Midlife Awakening

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Learning to Thrive

The Geeky back-story

I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit.  I remember when I knew nothing much about computers or programming.  I had typed in some program listings for games printed in magazines so I could play them on my TI-99/4A  when I was 10 years old.  Sure, I adjusted those games so I could outrun the lion that was chasing me, or whatever the game did.  But after about a year or 18 months, I got bored with loading programs I wrote by super slow cassette players and preferred to jump ramps on my bicycle, and otherwise be a dumb kid running around outside.

The cocky college kid

In college, I teased the computer science and business school kids who were always in the computer lab, and crying and hissing when the unreliable equipment would instantly destroy the assignment they had been doing for hours.  I would gloat that I outlined my writing assignments between classes on paper, and could generate an error free paper in a couple hours, first try on my trusted electric typewriter.  I remember trying out the computer lab a few times and getting screwed when the bomb icon would show up on the old macs (the PCs were occupied by the forementioned business and CS students), which meant the machine had locked up and corrupted the file I had on my floppy disk, and on my way driving home I got so angry I tore a piece of my dashboard off with my bare fingers!

I feel stupid doing the same thing repeatedly

Years went by, and I was working as a technical recruiter.  I was getting tired of running laps around the file cabinets, formatting resumes on a typewriter, and entering the same candidate information on each bid sheet, every time I submitted them to a position.

Discovered a talent

So, I created a simple Microsoft Access database to hold the bid sheet information for the candidates I was submitting to make things less repetitive for me.  Then I figured out how to share that database on the network so my co-workers could use the same bid sheet system.  I learned how to configure the Windows for Workgroups network so that I could print the resumes directly from the computer, instead of working through the old Unix-based resume system and horrendous printed workflow it forced us to use.   Then I shared out the fax-modem that the acccount rep had on his computer, so that I could skip the printing step altogether, and fax bid sheets directly to our client.  If the fax did not go through, an email alert showed up at my desk letting me know I needed to retry.  It was fantastic in terms of productivity, but seems rather primitive by standards of today!

Off to the races

Not too long after that, I found myself in my first database/programming job, at a small electrical engineering firm.  There, I had to learn how engineers worked with CAD documents, paper files, and how to fix a document control system, eventually replacing it completely.  Along the way, I learned Visual FoxPro and Visual Basic, because both were more flexible than Access, and much more useful in the marketplace.  About a year into my programming career, a friend and former co-worker from the recruiting job asked me if I could build a system for his new employer to use for tracking applicants and jobs in their recruiting department.  I have less than 2 years experience in software, and delivered my first product on my first consulting engagement!  As a new consultant, I had to learn about self-employment tax (that sucked).  As a programmer, I learned how to be a de facto Oracle DBA, because I saw resistance from those groups when I asked for help from them.

The pattern emerges

On and on this goes.  I always seemed to hit a wall that required me to learn as I went, learn just what I needed to get to the next step, and fall on my face in a few places as necessary along the way.  What I did not realize at the time, is that I was an early adopter of what I believe is the most critical life skill for the next 50 years…Just in Time Learning!

What is so different now compared to the time of your parents?

At one time, we were all encouraged to become the best at something–To get a solid skill, and use our specialty to improve our incomes, lifestyle, and futures.  Today, I do not believe this is a reliable way to get ahead, past a certain point.  For one thing, there are so many specialties available, espeically in technology careers, that the options are endless.  There are so many people in these fields competing for top position as a specialist, that even if you are in the top 10% of a specialty, there are probably like 50,000 others just like you in the marketplace.  Instead, it is the combination of things you are good at which makes you unique, and this is your strength when competing in a market.  For example, there are some brilliant software developers out there.  I have worked with some of them, and they can out-class me in every facet of algorithm design, their use of patterns, and even speed to completion of individual programming tasks.  I was often amazed that I ended up on top of these talented folks so often.  Here is why that happened:

  1. I could deliver a bigger project more reliably, because I would use the best designs for the skill level of the people on my team.
  2. I could explain to the VP and ‘C’ Level people what we were doing and why, and I could explain to the developers how the work they were doing fit into the bigger vision.
  3. I could demonstrate that performance issues during testing were not due to code, but due to database and networking configuration issues, using tools and terminology that the DBAs and Network Admins used daily.

