Mark Freedman’s Blog

Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

The most important question is always why. Why do you think that is?

Picture a familiar scenario. Your young child asks one day…

"Why did you marry Mommy?"

"Because we love each other."

"But, why?"

"Because we grew to care for each other."

"Why?"

"We were attracted to each other…"

"Why?"

"…so we started to spend time together."

"But why not somebody else?"

"Because we felt that we were meant for each other."

"Why did you think that?"

"Because."

"Why?"

It may be annoying, but isn’t that how we always learned as kids? Sure, as kids we knew quickly that it bugged adults, but we kept asking for two reasons. 1) It got a rise out of grownups, and 2) we really did learn a lot by asking.

When Did Why Become Taboo?

Why did we stop? Did we start to feel uncomfortable asking the why question? Maybe we felt as though it intruded on the askee. As we matured, did we start to feel it was rude?

In this information age, we are constantly bombarded with more information in a week than our ancestors in their entire lives. We’re drowning in facts and figures, and overwhelmed with the available knowledge. But at the same time, it takes us too long to find the answers we’re looking for. Why is that? Are we not asking the right questions, or are we avoiding the why questions?

Sometimes we’re afraid to answer the why questions, because it may expose our lack of understanding. Once you can ask why , you’re on the path to learning.

"Why would I use a GridView instead of a Repeater?"

Doesn’t it feel safer to just lookup details about the GridView control and the Repeater control and just compare them ourselves? Don’t want to seem stupid for asking why we’d use one over the other, right?

Too Many What Questions

Too many books and tutorials start out with the "do this, then do that" without explaining why. "Why did you take this approach?"

The question that triggers the most thinking is the why question. Whys will make you wiser.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

If someone fails at something, they ask themselves all kinds of questions. "What did I do? How do I make this different next time?" But the question they’ll get the most out of is, "Why did I choose to do it that way? Why should I do it differently next time?" By asking the why , you learn a lot about the motivating factors that led towards the path of failure to begin with, so you can avoid that same path next time. Maybe your motivations were wrong. Maybe your decisions were based on faulty or incomplete information. Asking what will only lead to identifying what you did wrong. But without understanding the "why", there is no basis for change. You can easily repeat the same mistakes.

If you’re teaching someone, ask yourself why you’re teaching that way. By questioning yourself, you may discover a better way to explain things.

Arrogance — What Without Why

Just stating what to do can come off as arrogant. It’s like your parents telling you when you were younger, "do it because I said so" — like that actually motivated you to do it. It actually motivated you to do the opposite, just to discover the why , yourself. Why do they want you to do it, and what would happen if you didn’t? Why helps you fill in gaps of knowledge.

If you want someone to do something, explaining the why allows them to feel more apt to do it. In the worst case, at least maybe they could suggest a better option if they at least they know your motivation.

The Power of Why

Why is an extremely powerful question with potentially powerful answers. It teaches us to question everything. We live in a society where we take almost everything for granted. That’s because most people are afraid of asking why . The answers may challenge the way we’ve always approached things our whole lives. But at the same time, it opens up a whole new set of opportunities.

Why is the key to self-discovery. It helps you understand yourself better. At the same time, it’s the scariest question you could ask of yourself. It forces you to look into the mirror.

All questions are powerful, but if you start with why, the what, how, and when just fills in the blanks to resolve the why .

The Problems with Most Tests

This is also why multiple choice tests are a very poor learning tool. It tests memorization. They ask the what, not the why. Essay questions are the why questions. It forces us to think. It forces us to analyze, which leads to true learning. Unfortunately, the system encourages the simple (for teachers) multiple choice tests.

Curiosity

Why do you think the Imponderables series of books are so popular? Because most of the questions start out with why . Why is the most interesting question. Their answers satisfy our curiosity. Be aware that some what questions are just why questions in disguise, so don’t take it literally when I say that why questions are the most important. Related why disguises are "What is the reason for that? What is the meaning of that? How can you do that?" (all of them really mean, "Why did you do that?" ), etc.

When someone is reporting bad news, isn’t the first question that comes to mind the why question? "Why would somebody commit that crime? Why was that person in that neighborhood so late?" Why do they want to start a war?" One of the first things investigators look for is the motive for a crime. While the CSIs look for the what to help prove a crime was committed and by whom, when deciding guilt or the level of punishment, it all comes down to the why. He can be guilty if we could find a motivation he may have had. Once we have a motivation, we can tie him to the crime.

