Author Archives: circleofpractice

Influencer by Patterson et al

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Influencer is about changing behavior, whether of an individual, a group, or an entire nation.  The premise of the book is that any behavior can be changed.

Behavior is changed by searching for vital behaviors, and once they’re determined using six sources of influence to change them: personal motivation, personal ability, social motivation, social ability, structural motivation, and structural ability.

The book is full of case studies from scientific research and business to show how the various concepts are applied.  Whether it’s changing the behavior of hardened drug addicts and criminals into productive citizens, stopping the spread of aids, or turning around a software business plagued by missed deadlines and cost overruns into a business that executes its business plan and meets deadlines in a timely manner, there are examples of applications of the concepts to a wide variety of behavioral problems.

I first listened to the audio version of the book, and then checked out the book from the library.  While the narration is good, it would be very hard for me to apply the concepts from the audio version alone.  To be useful, I think you need the book.

Applying the concepts will take some work; it’s not a quick fix.  Just determining the vital behaviors can take some subtlety.  I’ve yet to apply the ideas in the book, but I do intend to.

I recommend the book to anyone who wants to change their own behavior, or the behavior of others.

The Conversationalist

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I learned most of what I know about conversation from my second father. He never met a person he couldn’t learn something from.

He owned a convention services business. As a kid I would often go with him to work with my brother. He would give us odd jobs to do, like sweeping the dock, stuffing envelopes, or folding drape.

Along the way we would inevitably run into someone, like a guard, an exhibiter, or a convention manager. He would talk with them all with the same respect and interest. And it seemed to me he would invariably learn something interesting from all of them.

I can remember riding in a cab with him one day; I want to say in New York, but I can’t think why we might have been there. But it was a long ride, and in the course of time it took us to get where we were going, he had coaxed that cabby’s entire life history from him. And I remember it fascinating me completely, both how interesting this cabby’s life was, and how effortlessly my father was able to draw it out of him.

My friends loved to talk with him; they would feign otherwise, and talk about playing twenty questions with George. But to this day they never fail to mention those conversations whenever his name comes up.

His questions come from a genuine interest in people, and he is able to ask them in such a way that they don’t feel probing or intrusive. He makes the person he’s talking to feel like she is utterly fascinating to him, and they seem to trust him completely.

I’ve tried to emulate him, but it’s not as easy as it looks. There’s a subtle difference between a question that makes a person feel interesting, and one that makes a person feel threatened. He listens. He’s interested. He’s observant. I can remember him more than once describing roadside scenes that utterly escaped my notice. Somehow he makes his conversations go where most others can’t.

Budgeting with ADHD

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My wife and I and both our kids have all been diagnosed with ADHD. Imagine four people living together who struggle with goal setting, planning, organizing, and getting things done.

We’ve tried to set a budget a couple of times, but it just seemed like an overwhelming task; too many categories, too little planning, too many moving parts. We didn’t get through a week.

The most important aspect of creating wealth for a family is to be economically productive; i.e., live within their means and have an adequate level of savings. This generally means creating and living within a budget. But some families manage to save without setting a budget. These families build wealth by saving a certain percentage of every paycheck. Those who are “wealthy” save at least 15 percent.

My wife is a psychiatrist in private practice. Doctors as a group have a higher propensity to spend than nearly every other occupation. Suffice it to say that the propensity to spend combined with deferred expenses (like taxes, malpractice insurance, etc.) make saving a certain percentage of each “paycheck” more complicated, and for us, an inadequate means to accumulating wealth.

Like most people, what gets us into trouble are retail purchases made via a credit card. We have three cards: one for medical expenses (like a medical flex account), one for Costco (they only take American Express), and one for retail purchases in general.

The idea behind saving a percentage of each paycheck is to create an artificial sense of scarcity for the family. They put that percentage into something like a 401k right off the top, and have to live on what’s left. To create that sense of scarcity for us, I calculate the expected costs in certain broad relatively fixed categories like taxes, utilities, housing, saving, etc. I give what’s left to retail, and then calculate a per diem expense for retail by dividing by 365 days. I pay those cards off every week, calculate the per diem rate of retail spending for that week, and then my wife and I get together to discuss how we did, and whether we need to make adjustments in the following week. And thus our family is becoming more economically productive. What works for you?

