Gumption

Snoop: An Investigation into Possessions, Perceptions, Projections and Personalities

Sam Gosling's new book - Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You - blends an engaging and accessible overview of some of the key concepts and research findings in personality psychology and environmental psychology with what amounts to a collection of short detective stories. Snoopology, the art and science of determining "which of your tastes and habits provide particular portals into your personality", attempts to differentiate what our stuff really says about us from what most people might think our stuff says about us.

A snoopologist looks for three basic types of clues to personality - one's "unique pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving that is consistent over time" - in the personal spaces (e.g., bedrooms and bathrooms in the home, and offices or cubicles at work) that we inhabit:

• identity claims: posters, awards, photos, trinkets and other mementos that make deliberate symbolic statements about how we see ourselves that can be for our benefit (self-directed identity claims) or intended for others (other-directed identity claims)
• feeling regulators: family photos, keepsakes, music, books and videos that help us manage our emotions and thoughts
• behavior residue: the physical traces left in the environment by our everyday actions (e.g., objects on our desks, on our floors or in our garbage)

The "big five" personality traits, which I first encountered (and wrote about) in the context of YouJustGetMe, a web site for guessing these traits (and an associated ICWSM 2008 paper on which Sam was co-author), are here enumerated along with well-known icons who exemplify these traits:

• Openness: Leonardo da Vinci; creative, imaginative, abstract, curious, deep thinkers, inventive and value arts and aesthetic experiences.
• Conscientiousness: RoboCop; thorough, dependable, reliable, hard-working, task-focused, efficient, good planners.
• Extraversion: Axel Foley (Beverly Hills Cop); talkative, energetic, enthusiastic, assertive, outgoing, sociable.
• Agreeableness: Fred Rogers; helpful, selfless, sympathetic, kind, forgiving, trusting, considerate, cooperative.
• Neuroticism: Woody Allen; anxious, easily ruffled or upset, worried, moody.

In exploring what it really means to know someone, Sam reviews some of the work by Dan McAdams, including McAdams' book, The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self, which describes three levels of intimacy:

• traits: the "big five" dimensions of personality listed above
• personal concerns: roles, goals, skills and values
• identity: the thread that ties the experiences of our past, present and future into one narrative

In discussing these levels of intimacy, Sam notes that Arthur Aron has developed a two-person "sharing game" consisting of a sequence of 36 questions that slowly escalate the level of disclosure between two people, enabling them to progress from the first to the second level of intimacy. Unfortunately, the sharing game does not appear to be available online (though a journal paper describing the system is available for a fee),

The "sharing game" reminds me of OneKeyAway, a dating service that adds some new twists to "lock-and-key" parties, in which women are given locks and men are given keys - both worn on lanyards around their necks - and prizes are awarded to couples who find matching locks and keys, offering incentives to both easily engage and disengage throughout the course of a party. I've written an entire blog post about lock-and-key parties and OneKeyAway; here I'll simply note a few relevant items. OneKeyAway introduces two interesting dimensions: a 64-question online questionnaire, which covers topics such as relationship expectations, emotional responsiveness, personal behaviors and habits, hobbies, sexual orientation and preferences, religion and substance; and a MatchLinC keyfob-like device that encodes those responses and is handed out at an event. Participants can "zap" each other - point their MatchLinCs at each other and press a button (vs. inserting a key in a lock), and a red, amber or green light on the device signals their relative compatibility. Couples can, of course, strike up a conversation whether the devices say they are compatible or incompatible (both of which are potentially interesting conversation topics if they find each other attractive). The real power is in the questionnaire, which primes the participants to delve into topic areas that are more likely to lead to progressive disclosure and increasing levels of intimacy.

I don't know whether music is one of the topics in the OneKeyAway questionnaire, but it does frequently rank among the topics that appears to be most conducive to enabling people to connect with and relate to each other. Summarizing a number of related psychological experiments, Sam observes that

music consistently trumps books, clothing, food, memories and television shows in helping people get to know each other.

Elsewhere in the book, he notes that

Web sites are extraordinarily good places to learn about people - perhaps the best of all places.

The book includes a handy table (shown right) to indicate just how well we can really learn about people's personality traits through different channels.

These, in turn, reminded me of some earlier ruminations about music and personality, that were inspired by earlier encounters with the work of Sam and his colleagues, and gives me renewed hope that we'll be able to effectively transmute Strands' early core competencies in music recommendation into broader and deeper recommendations that help people discover and enjoy other people, places and things around them (an explicit part of our mini-manifesto for Strands Labs, Seattle).

The sharing game, OneKeyAway and talking about music preferences can help people move from traits to personal concerns, but to really enable people to know each other at the deeper level of identity, McAdams says we have to set the stage for the telling of a story ... their story: "an inner story of the self that integrates the reconstructed past, perceived present and anticipated future to provide a life with unity, purpose and meaning". This dimension reminds me of my experience in The Mankind Project, where we regularly seek to differentiate data, judgments, feelings and wants. One of the tools we use to do this is careful use of language, or as we like to put it, clear, direct, concise and truthful (CDCT) communication. We often preface our remarks with "the story I make up about X" to help us remember that the judgments we have about people - others and ourselves - typically take the form of narratives we construct based on relatively sparse data, filled in with a multitude of judgments, in our relentless effort to make sense of the world. We also emphasize the use of "I" statements - which is consistent with the findings of James Pennebaker reported in the book that a person's use of first-person pronouns is correlated with honesty (and, interestingly, complex thinking).

Returning to the topic of making sense of people, Gosling reports that the famous Rorschach ink-blot test, in which people describe what they see in ink-blot patterns, is actually not very helpful in assessing personality. A more helpful test is the Picture Story Exercise (PSE) - or Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) - in which people make up a spontaneous story about a random series of pictures, revealing repressed aspects of their personality, especially their motivations and needs for achievement, affiliation and power. Personality seepage can also be effectively captured and analyzed through body movements such as jumping, walking and dancing. Wryly noting that "we sometimes say more with our hips than with our lips", Sam reports on a study by Karl Grammer, at the Ludwig-Boltzmann Institute for Urban Ethology, in which analysis of videotapes and interviews conducted in nightclubs showed that the tightness of a woman's clothing, the amount of skin it reveals, and the "explosiveness" of her movement on the dance floor are all correlated to estrogen levels (indicating fertility, and thus, attractiveness, evolutionarily speaking).

