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Reasons
In light of the recent cheating scandal news and the dead (for now) Tennessee welfare bill, I feel it is my duty to remind you all that everyone, absolutely everyone, has a reason to do whatever it is they do. Teachers and staff in Atlanta (and possibly D.C.) did what they did for certain reasons. They may not necessarily be good reasons, but nonetheless they are there. It could have been for funding, which while being a morally good reason to act a certain way does not exactly excuse their actions. Remember that it was also the reasoning of someone higher up that led to them being told that they had to reach certain standards or be penalized. It is not exactly a bad thing to ask teachers to do better at their job, though it might be considered a problem if they are already at the peak of their abilities based on the level of work able to be done by their students.
And what about the students, exactly? Each student has a reason for how they act in and out of school. They might not even be aware of some of them. A student that has been unfairly (read: barely passing, if at all) dumped into harder and harder classes, it makes their actions somewhat more understandable than those of the kid with the potential for perfect grades but without the desire (someone like me, for instance). Then again, you look at that kid – the apparently smart one – and see that it could be ADHD or maybe it’s simply boredom with being tasked to complete things he has, at least in his mind, done over and over and over already.
Is that a good reason to skip out on work? Boredom? No, not especially. Teachers and parents alike need to be able to work with the students to show them that there are always good reasons to do schoolwork, good reasons to not cheat, and good reasons to keep their grades high and their sights set on the big picture. None of those involved, be it the teacher, a student, or that student’s parent(s), may be able to tell exactly what that big picture is, but it is always there. It might be following in a relative’s career footsteps, or going to a certain (or any) university. Each of those outcomes relies on certain things being completed and simply ignoring those things for nothing is, well, not a good reason at all.
Yes. Okay. Everyone has reasons. Remember, though, that they are almost always good reasons to them in some way or another. They might not be good for the world at large, which is a shame, because that is what people’s reasoning should really be based on, not greed or self-preservation. If you find it hard to have a reason for doing good in the world and “the good of the world” isn’t good enough, then I doubt I’m going to be able to help you any further.
I have my reasons.
Class dismissed.
Tennessee Welfare Bill Dropped Due To Not Thinking (Seriously)
As has been reported, Stacey Campfield (R) out of Tennessee dropped his bill that would tie welfare compensation for families to the academic progress of their children. Citing that a main piece of the bill would require parents to attend two parent-teacher conferences in order to save their child from failing. Now, the article I linked to points out the trouble some parents would have in possibly getting the time off from their jobs to actually go to these meetings, and it also points out (in a quote from Campfield) that the senator was apparently not thinking clearly when he decided to create the bill.
Campfield says he withdrew his bill because he didn’t have a full understanding of how the law would affect groups.
You know what you should never do as a lawmaker? Not understand the consequences of your actions. Granted, there could always be unexpected outcomes to any situation, but when you are trying to take something away from someone, especially any kind of benefits (and this applies to any level of income or social status), people are going to be ticked off and will do whatever it takes to poke holes in whatever it is you are trying to accomplish. Oddly enough, this child was home-schooled, and thus outside of the rule’s jurisdiction (though I am not sure what her families welfare status is, if anything). The senator even had a little more to say, and right to the girl’s face:
“I love it when people use children as props.”
I hate to break it you, sir, but your bill was basically using school children as a prop against the ‘burden’ of welfare. You were putting consequences on their shoulders, regardless of your ‘two meetings’ requirement. A student that never needs those meetings is meeting your guidelines and thus the parents do not have to find the time to attend them in the first place. I want children to do better in school, too, but not with these kinds of consequences.
Which brings me to one other issue I have with this whole thing. Your bill would make it so that a child would not fail a class (or grade, whatever) if a child’s parents attended two conferences. This is a patently bad idea. If a child needs to fail, then they need to fail. I know that it can be hard on a child (and their parents) to go through something like being held back or seeing that big, fat “F” emblazoned on a report card for all eternity, but giving the child an easy out by way of their parents simply means that even though the children are not meeting the real requirements of the grade they are getting a pass because of a few sit-down talks that do not even necessarily involve them and their ability to learn. Letting children move on to the next grade when they haven’t shown proper skill is way worse for them than taking away any kind of benefits, save the possibility of homelessness or starvation. You can not expect students to get better with this bill or any variation of it that you try to pass in your state. So either a family loses some portion of welfare benefits, which is somehow supposed to make the underachieving child better, or their parents go to two meetings and then the underachieving child gets to move on to a higher difficulty level.
