Author Archives: circleofpractice

Social Capital

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Social capital is a fairly broad sociological and technical term that refers to the “value” of a social network.

Much has been written about the importance of social networks, both to an individual’s happiness and influence, as well as the health of the greater society in which she lives.  See for example, “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam, or “The How of Happiness” by Sonja Lyubomirsky.

It therefore seems important to cultivate these networks, whether as individuals, or as institutions, or as societies as a whole.

It helps me to understand what social capital is, by understanding some of its measures.  The ones I want to discuss today are for an individual (following are taken from “Network Measures of Social Capital” by Stephen P. Borgatti, & Candace Jones, Connections v21(2)27-36, 1998 INSNA.  They try to ignore relational contents such as friendship, and want to measure neutral or positive relations such as knows or likes.):

  1. Size/degree: the number of persons that you are connected to.  Size has a positive relation to social capital, since the more people with whom you are connected, the more likely it is one of them has the resource you need.
  2. Density: the proportion of pairs of persons in your network that are themselves connected.  Density has a negative relation to social capital, since if all the persons in your network are connected to each other, then they are “redundant.”  That is, relational energy is a limited resource; don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
  3. Heterogeneity: the variety of persons with respect to relevant dimensions, such as age, sex, race, occupation, and talents.  Heterogeneity is positively related to social capital, except where it conflicts with compositional quality, since it is likely to bring a broader range of ideas.
  4. Compositional quality: the number of persons with high levels of needed characteristics (e.g., wealth, power, expertise, or generosity of persons).  Compositional quality is positively related to social capital, since the more connected to useful others we are, the more social capital we have.

Reading Books

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There probably has never been a time when it has been so easy to read a book.

There are so many media by which a book may be “read,” and so many more contexts in which is possible to read, that I am truly amazed by how few people avail themselves of the opportunity.

According to wiki.answers.com:

  • less than 15% of Americans read books on any regular basis,
  • one third of American high school graduates never read another book in their lives,
  • 42% of college graduates never read another book after college,
  • 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year,
  • 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years,
  • 57% of new books are not read to completion, and over half of those are not read past page 18.

Wow.

I was not a great reader when I was young.  I caught the reading bug in college.  I had a friend who was making his way through the Russian writers, and I decided to follow example.  I loved them.

Then somehow I stumbled across Mortimer Adler, and How to Read a Book.  Mortimer inspired me to read with great enthusiasm, and filled me with the belief that books would change my life.

While in many ways I have not been a good student of Mortimer, seldom has a day gone by when I have not read a book, especially once I found audio books.  Whether I’m driving my car, taking a walk, washing dishes, or folding laundry, you will also find me listening to a book.

And what has all this reading availed me?  Well I feel I can talk with almost anybody about almost anything.  I’m interested in most things, and most things have been written about.  They have helped me to understand other people, and to understand myself.  And they have enriched me with the experience of a thousand lives.

How to Read Scripture

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I think the most important thing to remember about reading scripture is to read it.  You can’t read scripture if you don’t read it.

With that in mind, and knowing how busy everyone is these days, choose to read something you are interested in, or enjoy reading.  Don’t start with Leviticus or Summa Theologica (the latter is great for insomnia), especially if you struggle to find time to read in the first place.

When you find a section of text that speaks to you, highlight it, and perhaps even make a note to yourself why you underlined it.

If you read something that just rocks your world, then write it down.  Memorize it.  Write about it.  Discuss it with those you trust and can be vulnerable with.

Set a reasonable goal for yourself: not so little that its accomplishment is trivial, and not so much that it becomes a burden.  Be gentle with yourself, but at the same time remember what you’re reading and why: these are the ideas you build your life with.

Maybe you’re beyond all this and are rolling your eyes at the lack of scholarship I’m advocating.  After all, there are folks out there who do word studies, syntopical research, comparative research, etc.

All those things are great.  I think generally speaking the deeper and more engaged you are in any activity, the greater will be the rewards you reap.

Just remember why you started your research.  Don’t let all that analysis make you deaf to the voice that spoke to your heart in the first place.

If you spend all your days dissecting corpses, it can be hard to remember they were once human beings.

What Is Scripture?

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What is scripture?  Is it the Word of God?  Written text divinely inspired by God?  Or is it the written compilation of religious traditions of peoples from around the world?

What is scripture to you?  Do you read scripture?

Shortly after graduating from college, I read Mortimer Adler’s book, How to Read a Book.  That book inspired me, not only to read the Great Books of the Western World, but of the eastern world as well and the various religious texts in particular.  I figured if they were profound enough to inspire the religions themselves and millions of people as well, then they probably have something to say to me too.

They did, and still do.

I believe scripture is that body of written work on which you build your life.  It is the “first principles” of your life, the axioms and assumptions which underlie your thoughts, words, and deeds.