Of course, physiological components of attractiveness are often combined with - or covered up or compensated by - other, more deceptive, dimensions of the outer layers of appearance and behavior we project. This reminds me of some of Judith Donath's insights into the application of signaling theory to social networks, in which she distinguishes among the relative costs and benefits of handicap signals, index signals and conventional signals, and explores how fashion is largely a manifestation of the latter, relatively inexpensive, type of signal.

Fortunately, however, for those of us who are concerned or obsessed with authenticity, Sam claims that our behavioral residue is difficult to consciously manipulate, and underneath whatever appearances we may try to cultivate, our real personalities persistently try to express themselves. This is corroborated by experimental results from Self-Verification Theory, which suggests that people want to be seen as they really are (or at least as they see themselves), even if that means that "negative" aspects of their personalities are seen.

One of the more controversial chapters in the book addresses the issue of stereotypes. Given that we can only perceive narrow aspects of others' personalities, we naturally tend to fill in the gaps of the stories we make up about them with information based on our perceptions others who we judge similar, based on gender, race, or where they live (e.g., with respect to red states and blue states). Unfortunately, for those of politically correct persuasion, many of these stereotypes do have at least a kernel of truth. For example, women tend to score higher in the Big Five trait of neuroticism than men, i.e., they tend to be more anxious, less even-tempered, less laid-back, more emotional and more easily stressed tan men, and it turns out that, generally speaking, conservatives are "neurologically more resistant to change" and liberals are more extroverted.

And music stereotypes turn out to be very helpful in forming correct impressions of people, although not all music genres are created equal, with respect to the personality traits their fans inadvertently reveal. For example, affinity for Contemporary Religious music turns out to be much more revealing about personality, values and alcohol and drug use than a love of Soul music or, more surprisingly to me, Rap.

Another dimension that reveals aspects of our personalities is hoarding. Sam notes that we have "an ingrained instinct to collect stuff" (which may be why Amy Jo Kim includes "collections" as one of the five key elements of what makes online games - and online social networking - so addictive). He shares a definition of hoarding as "the repetitive collection of excessive quantities of poorly usable items of little or no value with failure to discard those items over time". With the caveat that "little or no value" is a rather subjective label, I must admit that I tend to hoard books, academic papers and wines. This, in turn, leads to a discussion of what our workspaces say about us ... but I'm going to hold off saying more about that (for now) ... I've been composing this blog in bits and pieces for over a month now, and I want to wrap it up (and if anyone has actually read this far, you may be thinking the same thing). [In fact, given the change in default formatting that TypePad has instituted in the interim, this blog post didn't even get assigned a usable URL, so I've had to repost it :-(]

However, before closing, I will note that in the "What Counts?" column of the May 2008 issue of Conscious Choice, a few interesting statistics - from a TreeHugger article on "Spring Cleaning: '101 Reasons to Get Rid Of It'" - are listed:

• 1.4 Million: Americans who suffer from hoarding or clutter.
• 80: Percentage of things Americans own that they never use.

Unfortunately, it's not clear what proportion of the 1.4 million sufferers are the actual hoarders and how many are family, friends and/or coworkers of the hoarders ... for example, I think my wife suffers much more from my hoarding than I do.

Just to come [nearly] full circle again, the issue starts out with a letter from the editor entitled Fire and Rain, that talks about the way that music influences us,

I can’t help but pay special attention to the songs that randomly pop into my head. ... Music has the magical ability to transport and transform us in ways that impress me on a daily basis.

I've just finished - and plan to write another long blog post about - another fabulous book: This is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel Levitin ... in which he talks about how and why some music gets stuck in our heads ... and a variety other aspects of our obsession with music ... and which offers an interesting complement to some of the insights that Sam shares in his book.

Returning to Sam's book, one issue that came up repeatedly (for me) throughout the book was the difference between what our words and actions really say about us, and how others generally interpret what our words and actions say about us. Sam notes a number of scientific experiments that have shown that we often make mistaken assumptions about people. But if most people make the same inferences - however mistaken - about others, won't this have an effect on their interactions with them ... and eventually, on their personalities? As Sam notes in the book:

Attractive people may be treated differently in social interaction, a phenomena that actually leads to differences in how they behave and how they seem themselves.

Theodor Adorno noted a similar phenomena in his 1951 book, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life (which I read about in a recent Wall Street Journal book review, Capitalism and its Malcontent):

The sound of any woman's voice on the telephone tells us whether the speaker is attractive. It reflects back as self-confidence, natural ease and self-attention all the admiring and desirous glances she has ever received.

So if others' assumptions about us affects their behavior toward us, and their behavior affects our behavior, and our behavior over time affects our personalities, won't others' assumptions - however erroneous - affect our personalities? Do we tend to become more of the people others' see us as? I'm reminded of the lyrics from a Lyle Lovett song: "If I were the man that you wanted, I would not be the man that I am" ... but I digress...

I don't mean to say that personality and social psychology does not yield many interesting interesting insights - indeed, Sam's book is one of the most interesting books I've ever read - I just wonder how much impact these insights will have on society. How much does what our behavior really mean matter, in comparison to how others interpret our behavior (and its residue)? Should we be doing more scientific experiments or conducting more polls? Would we rather be right or happy (or popular)?

Of course, if snoopology catches on, perhaps more of us can be right, happy and popular - about and with each other.

The Paradox of Choice: Decisions, Happiness and Appreciation

In addition to seeding my last post - on Dark Nights of the Soul - by sending me a link to an evocative image, Yogi also sent me a link to a 20-minute video of Barry Schwartz giving a presentation on The Paradox of Choice a few years ago at a TED conference.

The presentation is derived from Barry's book, The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More, about which he says (during the video presentation), "I wrote a whole book to try to explain this [paradox] to myself" ... reminding me of why I blog ... or why David Whyte writes poetry ("Poetry is the art of hearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew" - (well, at least I think these are all related)).

