IRL Experience Design

Book: Grammar for a Full Life (Lawrence Weinstein)

It’s almost always enjoyable to me to read a well-written book on a topic I haven’t considered much authored by someone who has considered it a whole lot. Grammar for a Full Life is one of those books.

The first thing you should know is that it’s not really about grammar. In fact, he gives just one short chapter dedicated to the proper usage of grammar – buried in the middle – to appease those whose interest in grammar is rooted in their need for order and propriety. This is not a book about such small things. It’s a book about the biggest things.

I picked up this book because of my interest in language, wordplay, reflection and meditation, human behavior, and influence. My hope was to see things from a unique perspective (and as always) take some ideas that I can use in IRL Experience Designing. I figured I might find a few insights on how to word things to maximize impacts.

The author, Lawrence Weinstein spent ten years teaching at Harvard and cofounded and directed Harvard’s Writing Center. His book is filled with those novel insights that only come from spending a lot of time with the subject matter.

I’ll summarize some of his insights here. If these appeal to you, get this book. You’ll love it.

Passive vs Active Tense

Using the passive tense takes away your agency, or at a minimum, questions it. For example “I am being kept on hold with the credit card company” is passive.

Using the active tense takes your power back and reduces the victim-ness: “I’ve been holding for ten minutes now”. 

The situation is the same in both. The power you own is very different.

Use What Works

In short, if you break the rules of things like comma placement and it helps you get your needed effect – do it. (This chapter comes early in the book, almost thumbing his nose at the grammar sticklers). But the idea he presents (like most of the ideas in the book) is an allegory to life.

Passive Voice to Avoid Blame.

“Mistakes were made” is far different than “We made some mistakes”.  For the Eureka Room, I could use avoidance technique for unreliable narrators to humorously deny ownership of things that are clearly their fault.

Ellipsis: Assuming Your Audience Knows The Rest

The ellipsis essentially means, “it goes without saying”.

Other than the literal “…” there is the unspoken ellipsis. Things like “Even my sister came to the party” to someone that doesn’t know your sister still gives them an idea about the sister. And it makes them feel more connected to you and “in on it”. It’s like you even are bonded with the sister in some way.

In his words, “It is, to a large extent, the ellipsis which accounts for the joyful, bonding power inherent in the telling of a good joke” and “We can make rhythmically calculated use of silence to mark, revel in, and build upon, the good things that are gaining hold between us.”

One of my favorite go-to’s in humor of the crazy narrator of the Eureka Room is the narrator assuming this craziness is normal, then they pause and let the participants take it in and hopefully find a moment of bonding with the others in the room.

E-prime

(This is D. David Bourland, Jr.’s invention). The idea is to strip the english language of the following words: be, been, am, are, is, was, and were.

These words are the verbal equivalent of the “=” sign. Removing them from the language removes false equations that get us into numerous problems, not the least of which is identity issues. 

“I am a baker” becomes “I bake”.

“I am an idiot” becomes “I forgot about your birthday this year”.

Even better is to put e-prime in past tense. This is completely acceptable, since almost all instances of things we might talk about are in the past.

“But” cuts both ways

When I say “I want to go for a run but it’s raining” both things are true: I want to go for a run and it is raining.

But if I swap the two sides around the but and write the same two true things like this: “It’s raining, but I want to go for a run”, it takes on a different tone and implication. 

Both of these are still true but somehow placing the positive part on the right changes a lot. It adds hope and a hint of determination in the face of adversity. 

Consider how you tell two truths with a but.

Ownership

Similar to the E-prime situation, you can drop the word “my” or “mine” and “our” and “ours” to get a different view of life. It’s all impermanent but we don’t like to think that way:

“My car” becomes “The car I drive”. 

“My house” becomes “The house I live in”.  

Sounds strange, right? Instead of extending your being into these objects, as if you might say “my leg” or “my hand”, you stand apart from them, being yourself without these false appendages.

The Word “Will”

When speaking of the future, the word “will” (as in “I will go to the store”) used to be more related to “willing something to be done”. As in using your own power.

Today we hear it mean “it’s as good as done”, but of course it is not. The future is not happened. We must apply our will to make it happen. If we are more mindful that the future happens under our will and is not foreordained.

Historically “will” was not a future tense verb. It was a declaration of intent to create a certain future.

A more mindful way to express “I will go to the store” would be “I intend to go to the store”. This way, intead of jetisoning the idea from our head with the attitude that is a sure-thing, we keep the idea in mind that it is up to us to go to the store and that it is not yet done until we do it.

