able to decorate the walls like that and really make it my own. But then I discovered a solution … magnets!
Originally I thought it would be really cool to use magnetic paint on the wall. But then I learned that magnetic paint is good for putting flexible magnetic images on the wall, but not for hanging anything up. So I thought, “How can I make my house into a magnetic bulletin board?” Then I realized how much of my house is made of metal.
The radiator is made of metal…
… as is the front door is made of metal which is a collection of pictures and maps …
Note at the top of the door is some remnants of our sign from the women’s march including Blake’s wonderful artwork of Donald Trump in the middle of the “O.”
Our window frames are made of metal…
… as are the many of the joints where the joints in the wall where the drywall comes together…
This year I’ve moved from Citi to AIG. I’m a Product Manager doing Agile Development. Some definitions:
Product Manager: Product Managers are the owners of products, setting the goals of products and ensuring they are met. We manage the product, not the people (i.e., the coders). It’s common for the business to need one thing and technology to deliver something else. The product manager is there to ensure that the technology team effectively meets the needs of the business. For a non-technology example of miscommunication of business needs take a look at this cake or this one
Agile Development: People used to think that you should build software like you build a building. You make detailed plans and then take years to build it. However, we’ve realized over the years that we can solve most key business problems without building the whole software project — we just build the parts that matter. Also, people can start using the software before it’s done — which lets us revise the plans on a regular basis as we see how it’s used
At big companies, it’s important to communicate the value that a product manager is bringing to the organization to avoid having others take the credit
Here’s a couple of thoughts on what to build first:
I created this card around 2015. I wanted to show my creativity off when I met someone, rather than just tell them where I worked. I wanted to own my own personal brand.
I came across these cards from Apple online. The card read, “Your customer service just now was exceptional. I work for the Apple Store and you’re exactly the kind of person we’d like to talk to. If you’re happy where you are, I’d never ask you to leave. But if you’re thinking about a change, give me a call. This could be the start of something great.”
I loved the sentiment, so I borrowed it for my own cards and made this:
But where did I get the idea of a personal card in the first place?
It was the summer of 1999 and Merrill Ford gave me her calling card at the International Design Conference at Aspen (IDCA). The IDCA was the forerunner to TED—Richard Saul Wurman wanted to head the IDCA, but they didn’t let him, so he went off and started TED instead.
A calling card is different from a business card, slightly larger and with different dimensions. People used to leave it at a house when visiting someone who wasn’t home, a small note that you’d called.
My team had won the student design competition by creating a pen that transcribes what you write, and we were presenting our idea. These are pretty typical now, but they were a novel concept in 1999.
I was walking down the street with my friend Jeremy when we were stopped by three older people. “What are you doing walking!” they said. “You should come to lunch with us.”
So we went.
We started talking. Merrill gave me her calling card. The naïve 21-year-old I was, asked “Do you ski?”
I didn’t realize how silly a question it was at the time. I didn’t have Google then, and it took me years to realize that I was being taken out to lunch by some of the founding members of the Aspen community.
Merrill said, “Of course, but not since the injury.”
She walked with a cane, but not because she was old. She’d been one of the first Obermeyer ski models. Merrill had been married to Stein Eriksen, one of the most famous skiers. But she was in a horrible car crash in 1973 and since then, walked with a cane.
Merrill was sitting next to her boyfriend, Major General Robert Taylor, who everyone called “The General.”
Merrill would tease that people asked when she and The General were going to get married. “When I get pregnant,” Merrill would say. She was in her early 70s at the time. They eventually married in 2001.
The General said, “I came out to Aspen to ski. I’d learned to love the sport when I was in Europe in World War II. But now that I’m 85, my knees can’t take it anymore.”
Then we got to Ruthie. She said, “No. I don’t ski much.”
Then Merrill teased Ruthie: “Oh come on Ruthie. They named the second run on the mountain after you.”
It’s true! The third member of their group was Ruth Brown. The first run on the mountain was Roch Run. It was cut by volunteers in 1937 and was steep and difficult—the only other option was a sideslip down Spar Gulch. A decade later, that was still the only way down. But, as Ruthie told the Aspen Times, “To be perfectly frank, I was never a great, fabulous skier. All I did was just go down and have fun. I wanted to get down the mountain.” So she gave $5,000 to the Aspen Skiing Corporation to cut a kinder, gentler way down in the summer of 1948. Ruthie’s Run opened on December 16, 1948, with Ruthie leading the way, snowplowing down through 3 feet of powder.
That’s why I made my own cards in 2015. Not to show off where I worked, but because Merrill Ford taught me that the best cards say “I’d like to know you better.”
They’ve all passed on now. The general in 2003, Merrill and Ruthie both in 2010, just two months apart. I still have Merrill’s calling card. And at Aspen, Ruthie’s Run is still the kinder, gentler way down the mountain.
What amazes me is how casually they invited us in. They were founders of Aspen, married to Olympic champions, had ski runs named after them. And they treated two college kids like we belonged at their table.
This a post I wrote in 2017. I figured I’d publish it now given the unrest on campus.
In the last few years, there’s been an increasingly polarizing discussion around freedom of speech and values in the US — especially on college campuses. It reminded me that in contrast to the he said / she said of political debate, Yale took a much more thoughtful view on the topic starting 4 decades ago.