Barry offers an engaging theory on why increasing choices often makes people miserable:

1. Regret and anticipated regret
2. Opportunity costs
3. Escalation of expectations
4. Self-blame

He is not railing against choice(s), but instead arguing that the "official dogma" - having more choices leads to more freedom and [thus] greater welfare - is wrong, that we pass a point of diminishing returns after which welfare - or happiness - decreases as the range of choices increase. As he says "some choice is better than no choice, but more choice is not necessarily better than some choice". While I generally and enthusiastically agree with many of his points, I think we differ on where the points of diminishing returns start, whether or how to set boundaries near those points, and whether there are other ways of approaching choice that may affect these points.

Barry draws some of of his examples of overwhelming choices from his supermarket, which stocks 250 varieties of cookies, 75 iced teas, 230 soups, 175 salad dressings, 275 cereals and 40 toothpastes (several years ago, a Washington Post article on Toothpaste Proliferation Syndrome reported finding 179 varieties of toothpaste in a virtual stroll down the aisle at Drugstore.com).

One of the side effects of so much choice is that it increases the likelihood that we'll make a "wrong" choice, and the corresponding likelihood that we'll regret our choice ... and the likelihood that we'll anticipate regretting our choice:

Even if we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the result of the choice than if we had fewer options to choose from.
...
With a lot of different salad dressings to choose from, if you buy one and it's not perfect ... it's easy to imagine you could have made a different choice that would have been better. And what happens is this imagined alternative induces you to regret the decision you made, and this regret subtracts from the satisfaction you get out of the decision you made even if it was a good decision. The more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything at all about the option that you chose.

Further on in the presentation, Barry distinguishes between time spent making decisions vs. acting on those decisions, which evoked an image of spending more time computing in the nodes vs. traversing the branches of a decision tree. But upon further reflection, this representation of activity led me to start wondering what proportion of of the time we are acting on previous, or higher level, decisions, is actually spent making lower level decisions, many of which we may not even be conscious of ... whether, in effect, it's decisions all the way down.

Shifting from decision theory to political theory, representative democracy strikes me as one model for modulating choice, wherein we elect representatives who we then hope will make good decisions regarding a large number of options across a wide range of topics on our behalf (behalves?). I rarely hear people complain about the overwhelming range of choices in political candidates (in this country), although I often hear people complain about decisions made by our "elected" politicians ... especially during a U.S. presidential election year. 

I'm reminded of much I've heard and read about "tastemakers" and "trendsetters", and I imagine we often tend to gravitate toward official and unofficial "authorities" to reduce our anxiety over the array of choices. One of the benefits of this tendency is that it can simplify our lives. However, the shadow side of this tendency reflects Don Miguel Ruiz' notion of "domestication" (described in the introduction of his book, The Four Agreements), in which we learn to defer to authorities as children, and eventually learn to constrain ourselves based on what we think the authorities would want us to think, feel and do. [The Four Agreements are about unlearning this domestication, or at least consciously making agreements about what rules - and rulers - we are willing to follow. I've written about two of them before - don't take anything personally and always do your best - and will surely find a pretext to blog about the other two - be impeccable with your word and don't make assumptions.]

This delegation of power to authorities is what bothered me most about the presentation. Barry complains that doctors no longer tell us what to do, but instead list alternatives we might consider. Personally, I like doctors presenting alternatives with relative benefits and risks vs. telling us (me) what to do; the latter, more "traditional" (and "authoritative") approach strikes me as disempowering, and I would greatly prefer to deal directly with the misery entailed by being offered a multitude of health care alternatives than to suffer the degradation of condescending "doctor's orders".

The idea of delegation is closely related to surrogation, which reminds me of Dan Gilbert's ideas on how we make decisions (poorly) and how we ought to make decisions (using a surrogate). As I'd noted in an earlier post on Dan's book, Stumbling on Happiness, he argues that

rather than relying solely on our selves (and our fallible memories) to imagine how happy we will feel in some future state, we should capitalize on the experience of others by inquiring about the happiness of those who are already in the future state we are considering ... the problem [then] is figuring out which others we ought to consult in estimating our future ... I want to know what people like me like.

[I'll also note, here, that I recently discovered a TED video of Dan's presentation on Stumbling on Happiness].

Given my renewed research into recommender systems, and some recent ruminations about re-rethinking recommendation engines, I see how such systems can also play a key role in effectively addressing the increasing array of choices we face in our lives ... and in helping me find people like me ... and what those people like.

What people [like me] like reminds of David Whyte's perspective on why we are liked (or loved), expressed through his poem, "This Time":

Those stars told him
they loved him only
for what he loved himself.
They did not love him
for who he was.

So, people like me [might] like me for what I like.

Toward the end of his presentation, Barry wryly comments "the secret to happiness is low expectations". I've been a student of happiness for some time, and am intrigued with many dimensions of the art, science and business of happiness. And so, I again turn from the science to art - from psychology to poetry - and invoke Oriah Mountain Dreamer's perspective on the secret to happiness ... which not only offers a contrast to Barry's, but also seems to conflict with the sentiment expressed by David Whyte (which is particularly incongruent, for me, as one of his workshops had inspired her earlier prose poem, The Invitation, and I find a great deal of congruence between that poem and his poem, Self Portrait). Oriah expresses a view which has more to do with greater appreciation - and less to do with lower expectations - and seems to admit the possibility that we might well love ourselves for who we are (not just for what we love) in the Prelude to her book, The Dance:

What if your contribution to the world and the fulfillment of your own happiness is not dependent upon discovering a better method of prayer or technique of meditation, not dependent upon reading the right book or attending the right seminar, but upon really seeing and deeply appreciating yourself and the world as they are right now?

So maybe what we really need in the next generation of recommender systems - as a way out of the paradox of choice - is new mechanisms to help us better appreciate ourselves, and the people, places and things around us ... and perhaps new ways for expressing our love for people, places and things.