Measuring Wealth, a Target for Financial Practice

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If we are to have a financial practice, we need to know what we are aiming at. We need to know, “How much is enough?” The best exposition on this topic that I’ve read is in the book, The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas Stanley and William Danko.
When someone says that another person is rich or wealthy, they typically mean that person has a relatively high gross income relative to other people. We’ve seen that in the fiscal cliff debates, where congress and the president have argued over where to draw the line between the “rich” and everyone else in terms of gross income.
But gross income is just the sum of all sources of income, earned and unearned, that a person has received in the course of a year. It says nothing about what she has spent, what she has saved, or what she has accumulated over the course of her life.
A better measure for determining wealth is net worth. Net worth is just the difference between the sum of all your assets (everything you own), and the sum of all your liabilities (everything you owe). Net worth measures what’s left after all the dust has settled; it measures what you have to show for all your work.
But net worth by itself is not enough to measure wealth. Say Joe (age 40) makes a million dollars a year, but only has a net worth of a hundred thousand dollars. If Joe lost that income tomorrow, he could only sustain his current lifestyle for less than six weeks. But if John (age 50), who makes a hundred thousand a year and has a net worth of one million, lost his job tomorrow, he could sustain his lifestyle for ten years.
For Stanley and Danko, a person has “enough” when her net worth is at least equal to her age times her gross income less inherited wealth, divided by 10. Using this model for wealth, John has twice more than “enough”, but Joe has only about 3% of what would be enough for him by age 50. So even though Joe makes ten times more than John, John is in fact in much better financial shape than Joe. John is “wealthier.”
Hence the target I use to determine whether we have “enough” is the sum of our age times gross incomes divided by 10, and compare our net worth to that number.

Life in Review, a Reflection on New Year’s Day

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New Year’s Day is an obvious time for reflection, to review the results of our practice, to celebrate our accomplishments, and to consider ways to improve.

What do we reflect on; the collected memories of the past year with their accumulated emotion?  Remembered victories and failures?  How we look in the mirror?  How high we’ve climbed the ladder?

This has been the hardest part of my practice: to look myself in the mirror in such a way that brings growth and a sense of accomplishment; to bring my life under a process of review, without blame or shame, accepting who I am yet determined to get better.

I’ve learned to create a vision for my life, to set goals that will accomplish that vision, to make a plan to accomplish those goals, to create a history of those goals, of how I spend my time, and whether a goal was accomplished with the time spent.

But even so, I’ve yet to take all that data and let it tell me who I am, and who I am becoming.  Sure, numbers don’t tell the whole story, but they do tell a story.  Our friends can’t tell the whole story of who we are either, but we want to listen to what they have to say.  And I want to learn to listen to what those numbers have to say.

Deliberate practice requires feedback; without it our practice isn’t deliberate.  Feedback involves measuring in some way how near or far we are from the mark, from executing what we’ve set out to accomplish.

In this coming year I want to take the data I’ve collected, and turn it into summary statistics that can reveal to me the accumulated results, the “wealth” if you will, of my practice.

How do you reflect on your life?  What rituals do you celebrate on New Year’s Day?

Practicing Sex

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I believe that practicing sex is less about technique and equipment than it is about learning to be vulnerable, intimate, and tender with the one you love.

It’s paying attention to the little things, like taking the opportunity to give a nice long hug, or gently rubbing your loved one’s back, or giving a quiet touch as you walk by.  These touches make us feel valued and loved.

It’s about taking the time and effort to be romantic: giving a gift unlooked for, making a special dinner, or planning an adventure to some place or event you’ve never been before.

It’s about savoring your lovemaking with long lingering kisses, passionate embraces, and lots of gentle touching or massage.

Maybe the hardest thing about practicing sex is talking about what you want, or what you’re afraid of, or what you don’t like.  Something as simple as initiating sex, or refusing it, can make us feel extremely vulnerable.

You know it’s time to talk if you feel some resentment about your sex life.  Where does the resentment come from?  What is it you want that you’re not getting, or don’t want that you are?  How can you express that to the one you love in a way that is respectful and not resentful? 

These conversations are usually pretty difficult.  I need to find a way to get some distance from my emotions.  I may begin by writing a letter, and getting down on paper what I’m feeling.  Obviously I’m already feeling some resentment, so I want that letter to sit for at least a day before I edit it.  Then I’ll read it again and try to reword it in a way that is less resentful, more respectful, and uses language that I think my wife can hear. 

What you don’t want to do is provoke the same resentment in your loved one that you’re already feeling yourself.  That’s a recipe for an emotional conflagration, and maybe long term damage to your relationship.

Once I’m happy with the letter, I’ll give it to her and ask her if we can talk about it after she’s read it.  When we begin to talk, I try to breathe through the conversation, be aware of our emotional pressure, and back off if it gets too high.  But I keep trying to find a way to talk about it until we can come to a mutually satisfactory conclusion.

Four Steps toward a Social Practice

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How do we describe the nature of an acquaintance?  I use four measures:

1)   propinquity,

2)   breadth and level of interest,

3)   level of trust,

4)   And level of vulnerability.

By propinquity I mean proximity or distance.  We are much more likely to be acquainted with those in close proximity to us than we are with those who are far away.  One way to improve an acquaintance is to shorten the distance between you.