I think society needs to have a meeting with your parents, Senator, because you don’t seem to have any basic understanding of how real life works. That’s really something you need to have if you are supposed to have some sort of authoritarian control over the real lives of others. For now, you are getting that “F” (and will be sitting at your desk with your head down during lunch period tomorrow)…
Class dismissed.
Is It Wrong To Be Smart?
I was deemed a “smart” kid in school, and I really hated it. Other students treat you poorly simply for doing what you are supposed to, and teachers react with disgust when you momentarily don’t live up to some imaginary potential that they have created in their mind for you. It’s a no-win situation if you ever want to appease both sides – one side by being “ordinary” and the other by being “extraordinary”. There is no good answer here, because either solution creates its own sets of problems for how you live both in and outside of the classroom.
Society loves when success comes by luck, accident, or gift rather than by talent, especially when that talent is brain power. Look at Instagram, a program used by millions of people and seen as a fantastic social media photo sharing system…that was then bought out by Facebook for one billion dollars. People screamed, long time users abandoned it, but why? Some where afraid that their favorite app would be shut down, which is somewhat of a valid concern given the history of such acquisitions. Some left when Facebook tried to say “oh, we own all your photos now” only to backtrack a few days later. The company behind Instagram was not that many people strong, and before they were paid for their talent we loved them because they succeeded without being compensated by much in the way of our money. We had ourselves a free service kept alive by venture capital funding and then everything went up in smoke when this guy we all hate (yet most use the services off ourselves) jumped in and bought it up.
We would rather watch a family win the lottery, or a sweepstakes, or a reality television competition than see them have success by hard work. Think of how many times you have sat in your job and thought to yourself how much you despised the head honchos in your company – the ones that will never see your face and don’t care about your name being the one on that paycheck. They got where they were (usually) by being worthy of the position, yet our blood boils just thinking about all the success they have and all the success we are chasing.
It might just be financial. I know that is what you are thinking. They make money, we don’t have it, so screw them. What did they do to deserve that, right? It’s not like these CEOs are professional athletes, payed millions to play games we toyed around with in elementary school. I might have been really good at math in school and people would have called me “some kind of math nerd”, but nobody ever called Michael Jordan some kind of basketball nerd because of how well he played that game. In fact, sports is the one place in culture where we, the fans, want you to earn your rewards and your pay. We scream, hiss, boo, and make jokes the moment a team “overpays” a player that we feel is lackluster. Nobody called Instagram lackluster, and yet there we were in the same place, secretly wishing it was us grabbing a ten figure salary while at the same time crowing that there was no freaking way it was worth that much.
My mind is not worth a billion dollars. It never will be. I will probably never be sitting in a conference room having that kind of contract pushed at me because of something I had in my head and shared with the world. But regardless of every single time I ever felt bad about being intelligent or felt like I was not living up to that high standard of being “smart” because it put a big target on my back for schoolyard bullying and schoolwork inspection, I would sign that paper and take that money and run. I know I’m not the only one, either.
It is not wrong to be smart. It’s not wrong to be successful. It’s also not right to treat success as though it is some kind of albatross to carry around your neck because not everyone can be successful the way they want to be. Good grades, good paychecks, or simply just good use of your skills are not some mark of Cain to show the world how evil you are. Never hide your talents, regardless of what they are. Hone them, harness them, and use them wisely and fruitfully. Don’t hate yourself for using your mind and don’t let anyone force you to stop. If you think living up to your potential is a far off dream, then just imagine what kind of nightmare it is to realize you haven’t lived up to it and maybe never will.
Class dismissed.
Auburn, College Recruitment, & “Wrongdoing”
Because all I can seem to find in my research currently is conjecture and finger-pointing with no solid evidence, I am not going to tar and feather the Auburn football team due to the allegations put against it in the last few days. However, what I am going to do is take a little bit about the growing debate around paying college athletes similarly to professional athletes.
Are There Pros?