In any case, I think a healthy dose of Susan Jeffers' "no-lose decision model" (from her book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway ) offers a remedy for avoiding the misery and regret that Barry talks about. I've mentioned it before, but I'll include it yet again, as I think it is relevant (and helpful):

Before you make a decision:

1. Focus immediately on the no-lose model (whichever path you choose will provide learning opportunities … even if it’s learning what you don’t like)
2. Do your homework (talk to as many people as will listen … both to help clarify your own intention and to get alternative perspectives)
3. Establish your priorities (which pathway is more in line with your overall goals in life – at the present time)
4. Trust your impulses (your body gives you good clues about which way to go)
5. Lighten up (it really doesn’t matter – it’s all part of a lifelong learning process)

After making a decision:

1. Throw away the picture (if you focus on what you expected, you may miss the unexpected opportunities that arise along the new path you’ve chosen)
2. Accept total responsibility for your decision (don’t give away your power)
3. Don’t protect, correct (commit yourself to any decision you make and give it all you got … but if it doesn’t work out, change it!)

Although we may not want to apply the full range of this model in every choice we make - talking to as many people as will listen about which toothpaste to buy seems a bit extreme - but lightening up and letting go seem like good practices to apply to all our choices.

Dark Nights of the Soul

Maureen McHugh, a science fiction writer (who also enjoys "not science fiction" books), has written about the challenges of writing novels (and battling cancer) on her blog, No Feeling of Falling. She augmented her words - which unfold with exquisite openness and vulnerability - with a graphical depiction of the soul work involved in rising to meet these challenges, which is inevitably preceded by a descent of some kind. The image, appropriately entitled Dark Night of the Soul, is shown above; it first appeared in a post entitled Episode 1: Begin Anew, which offers a wonderful perspective from which to view new challenges.

Yogi sent me a link to this image, after a recent guest presentation I gave at a UW Tacoma course on Social Networks, taught by Ankur Teredesai [the presentation was on how proactive displays bridge gaps between online social networks and shared physical spaces]. Yogi had encountered the image in yet another course, on Interaction Design, an area which also offers a set of challenges, though the image and the ideas it represents were more related to our broader conversation after the class about work, soul, passion and happiness. I wanted to continue that rumination here, because it brought to mind (and heart) a few strands of inspiration I've encountered elsewhere.

David Whyte, in his book, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America, invokes the epic poem of Beowulf - in which the hero descends into a deep well to battle a monster, Grendel, who has been attacking King Hrothgar's men, and then descends again to battle Grendel's mother - to illustrate some of his insights and experiences into creativity in the workplace. Whyte notes that:

[H]uman existence is half light and half dark, and our creative possibilities seem strangely linked to that part of us we keep in the dark.

and goes on to share the steps he sees in the story - and throughout work (and life) - that are required for unleashing our creativity:

• dropping beneath the surface
• disclosure and vulnerability
• disappearance and return

Whyte draws an analogy between Beowulf's battle with Grendel mother and each of our individual battles with the mother of all vulnerabilities: "the deep physical shame that we are not enough, will never be enough, and can never measure up".

He finishes the chapter with a quote from The Man Watching, by the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke:

Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Or, perhaps, one might say, by facing, repeatedly, darker and darker nights of the soul.

In an earlier post on an unfolding series of peak and pit experiences, I'd written about how inspired I was by Dan Oestreich's insights into and applications of Otto Scharmer's ideas about "Theory U". I want to repeat - again - what Dan had to say:

We all want to know where the point of transformation lies. I would say it is in “no space,” the place we come to after exhausting everything we know…and everything we are, a point of pure meditation. The current theory base, exemplified by Oscar Scharmer’s “Theory U”, suggests exactly this process of emptying ourselves of everything known so that we can listen to a best future Self, a source of deep intuitive wisdom... Scharmer describes the bottom of the U as where we touch a larger field that goes beyond our present awareness, a place of new insight and new consciousness that enables us to solve the problems we have been stuck by using our current, more limited awareness.

I also want to include a larger version of the image Scharmer uses to illustrate Theory U, as it closely relates to the image of the Dark Night of the Soul I started with at the beginning of this post:

I still have not read Theory U (yet), but revisiting this image reveals another dimension of connection (for me (and my work)), with respect to the inspiring ideas of co-sensing, co-presencing and co-creating - not to mention open mind, open heart and open will - so I've ordered a copy of the book.

Meanwhile, based on what Dan has written (and what I've experienced), I suspect the process of descending and rising from the depths of our selves and our work is an ongoing educational journey ... leading through a series of dark nights of the soul(s) ... and, hopefully, some bright days, as well.

Oh, I almost forgot to add that the image also reminds me of stories I've heard about "thesis hill", a visual representation that Roger Schank (my academic "grandfather") employs - or employed - in his meetings with graduate students. Thesis hill, as I understand it, was depicted using an inverse geometric representation - climbing a hill vs. descending into darkness - but in my experience, and in the experience of many people I know (including many of Roger's former students - my "uncles" and "aunts"), working on a Ph.D. thesis often requires persevering through many dark nights of the soul ... and Rilke's quote about repeated, decisive defeats by greater (or, at least, more powerful) beings is one of the best, short verbal characterizations of graduate school - and especially, a thesis defense - that I've encountered ... rivaling the visual characterization of the Dark Night of the Soul. And, I suppose, writing a science fiction novel has many characteristics in common with writing a Ph.D. [scientific] thesis, just with varying intentions - and interpretations - with respect to the relative use of fact and fiction.

[Update, 2008-04-01: I just stumbled upon this relevant quote - from one of my heroes, who certainly had keen insights into darkness and souls - on Aaditeshwar Seth's home page:

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

- George Orwell, 1946.]

Locked-in Syndrome: Diving Bells, Butterflies, Freedoms and Families

Amy and I recently saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (or, more properly, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon), during an unexpected extended layover in San Francisco. The movie is about the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor of the fashion magazine Elle, who at age 43 suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed except for his left eye, after which he continued to suffer for the next 12 years from locked-in syndrome - aware and awake, but unable to communicate. Fortunately (at least for viewers and readers), a dedicated speech therapist (Henriette) was able to open up a new communication channel for him - through repeatedly reciting a frequency-sorted version of the alphabet and watching for him to blink his eye when she reached the desired letter - and a dedicated transcriber (Claude) was able to navigate this channel with him to help him get his story out. And that story is a powerful one, touching on the challenges he faced in dealing with his highly constrained condition, and its effects on his opportunities - past, present and future.