Why Forces You to Think

Why questions should make you pause to consider your answer, and not just shoot from the hip. "Why did that person cut me off?" should cause you to consider that maybe she just got an emergency phone call, or she’s rushing to the hospital, or she’s late for work, instead of just saying, "she’s a jerk." If nothing else, it could allow you to calm down and consider why someone did something rather than what they just did to you.

Why is the most fascinating question. Don’t fear it. It’s a powerful tool. Wield it.

I find it fascinating, and at the same time a bit uncomfortable that we are never exactly who we think we are. Our personas shift slightly depending upon who we’re interfacing with at the time.

Our core personalities remain, but different sides of ourselves come out when interacting with different people in our lives. There’s usually a "common" us that comes across when meeting someone for the first time, at least in the first few minutes. But it shifts rather quickly into an actual persona that we can’t help but filter through in our dealings with this person forever more.

With some people, I automatically shift into a more leadership, mentoring persona, while with others it’s more subservient, and with others it’s more domineering. Still, with others, it’s more chummy. But the most fascinating part is how quickly it settles into a permanent role, and it often doesn’t seem to make any logical sense based upon hierarchical position, status, or role.

Is it chemical? Is it aural? Is it based on something locked inside us from early childhood experiences? It’s probably a combination of all of these. I guess this is why we decide early on if we like someone or not, and why a personality conflict seems to exist before opportunity for one even presents itself.

As I became more aware of this phenomenon, I tried experimenting by pretending that I’m dealing with someone else. But I believe for most of us, this is simply not possible. It feels forced and unnatural, and we quickly revert back to our roles in the relationship.

I’ve also tried this experiment at meetings, thinking it may be more difficult because of the variety of personalities in the same place, but the personas seep through depending upon who’s getting my focus at the time. I think a lot of this awareness is inward, and not as obvious to the people around us. But you start to pick up similar behavior with people you are very close to.

I can see it in my wife’s relationships, but outward observation is not as distinctive as inward — I can sense a few minor persona differences in her relationships, but I’m sure there’s a lot more color in her awareness than I could experience. At the same time, I’m sure she sees me only slightly different in my interactions, but inwardly I feel my personas more distinctly.

So who is the real me? The real you? Is it the sum total of all our interactions with others? Or is it our inner voice? Is this a good thing? I believe it’s just different sides of our true selves, and what makes us such a complicated species.

When I drive to and from work, I listen to podcasts. It makes the trip go faster, and allows me to focus on something other than the traffic. It also takes my mind off the day’s events if it was a rather difficult one.

Quiet Time

But sometimes I need to shut everything off and have quiet time to really think. Listening to podcasts and the radio gets in the way. It can cause you to avoid seriously thinking about life and what you should be doing, which is something that can be uncomfortable to think about. That’s because this usually involves having difficult thoughts you have to face, and even terrifying decisions you have to make. But sometimes you’ve got to just sit in your car, and think clearly about these things without any distractions.

Life Defining Decisions

I was recently in this situation. My boss had set up a meeting for the next day to discuss my future goals at our company. I wasn’t totally clear in my head about my plans. Or was it that I was unclear about what I wanted to tell him? I wanted to say that I’d like to stay in the technology field, but I needed to work on something that would make a real difference in the world. There’s an idea that I’ve been working on for several years with a couple of other people. We’ve put together many revisions of a business plan, have a working prototype, and feel that if we can get this product out there, it could improve the productivity of millions of people. It’s software I’d love to use myself.

Eventually, a lot of us find ourselves in interesting but ultimately unfulfilling jobs. Some of us get to the point where we want to spend our time and energy towards making our own dream a reality, instead of supporting someone else’s dream.

It was during one of these deep thought sessions when I decided to tell my boss my true goals. I work for a startup (well, I’m not sure you could call us that anymore, but I’m one of the very early employees), and ownership is entrepreneurial. They know what I’m capable of, and I know the owners pretty well. I’d heard that they’ve helped other like-minded employees before, so I was willing to open up. It’s rather liberating to no longer keep this bottled up.