Yes. Absolutely. College athletics is quite profitable. The NCAA makes a hefty sum on media rights management and ticket sales for championship games held in neutral stadiums (so that’s why there are, like, nine hundred bowl games every Christmas). From the NCAA’s website, a lovely page titled Where Does The Money Go? -
Each year, about 60 percent of NCAA revenue (that’s all revenue, not just money from rights agreement) is distributed to Division I members. For 2009-10, the total was a little more than $433 million. Some of that distribution is earmarked for particular uses, such as funds that directly support academics or those that meet special student-athlete needs away from the field of play.
Most of the money, however, is distributed through funds that recognize long-term competitive success and that support the Division I tenets of athletically related financial aid and broad sports sponsorship. Those funds (the Basketball, Grants-in-Aid and Sports Sponsorship Funds) are paid to conference offices and divided among conference institutions according to their own agreements. At a typical Division I Football Bowl Subdivision institution, the most common uses of the money would be for salaries, financial aid for student-athletes, facility maintenance and rental, and travel.
So, some of the money that goes right to the NCAA is used to help pay salaries of people that work for the NCAA (makes sense) and not directly given to schools. We don’t have an exact breakdown of percentages for money given to “academics”, “salaries/maintenance”, and, oh boy, “long-term competitive success” (whatever that means). Some of the money even goes to financial aid for student-athletes. That’s pretty good, right?
I firmly accept that college sports will never, ever go away. It is entertaining and obviously incredibly profitable. People build their lives around autumnal Saturdays and March Madness. It’s not even that my annoyances with it’s existence mean I want it to go away myself. I just wish it were different. How different? Glad you asked.
The Cons
Schools have been shown to do some incredibly underhanded actions to make sure they are just as competitive, if not more sure, in athletics as they are in the classroom. Changed grades, paid-off recruits, and tons of other NCAA violations pop up seemingly every single year. Whether it is the fault of the school or simply of the coaching staff or athletic departments is not the concern, but simply the fact that it happens at all. Of course, this is probably something that also happens in high schools on a regular basis but is not as well known or chastised due to the lack of media attention high school athletics gets compared to the hours and hours of weekly coverage generated by Division I football and basketball.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but regardless of your potential future career in the NFL, NBA, or any other professional sports league, the goal of college is not to play sports, scholarships be damned. Your four years in university are there to educated you in ways other than splitting defenses, stopping offenses, and trying to look good in front of a camera or microphone. You could be the greatest quarterback or point guard to ever play the game, but if that’s the case then you shouldn’t be in college at all. It’s just not necessary. The economy of sports has put so much more value on your skill set that your academics that even you should not even be wasting your time in college.
At least in professional basketball, some players never even go to college – like Kevin Garnett or LeBron James. Fine. I’ll accept it. You have proven to me that college would have been completely unnecessary. Football has worked very hard to keep college athletes in school for as long as possible and I doubt the NFL would even allow a player to sign a contract right out of high school, no matter how good they are. In the case of players like Jadeveon Clowney from the University of South Carolina, people are screaming at him to play professionally because it seems as though he would be a powerhouse and instant star. He would probably be in the top five of the NFL draft this year if he did go. But he can’t. You have to play at least three years of college football before you are draft-eligible. He has since taken out a $5 million dollar insurance policy to cover his body over the next season because that is easily the best business decision he can possibly make. Whatever the cost is to take out that policy, his skills will repay him ten fold in a year when he finally gets to be a professional.
For every Clowney, though, there are thousands of college athletes that never get to be a professional, and have their bodies wrecked for upwards of four years doing way more work on the field or court than in the classroom. There is a typical bell curve scenario, as many of those players will not be as harmed as the media would like you to believe and will do just fine in their career of choice, content with the memories of playing on a national stage a few times a year in a chase for glory. But there are players that can see their hopes and dreams fall apart in just a single play, like what could have happened with Kevin Ware of the University of Louisville or what did happen to Eric LeGrand, who was paralyzed from the neck down after a bad hit. I know that is one of those rare, unlucky circumstances, but still one that has the possibility of happening no matter how safe we try to make the game (for better or worse).
Is There A Right Answer?