The diving bell in the title is an allusion to the restrictions imposed by his physical condition, while the butterfly refers to the relative freedom of his mental and imaginative capacities that he appreciated - and indulged - all the more after the stroke. What struck me most about the film was that we all suffer some degree of locked-in syndrome - unable (or, perhaps more often, unwilling) to communicate effectively with the people around us. I do not mean to imply for a moment that most of us suffer anything close to the incredible challenges Bauby faced, but the movie did offer me an opportunity to reflect on how often I underutilize communication channels in my own life (this blog notwithstanding).

I remember one time, at the beginning of a surgical procedure, I had been given anesthesia, but it had not yet taken [full] effect before someone started inserting a tube down my throat. I tried to alert the medical staff to the pain I was feeling during this part of the procedure, but was unable to move or talk, and the fear I felt about being so incapable of communicating my predicament was at least as painful as the insertion itself. This was a far more dramatic example of feeling locked-in than most of my experiences, in which I am able to communicate, but unable to effectively convey something I am thinking or feeling to another person ... or situations in which I consciously or unconsciously choose not to communicate at all.

Bauby, of course, could have also chosen not to communicate. It required far more effort for him - and for the people with whom he was communicating - than it typically does for me (and presumably, however ponderous my writing and speaking may be, for the people with whom I communicate), and his willingness to make that effort to not only communicate with the people around him in his activities of daily living but to dictate a book about his experience is inspiring. I was reminded of a Richard Bach quote,

Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours

as well as the lyrics to the Eagles song, Already Gone [video],

So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains
and we never even know we have the key.

Another aspect of the film that moved me was Bauby's relationship with his children ... and their mother (Celine, to whom he was not married). After his stroke, his ability to interact with them was extremely limited, illustrated by a picnic on the beach, during which they play the word game hangman. Amy and I were watching the film on the eve of my "homecoming" - after having commuted nearly every week from Seattle to Palo Alto (or other business-related destinations) for 16 months - and so the lost opportunities for enjoying time with his children was especially poignant ... as was his continued underappreciation for Celine.

Bauby's relationship with his father was also very poignant (for me). Early in the movie, while Bauby is shaving his father (Papinou), his father expresses how proud he is of his son, which brought back memories of my own father expressing pride and approval - as best he could - for his son ... as well as more painful memories of him not expressing pride or approval ... for his son or himself. [In writing this, I'm struck by how my father suffered from a form of locked-in syndrome, tightly bottling up his emotions, which eventually started leaking out in various ways, shapes and forms.]  In my last conversation with him before he died - in 1996 - I was talking with him about the three job offers I had as I was nearing the completion of my Ph.D. One would have enabled me to continue working text-based information extraction; a second would have enabled me to work in the related area of speech interfaces; the third, which seemed both the most promising and the most challenging - what he called "the big job" - would have enabled me to work on something completely different. His last words to me were "Take the big job. You can do it!" I did take that big job - I felt the fear and did it anyway - but I never saw him [alive] again. Although I have many memories of episodes in which I did not receive much-desired approval (from him ... and other authority figures in my life), I'm glad to have the most recent - and lasting - memory be an example of explicit and enthusiastic approval.

During the shaving scene in the film, Bauby expands on this theme, noting "We all are children. We all need approval." Andrea Gronvall expands this theme even further, in her Chicago Reader review:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly inter-twines the need for validation—which is tied to the impulse to create—and the inevitability of isolation and death. Locked in, Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote a luminous treatise on life and love, leaving behind a work of art that says “I was here and I mattered.” [Director Julian] Schnabel honors that impulse with this mature, resonant portrait of an artist.

This need for approval ... for validation ... for appreciation ... for mattering ... is something I continually struggle with. As I noted in an earlier post on living without a goal, and mattering without being useful:

I can't honestly say I'm entirely willing to release my attachment to others' [expressions of] appreciation at this moment -- despite the opportunities for practicing such detachment currently being offered me -- but I'm at least willing to re-open the question of whether and how I matter ... and if it is possible to matter without being [acknowledged as] useful to others.

And so I guess I'm still in the question ... perhaps locked-in to the question ... and in the current context, I'm wondering whether the answer - or the key - lies along the path of the butterflies.

Complimenting and Complementing: Great Management through Praising and Partnering

I recently finished “First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently”, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, in which they emphasize the importance of discovering each individual’s unique constellation of talents – the things he/she cannot help but do (and do well) – and aligning those with appropriate roles – where doing those things add value – within an organization. They also emphasize the importance of offering positive feedback at frequent and regular intervals, and managing around “weaknesses” by establishing effective partnerships - within the team itself and among the management – with others who have complementary talents.

This approach emphasizes discovering, developing and capitalizing on people’s natural strengths, rather than the conventional “wisdom” of creating “well-rounded” employees (what I might call "rounding errors") by “fixing” their weaknesses or, more euphemistically, addressing their “areas for development” (I found myself ruminating on the “spay” or "castrate" meanings of "fix") and/or instituting detailed processes intended to ensure desired outcomes (rather than empowering employees to engage their talents and natural creativity to achieve those outcomes).

The book defines talent as “a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied”, and differentiates talent from skill (ability to follow steps) and knowledge (awareness of facts and practices). Talent typically involves skill and knowledge, but most importantly, it is something we are inexorably drawn toward … something we have a deep passion for (reminding me of Rumi’s maxim, and my former email signature quotation: “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love”). Buckingham and Coffman go on to distinguish three types of talent – striving (the why of a person), thinking (the how of a person) and relating (the who of a person) – and offer a dozen or so more specific examples of each type of talent in an appendix. I must confess that I do not appear to have a talent for understanding the specificity of these distinctions.

The authors, who are (or were?) leaders in the Gallup organization’s 25-year effort to understand attitudes, opinions and behaviors in work settings, offer 12 questions that represent “the simplest and most accurate way to measure the strength of a workplace”:

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

In polling over one million employees with these questions, Gallup found that the proportions of employees who “strongly agree” (a “5” on a 5-point scale) with these statements is highly correlated with their group’s productivity, profitability, retention and customer satisfaction.