Literally Listening to Yourself

Even after turning off the podcasts, it’s easy to get distracted with bottled up thoughts bouncing around in your head. So one thing I’ve started to do is record my thoughts. This prevents them from slipping through the cracks, making it all too easy not to take action on a lot of this stuff. I’ve found that recording is great. I can review later, analyze better, and think more clearly. I often feel embarrassed talking out loud — even to myself. This is one of the reasons I want to try Toastmasters. Not only to get more comfortable speaking in public, but to feel more comfortable speaking to myself.

Since I began this habit, almost all of my blogging entries have originated from this self-dictation. I find myself debating a topic (with myself) for an hour, and later on I transpose it all to a draft entry. Over the next several days (or weeks, when I have a lot of recordings), I refine it, and eventually post it.

I highly recommend talking to yourself in this way. You’ll learn a lot about yourself just by listening to your thoughts through your own ears. You may not always like what you hear, but you will become more comfortable doing it. And it may lead to some life defining decisions.

The next step… video?

I’ve been sick on and off for the past few weeks. It reached a pinnacle last week when I inevitably came down with the flu. I hadn’t been this sick in a few years, and like many of us who’s experienced this, not being able to do anything towards my goals was driving me absolutely insane.

Ok, so I thought I’d take advantage of this externally (perhaps, self-) imposed restriction to slow myself down, get the rest I’ve been lacking, and help myself re-focus (a common theme). But just trying to take naps had been next to impossible. Even through my dehydration-causing semi-delirium, my mind had never raced so much with all the things I wanted to be doing, needed to be doing, wished I was doing. Maybe it’s time to learn some meditation techniques?

I consider myself an underachieving overachiever. I think in the past couple of decades there has been an explosion of people like me (sounds messy), who not only began to understand their potential for the first time, but also became aware of the opportunities never before available to the human race for actualizing this potential. This has created a culture obsessed with achievement. But it has also created a lot more disillusionment, not only with society, but with ourselves.

We’re wondering why we haven’t achieved everything we expect ourselves to achieve. Why does one person do one thing to change the world in obvious ways, while the next, just as capable person, can barely change the department he works in?

And we have so many potentially life-changing projects going on at the same time. We want to do everything before we’re gone. In this world, we’re more aware than any previous generation of how relatively short our time is in this life, and we’re always in a rush to make things happen.

We don’t even give ourselves time to get sick, or recover when we do.

We read self-help books, blogs, go to seminars, listen to tapes, and even practice all the best practices, and still it feels like it’s all a race.

And it is. You know why? Because we’re racing against ourselves. We have so many things we’re trying to achieve at the same time that we give everything, and I mean EVERYTHING the short end of the stick. Nothing gets our complete attention. Because we’re afraid.

We’re afraid of choosing the wrong thing to focus on. We’re afraid of taking the wrong turn. We’re afraid that several years down the line we’ll look back and realize that we chose the wrong things to focus on, and we’re now just that many years closer to the end. We’ll look at the other paths with regret, and we’ll notice who succeeded down those paths. So now we try to cover all our bases, and head down five paths at once, trying to grab our piece of each, hoping we’ll make our mark in at least one or two before it’s too late.

Sound familiar?

But all of those are half-hearted efforts. And none will truly succeed. If we put 20% of our efforts into 5 different paths, we’ll make maybe 15% of our goal in each of those paths at best. But if we put 80% of our efforts into 1 path, and split the other 20% into another 1 or 2 paths, our success rates would go way up, and when we notice we took a wrong turn (after bypassing the Dip), we can then refocus the 80% on one of the other paths.

I don’t have many answers yet. Like so many others, I’m still struggling with this, so I’m just thinking out loud here.

To kick off 2008, this post will be personal. Sort of a “get my bearings” post to start off on the right foot. You may want to skip reading this if you have something better to do, but it may spark some ideas for yourself.

This post was long delayed. It’s been my longest writing dry spell in months, mainly due to some rough times in my life right now (more on this later). In addition, as in 2007, it’s taken me about three weeks to figure out my focus for the coming year. I really kicked off 2007 on January 20th, when I started my diet. It was a year of extremes for me, and one I’d never want to experience again. There were some very positive achievements, but some seriously depressing and frustrating times. But I’ll focus on the positive here to kick off the new year.