Should we pay college athletes who put their bodies on the line? I am just as torn as the sports media when it comes to the subject. Education should be the first priority, period, and I think offering them more than scholarships tells them that what they do in class matters about as much as what they do while they are sleeping. Any sum of money paid would no doubt simply change the debate from “should we?” to “is$ ____ enough/too much?” when it comes to evaluating the worth of players to their universities. If college sports were not as profitable as they are (hundreds of millions of dollars annually), then this would not be a discussion. But when I tune in on a Saturday in October to watch college football, I care little about the coaches, the staff, or even the kids in the classrooms trying to make real lives for themselves. I want to see competition and see who the next big professional stars are going to be. They are cogs in a big money machine, and yet we cry foul when they get a little oil every now and then.
I wish I could make it fair, but it never will be. Neither side of the coin is fair, especially in the realm of football. We have created a culture that vilifies schools for trying to get their best players (the players everyone wants to see) on the field no matter what the cost, but then turns right around and tells those best players that even at the most even of keels they are forced to play just as hard, if not harder if you factor in trying to get an actual education, before being able to get proper payment. This is a culture that says your degree means nothing because your skills are worth more. Is it really unethical or immoral to pay people for their skills? Businesses do it every single day, and whether we like it or not, college sports is more of a business than an educational system.
Pay them if you must, but don’t patronize me by throwing them in a classroom. If they want that degree, let them earn it fair and square. Don’t cheat them, or us. I would gladly take three or four years of educational and athletic hard work for even half the pro league minimum in salary (which would be around $150,000 as a rookie). Your education should not be handed to you on a silver platter because you can tackle well or throw a ball. Those skills have been proven to be worth payment, and as much as I hate to it admit, a little extra credit is chump change.
Class dismissed.
Why Unicorns?
Yes, this is silly. It’s also important. Why unicorns? Why is it that a horse with a horn/spike on it’s forehead is a mythical beast that people not only claimed to have seen but actively wished to find? What is so amazing about a horse with a horn? Why not two horns? Five horns? What is so damn special about a horn, anyway? I read through wikipedia and can find very little about why anyone thought they were real.
Pegasus I can understand. A winged horse makes sense because it is at least a fantastical travel option. Horse with a horn is just bizarre and stupid, regardless of whether or not the horn had some kind of magical powers. People like Aristotle, who we consider a damned genius, believed in the unicorn because he thought he happened to see one in the far distant and wondrous (at the time) land of India. Then again, maybe if the horn is magical and helps with fertility and rebirth it could very well explain the extreme lack of unicorns now compared to the extreme abundance of an Indian population on the planet. They exterminated the wild beasts to help get their freak on (over and over and over). It’s as good a tall tale as any in the wild world of unicorn lore…but it still doesn’t explain WHY.
Why Unicorns?!
You have an entire imagination right behind your eyes (or somewhere, anyway) and you’re big idea is “oh, horse with a goat’s beard and a horn!” It sounds like a rantings of a syphilitic brain. Since Aristotle died of natural causes and not STDs, it is safe to assume he was at least sane when he happened upon a creature that may perhaps have been a unicorn but was mostly like a horned antelope. If I was in a far away land and I saw something new and foreign to me (as would no doubt happen quite frequently) I would be asking plenty of questions, and in this case getting an answer of roughly “Oh, those? They are all over the damn place. Also, get some glasses because that thing (the oryx) has two horns and is in no way special.” Because, as we all know, two horns is the norm and one horn is MAGIC. Also, yes, they did have incredibly rudimentary eyeglasses back in those days, hopefully of well enough corrective ability that he could distinguish one from two. Then again, he was a philosopher and a physicist, and they see all kinds of crazy s**t.
Still, why is it special? Why are they still talked about and painted and beloved? Because they sparkle? There are so many other mythical beasts that are in no way ever glorified as much as the unicorn. This glittery horse is the Edward Cullen of the unbelievable animal species. All the liger gets is Napoleon Dynamite, but the unicorn gets the WORLD. People desperately want a horned horse, as though it’s amazingness won’t wear off the moment it leaves a less-than-sparkly present on your front lawn and you have to find fairy dust oats to satiate it’s hunger for adventure and whimsy.
Give me a sphinx any day of the week. At least we could probably talk to each other after we deciphered each other’s native languages. Damn, there’s always a catch.