Gallup also interviewed eighty thousand managers to better understand what the great managers did differently from the good (and bad) managers. They found that great managers are able to both identify an employee’s true talents, and capitalize on them by aligning those talents with roles in the organization. The authors share a mantra that was shared with them (in various forms) by great managers:

People don’t change that much.
Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out.
Try to draw out what was left in.
That is hard enough.

They also shared their view of manager as a catalyst rather than a controller, which can be summarized in three passages in the book:

The manager role is to reach inside each employee and release his unique talents into performance … one employee at a time.
...
You can’t make things happen. All you can do is influence, motivate, berate, or cajole, in the hope that most of your people will do what you ask of them.
...
Identify a person’s strengths. Define outcomes that play to those strengths. Find a way to count, rate, or rank those outcomes. And then let the person run.

Great managers accomplish this alignment of talents and roles through four key activities:

• Select people for talent (not simply skills, knowledge and experience)
• Define right outcomes (not precise steps or processes to achieve outcomes)
• Focus on people’s strengths (not their weaknesses)
• Help people find the right fit (possibly in another group or company)

Other insights shared by great managers include:

• You’re always on stage (we are always modeling by example)
• Every role performed at excellence deserves respect (reminding me of a recent Wall Street Journal article on Joie de Vivre Hospitality's practice of buying hotel housekeepers new vacuum cleaners every year)
• Unrestrained empowerment can be a value killer (“Allowing each person to make all of his own decisions may well result in a team of fully self-actualized employees, but it may not be a very productive team”)

The authors use the analogy of sports, invoking the wisdom of a great sports coach in promoting the primacy of people over pre-defined procedures (or plays):

Bud Grant, stone-faced Hall of Fame coach of the Minnesota Vikings described it this way: "You can’t draw up plays and then just plug your players in. No matter how well you have designed your play book, it’s useless if you don’t know which plays your players can run. When I draw up my play book, I always go from the players to the play."

This, in turn, brings up an issue about which I’ve been ruminating lately – the idea of a “player / coach” in the business world. There are very few examples of people who have excelled in both roles (simultaneously). Most great coaches are / were former players … but I don’t believe most great coaches were great players. Management is a talent – or, perhaps, a collection of talents. Having skills, knowledge and experience with the types of activities, people and organizations in which great performance is to be achieved can be very helpful in practicing great management. However, the best players rarely make the best coaches. There are, of course, exceptions – after all, as the book notes, everyone is exceptional – but organizational structures in which managers are also expected to be significant individual contributors may not offer the highest probability for optimal success on any level.

The book offers insights and observations about “managing around weaknesses” that I believe apply equally well to managers and employees. Noting that “no one possesses all of the talents needed to excel in a particular role”, the authors suggest three strategies that can be used to promote performance: devise a support system, find a complementary partner or find an alternative role. The first focuses on logistics – arranging physical or procedural aspects of work so that individual weaknesses can be compensated through other dimensions. The second strategy focuses on the specific dimension of other people, and this notion of complementary partnership reminds me of Starbucks' founder Howard Schultz' insights into passion, perseverance and partnership, and that all successful teams are really partnerships [I've written before that everyone's a customer, and it appears that Starbucks already recognizes and celebrates a corollary - everyone's a partner.]

The third strategy is consonant with more poetic treatments of the issue I’ve encountered (or re-discovered) recently  –the notion that “self-discovery is the driving, guiding force for a healthy career”. The book includes several references to the metaphor of a mirror, emphasizing that great managers help guide their employees to discover – and accept – themselves and their unique talents, and to work with them to apply those talents in ways that are optimally productive for the employee and the organization. This process – or journey – unfolds through regular meetings and discussions, where mutual awareness and trust can be cultivated ... ideally amounting to at least one hour every quarter (vs. the more conventional half hour or hour ever year or half year).

Of course, it may turn out, in some cases, that a productive channeling of an employee’s talents can not be found or created within a group or organization, in which case the best course is for the employee to change jobs. The key here is not to take anything personally – the problem is simply miscasting, not a defect in the character of either the manager or employee.

The book was published in 1999. I bought it in 2004, when I actively entertained ambitions for growing and managing a high performance team for designing and deploying technologies to “help people relate” – the dream, and erstwhile business, of Interrelativity (my now-defunct start-up). After a brief burst of activity as a team of 2, we soon became a team of one, and so the book sat on my shelf for the next three years. Toward the end of a recent presentation I gave at the SDForum on our new generation of proactive displays (which I entitled “Friendsters @ Work”), someone asked me whether I thought our proactive displays – which provide large, ambient windows into personal digital media (e.g., photos from an online photo sharing service like Flickr) in a professional physical workplace (our lab) to promote awareness, interactions and community – were, in effect, manifestations of the Gallup management philosophy. I had to admit I hadn’t thought about it, but in continuing our conversation after the presentation session, he mentioned the “First Break All the Rules” book, and helped me recognize that the design of the proactive display application (the “Context, Content and Community Collage”) was, in fact, very well aligned with the Gallup management philosophy … which I recognized as also being reflected in another book I’ve read (and blogged about): “How Full Is Your Bucket: Positive Strategies for Life and Work” by Tom Rath and Donald Clifton (also with the Gallup management organization).

The Buckingham and Coffman book and has two sequels, "Now Discover Your Strengths" (Buckingham & Clifton, 2001) and "Go Put Your Strengths to Work" (Buckingham, 2007). I have not read these yet, but I have taken the Clifton StrengthsFinder test - referenced in all of the above - which suggested that my five top talents (or strengths) are:

• Woo (Win Others Over)
  People strong in the Woo theme love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over. They derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection with another person.
• Connectedness
  People strong in the Connectedness theme have faith in the links between all things. They believe there are few coincidences and that almost every event has a reason.
• Relator
  People strong in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.
• Ideation
  People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between disparate phenomena.
• Adaptability
  People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to "go with the flow". They tend to be "now" people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.

I like to think of myself as someone who is willing to break rules, aware of my strengths, and willing and able to put them to work ... hopefully in complimentary and complementary ways.