Yale’s President Peter Salovey referenced these two issues in his freshman addresses of 2014: On Freedom of Expression at Yale and 2015: On Calhoun College. As the debate on these subjects get’s less and less civil, I thought it would be good to take the long view here.
“Daddy, what is the meaning of life?” says the child.
“It’s complicated,” says the dad.
“Why don’t you ask Google?”
Laugh if you will but the question makes perfect sense to kids. Google knows everything doesn’t it? “What’s the weather?,” “How do I get to San Francisco?”, and even “Why is the sky blue?” The big question is: “What doesn’t Google know?” Or, stated another way, “What knowledge can’t we outsource to Google?”
Knowing Facts vs. Gaining Understanding
It really comes down to two different kinds of knowledge: knowing facts and gaining understanding. The Farnam Street blog has a good description of this and there’s a great video of Richard Feynman explaining it. In summary:
Knowing Facts. You know what something is called and what it looks like. This is the type of information that Google is very good at.
Gaining Understanding. Taking various bits of information and really making it your own? This is the type of thing that you can’t ask Google because it’s about changing who you are (i.e., learning).
One good way to know the difference is the difficulty of what you’re reading or watching. If you can read it quickly you’re probably reading for facts. Reading for understanding requires you to sit down at the foot of the author and realize that things may not make sense in the beginning. I think of true learning as fundamentally changing myself. Kind of like in the Terminator 2 movie where the T-1000 changes his shape in the face of adversity.
Knowing Facts
So what does Google know:
Define a word (like epistemology)?
What’s happening in the news?
Who starred in the princess bride?
When is Mothers Day?
How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?
Rad Bradbury had a great section on knowing facts in Fahrenheit 451. The book is a metaphor on how books can be explosive with ideas. But the government can provide so many facts that people don’t have room for ideas:
“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”
Filling in the Gaps
Data and facts can be useful but you need a framework to use them. William Poundstone has a great book on the topic called Head in the Clouds: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy. Poundstone’s key point in the book is that Google can’t teach you what you need to Google. In order to do that, you need a framework of understanding. Facts are like bricks in a wall of knowledge. There can be some gaps and the wall will maintain its structural integrity. But if we remove too many, you have bricks hanging in midair and the wall collapses.
Gaining Knowledge
Gaining knowledge is about more than gathering facts. The best guide to gaining knowledge is from How To Read A Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren. The book was written in 1940 and revised in 1972 and it holds up incredibly well. The key idea is that to read a book well, you don’t just read the words or learn the key points. You need to understand the knowledge inside that book and let it change you — which takes effort. For a summary of the key points, the Farnam Street blog does a good write up. But if you really want to learn from these guys, you really have to read the book.
In short, the book says that an engaged reader needs to ask the following questions:
What type of book am I reading? What do I hope to gain by reading it?
What is the author’s high level points / argument?
How does the author make this argument? At this point you don’t agree or disagree with the author by bringing any predefined prejudices to the argument.
After reading the whole argument, going back and asking “Is it true in whole or in part?”
For the pieces that you find true, “What are you going to do about it and how does it change your world view?”
In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury talks about what makes an engaged reader. These are the people the government is concerned about. As one of the rebels says, there are three things needed to engage with a book:
Quality Information: “What does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more `literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail.”
Leisure: “[When] you’re not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can’t think of anything else but the danger, then you’re playing some game or sitting in some room where you can’t argue with the four wall televisor…. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense!'”
Action: “The right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the inter-action of the first two. “
If this all sounds difficult, that’s the point. You can’t expect to have other people do your thinking for you. You need to pose questions and answer them. You need to argue with the author once you’ve understood him or her.
Why is this Important?
Google in many ways is like the world’s most awesome encyclopedia or your friend with a photographic memory who watches TV all the time. He’s a great guy to have around but not someone you should trust with important decisions. In an age when you can type a few keystrokes and feel like you’re changing the world it’s hard to put in all that effort.
But getting back to the original question, the reason that Google can’t answer “What is the meaning of life?” is that it needs to be figured out by living. It’s a question that’s only answered by learning and discussion. Basically, it requires gaining knowledge throughout your life.
The book The Goal by Elihu Goldratt is one of the best business books I’ve read. I was assigned the book in business school but it holds up even better in the real world. The key idea is that in a factory, the entire production of any part is limited by the machine with the least capacity. And similarly, the entire production of the factory is limited by the capacity bottlenecks. So you can have a whole factory at work, all the machines are working as fast as they can but they’re just piling up inventory in front of that key machine that has limited capacity. In a software development shop, it’s the IT operations group might be the bottleneck like in the book The Phoenix Project. In a strategy shop it’s the amount of time people want to devote to reading and implementing these projects. When looking at any knowledge business you see lots of people doing work but most of these people are creating work that prevents the constrained resource from getting its critical work done. Once you look for the constraints, you start to see the world in a very different way.
The other thing about The Goal is the way the book is produced:
Goldratt hired a co-writer Jeff Cox, a novelist, who brings out the lessons of the book in a very easy to digest format. He even ties in some personal problems and office politics to make the book more engaging.
The audio version of the book is dramatized as a play. There are a host of actors playing the different parts. When Alex is on the machine floor, you can even hear the machines at work. This is certainly the best produced business audiobook I’ve ever listened to.
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