When we keep the idea in our mind we will think about it more and it will actually happen. 

Other great lines from the book

I’m not going to go into detail on all the other ideas in the book, but here’s a few ideas you’ll get to explore if you read Grammar For a Full Life.

  • On knowing when and how to criticize: “Nobody should be cut off from the inner well of confidence required to get on in this world.” Use modeling. Use scaffolding. Yield the red-pen lightly.
  • Socrates dictum: “If a person knew what was right to do, they would be doing it”.
  • The semicolon reads “which is to say”.
  • “admit it to the waiting room of future possibilities” (I just like the wording here)
  • “civic minimalists” (another great phrase)
  • “good thought often depends on more than intelligence: It depends on how long thinkers can endure not yet having reached a satisfactory endpoint to their inquiry.” (so true)

Reads: The Slight Edge (Jeff Olson)

Note: I drafted this post on 9/1/2020 and finalized today.

Jeff Olson’s The Slight Edge

Overview

One Sentence Summary: If you do easy things frequently they add up over time.

Scope of book: Generally narrow. Touches on some related topics but typically for just a few pages and not enough to really get anyone to make change or an understanding in those areas.

Audience /Recommended For: Beginners.

Delivery Method: 30% knowledge 60% inspiration and testimonials. 10% anecdotes.

Mentality: Firmly in the industrial-era mentality of self development. People like Napoleon Hill or Jim Rohn are mentioned every few pages.

Experience: Experienced Coach

Writing Style: Rah Rah and Coachy. Way more customer testimonials than I thought was needed.

Writing Competency: He’s a good writer. Message is honed and polished.

Padding: Second half is 50% not rehash.

Upselling: No upselling.

Biggest Con: Keeps telling you how great the book is. Off the chart with the number of testimonials in this book. Fortunately they are conveniently placed in callouts that you can ignore.

Anecdotes: More than I needed and longer than I needed in many cases.

Organization of material: OK

Promises: Definitely promises you a lot, especially with the testimonials.

What I Got Out Of The Slight Edge

Note: this is not intended to be an accurate representation of what the book is about. These are just things I learned, reminders I appreciated and other odds and ends.

Favorite Quotes

“What’s the formula for success? Double your rate of failure” – Thomas Watson

“Successful people do SIMPLE things that are EASY to do.”

“Do the thing and you will have the power.”

For me, these are reminders that I don’t need to do “a book a day” or “an hour at the gym each day”. I can do far less, an amount that is still enjoyable and sustainable, and it will ADD UP.

“Easy to do is also easy NOT to do.”

This quote shows the value of incremental progress not from the perspective of potential gain but from the angle of potential loss. When I feel like “oh I’ll postpone it” that should be a flag to consider if it’s one of the easy things I should be doing because those easy things add up. This might be the most important thing I got from the book. Easy to do a little bit of exercise is also easy to not do that little bit of exercise. The problem is that it adds up and compounding works both ways. Small easy things add up to great mountains or terrible pits depending on which small things you choose.

“Easy things compound exponentially over time.”

This quote is kind of rehash of the main point, but repetition helps it sink in.

“If you want things to compound you have to do something. For example, read 10 pages a day.“

The 10 pages a day thing was something my friend Fred told me about a couple years ago. It really changed the way I approached reading. If Olson was the reason I heard about this from Fred, that was worth the price of the book right there. 10 pages a day – easy!  Oh, and btw that works out to about 300 pages a month (2 books?), which is over 20 books a year. What!

“There is no silver bullet.“

I can’t be reminded of this enough.

7 Principles of The Slight Edge

Olson expouses:

  1. Show up.
  2. Be consistent about it.
  3. Have a good attitude.
  4. Have faith and a burning desire.
  5. Accept that you are in it for the long haul.
  6. Be willing to pay the price.
  7. Have integrity.

Seems all common sense. Yes. Because it is. But I enjoyed seeing the list and reflecting on how much of them I am applying to my current goals. 

Olson says that in practice, “The Edge” follows this path:

  1. Momentum
  2. Completion
  3. Habit
  4. Reflection
  5. Celebration

These received just a cursory examination from Olson, so don’t expect to learn how to DO these things. But if you are wondering what the Slight Edge means in practice, these are indicators if you are doing simple things easy.

Final Words

Worth the price for the few good ideas and reminders I got. 