Scripture may be a religious text like the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita.  It may be some work of philosophy like Plato or Aristotle.  Maybe even a work of fiction like The Lord of the Rings.  For a time I read that book, or parts of it, nearly every year.

Perhaps you disagree with me.  In fact you may feel offended by the generic nature of my definition.  But I think even an atheist will want and need a written embodiment of what she believes to be true: the fundamental axioms or principles on which she bases her actions; or a vision for what life can or should be.

And let’s face it, there are certain texts that have acquired a sacred patina even though they are secular in nature: the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America to name only a few.

People and scripture are the bricks and mortar we build our life’s meaning with.  Without one or the other, it’s hard to build a lasting foundation.  That being the case, what are you reading?  What are you mixing your mortar with?  How do those words become the cathedral of your mind?  How do you turn that scripture into meaningful action?

A Meditation on Election Day

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How do you get politically involved?

Is it enough to vote?  Voter turnout in 2008 was 63% of the electorate.  I was among them, but it didn’t seem like much of an effort.

Is it enough to be an “informed” voter?  What does that mean exactly?  If you search the web, the idea and the benefits seems foggy even to political scientists.

Should we join a party?  The founding fathers wrote at length about the dangers of factions and party spirit, but then proceeded to found political parties of their own.

I confess I don’t like politics.  Folks seem more bent on winning an argument than they do listening to each other.  I don’t like all the angry emotions politics seem to generate.  I don’t like the way we tend to demonize the folks on the other side of an issue.  I don’t like the way parties seem more interested in staying in power than they do in solving the nation’s problems.  I don’t like the money that is allowed to sit in a dark corner, and speak as if it were the voice of the people.

What seemed to impress Tocqueville were our townships.  He wrote:

“The town or tithing, then, exists in all nations, whatever their laws and customs may be: it is man who makes monarchies and establishes republics, but the township seems to come directly from the hand of God… Yet municipal institutions constitute the strength of free nations. Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish a free government, but without municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty. Transient passions, the interests of an hour, or the chance of circumstances may create the external forms of independence, but the despotic tendency which has been driven into the interior of the social system will sooner or later reappear on the surface.”     

I think I’ll start attending city council meetings.  Maybe if I listen I’ll learn something about what it means to be a citizen.

Practicing Contentment

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He who knows enough is enough will always have enough – Lao Tzu.

How do you know when enough is enough?

Jesus said something that bothered me for years:

25 Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” (Mark 4:25, NIV)

I’ve chewed that verse like a cow chews cud.  It just didn’t seem fair to me.

I grew up a glass half empty person.  It was as if I had negative vision: I could only see what wasn’t there.  And not just possessions; accomplishments, skills, physical attributes… the list was unending.  I saw what was lacking in my life, and everywhere I looked I came up short.

Whoever doesn’t have, even what they have will be taken from them.  It’s unpleasant to be around a person with negative vision.  They aren’t thankful for anything, and complain about everything.  They are jealous.  They are insecure.  They are easily offended, because the whole world is an insult to them.

I should know, for that man was me.

Here’s what that verse has come to mean to me: we all have something to be grateful for.  The issue isn’t possession, but recognition.  We’ve all been blessed with life.  And if we’re alive, then we have air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat.  Give thanks.

We’ve all been blessed with some interest, some activity we like to do.  Enjoy it.  Practice it.  And give thanks.

We all know people who are better than us in those things we’re interested in or like to do.  Admire them.  Get to know them.  Learn from them.  And give thanks.

Whoever has will be given more: this is the path to true wealth.  Before long you not only discover how blessed you are, but that you are a blessing too.

How Many Hours of Practice?

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How many hours of practice does it take to be good at something?

Since Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, came out in 2008 the 10,000 hour rule has been quoted more times than Poor Richard’s Almanac.  But that rule refers to the six sigma experts that are on the right hand edge of the bell curve.

What if you don’t want to be an expert at something, just competent?

For example, say you want to learn a new language well enough to be conversant, but not so well that you could write a piece of literature in that language.  How long would that take?

I’ve seen rules of thumb kicked around on blogs and in books, but never any research to back them up, apart from Ericsson’s 10,000 hour rule.

For instance one fairly common rule of thumb seems to be the thousand hour rule: that is, it takes one thousand hours of “practice” to achieve competence at some skill.  I found an article online that seems to confirm this for learning a second language.  The article refers to research done by the Foreign Service Institute, but without an actual citation.

Family Fortunes by the Bonner brothers asserts that it takes 1,000 hours to become competent, and 5,000 to become really good at some skill or other.  But again, they don’t cite any research to support these claims.

There is a graph in KA Ericsson’s article, The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Expert Performance, that plots expert performance as a function of experience (see figure 38.1).  It looks logarithmic to me, but the article doesn’t make that assertion.