Money, Power, & College Sports
I really shouldn’t have to be talking about this, but here I am. This is not a specific attack on a specific program, although it should be obvious what sparked this post.
College sports makes a ton of money. Even a mediocre football or basketball program can be financially successful for their school. Coaches can make multiple times more in salary than even the best professor, a problem that seems to be growing every year.
When the NCAA placed sanctions on Penn State for their scandal, it involved the loss of football scholarships. Fine. Think what you want about the scandal and the punishments but while I am not happy with the loss of any scholarships for potentially deserving individuals, these scholarships should have been kept and pushed to academic programs. That is where they could have been truly useful.
I do not want to say that every person on an athletic scholarship is there for some easy-A free ride, but it is a system that benefits from such actions. Someone in a law or economics program would never have the same chances afforded to them because, well, no law or Econ program is going to make the school millions of dollars a year. Off topic, but is there a good reason tuitions keep raising at these schools? I hope it’s not to pay a coach a few extra hundred thousand. I don’t care how good your team is.
I’ve said it before, but putting athletics over everything else does no one any favors. It is this mindset that creates the cult-like atmospheres of programs like Penn State, Miami, and others. This is not to say that every college sports program is inherently evil, but the chance always is there because of how much these schools seem to desperately need success out of their athletics in order to feel important. Sure, non-athletes love attending a good sports school, but it is not the most prevalent factor to deciding a university to spend four or more years and thousands upon thousands of dollars to be a student of. Athletes are not even a major percentage of the student body, but it is damn sure the percentage that matters to pop culture.
If you wanna support a team, fine, but maybe do a little better to support the whole school instead of just the few dozen people you might see on television. Those other people, the ones in the classrooms, are who really matters. Never forget that.
Class dismissed.
Impossible To Be The President
Okay, so it’s a misleading title. I don’t care. What I’m trying to say is that it is impossible to be everyone’s president. Sadly, that is also pretty misleading. Of course, if you win the presidential election you are the president of every United States citizen whether they like it or not. Still, there are tons of impossibilities that almost no one seems to consider when looking at what it means to be arguably the most powerful person on Earth that doesn’t involve upper-body strength.
I’m going to start with the “easiest” part of this. When I decide who I am voting for I do, of course, look at what sort of things they are promising to get done during their tenure. However, what I also look at is the percent possibility they have of actually getting those things done. The biggest problem in doing this sort of math is that there is absolutely a zero percent chance I get my calculations right because I have real fundamental knowledge of anything. No matter how much of a political scholar you claim yourself to be, you have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, or any damn time that could radically change every single thing you originally set out to do as the leader of the free world. You can make guesses, you can tow party line, and you can legitimately promise whatever you want, because even if you have been President before and are trying for a second term, you have no damn clue what is going to happen when you get out of bed tomorrow.
There is no Kobayashi Maru to be President. Watching someone work in an absolute no-win situation would make for some exciting television, except the difference between Star Trek and the US political system is that the test would be used more to push the candidates as some sort of Fox News/Reality TV hybrid spouting off all sorts of garbage about how the test doesn’t even matter because it’s completely fake and there is no way they are able to win it, unlike THE ELECTION which they GAURAN-DAMN-TEE victory for themselves and their party. Oops, too bad they will have to make decisions every single day that might only have one tiny positive outcome at the expense of tons of negative outcomes, if only for the people that see any sort of potential attack (especially financially) to be the absolute worst choice for doing anything ever. Who cares if we don’t have enough money to pay for anything? I’m not chipping in. I chip in enough. Gas Prices! Bah! Iraq! Seriously! Worst. President. Ever. (saw this bumper sticker today, though without the Comic Book Guy punctuation)~!
No one would be happy if the President made everyone happy. Compromises and bi-partisan advantages are seen as weaker than toilet paper against napalm. Someone has to suffer in order for the people who aren’t suffering to be happy. Let the world burn into ash and dust so long as it keeps my damn tank full and my bank account where I want it. Why should I care what foreign countries want? All their people live here as it is! They get enough! Obviously I’m being very generalizing and going over-board, but this is the kind of vocal opposition that someone with basically the world at his fingertips has to deal with. You are the boss of EVERYONE. You have the biggest ring of keys, the best parking space, and even after you are long out of the position people will stop you on the street and say “hello, boss!” even if they didn’t work a single hour of a single day for you ever, ever, ever. In fact, they could have worked for the other company, the #2 political retailer in the country, knowing all full well eventually they’ll be number one again and then they get to be Employee of the Month or get their own voicemail box or key to the executive washroom. Even still, so long as you are the boss, their boss still reports to you – some way, some how.