Apparently earlier editions lack the onslaught of customer testimonials slathered throughout my version so maybe get an older copy.

Dreaded Tasks Are Often Short

Like many people, I have a running to-do list with many “not urgent” items.  Things like “replace wiper blades on car”, “organize the mess in the pantry” or “Email ABC customer to see how things are going”. 

Due to their non-urgentness, these things often get left to the “not doing today” section day after day.

After a few days or weeks, I start dreading even seeing them on the list. There’s some weird resistance to doing them. They feel hard, arduous, draining, awful.

Ugh! Do them some other day!

But every once in a while (which is not often enough), I review those types of items and I ask myself:

How long would it actually take to do this?

And many times, when forced to thing about the *duration* of the work instead of the work itself, my perspective changes dramatically.

I can literally email that customer in less than 30 seconds:

“Hi Gil, I want to make sure you are satisfied with the product. How are things going with it?” 

Done.

How long would it take me to organize my tiny pantry? 10 minutes?

Done. Two minutes.

How long would it take me to take the new wiper blades that have sitting on the floor for over a month, walk out to the car, take the old blades off and put these on?  15 minutes?

Not all the “non urgent” tasks will be quick to do. But in my experience there’s always far more tasks that can be done in under a minute than I imagined. 

Why Didn’t I Do Them Sooner?

I’m sure there’s a variety of factors, but I know for sure that one of them is that my brain conflates the strength of my feeling of dread for the task with the actual strength needed to perform the task.

Imagine that the brain has many gauges that range from “easy” to “DAMN. That’s a LOT”. There’s a gauge for emotions, a gauge for physical actions, a gauge for mental processing, a gauge for measuring the things in our world, a gauge for measuring how long things will take, etc.

The thing I’ve experienced is that once the brain registers “DAMN. That’s a LOT” on ANY of the gauges, it loses track of what is was measuring and assigns that value to everything in some vague underlying feeling of anxiety.

Examples: There’s A LOT riding on this email to my customer. There’s a LOT of recyclables that keep falling out of the pantry.

Brain concludes: It’s going to take A LOT of time to do it.

But you’re asking about temperature and reading the pressure. You’re looking at the wrong gauge.

If you can be mindful and ask the question: “OK. How long will this actually take?” Then you can often snap out of the automaticity of “A LOT” and look at the specific gauge you are concerned with.

What’s great about this is that there’s something incredibly motivating about knowing that a long-dreaded task can be permanently vanquished in under a minute (or a few minutes). Once you see that, you want to do it right there, before you even evaluate the other “non urgent” tasks. 

Another thing I do when those tasks start collecting on the bottom of my to-do list: I figure out how much time each will take, then I put all the ones that are “under 10 minutes” in a single block of time.  Then I have the most productive and rewarding hour in months. And it feels like I have superpowers when I’m done.

Even Time-Intensive Dreaded Tasks Benefit From This

Even if you look at the dreaded task and estimate the work involved is many hours, this exercise in being mindful of what gauge you are looking at is helpful because you have to think through the whole task if you are going to come up with a decent estimate.

Often, since you haven’t fully faced the task and looked at the gauge, the dread comes from not being able to see any path forward. It’s vague, cloudy, or (feels) downright impossible because you haven’t thought of a single way it might be possible.

The only way to get a good estimate of time it will take to do the task is to spend some time thinking about the task. And once you do that, you’ll have at least one possible path to completion you’ll almost certainly feel more confident about the dreaded task.

How I Review Strategies

Note: this was drafte on 3/1/2021 and finalized today.

I think it’s common for people fail to make new habits and/or meet goals because they set up rules and strategies at the beginning of a project but then don’t go back to review and update those rules and strategies frequently enough.

Here’s some things I used to ask myself. They weren’t the right questions to be asking. Over the years I’ve found some better ones. Let me share them with you.

Don’t ask: “Do I really want to do this?”

On the surface, this seems like a great question to check in with your heart. However the wording is problematic.

First of all, it’s a yes or no question. Obviously at some point this endeavor was important to you for some reason and it deserves better examination that thumbs up / thumbs down.

The wording is also problematic because it’s not clear what “this” is in “Do I really want to do this?” Are you referring to accomplishing the goal? Or are you referring to the task at hand that will get you to the goal? It’s easy to take a negative feeling you have for the task at hand and project it onto your original goal. Do you want to run a marathon? Yes. Do you want to get up at 4am to train? No. Which question are you asking at 3:30am when you ask “Do I really want to do this?”