In short, it was the intersection of technical prowess, communication skills, and adaptability to my environment that made my probability of success much higher than that of the “programming god” sitting next to me.  I will tip my hat to Scott Adams (Dilbert cartoon), for drawing out this concept in his book, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life”.

While we must have competency in several areas to be viable in any complex field, the most important skill to have after acheiving a core competency is the ability to integrate a new skill into our perspective and problem solving.

This is what I call Just In Time Learning, and it is the ability to identify the key parts of any discipline, boil those down to self-study practices to add the new competency, and to apply the new practices to our vocation.

Embrace Just in Time Learning.  Once you get comfortable with the idea, your world will open up.  After doing it successfully, you will realize that you already have everything you need to pursue anything you want.  You just have to be open to learning, and get good at determining what are the core parts of any discipline you study.  If you are facing a career change, Just In Time Learning can help you keep calm and confident as you pursue your next opportunity.

 

Diversification is for stupid people

Society seems to be wanting to emphasize inclusion, diversity, and engagement as concepts, while seeming to ignore the need to make fast decisions that are “good enough” very quickly.  If you want to thrive, you have to take action quickly, so I will simply state:  Diversification is for stupid people.

How many times have you encountered these ideas?

  • Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
  • You cannot time the market, so spread your money around to avoid losing it all
  • Let’s get input from the whole team to help with this decision

While there is some truth in these statements and some are even  “common sense”, a contrary approach has merit that we should consider, so I will unpack each with some questions.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

How many baskets can one person safely carry?  If you try to carry 3 baskets, it becomes more likely that you will drop one of those baskets and lose a lot of eggs.  If you mindfully carry one sturdy basket, the risk of losing eggs is smaller.

You cannot time the market, so spread your money around to avoid losing it all.

Is losing money in the stock market the result of investing in too few stocks, or is it the result of trying to keep track of too many stocks, and buy and sell all of those at exactly the right time?  Or is losing money caused by our human nature that encourages us to sell a stock that just lost a bunch of its value (before we lose it all)?  If we are diversified in a lot of different stocks, it will require much more work to stay on top of how those are performing.  Maybe to avoid losing money in the stock market, we need to select a smaller number of investments carefully, and not try to game the system.

Let’s get input from the whole team to help with this decision

This idea is special to me.  It is a great idea to gather input from people you trust who have different specializations and perspectives than you do. This will help you have fewer blind spots when you make decisions.  However, there is no evidence that an ever larger number of opinions will result in a better decision.  Even when gathering information from other people to get more perspective, the group you solicit input from should be quite small, and carefully selected.  The not-so-nice way to say this is that if you add 100 idiots to the discussion, you will either get a worse decision, or it will take longer to arrive at the right decision because the decision makers will need to filter out all the extraneous and useless input from the idiots.  Why not just ask a few trusted people for their input, and make a good decision quickly, without the frustration of talking to the idiots?

The goal of a business activity is to make money for the owners, and probably also to provide a useful product or service.

If you are collecting eggs to sell, you should walk the shortest/safest path to the hens and collect the eggs in a sturdy, appropriately sized basket for the task, and do not play on your smartphone while carrying the eggs, as the lack of attentiveness is probably the biggest risk to your egg profits.

If you are hoping to profit from stock market investments, you should identify the source of your risk and avoid those things first, then you should seek ways to improve your odds and making profits with the least investment of your personal time.  You are probably scattering your money in too many places that you have too little knowledge of, and you probably do not have enough time to keep track of all the daily changes to the value of your positions.  Some very successful investors focus on purchasing really good companies that they are sure will go up in value, and they hold for a long time to make profits safely, with less daily interruptions to their lives.

If you are trying to make a difficult decision, do not take a survey from a bunch of people.  Instead, pick one thoughtful, competent person from a number of disciplines or perspectives and get weigh their opinions.  With this approach, you will learn something, and you will build relationships with smart people.

Good luck in your next venture!

Money makes you more

“Money is the root of all evil”.  I doubt it.

“The love of money is the root of all evil”.  Getting closer, but it is probably OK to want, like or love money.

