Friday afternoon blog round-up

There are two posts today, so don't miss the Decisions that should make themselves, a post about taking back my life from the four-pronged instrument of destruction, and how your life will benefit by making some simple choices.

Originally, I was planning on doing a weekly round up of this blog, highlighting additional information about previous blog posts. I figured it'd be a way to come up with content at least once a week that I didn't have to think too hard about. But so far, I haven't run out of topics. I have about 15 blogs in process at any given time, and finish them when the topic interests me. I then publish the post, and use Hootsuite to set a schedule for pushing out the promotional posts to Facebook and Twitter. Some of the blogs I also push to LinkedIn. I schedule the release to coincide with the times of day that seem to get the most readers.

I started the blog just for fun. I have opinions and wanted to share them. As I began to write, I realized that I could write on a broad range of topics, and focus on solutions. My intentions for 2011 changed the direction I was taking this blog, and so far am satisfied with the feedback and traffic this site generates.

Business topics
LinkedIn has been a surprisingly good source of traffic, especially business related topics such as the post on performance management. If you are interested in republishing this blog as an article or on another blog, please contact me. I won't charge anything, but would like the professional development units this will generate for meI will eventually submit it for a magazine or two, but have too many other items on my plate right now. I am still noodling on how to increase the value of comments for feedback, which in my opinion is the greatest challenge, and weakest link in the performance management process. Look for a future post on this topic. I have been intrigued by a service named Rypple, where a person can get Twitter-like feedback anonymously from colleagues. We are all on the human journey, and if you aren't working to continuously improve, you are just using oxygen.

Life Planning
In regards to the blog titled Luck would have it, Wired Magazine has a great article about how the scratch off lottery tickets aren't as much about luck, as identifiable patterns. Organized crime (not our government, they already take their share of the money) have identified how to beat the patterns, and use this knowledge to launder money.

Health and Fitness
I was surprised to see how quickly the page views increased on When we sweat diet soda, we should drink diet soda. It is now my second most read blog after only a few days online, trailing Economics - the dismal science, my post about my experience with Junior Achievement. If you are inclined to be part of the solution in our educational system, you should consider volunteering to assist this awesome program.

Resources
Water Wars is still drawing readers, many people love a good conspiracy story, especially ones where governments and corporations collude to take away our rights. This post has a shelf-life, and keeps the traffic coming.

Food (actually, food ignorance) is still a topic I want to dig deeper into. The rising food prices across the globe are driven by many factors, and there are some solutions we must implement to ensure each of us can weather any issues that come up.

My tongue-in-cheek post about DADT generated a very large and fast spike of readers, then dropped to obscurity.

If you are interested in a follow up of a blog, or my brain droppings on a specific topic, please feel free to comment and I will do my best to meet your request. 

Decisions that should make themselves

When I walked out of the doctor's office a few years ago, I was in a funk. I was a little overweight (okay, about 25 pounds, which meant I was carrying the equivalent extra weight of a bag of cat litter around with me), had high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and high blood pressure. My doctor handed me a bag of statin samples, asked me get another blood test in 30 days, and we'd meet again to discuss if the dose needed to be adjusted. We'd also discuss other medications.

I walked out thinking "how can this be?" I was physically fit, and a great runner. My Army Physical Fitness test results proved it! I exercised, but like anyone, I was subject to time constraints that kept me from staying regular in my so-called exercise routine. I was careful about what I ate. Okay, so I have a weak spot for dark beer, sweet potato fries, chocolate, chips, cookies, pie, cake, all you can eat buffets, and any food left unattended at work (not the lunches in the work fridge), and did I mention beer? But I really was careful in what I ate.

I went home and took my first dose. It was tough to do, since I am not a big fan of swallowing pharmaceuticals to solve my issues. I tried to convince myself that the meds were a necessary thing, and felt like age was creeping up on my 40+ year old body. It was a depressing time.

A few days after starting the medication, my body was in pain. I had back cramps, my body ached, I was lethargic, and couldn't get myself to exercise. The "excusinator" (the inner voice that keeps me from doing fun stuff) was winning the fight, and the pain I was experiencing was not the good pain.