Rubber-stamping your exit from your goal pursuit is very easy when you ask this question that seems specific but is actually pretty vague.

Don’t ask: “Is this strategy a good one?”

Asking “Is this strategy a good one?” has similar issues as the first question.

Obviously it’s another yes/no question that invites a quick answer and minimizes the reflection needed.

Yes/No questions also invite you to project your feeling in that moment into the answer. (Many good salespeople have capitalized on this to their advantage by getting the prospect to feel good before closing the deal).

When you ask “Is this strategy a good one?” another thing happens: “shiny new things” start appearing on the horizon. You can see the tough parts of the road with the strategy you are familiar with but those shiny new and unexamined strategies always seem easier and better because we want them to be and we hope they will be and we don’t like feeling where we are right now.

So we throw out the training plan and get another, try to start a different routine, mix it up. Until that new strategy’s challenges are revealed and it is no longer passes the “Is this strategy a good one?” test.

Then the next shiny thing on the horizon is spotted. All of the switching comes at a cost and we never really know if one is better or worse than the last because we haven’t been asking the right questions.

Asking this question puts the focus on whether or not you like the strategy itself (not if it’s working), what you feel about the strategy in the moment (not about how you feel about it is helping you get to your goal).

So what DO you ask?

Here we want to combine the two questions and make sure we are clear on what the questions are asking.

Additionally I think it is important to jump up 20,000 feet and review the mission. What’s really driving you? What is the purpose? It all starts with mission (that is for another post, but I’ll assume you have some idea of what I mean here).

I propose:

  1. What is my mission?
  2. How well does this goal that I am pursuing align with my mission?
  3. How well does this strategy help me accomplish the goal?

These might not be the perfect questions, but they are more exact and invite a better more nuanced analysis of your actions.

The previous two questions give you room and set you up for a comparison between your current feelings and your current strategy. But these questions I’ve outlined here force you to focus on comparisons that are more fact-based and help shift you from the right brain to the left brain: goal and mission, and strategy goal. (The first question might be one for the right brain, but that’s another post).

The Museum of Everyone Has To Hold The Art Because We Have No Place To Put It

Note: This post is part of my “Museums Project“, a collection of 200+ high-concept ideas for museums.

When you arrive at the museum, your strength and height are assessed. Then you are given a valuable work of art to hold as you wander the museum.

Do you want to see other art?

Well, you’ll have to find a stranger holding some other art.

Here, there is no art displayed in the formally. All the art is carried by other patrons.

Even with the “how much can you carry” question addressed, I see that we might have another challenge to solve: Some groups will form around certain people – not because of the art but because those people are more attractive. Attractive people might distract from the art. So people might have to wear a mask or costume. Or at least the attractive people will have to. Or maybe we ask everyone to wear a costume. No one likes getting their feelings hurt at the museum.

Maybe they can’t even talk. Or maybe the point is to talk to other people and so no mask.

Maybe the artists are there to keep an eye on you so you don’t mess up their stuff.

Maybe you don’t know who the artist is, they just look like anyone else.

For those that don’t like holding art in a museum, maybe there are two options, Number One: hold this art; and Number Two: Look at people holding that art.

Maybe the art is arranged by a curator at certain times. Maybe all the art needs signed by the guests, because at this point they are part of the art. Maybe they should sign the museum instead.

Maybe this is a good idea for a silent auction. The person holding the art has to try to get bids, and it is a contest between art holders to see who gets the highest bids.

Or… maybe it’s just a museum where people walk around with art.

Maybe the art is all small art. And it is covered up or in a box. So people come up to you and ask to see the art, and you open the box and show it to them. Then you hide it again and wait for the next person.

But how does the museum maintain that they have “no place to put it”? Clearly a museum making such a claim would not be so daft as to present itself with blank walls, easily discernable by patrons as perfectly good places to put art that was puported to have no location to be put.

Perhaps the walls are covered in something ridiculous that is clearly less-deserving. Or perhaps this museum is out in a field where there really isn’t any place to put it. I like that idea. It might also double as commentary about the lack of cultural infrastructure.

I have made the assumption that most of the art is light, most of the patrons are strong, or that there is a mix of both and that the art and patron are matched up with these qualities in mind. There might need to be wagons, dollys, or other means of moving the art around should we have more heavy art or more wimpy patrons than expected.