With all that is written about money…all the books, all the TV shows, all the mental energy thinking about needing money, and what you would do with it if you had more, do you really believe you can boil it all down to one simple statement?

Even if you can boil it down, the resulting statement is probably not going to be very specific, so let’s start with this one:

“Money makes you more like who you are.”

For all the idealists out there who do not think money matters, or should matter, consider the following questions.  If you do not think my points are valid, you should probably move on to another article to read, because you are not likely to buy into what I am saying.

  • If I am dead broke, and want to support a political candidate or issue, is anyone going to be impacted by my preference?  How about if I am rich and want to support a political candidate or issue?
  • If I do not like the uniforms that my children’s sports team are wearing, and do not have any money, all I can do is complain about the situation, or if super motivated, I could try to organize a fundraiser.  If I am rich, I can either write a check to purchase new uniforms, or I can get a few of my like-minded and well-funded friends together to pitch in a little each to get new uniforms, and write a check very quickly.
  • If I like to help other people, can I do that more effectively as a broke person, or a rich person?
  • If I know how to use and manage money, will wealth destroy me, or help me?
  • How about if I do not know how to manage money?  In that case, will sudden wealth destroy me or help me?  Here is a hint:  Look at what happens to most big jackpot lottery winners.

Here is a different question to think about:  What would most people do if they suddenly had all the money they would ever need?

My answer is that most people would do almost nothing significant or noteworthy, at least for a year or two.  It is the possibility of losing your house, affections of your wife or girlfriend, and ability to provide for your children that motivates many to get out of bed and get to work each day.  In some cases, this motivation leads to extremely successful business ventures.  If you take away the potential pain of those losses, most people will not know what to do anymore, and this creates a motivation vacuum.  To avoid the pitfalls of new wealth, it requires adjustment to the way the nouveau riche see the world, and respond.

The fact is that many lottery winners and short careered professional athletes lose all that money, and end up broke.  There are some likely explanations for this, most common-sense, but also likely to be viewed as elitist or some other “-ist” label that weak-minded people need to apply to prevent challenges to their feeble perspective of the world.  So, I will assert a few ideas, and you can decide if you buy in or not:

  • There is something that happens to a person who earns a lot of money, during the process of learning how to earn that money, that helps that person manage and maintain wealth.  In a normal scenario, it takes a lot of time and effort to become wealthy, and you have to become a wealthy person, and part of becoming that is to develop different habits and perspective.
    • If you give a teenager a house, they do not know how to maintain that house, and will either let it fall into disrepair, or get taken advantage, or in rare cases, they will see their deficiency and start to seek out the knowledge required to maintain a house.  Same thing with money.  The key difference between a house and money is that money is much more mobile and liquid than a home, so it tends to leave a careless person’s wallet very quickly.
  • Lottery winners and short-term professional athletes tend to be either less educated than other wealthy people and/or have less time invested in gaining and managing money compared to other rich people.
    • For example a business owner who find success probably spent years working 60-100 hour weeks building that business…and he or she learned a lot along the way during that time, and a smooth talker is not going to roll them out of their money as easily as a lottery winner!
  • If a person is to keep their new found wealth, they must change the way they view money, and the way they interact with the world! Failing to do this, they will tend to return to their “normal” financial status (see introducing-the-thermostat for more about this).

Most of us will not win the lottery…if for no other reason, I forget to play most of the time, and will not make a special trip because of the low chance of winning anyway!

So, for most of us who want to acquire wealth, we have to become something different in order to have a different life.  This means developing different work habits, different and more positive ideas about what to do with our time, and changing our views and relationship with money.  If you are rejecting money because you think it is evil, you are going to have a hard time creating wealth.  Money is a tool, and it does what its owner tells it to. Period.  Get right with that idea, then decide what you want.

 

 

 

Introducing…the thermostat

Why we have thermostats

We get used to a certain temperature, and have invented a device to make sure that our living spaces stay with a certain range that we find comfortable.

Not just a device, but a model for how people behave

What if people have metaphorical thermostats that regulate the “temperature” of every major area of our lives?  Think about the questions below:

  • How emotionally am you with my friends, significant other, or co-workers?
  • How much stress do you experience regularly when working on a challenging project?
  • How much money pressure do you experience each week or month?
  • Are you wanting to meet new people, but not connecting?