But suppose expert performance is in fact a logarithmic function of experience.  The log base 10 of 10,000 is 4, while the log base 10 of 1000 is 3.  In other words if this relationship is logarithmic, a person with 1000 hours of deliberate practice would have 75% of the skill of a person with 10,000 hours of practice.

If “really good” is halfway between the competent level at 1,000 hours, and the expert level at 10,000 hours, How many hours of practice does that translate to?  Well 103.5 = 3162, so about 3200 hours to achieve 87.5% of the skill of an expert.

Harness Infinity in your Practice

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We tend to think of infinity as a REALLY big number.  But pick any number you want, even say a googolplex, and that number is finite.  It is limited.  A googolplex plus one is still greater than a googolplex.

Infinity is unlimited or unbounded.

Infinity is less of a thing than it is a process.

The natural numbers are just the counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4,…  We know that there are infinitely many of them, because if you assume there are only finitely many, then there must be a largest number, say N.  But N+1 is greater than N, and if N is a natural number then so is N+1.  This contradicts our assumption that there are only finitely many.  Hence there are infinitely many natural numbers.

It is by this process of adding one that we come to infinity.  As soon as we stop adding one, we know that no matter how big the number is, it is still finite.

So how do we harness this concept of infinity into our practice?  By doing our practice every day.  This is what takes us from N to N+1, from the finite to the infinite.

The brain is a very plastic organ.  When we do something again and again, particularly at the same time and place every day, that activity will eventually cease to be something we consciously choose, and will eventually become nearly autonomous, like the beating of our hearts.

Our practice becomes truly powerful when we no longer waste any emotional energy on choosing whether or not to do it. At this point our practice transcends habit; it becomes part of our very nature.

N+1 follows N as night follows day.

The Circle of Practice

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Why a circle of practice?  Why not a straight line of practice?  Or a four square practice?

Our lives are lived on a continuum of spirit, mind, body, and emotions; of family, friends, and the larger community; of vocation, finances, and household management.  All these things matter in the quality of our lives.  If we let one of them blow up, it makes living well much more difficult and less likely.

The circle of practice is intended to reflect the importance of this continuum, and to encourage me to establish a “practice” in each domain so that I have a reasonable degree of competence and satisfaction in each of these areas.

A circle is balanced, with each point equidistant from the center.

You may not recognize the same domains in your own life, but we all have more than one role to play.  Here is what I mean by each of these domains:

  1. Spirit: the faculty and activity of meaning making, purpose, and values; the source of our life vision and goals; the source of our faith.
  2. Mind: that by which we know and understand the world; the sources of our information, and the processes and structures by which we process that information and solve problems.
  3. Body: the flesh and blood vessel of our physical selves together with the care and maintenance of the same.
  4. Emotions: our physical reactions to thoughts and social interactions such as love, hate, joy, depression, compassion, and indifference.
  5. Family: our blood relations as well as relations by marriage, or people living under the same roof.
  6. Social: our friends, our colleagues at work and school, our community of faith, and political communities of city, state, nation, and world.
  7. Vocation: those activities associated with earning a living.
  8. Finances: personal finance, managing the household income and capital.
  9. Household: the care of children, preparation of food, and maintenance of the home.

My goal is to find an effective and efficient practice for each of these domains, practice regularly, and share them with you.

Projects – Turning Goals into Reality

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For most of my adult life I have worked hard, but never seemed to get anything done.  Why?

As a kid I was easily distracted, had no real goals, and struggled with organization.  Just cleaning my room seemed like an overwhelming challenge.

Somehow I managed to graduate from college, but only after changing majors and schools half a dozen times, and even then had no clear idea of what I wanted to do or why.

So I went backpacking for six months, found God, and then began working as unskilled labor.

In my late twenties I read about the importance of setting goals to people who managed to accomplish something with their lives.  But I found it difficult to write down meaningful goals and even more difficult to accomplish them.

Still, I did begin to set goals for myself and achieved some of them.  I set a goal of becoming an actuary, began studying for the exams, passed some and was hired.  Even with my exemplary record.

This is part of the secret to knowing what you’ve accomplished.  When you set a goal, write it down, and accomplish it, you have a written record of what you’ve done.  You know you’ve accomplished something.

The people who did really well on those actuarial exams knew how many pages they had to read, how many problems they had to work, when they would begin taking practice exams, etc.  They had all these milestones on some kind of timeline with due dates.  That’s a project: a goal with a roadmap and timetable for its realization.  That’s the second part of knowing what you’ve accomplished: that written document of milestones, due dates, and done dates.

David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done really helped me with just this one idea: what’s the next action.  That was specific enough, clear enough, and short enough to get me from writing down the goal to accomplishing it.  Writing those next actions down is the backbone of a project.  Doing them turns a goal into reality.