While attending a symposium in Denver a week after starting the medication, I found that my back pain was so bad that I had to stand with my back against a wall during sessions. Chairs hurt too much. I was taking ibuprofen to dull the pain, but it wasn't doing much. By the second day, I called my pharmacist, and he said I should continue the meds, and call my doctor. I put the meds in my bag, and decided to reassess my options after my return home.

After returning home, I didn't contact my doctor. It was an avoidance strategy. A year slipped by, and I finally  returned to my doctor, and found that I had the same issues. She asked where I was getting my prescription from, since I hadn't been back. I sheepishly told her I hadn't taken them. If you continue doing the same thing, you will continue to get the same results. It kind of goes without saying. I left the doctor with a new supply of statin samples, and even more morose than my first visit.

After much contemplation, I was able to boil down the issue I was facing into a simple thought. I was being advised to take a medication that makes me feel like crap, so I could ingest things that weren't good for me, and avoid exercise. I had become part of the problem we face as a nation. I wanted to live my life as I wanted to live it, and didn't want to be responsible for the consequences. I also realized I was physically fit, but unhealthy. Fitness is related to exercising the structure, but health is how the whole system worked together. My health issues were a result of my lifestyle, which I was choosing.

Admitting that my health situation was my own fault lifted much of the burden from me. Now I had to make decisions on how to take back control of my health. My honey recommended that I stop drinking alcohol for a month, watch my diet, and get my blood tested again. She thought that the alcohol was driving up my triglycerides, and this was impacting my cholesterol. I wasn't convinced, but decided I'd stop drinking for a month anyway. This wouldn't be the first time I disagreed with her to later find out she was right. I also started to exercise regularly.

A couple of weeks later we were at Lake Placid to go cross country skiing. As I was pulling my day pack from our rear seat, the driver of the Toyota Sequoia parked next to us backed his mechanical behemoth out, swung the turn wide, and bent our car door around my left leg. The car sustained $1,000 of damage. I ended up on crutches with a compression injury to my knee. My exercise stopped, my spirits fell, but I didn't drink. I resolved that as soon as I could, I'd get back to exercising, and get my blood checked. I recovered from the incident (or at least as far as I can recover), and got my fitness routine back on track. I hadn't had any alcohol in months, and didn't miss it. Alcohol was a thing of the past, and I counted the days without it. (Today is day 383, thank you for asking, and no, I am not in a 12 step program.)

I also made radical changes in my diet, dropping fat, reading restaurant menus online before going out to eat to avoid a rush decision, and packing a healthy lunch every day. A few months later, I had my blood work done. My doctor's first words were "Wow, this can't be right. You need to get another test, there must be a mistake". I disagreed, and told her of the changes I made in my life. She reiterated the need for another blood test. I pointed out my weight loss, new diet, alcohol-free lifestyle.

I am due to go back for my annual physical, and if my cholesterol is high, it will be my only risk factor for heart disease. My weight is down, and I check my blood pressure at every pharmacy I am near. My blood pressure is fine. I feel really good, and my enjoyment of life has increased exponentially. I have a new wardrobe.

In retrospect, the decision to live a healthy lifestyle should have been easy, and I should have been living that life on a daily basis. But when we are young, we don't know what we don't know. This decision should have made itself. Do you contribute to your health problems? Can you control the fork, or does the fork control you?

When we sweat diet soda, we should drink diet soda

I live across the street from a public reservoir which is pretty big. But know that public water isn't really public. Most of the water, including the rights to it are owned by corporations. In some states, the water companies sue to keep their municipal contract expiration dates from being enforced, arguing that they have perpetual rights to sell our water to us. We also know that in most years, areas with large reservoirs and great distribution systems experience droughts. These droughts can require us to limit our water consumption.

This reminds me of an experience I had a few years ago in a different town. The town owned its own water system, and had ordered restrictions. My honey and I returned from a kayak trip, and I was hosing off the kayaks in our driveway. My neighbor was the supervisor for the town's public works, and head of the water department. He was driving past our house as I was hosing the salt water off of the fiberglass kayaks, and slammed his brakes on. He began yelling at me to turn the water off or he'd call the police and have me ticketed. I calmly walked out to his car, and leaned in real close. I told him that we walk our dog late at night, and the soaker hoses he runs every night to keep has lawn green was real easy to hear, so there must be plenty of water. Isn't there? He turned the brightest shade of red. By the way, I had contacted the state and asked if I could clean a boat after it was in salt water, and they said that was an acceptable use of water in a drought. The supervisor became my best buddy from that day forward. But water is an important resource.