Passive comfort zone, or active control of temperature?

Sometimes the answers to these questions are described as habits or comfort zones, but I think thermostat is more fitting.  A habit or comfort zone implies passivity and a tendency of something to remain constant, but a thermostat is a device that actively sets in motion, events to bring the temperature to a specific level.  It is as if when you set out to make changes to some area of your life, there is something actively trying to return you to your previous setting.

If you are in a room and are cold, you can easily get more comfortable by putting on a sweater, but you are not changing the temperature of the room.  What if the room is very hot, and you are already naked?  How will you get comfortable now?  In that case, the only solution is to change the temperature of the room.

Two examples that everyone should recognize

Let’s say that you decide to reduce the amount of stress you feel about finances, by having more money left over after you pay your bills.  To spend less money, you make a plan to pack your lunch instead of going out. Your normal lunch buddies tease you a bit and try to coax you out to lunch with them.  Its a small thing, but the teasing by your coworkers is an influence that seeks to prevent you from changing your “financial temperature”.

Now, what if you are wanting to meet new people, but like many people, you are not very confident approaching them.  What happens when you see an interesting person you would like to approach?  Does your inner voice immediately start telling you that she does not want to talk to people?  Do you stop before you start, thinking that you cannot think of something to say?  How do you know she does not want to meet you?  If she has closed off body language and is wearing headphones, you might be right to hesitate, but if her body language is neutral, it is really a coin toss as to whether or not she would want to talk to you.  The only way to solve a coin-toss is to flip the coin, so you need to act!

What to do!

If you get paralyzed when you see someone interesting, and are analyzing yourself and telling yourself that the new person will not be interested in you, your own thoughts are the thermostat that is controlling you.  Shut down those thoughts and tell yourself things that are helpful…perhaps something like, “she is just a person in the same room as me…I will smile, say hello and introduce myself”.  Then do those things.  Smile, say hello and introduce yourself.

It really is OK

While it feels awkward to many people today, consider this:  Until people moved to  big cities in the past 10 years or so, the self-introduction to new people was polite and expected behavior!  It is normal and human!  Count how many people you can do this with in one evening so that it is no longer a big deal, and so you do not care about the outcome of any single attempt.  I bet nothing really bad happens, and you might find that some of those people will try to keep talking to you, because they want to meet people too but were not sure how to start.

Conclusion

I believe we can beat all of your thermostats and make whatever changes we decide to make.  First, you have to identify your own thermostats that are regulating the areas of your life.  Then you can think of some actions you can take every day which will alter your default settings and behaviors in those areas.  This can make your life more the way you want it to be.  If you take steps each day toward the change, persistence wins.  In time, you will recognize your own personal thermostats, and be able to change those by taking action each day to make the temperature right for you!

 

 

Why is two years the limit for a plan to clear up your debt?

The back story

So, things got rough in about 2009.  I discovered that I was heavily in debt, with very little to show for it.  I had some interesting discussions at home about this.  The result of the discussion was that the responsibility to manage the bills shifted to me now.  I decided to pay off the debt.

Start Playing Defense, make a budget

So, I dove in and made a plan on a spreadsheet to track our cash flow each month including paydays for the month and a list of  every monthly payment amount, due date, and balance.   Then I assigned each one of those payments to a payday for that month to try to make sure things got paid with some money left.   I listened to Dave Ramsey quite a bit at the time, and was applying the “debt snowball” to my plan.  Things were going OK after about 3 months and my confidence was improving that we would have this mess cleared up in about 3 years.  Well, just about that time, I was notified that everyone in our company who made more than $50K per year would be getting a pay cut.   If you understand how the debt snowball works, its easy to see that any decrease in your income can really extend the payoff plan for your debt, so you have to take action immediately or change your plan.

Start Playing Offense-Immediate actions!

Deal with lenders

The day after I found out about my pay cut, I made a list of all the credit cards I had, and contacted each of those companies to tell them about my salary cut, and try to work on a plan to reduce interest and minimum payment requirements so I could pay off faster or at least stay current if I received another pay cut in the future.  Some of the credit card companies were very receptive, and some tried to sell me credit counseling services, even though I was current on all my accounts and merely wanted to discuss options to change the terms of the account.  I will tell you that this exercise gave me extreme clarity about which companies I would pay first if my finances took another hit, and which companies would be at the back of the line.