1. 2007 was the year I finally lost the weight I’ve wanted to lose for about 25 years. I reached that point of “I had it.” That point where you just can’t take it anymore. And I lost around 70 pounds. I still want to lose another 10 or so, but as long as I stay around where I am, I’m happy. I haven’t been in this good shape since, well, ever. This is the first time I can remember feeling slim. My previous slim days was another life ago, and I never knew fat then, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to. This was a great year as far as this is concerned, and it wasn’t really painful at all. Wish I did it years ago, but at least I DID IT!
2. 2007 was the year I finally helped kick off a user group. I’ve wanted to do this for several years, and by pushing for it and making my intentions known, I got myself into a situation to make it happen. I initially tried to do this on my own, but realized it was impossible. Thanks to Leo Junquera and Louis Edouard, this is now real. Louis ran the prior version of the .NET user group ON HIS OWN, which amazes me. And without his role at UConn, none of this would have happened. And Leo has an amazing ability to find unbelievable speakers, and has great ideas for making this so much more. And not only did we start one user group, but actually two user groups AND the next great thing that happened…
3. 2007 was the year I helped run a very successful code camp. This came together so fast, that it took some time afterwards for it to hit me. It’s given me a lot of confidence to organize this type of event in the future. I also discovered through this experience that I’m a much more capable manager than I previously thought. I sort of grabbed that role, but I’m sure my co-chairs, Leo and Louis would do just as well managing future events. This whole experience has gotten the wheels turning in my mind for so much more!
4. 2007 was the year I really started writing. But it’s still so much less than I want to write. I’m still trying to find my voice on the page and just be myself. I tend to hold back a bit, and I feel some of my writing is still a bit stilted, but I’m learning to relax. I’m starting to feel a little less self-conscious about it (and, ouch, my parents are reading ). I have so, so, so much to say, but I need to stay focused.

In 2008:

I want to write a lot more. I want to get much more involved in other conversations on other blogs and such. I feel I have a lot to contribute, but I have to prove it, mainly to myself. I need to learn to be myself in my writing. I claim I’m opinionated, but I sometimes hold back on that. I need to concentrate on a few main topics to keep this blog focused. I’ve been reading a LOT about blogging, and I’m taking many of the ideas I’ve read about to heart. Like Bob Walsh suggests in his book Clear Blogging, I’m going to try to focus on what I’m most passionate about. There are several such topics, some of which are unrelated. Some people recommend having separate blogs to keep the audience (hah!) interested and coming back for more. But since this blog is named after myself (uh, no ego involved there, no sir ), I think it’s more fitting to be true to that. So I’ll follow another implied suggestion of Bob’s, which is to dedicate a topic or sub-topic to each day of the week. If people are only interested in one or two topics, they can choose to only visit on those days. Or if they subscribe to my feed, they can ignore the articles from some days, knowing that I’ll be writing on interesting (to them) topics the other days.

As of now, here are the topics I care most about, and will be dedicating to different days of the week (haven’t assigned which, yet):

• Productivity (mainly through technology)
• Micro-ISV (I’m working on starting one, so I’ll walk through that experience)
• Training and Education (I’m also looking to start a training company or wing of the Micro-ISV venture)
• Leadership (my roles have been leadership roles for the past 20 years or so, and I have a lot to say here)
• Music (this is a major passion of mine, but a bit off-topic from the above items, so this may be a weekend topic)

Also in 2008:

I want to get the new Micro-ISV off the ground. My team and I have been working on this in fits and starts for several years, but it’s finally close to reality, and now my current employer is aware of my dreams for this. Being entrepreneurial themselves, the founders may be willing to help. I understand that they’ve helped other employees. Unfortunately, my business partner for almost 20 years (in my previous consulting company, and one of the partners of this new venture) is in very critical condition after a bad car wreck in December. As of this writing, he’s been in a coma for a month, and we have no idea what’s going to happen. But this has lit a fire under all of us to get this going, and secure the funding we need.

I really can’t plan much more beyond the above two major goals, on top of continuing my work for the technical community with the user groups.

One more thing. I’ll often have other random thoughts that I’d rather not post full articles about. So I’ll post them as little notes at the end of my normal posts, clearly delineated so you could ignore if you’d like. Sort of like a personal Twitter. Here comes one now…

Random Thought:
Angels and Airwaves’ new album, I-Empire, is currently my favorite album of all-time, bypassing U2’s The Joshua Tree. I may change my mind next year, but it took 20 years to knock a U2 album out of first place for me. I never get sick of it, and I can listen 100 times a day. Amazing stuff. It’s magical.