Water was back on my mind during a recent airplane flight. My honey and I noted that the water bottles we purchased in St. Croix were from Georgia, USA. We contemplated the resources required to move that bottle from Georgia, to St. Croix, USVI, so we could drink it on the flight to NY. That conversation led us to diet soda, and the resources required to manufacture and transport it.

By U.S. Navy photo [Public domain]
via Wikimedia Commons

I am not against bottled water, and see the many good uses for a transportable and clean water supply. Humanitarian relief, quick trips that require hydration, and many other activities are great uses for bottled water.

We regularly utilize reusable containers to carry our water, and would have filled ours in the St. Croix airport. But they had no water sources in the terminal, other than the bathroom faucets. The bathrooms were very disgusting, and we decided that bottled water was a good thing under the circumstances. I did look at the numerous TSA employees staring at the passengers, and wondered if they would be better utilized protecting me from bathroom germs, but wasn't sure they'd think that was an appropriate use of their expertise.

This conversation with my honey about water led us to talking about diet soda. Diet soda contains no calories. It is like water with a whole bunch of other useless processed stuff put in a bottle. Last year I was talking to an acquaintance about diet soda, which he was consuming in large quantities, and I asked him if he ever saw a fit and average weight person who drinks diet soda regularly. He said "me". I told him to look in the mirror, he was not exactly a healthy weight. He looked pissed, and was going to prove me wrong. A few moments later, someone we knew walked by. He was thin. The heavy diet soda drinker asked how much diet soda the person drank, and found they didn't drink any soda. He repeated this with the next few people, and found no one who drank diet soda who was a normal weight.

By Karen Apricot
 via Wikimedia Commons

That night, I thought some more about what I said, and realized I hadn't really done any research to support my statement. I just believed it was true because it was what I observed. So I started searching, and found that studies are showing that people who drink diet soda gain more weight than those who drink regular soda. Regular soda has loads of sugar, so the same study showed a very large increase in the risk of obesity for those who drink regular soda. And the diet soda drinkers were at an even higher risk of being obese.

I also found that diet soda consumption increases the risk of stroke, the acidity is so high that it destroys your teeth, and contains excessive levels of salt that causes water retention, thus making the drinkers even heavier. This salt also triggers feelings of hunger, which leads to people eating more food. Heck, if you are drinking diet soda, then getting the calorie laden appetizer before dinner is already paid for, right? In my opinion, the real danger in diet soda is that no one really knows what kinds of reactions occur in your body as a result of the chemicals in the diet soda. Time will tell, and many will be happy that didn't drink much of it when the results come out.

And in case you think you'll go back to regular soda, a 12 ounce can contains about 9 spoons of sugar. Actually, it isn't really sugar, it's processed sugar from corn, beets, and other things that used to be living plants. They are chemically modified into "sugar". Maybe the person drinking soda is depriving the poor of food, while driving food costs up to astronomical levels. Just sayin'.

Now let's talk about the water. After all, this is the reason I started writing this post. It is difficult to estimate how much water is needed to create a liter of soda. One large distributor claims they use "only" 3.2 liters of water to make 1 liter of soda, while an advocacy group claims it takes 9 liters of water to make 1 liter of soda. That's for regular soda, and diet soda requires more water. How about the water needed to grow and or produce all of the ingredients? I heard a few years ago that it takes 270 liters of water to make 1 liter of diet soda if you add up the water used in the whole production chain. I can't find a source for this information, but let's pretend they exaggerated and it only takes 135 liters. Does that sound better?

By MobiusDaXter (Own work)
via Wikimedia Commons

I don't like reading long blogs, so I won't delve deeper into this topic right now. Some food for thought - think of the container the soda comes in, the amount of resources it takes to produce, deliver, fill, pack, pallet, load, truck, warehouse, truck again, deliver, stock, and take it to your mouth. Is it worth all of this just so you can drink something that's bad for you? Here's a startling fact - it takes 1 liter of tap water to fill a 1 liter container. Really, I wouldn't make this up.