Altered States, Alienated Majesty, the Vigor of Wild Virtue and the Magnetic Attraction of Awakened People

I awoke yesterday morning, still feeling in a somewhat altered state, ruminating on Andrew Zolli's observation of the magnetic attraction of awakened people that permeates Pop!Tech. When I logged in, I found an email notifying me of a comment posted on a blog entry I wrote years ago, on Self-Reliance vs. Interdependence: Inherence, Adherence and Coherence. The comment offered me an opportunity to re-read, reflect on and reaffirm some of the particularly appealing concepts and terms I'd gleaned from Ralph Waldo Emerson's inspirational book:

• alienated majesty (hearing others speak truths we ourselves had earlier discovered, but rejected),
• the vigor of wild virtue (uncivilized, spontaneous, instinctual aboriginal strength)
• the corpse of memory (our concern with being consistent, lest we violate expectations and disappoint others)

All of these resonate all the more strongly with me during this post-Pop!Tech period. Many of the conversations at Pop!Tech helped me better recognize the alienated majesty within me (a developing self struggling with self-development), as well as the alienated majesty of the invisible and voiceless people who are struggling in many developing regions of the world. The wild virtue exposed and expressed through many of the presentations and performances (Vanessa German comes foremost to mind) was, well, invigorating. And as for the corpse of memory, well, I find myself increasingly fearful that Pop!Tech has permanently altered my state, that I won't be able to snap back to "normal", and that if I proceed much further along the path that seems to be silently - or, perhaps, not so silently - drawing me, I may well violate expectations and disappoint others.

There's a part of me that wants to go back to sleep ... reminding me of a Rumi poem:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

I was also reminded of Oriah Mountain Dreamer's observations in her audiotape, Your Heart's Prayer - which I'd earlier projected onto the practice of unfolding through blogging - about people who come into contact with spiritually enlightened individuals, such as Mahatma Ghandi or Mother Teresa, likening the experience to what happens when two tuning forks coming into proximity of each other: the strong vibration of the spiritually enlightened person transmits energy to any other person that comes near.

I felt like I was walking in a sea of vibrating tuning forks at Pop!Tech - so maybe, in addition to my earlier observation of combined high IQ and high EQ among people at Pop!Tech (Pop!Techies?), I should add high SQ (spiritual intelligence) to the mix. It seemed like everyone was in a highly awakened state ... and I wonder whether that represents an alteration of normality for others, or whether it is their normal state ... or perhaps [only] their normal state at Pop!Tech ... or simply another example of my seeing what I want to see.

I'm not sure what "normal" is anymore - for me ... reminding me of earlier periods when I identified strongly with the character of Phaedrus in Robert Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ... which I suppose is apt, given that I'm increasingly inquiring into values.

Blessed Unrest: Environmental and Social Justice for All … or Bust!

In his latest book (and video), environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author Paul Hawken achieves a remarkable balance between breadth and depth in arguing that in order to restore environmental and social balance on this earth, we must strive for both, or we will achieve neither. Noting that "we are nature", and thus however we treat the earth affects its people and however we treat one another affects the earth, Hawken presents a systems approach in which recognizing our interrelatedness, taking advantage of our interconnectedness, and acting with greater consciousness may allow us to save ourselves and our planet from the brink of disaster.

The title of the book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, is based on Hawken’s estimate of somewhere between one to two million organizations worldwide – many of them very small and narrowly focused (hence their relative unremarkability, from the point of view of major media) – that are acting to improve environmental and/or social conditions. Although many of these organizations (some of which are listed at WiserEarth.org) are acting independently, an increasing number are linking together with other organizations – in the non-profit, government and commercial sectors – to achieve greater progress ... think globally, act locally, link laterally.

The Unrest in the title presumably describes the motivations of people in this Movement – what moves them to take risks in challenging commercial rights on behalf of the rights of the planet and its peoples. I was deeply moved by the book – it is searingly provocative on an intellectual and emotional level. I’m not sure how much risk I’m willing to take on in order to join this movement … but I’ll at least write about it (Hawken notes that the key attributes to success in fighting for environmental and social justice are "gumption and persistence", so this is at least within scope for [the name of] this blog), and perhaps writing will help pave the way toward further action, by me and/or others (socio-neuro-linguistic programming?).

I found myself feeling physically ill during some passages, such as when he described a single day in the 15th century during which Spanish conquerors raped and beheaded 3,000 people in front of a [presumably complacent, if not condoning] priest. Other passages moved me to tears of sadness, as when he recounted the desecration of The Mother of the Forest, a 363-foot sequoia cut down and transported to New York to parade in front of audiences in the mid-nineteenth century, or the horrendous mistreatment of children by industrialists in England during the latter part of that century, such as the teenaged girls typically employed as benchgrinders who lost the ability to sleep, to stand, and eventually, to breathe, often dying before reaching adulthood.

Hawken highlights the history of economic fundamentalism – in which commercial rights have consistenly trumped human (and environmental) rights – perhaps most starkly exemplified by the Frame Breaking Act of 1812 in England, whereby people who destroyed machinery could be executed, while corporations running machinery that destroyed people were unaccountable. This primacy of business interests over environmental and social interests extends back through thousands of years of slavery and indentured servitude, and is still very much alive and well today, as exemplified by the “rights” of the World Trade Organization, which imposes sanctions on countries that seek to impose restrictions on commerce due to the environmental and/or human costs incurred in the production of "goods". In fact, I believe that it is the nearly unfettered ability of corporations to externalize such costs – to exclude them from any financial accounting, and thereby excuse themselves from any moral or civic accountability – that has led us to the brink of planetary and humanitarian catastrophe.

If everything and everyone is truly connected – an "Ecology 101" perspective that Hawken argues for repeatedly and convincingly throughout the book – then there are no externalities, and the sooner we (and I use the term with intentional ambiguity) adopt accounting and accountability systems with greater integrity, the better … and if we wait too long, we may give new, planetarily posthumous meaning to the cliché "he who dies with the most toys, wins".