The more interests we share with a person, or the greater our intensity of interest in a shared passion, the more we will be attracted to that person.  The more we cultivate those interests, the more we will have to talk about, and the more interesting will become our conversation.

Our level of trust in an acquaintance is indicative of our expectation of honesty and reliability from the other.  For trust to grow our actions must be consistent with our conversation and commitments.  We want to spend our time with people we trust.

Our level of vulnerability is the extent to which we are willing to reveal those parts of ourselves of which we are ashamed, or those parts which if injured in some way, could do us great harm.  Vulnerability allows us to bring to light those parts of ourselves hidden in darkness.  With a friend vulnerability can be transformative.  But if that vulnerability is betrayed, it can be shattering.  For vulnerability to grow between friends, what is shared in confidence must be treasured in the heart and protected from gossip.

A social practice then should seek to shorten distance between acquaintances, seek and cultivate those who share our interests, build trust, and encourage and protect our mutual vulnerability.

Communicate with Your Interest Groups

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The most subtle and precious treasure in my life is the web of conversation spun over the course of years with my family and friends.  So for the past several years I have meditated on ways to improve my methods of communication.

I find it much more effective and efficient to communicate with clusters rather than individuals.  A cluster is a connected group of acquaintance, usually where each member of the cluster knows everyone else in the cluster, like a household.

If I want to communicate with everyone in a cluster about a particular topic, it will take much more time and effort to write or speak with each member individually than it will with the group as a whole.

The determining factors for me as to whether I can communicate with the cluster as a whole is whether I expect everyone in the cluster to be interested in the topic, whether I trust everyone with topic, and whether I am willing to make myself vulnerable to everyone in the group with the topic.

Weighed against this is the possibility of dividing the cluster if I communicate with some members of the group and not others about the topic.  Generally speaking, no one likes to be left out of a conversation of a group of which they deem themselves a part.  And they will often resent it if they are.

So if I don’t consider everyone in the group to be at nearly the same level of interest, trust, and intimacy the preferable alternative is to write at a level that is commensurate with the lowest level overall.  But sometimes this simply isn’t possible; if I am trying to communicate with them on a sensitive topic, then I will likely feel compelled to communicate with each individually or none of them at all.

How do you deal with these issues?

Practicing Persistence

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Why do you persist in your practice? What do you do when you get discouraged? How do you make yourself do it again when everything in you says “No mas!”?

I am trying to learn the answers to these questions. So please share your experience with me.

It is easier to quit when I lose sight of what I’m trying to accomplish, or lose faith that I can accomplish it, or lose the expectation that my practice will bear fruit.

So to persist, I need to continually revisit and sharpen the vision or description of the expected results of my practice in all its blossoming glory.

I need to carve my practice into a series of small achievable steps of gradually increasing levels of difficulty, with well defined milestones along the way. These milestones are the “small wins” that will build my confidence and my expectation of future success.

I need to document these wins, so I can go back and look at them, and remind myself when I’m discouraged that I have succeeded in the past.

I need to surround myself with like minded individuals, who share in these experiences, who share their encouragement, with a mutual expectation of success.

I need a mentor who is a model of practice, persistence, and who has already accomplished what I want to achieve.

My Quest for a Social Practice

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It turns out there is little, if anything, more important to our happiness than our level of connectedness with others; both in terms of quantity and quality of our relationships.  Even so, I can’t say that I have a formal practice for broadening and deepening my network of social connections, nor do I know anyone who does.  If you have one, please share it with me.

For me, connectedness begins with interest in another person.  Some years ago I decided that if I met someone I had a good conversation with, that I would try to pursue that person in order to renew the conversation; or perhaps connect them with another person I think shares one or more of their interests.

After that initial interest, I need to be able to trust the person, and show myself to be trustworthy in turn.  Those who are unreliable, who don’t keep their commitments, or say things they don’t mean or believe don’t make very good friends.

If we share an interest, and build a solid foundation of trust, then perhaps the deepest level of connection comes from a willingness to be vulnerable with the other person.  Vulnerability implies revealing certain of those aspects of us that could cause great embarrassment or injury if the other person does not value and treat with some reverence those parts revealed.  Here are the greatest risks, and greatest rewards, of a relationship.

But perhaps the heart of a social practice is as simple and as complicated as staying in touch.  It takes time to stay in touch.  It takes some courage (we might be rebuffed).  And as our circle of acquaintance grows, it takes some creativity and diligence in order to keep those lines of communication open.  How do you stay in touch with 150 people?  Facebook right?

One thing I’ve noticed about my connections is that they tend to be clustered.  These clusters tend to exist at a certain level of intimacy across the whole cluster.  Hence I can send an email to everyone in that cluster at the level of trust and vulnerability of the cluster which everyone can feel safe responding to.  I think it’s hard to do that on a venue like facebook.  I still haven’t figured out how to use it.