And you wonder why I think it’s impossible to be President.
Even if people hate you with every fiber of their being, they have to stomach you. Okay, they could leave the country, and they might even do that until they find out that they know even less about living outside this country than they do about what it means to be in political power. It hurts that so much of our community is trapped under red, white, and blue (and I don’t mean the French flag) that they are nearly blind to the rest of the world. It hurts even more to realize that they want one person to be their spyglass and are absolutely pissed off beyond belief when what you show them isn’t what they wanted to see or thought they’d ever see.
Anyone right now, and I mean in the entire world, could be the greatest president of the United States ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, but that person could also be the worst president ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER because of things that we can never, will never, and maybe should never predict. After all, if we could just predict everything that could happen to us, there would be no need to have a two party system, and that would put a LOT of the news media out of a job. Without them decrying what people in power do how am I supposed to feel any emotion?
I mean, seriously…
Class dismissed.
The heck is the Internet?
For a growing percentage of the population, the Internet is basically three things: Email, Facebook, and Google. That is it. Inside that group of people, there even exists those that could not, under scrutiny, really explain the functions of the latter two outside of “searching” and probably some combination of FarmVille, photo-sharing, and being able to zip off little notes whenever they feel like it for dozens or even hundreds of people to get to read every day.
Thankfully, Facebook isn’t the Internet, as muck as Zuck & Co. would love for it to be so. Google is most definitely more than a search engine and also really, really, really wants to be the whole Internet itself as well. Problems arise, socially speaking, when those that exist in the Facebook/Google bubble and those in the rest of the Internet get too close to one another. Usually it is the first group encroaching on the second, because the second group treat that little blue and white “f” logo as an allergen.
So cool things get created by the second group, filter out and very possibly eventually hit some sort of mainstream popularity. This, by and large, infuriates those that got there first, even if the social aspect of a higher user base is nothing but a good thing for all involved. “If it is not my user base then get it the ______ out!” It’s way more than some sort of NIMBY mindset at work. It is an absolute disdain and overwhelming fear that “the Internet” will become “their Internet” and heavens if that isn’t a sign of the superhighway apocalypse.
I will add here that I do not honestly hate Facebook or Google. Hate is a strong emotion. In fact, I get some use out of both, though where things get sketchy is exactly how I use them compared to what is, ahem, “normal.” I am planning to write in the future about my experiences with the world of social media and the more Facebook-ish side of the Internet. For now I just want to focus on why my explanation of what the Internet is seems to be at odds with mainline cultural thought.
I see the Internet as a tool for expressive creation and innovation first and personal communication and networking second. That sort of explains my social media issues in a nutshell. I want my words heard, yes, but I do not insist that they be inside of a conversation nor do I expect any sort of reciprocation when my fingers let words out. I look outwardly to others for similar things. I read blogs, news sites, reference sites, and let my brain lead me to wherever it wishes to go. I can not fathom being confined to Facebook any more than some people could be bothered to try and figure out how to leave it outside of possibly YouTube and Wikipedia. I admit those can be useful tools when actively and truly surfing the web, as they used to say, but can actually be little more than outliers to those that came into the Internet age as little more than a “friend” and don’t mind keeping it that way.
There is nothing actually wrong with sticking to the blue bricked garden of Facebook, except to catch the peripheral sneers of someone that abandoned it long ago and cares as little about things like Zynga and “liking” things as those in the garden care that they are being openly mocked by people they will never meet, speak to, or run across in all their hours of clicking and scrolling, friending and liking, and “using the Internet,” whatever that means.
Class dismissed.
Stupid Should Never Win
Originally, I wanted to title this post “Stupid Doesn’t Win”, except that sometimes it really, really, really does. It wins far more than it ever should, and as my updated title says, it should simply never, ever win. Not even once. Not at all.
