How to cover up your fatal flaw

When did it become acceptable to embrace the characteristics that others have identified as detrimental to our mutual professional success? 

I suspect many of the people who trot out their fatal flaws are attempting to create a defense shield to protect themselves from further criticism:

"You will not speak of my fatal flaws because I have mentioned them first and am therefore immune to your potential condemnation."

It’s a classic offense-as-defense strategy.  That approach may work for a while but eventually it prompts some pointed questions: 

"If you know you talk too much, why do you continue to take up all the air time?"

"If you know you are considered dismissive, why do you believe it is in your best interest to denounce the perspectives of anyone who thinks differently than you do?"

"If you know you overpromise and underdeliver, what makes you think people will continue to take you seriously?"

"Why do you assume steamrolling over others is a sustainable strategy?"

It is good to be self-aware. But demonstrating self-awareness, while at the same time showing a lack of discipline to fix issues of concern, is worse than being clueless about our shortcomings. When people close to us offer consistent and considerable feedback about a behavior that is not serving us well, we need to listen up.  Dismissing feedback that does not comport with the way we see ourselves is understandable, but it is not strategic.

The most effective people I know sometimes whimper for a bit after receiving constructive criticism, but they quickly put a plan in place to modify the annoying or offending behaviors. By doing so, they demonstrate respect and appreciation for those brave enough to share difficult truths that are offered with the very best intentions. We need our colleagues to help us be better, but they can’t help if we’re not listening. 

Allison Vaillancourt writing in the Chronicle of Higher Ed   

Child rearing is an art

Child rearing is an art, and what makes art art is that it is doing several things at once. The trick is accepting limits while insisting on standards. Character may not be malleable, but behavior is. The same parents can raise a dreamy, reflective girl and a driven, competitive one—the job is not to nurse her nature but to help elicit the essential opposite: to help the dreamy one to be a little more driven, the competitive one to be a little more reflective.

Adam Gopnik writing in The New Yorker

In giving advice, seek to help, not please your friend. -Solon

life beyond the screen

Kevin Kelly writes, “Even the tiniest disposable item with a bar code shares a thin sliver of our collective mind.” Sharing in the increasing webness of things surrounding us is essential part of functioning in our digital society. If you have hung out on the cusp of technological adoption, waiting for the latest and most advanced devices to drop, you know how technology can monopolize our time and question any non-technological solution as inferior or important. The Internet is our exotic travel destination, a portal to bossy technologies.

Here’s the choice you have: You can grab the bullhorn of digital culture and plug into the belly of the machine or we can keep the cornucopia of technology at arm’s length to more easily remember who we are apart from it.

Somewhere there’s a balance between chasing the latest fad (simply because it is new) and becoming irrelevant to the conversation (because we choose to ignore transitions, remaining in our comfort zone). These extremes are the simplistic ditches we can fall into, when we would rather not have to regularly think hard and deal with uncertainty…and they will remain the temptations of anyone involved in the process of journalism.

As you decide where to place yourself in the technological embrace, remember there’s life beyond the screen.

Stephen Goforth

the glowing screen

When we grab a glowing screen first thing in the morning what are we trusting for nourishment? What are we imprinting on our day? 

When your appliances work as police informants

Suppose police suspect a man of organizing a political protest that turned violent, muses the ACLU’s Nathan Wessler, who argued the Carpenter case (on digital privacy) for the ACLU before the Supreme Court. The suspect’s smart meter and thermostat confirm that a handful of people showed up at his home and stayed there the two nights before the demonstration; the suspect’s smart refrigerator ordered a bunch of soda and snack food on those days, which was all consumed; after someone asked Alexa to play some music in his living room, a voice in the background said, “Tomorrow, we’re going to really show them”; and that night, the suspect’s smart mattress recorded him sleeping fitfully and his heart beating faster than normal. The police arrest the man on conspiracy and other charges. He eventually proves he’s innocent – some old friends visited from out of town, and planned a day of sightseeing—but not before a legal nightmare turns his life upside down.

 "There’s not a person among us who doesn’t have private aspects of their life that could create difficulty for them if they were exposed,” Wessler says. “And misinterpreted.”

David Henry writing in 1843

do well with what you have

The trouble is, you think you have time. -Jack Kornfield

Listen to the Young

Listen hardest to people younger than you. They are ignorant and generally have lowly jobs, but their fragments of knowledge will be more cutting-edge than yours. -Simon Kuper

Where to Begin

Begin with the end in mind. -Stephen R. Covey

forget yourself

Get lost in a book. Watch a sunset. Do things that make you forget yourself.

Winging It

There are no grown-ups. We suspect this when we are younger, but can confirm it only once we are the ones writing books and attending parent-teacher conferences. Everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.

Pamela Druckerman writing in the New York Times

unsolicited advice

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.  Mary Schmich

a Life Tip for Graduates

Because I graduated in Britain, I missed out on the traditional American commencement ceremony at which a middle-aged bore intones, “You can be whatever you want to be.” Obviously, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The trick is to work out what you should be. -Simon Kuper

religious morality

There is always a danger of thinking religious morality is the same as cultural norms. (unknown)

stubbing your toe

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.  Charles F. Kettering

Saying No

How do you personally determine when it’s right to say ‘no’ to an ask or opportunity?

I ask myself three questions:     

Is this in line with my values?    

Will it add significant value to my life? (Skills, increase my network, etc.)    

What will I be sacrificing to take on this opportunity?

Claire Wasserman, Founder of Ladies Get Paid in GirlsNightinClub

the highest mountain

You walk over the highest mountain one step at a time.

Learning from Envy

Aristotle described envy not as benign desire for what someone else possesses but “as the pain caused by the good fortune of others.” Not surprisingly these pangs often give way to a feeling of malice. Witness the fact that throughout history and across cultures, anyone who enjoyed a piece of good fortune feared and set up defenses against the “evil eye.” Of course, there is not much talk today about the evil eye, at least not in the West, but it surely isn’t because we are less prone to envy than our ancestors.

One of the reasons envy does not take a holiday is that we never give a rest to the impulse to compare ourselves to one another. I have had students respond with glee to being admitted to a graduate program and then a few days later coyly ask: “Hey, Doc. How many applicants do you think were rejected?” — as in, the more rejected the merrier I can allow myself to be.

Social media has generated new vistas for this compulsion to compare and lord it over others.

“Envy is secret admiration,” Kierkegaard said. As such, if we are honest with ourselves, envy can help us identify our vision of excellence and where need be, perhaps reshape it.

Gordon Marino writing in The New York Times

You never know

You never know when you're making a memory.

pack your bag

I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones. -Leslie Jamison