Any kind of fundamentalism is dangerous, and, I believe, ultimately disastrous (I'm reminded of the slogan "all isms lead to schisms"). All fundamentalists are, consciously or unconsciously, promoting totalitarianism, and so all fundamentalist movements represent pathologies of power. The world would be a better place if everyone were a Muslim / Christian / capitalist / communist / etc., and so any means of shifting the balance in the “right” direction – through "expirtation, genocide and colonialism … cultural cleansing for the supposed benefit of the victim" – are justified. James Carse's observation that "all evil is the result of trying to eliminate evil" (e.g., "the only good Indian is a dead Indian") - and, for those more familiar with his insights into finite and infinite games, "evil is not the inclusion of finite games in an infinite game, but the restriction of all play to one or another finite game" - offers an interesting perspective on the fundamentalist perspective.

A quote from Bertrand Russell, from his aptly named Unpopular Essays, and reminiscent of sentiments expressed in and James Ogilvy’s Living Without a Goal, helps explain why fundamentalism is so popular:

Man is a credulous animal and must believe in something. In the absence of good grounds for belief, he will believe in bad ones.

Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, offers further insights into these fundamental human tendencies as they apply to the religious dimension. Hawken’s recounting of the attacks on Rachel Carlson, author of Silent Spring, a 1962 expose on the harmful effects of the chlorinated pesticides (DDT), highlight a relatively newer, secular dimension for bad grounds for belief, also known as corporate junk science, in which corporate funded "think tanks" sow seeds of fear, uncertainty and doubt about any scientific discoveries that may harm their economic bottom line. This tactic of assimilation through dissimulation is promoted implicitly and explicitly by corporations, governments and their partners and co-beneficiaries, the mainstream media, more recently exemplified by reactions – or lack thereof – to threats of climate change and Weapons of Mass Destruction Delusion  … though, as Hawken observes, “any finger-pointing is inevitably directed back to ourselves" (reminiscent of my own recent revelations regarding seeing what I want to see).

Hawken notes that fundamentalism is, fundamentally, about ideology, and any fundamentalism – whether it is capitalism, socialism, capitalism or terrorism – is based on uniformity rather than diversity, and thus more inclined to justify and dictate than to question and liberate. Diversity, along with self-organization and self-regulation, are among the hallmarks of an effective immune system (or what Fritjof Capra, in his book, The Web of Life, calls an immune network), and Hawken suggests that "the widely diverse network of organizations proliferating in the world today may be a better defense against injustice than F-16 fighter jets".

Although much of the focus in the book is on how small organizations are working to improve the lots of the planet and its peoples, Hawken also includes some larger scale initiatives, such as The Nature Conservancy, which has US$4.4B in assets, the Clinton Global Initiative, which recently raised US$7.3B in pledges to combat global warming, injustice, intolerance and poverty, and the Gates Foundation, with US$29B in assets (and an annual budget that is twice that of the World Health Organization), dedicated to the eradication of disease in the developing world.

While I hope these initiatives are successful, I have to note that I think it’s ironic that Bill Clinton, who, despite his purported commitment - in the past and present - to environmental and social causes, was an ardent proponent of some of the foremost tools of promulgating environmental and social injustice, through his support for NAFTA, GATT and welfare reform (and even his former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who I had previously thought was more populist than corporatist, has recently been defending the gross inequity of the gross pay given to many CEOs).

Toward the end of the book, after cataloging a broad range of environmental and social injustices suffered in the past, present and possible future(s), interspersed with examples of organizations that are making some progress in addressing or even rectifying some of those injustices, Hawken offers an optimistic vision about how this movement might unfold. One passage, in particular, triggered a “goose bump moment” for me, where I experienced a strong visceral reaction to the words on the page:

We cannot save our planet unless humankind undergoes a widespread spiritual and religious awakening … What if there is already in place a large-scale spiritual awakening and we are simply not recognizing it?

As is often the case (with me), this positive feeling was soon followed by some self-critical reflection (perhaps because I was reading the book on an international flight during which, according to Atmosfair,  I was personally responsible for the emissions of approximately 3270 kg of C02 into the atmosphere): we I may be experiencing a spiritual awakening, but what are we am I doing about it?

This emotional and intellectual trajectory was then reinforced by another moving passage, in which Hawken quotes one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver:

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice.

So what am I going to do? How much gumption do I really have? Is the work I do really serving to promote environmental and social justice? Is it having impact on a scale that is commensurate with my abilities? [By definition, I suppose, it’s having impact on a scale that is commensurate with my willingness.] Can I really help to empower people to achieve greater environmental and social justice in my role(s) at Nokia? I’m not sure about the “blessed” dimension, but Hawken’s book has clearly created some unrest in me.

While I have written about environmental and social issues in the past, I believe I can do more to take part in this movement … and I am taking small steps in that direction. Although not directly related to the main focus of my research, I will be participating in a session at Pop!Tech 2007 in which I will be joined by Katrin Verclas and Nathan Eagle in giving presentations and leading discussions about broad visions and specific examples of how mobile technologies are serving to empower people throughout the developing world to develop solutions to the local environmental, social and political challenges they face. It’s a small step (for me, especially when compared to the steps taken by my cohorts in the session), but it does lie along a trajectory that seems to increasingly beckon me, including my recent awakening to the enormous challenges in Africa, and my recent exposure to the ways that communities and technologies can be used to address those challenges.

I can’t say that a clear path has emerged for how I can (or will) do more yet, but as long as I keep taking even small steps in the right direction, I believe I am contributing in positive ways to this movement.

Don't Take Anything Personally: Commenting on Commenting

I recite Don Miguel Ruiz' Four Agreements as part of my daily mantra practice (mantras are positive affirmations reflecting qualities I want to cultivate in my self). I have already blogged about the ambivalence with which I sometimes view his Fourth Agreement, Always Do Your Best. I recently ruminated about my ambivalence regarding his Third Agreement, Don't Make Assumptions, in a comment on my friend Dan's Unfolding Leadership blog. I now want to turn to his Second Agreement, Don't Take Anything Personally, in general, as well as its application to the blogosphere ... renewing a practice I followed for a week, almost exactly one year ago, relating blogging to other inspiring books, e.g., Love is the Killer App, Blogs are the Killer Platform (riffing on Tim Sanders' book), The 8 Blogging Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey), Your Heart's Blog: The Practice of Unfolding (Oriah Mountain Dreamer).

[BTW, just for completeness, the First Agreement is Be Impeccable With Your Word.]

On the book jacket of