There seems to be an issue with defeating stupidity – to not allow it to exist in even the smallest of quantities. People are always eager to point out that stupidity and ignorance are “found everywhere” and cite it as “inescapable”, which is apparently reason enough for them to not try and fight against it. If anything has to stop, that sort of thinking should be top of the list. Allowing even an iota of unintelligent thought to cloud the judgment of any decision is almost worse than even allowing its voice to be heard in the first place.
Think about it: If I want something to work properly, especially something that involves a team, I am going to train the heck out of everything and everyone until the only way a mistake should likely happen is by sheer bad luck or at least something that is completely out of the control of me or my team. If someone on the team is not able to understand exactly what is going on, why they have to do what is being asked of them, and how their completion of the task helps out not only everyone else on the team but maybe even the rest of the company – then they should not be in that spot. Fire them, replace them, relocate them – whatever needs to be done to make sure that they are not the thing that causes failure. Granted, I hate failure that is not in my control, but when it is in my control it is a billion times worse. If I am just a cog in a corporate machine, and the gear I crank helps crank fifteen other gears that eventually helps get something important done, then I am just going to crank until I can’t crank anymore. If I am not sure if I am cranking it correctly, then I will figure out if I am doing it wrong and change my work if I am. If I think I have found a better way to crank it, then I damn sure do not want to hear my superiors tell me that doing it a better way would be bad because the other people around me cranking the same gear would not be able to crank it the better way because they are stupid.
You never hear machines complain that what they have to do is too hard, or if you reprogram to do their job differently they don’t suddenly give up because they don’t understand what it is you are telling them. They just do it, that is unless the program has tons of bugs in it or the machine isn’t capable of actually replicating the needs of the new program. If either of those things happen, you either rewrite the program to suit the machine or you replace the machine – usually without a second thought. Human workers are obviously not machines, but the same rules should nevertheless apply. If you tell them to do something, and they can’t, either figure out a better way to teach them (rewrite the program) or find someone new to take over (replace the machine). It is hard to accept that, as far as business is concerned, we are just little machines that combine to help power a big machine to success. Stupidity only exists in machines because the people that built them screwed up, that doesn’t mean the designers and engineers just leave it there because, hey, it is inescapable and everywhere. No, they fix it, because stupidity should never, ever win.
Stop letting it.
Class dismissed.
How Much Effort Is Too Much?
The question: How much effort is too much effort?
The answer: “Too much” = Bad Work. No one ever puts a limit on awesome.
Think about it, there is no such thing as an athlete saying they “played too much football” to become a pro, a writer saying they ‘wrote too many words’ to finish a novel, or an entrepreneur saying they ‘sold too many products’ to become successful. If you have ever had that feeling that you are doing too much work, then chances are whatever you are doing is not going to turn out very well. Successes will always come with a price, but very few (in any) will say that they overpaid.
If you do get that feeling, however, step back and rethink everything about what you are trying to accomplish. Look at your goals and what you are assuming is your path to get there. It is not hard to accidentally take a wrong turn and wind up somewhere you do not want to be. If you can’t seem to hit a target from twenty yards a way, being a quarterback might not be your future. If you rewrite the same chapter dozens and dozens of times, or worse, the same small part of a chapter, then it might be time to look at what kind of story you are telling and why you are choosing to tell it. If you are sick and tired of walking door to door selling encyclopedias no one wants, it might be time to accept that this ‘internet’ thing is not just a fad and move on to a new product or service.
I have stated before two seemingly contradictory things: 1) Don’t Accept Failure and 2) Failure is Always an Option. Just because failure is an option, and one decides that what they did indeed do is fail, does not mean they have to accept it as the end-all-be-all of a project or plan of action. As long as you never stop, you have never truly failed, and unnecessary surrender is the worst kind of failure. Giving yourself the choice of surrender is giving in to the idea that you have a limit, and going over that limit would be bad. No limits means no real failure, no bad work (by this definition) and never a chance to not succeed or not be totally awesome.
I want everyone to be awesome. I want people to realize that the only real limits they have are time and energy, not effort, and if they really want to get things done they will and it will be good. It might take more work than you have ever done before in your life, but once you start reaching your goals you will never look back on it all as being ‘too much.’ I can guarantee that.
Class dismissed.