Increase your income

That night, I made a list of every person I had ever worked with who might be able to use me for some project work.  I also went online looking for cold-call leads in Craigslist for software  and computer gigs.  The following day, I contacted everyone on my list during my lunch break.  I need to get another income source so I am protected from my employer’s decisions to reduce my pay.

Follow your gut, and believe in your plan

When asked me how I was going to grow a consulting business this way…working on it very part time, starting from zero, it seemed like something unlikely to succeed.  It may have been false confidence to cover my frustration at the situation, or even fear because of how vulnerable I felt after getting my pay cut with no warning.  Regardless of the motivation, I answered this:  “I will seek out 10 new clients this year that will hire me to do work.  Of those 10 clients, 2 will be worth doing business with a second time.  While I am doing repeat business with those 2 clients, I will seek out 10 more clients that will hire me to do work for them, and 2 of those will be worth doing business with again.  In 3 years, I will have 5 or 6 decent clients, or 2 really good, steady clients and will have 30% or more of my income provided by consulting work.”  I do not know where that answer came from, but it seemed to be percolating in me for some time, and just came out at that moment.

Outcomes from the plan

Growing the consulting business actually worked!  And pretty closely to what I planned!  I was making some good money.  Did I do anything wrong?  You bet I did.   In hindsight, I lost a bit of my focus on paying off the bills as fast as possible, and for the first time I was able to do a few extra nice things with my family.  In hindsight, I probably felt excited that my entrepreneurial activities were letting me keep up a lifestyle and I did not mind working if it protected my kids from what I considered to be pain or sacrifice.  The result is that I stretched out my over-working period to about 5 years instead of the original plan of 3.

Lessons Learned in Hindsight

What should I have done?  I should have cut our activities, sold more of our belongings, and cut out luxury things much more aggressively so that I could pay things off in no more than 2 years.  I think that any mature adult can change their habits for 2 years to achieve a goal.  After 2 years though, something happens.  In that third year, your schedule and work habits start to change you.  The excessive work starts to feel normal.  The time spent working instead of taking downtime with your family and friends starts to make your relationships a little less warm and close.  You also become less patient with people, because you really do not have time for a lot of nonsense.

After 4 years, I wondered at times if I am going to achieve the original goal at all, but I could not afford to stop the crazy schedule. I had way too many irons in the fire and I was used to having a lot of extra money in the cash flow.  I did not feel like I could afford to stop working so much, as it took a long time to get this consulting business going.  I noticed that I did not laugh anymore.  I also did not cry.  I just worked.

During this time frame, I worked a day job in excess of 45 hours per week (sometimes 55-60 hours for day job), plus I had multiple, mostly solo projects running. This required an additional 15-30 hours every week of additional time.  So for almost 5 years, I had been working an average of 60-70 hours a week, while not missing my kids sporting events, and eating dinner at home most nights.  My sleep was very bad during this time, I abused coffee in a grotesque manner, and drank a bit too much on the late nights.  I did not drink to get drunk or lacked control, its just that I went from drinking maybe 2 beers a month most of my adult life to drinking too many nights while finishing the work.  I was numbing whatever I was feeling so I could finish this one last cycle of projects.

When I hit the 5th year, I started firing my clients, unless I loved what I was doing for them, or the bill rate was very high and I could not resist.  I started to change my focus away from giving myself consulting jobs to do, and toward finding a business that would scale better than me working 24 hours a day.

I did the best I could given my experience and self-awareness at the time, but if I had to do it over again, I would have cut everything out of my lifestyle and simplified first….then I would have worked my ass off for a much shorter time to fix my money problems.  I would love to be able to take my 10 and 7 year old kids camping one more weekend, but they are 15 and 12 now, and you never get that time back.  This is not a pity party either…I was there for my kids, and I had to pay off the bills while I was able to work so much, but I would have done it differently knowing what I know now.  At the time of writing this, I am still waiting for my internal creativity and natural fire to return to me.  I am surrounding myself with people I like being around, doing more things I like, and taking time to feel all the things I stuffed down and worked through for all of those years.