Water is a resource we must conserve. We can't count on it always being available, and it continues to be consumed faster than it can replenish itself in many areas of our planet. Drinking diet soda, or any soda for that matter, decreases water available for the necessities in life - like farming and hydrating our bodies. Be thoughtful of what goes into your body, and thumb your nose at big business by not buying their chemicals.

We are what we consume. I sweat salt water, so I drink water and make sure I eat enough salt to replenish what I lose. Eating almost any single item of processed food provides you with enough salt for a few days. When I start sweating diet soda, I will drink diet soda. In the meantime, I will stick with tap water. 

The balance between pleasure and pain

Balance is so important in life. I'm not referring to unfortunate accidents where people fall from buildings, although this balance is important (as you can see by the CDC data to the right). I am referring to the balance needed to maintain a healthy and satisfying life.

Pain has a place in our life. As a youngster, we learned that sticking our hand on the hot stove top hurts. From that point forward, we didn't stick our hand on a hot stove. Sometimes learning about heat related pain comes later in life, like the time I used a wet pot holder to take a tray of cookies out of the oven. My honey was saying "don't use tha..." which was interrupted by my "AAGGHHH!!" as the steam burn ripped through my fingers. She applied some ice, and explained how steam is created.

Another pain we experience is when our body sends signals to us that something is wrong with it. This can be related to some incident, such as hitting our thumb with a hammer, banging our elbow on the door frame, or stubbing a toe on the dining room table leg. I offer up these examples from experience, no gratitude on your part is required. I will guess that you have examples to add to this list.

Some of this pain is enough to send us to the medicine cabinet, looking for the Ibuprofen, or in some extreme cases, the left over bottle of Codeine from the last time we had a real pain and the doctor prescribed something for it. If this fails, we call the doctor, and make an appointment.

This is a logical and normal way to deal with pain, and we hope this doesn't happen to us. There's another kind of pain that few people are willing to endure. It is the pain of growing, the pain of learning, and the pain of self-improvement. I also offer these from experience, no gratitude on your part is required.

It may be hard to think of pain as something we learn from. A common quote I hear from people who exercise, is "no pain, no gain". I prefer the quote "ignore pain, no brain". For the past 30 years, I have been forced to endure pain as the cost of membership in first the Army National Guard, and then the Army Reserve. For a short period after retiring in 2004, I avoided the pain, and the cost was high.

It is easy to come up with reasons to avoid the pain of exercise. I have a name for the alter ego who often fights me - "the excusinator". His sole purpose in my life is to stay in my mind, and look at the temperature, precipitation, Internet, fireplace, as well as any slight discomforts in my body. He then uses these to tell me a story that will keep me from getting off of the couch, hunt out my Vibram Five Fingers, and put in some miles. He also tries to hide my yoga mat, make my bicycles (fleet) look like medieval torture machines, and reminds me of the food that is at my disposal in our fridge.

Exercise hurts, and can be dangerous. At least that is what our excusinators tell us. Last year while bike commuting, a person pulled up next to me at a red light (I was making a left from the left lane - a novel concept), and he was going straight in the right lane. He said to me "that's dangerous, be careful". I replied "it's not as dangerous as not getting exercise, and the stress of sitting in a car in traffic". He paused for a moment, and then agreed with me.

I see many people who avoid pain by seeking pleasure. Their pleasure is in watching endless hours of television, eating junk food, and staying up late robbing their body of rest while doing this. The things they think bring them pleasure, actually bring them weight problems, family relationship issues, and the pain associated with these problems.

This past week, the American Heart Association asked us all to be aware of heart disease. Yet what is heart disease? It is a symptom of a laundry list of behavior-related health problems. Overeating, a sedentary lifestyle, Crackberry induced stress, and an insane level of distractions all add up to a health crisis. The American Heart Association lists 7 things to do decrease your likelihood of getting heart disease. But I have condensed these into two: be mindful of what goes in your body, and exercise.

After retiring from the Army Reserve in 2004, I stopped exercising, and threw myself into the pleasure side of life. I gained about 30 pounds, my asthma came back with a vengeance, my knees hurt, and I was not happy looking in the mirror. I expressed my concern to my honey one day, and she said "why don't you pretend you are a Soldier for the rest of your life?". So I did that. I resolved to be able to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test any day of the week. I realized it had to be a lifestyle, not a scheduled event.

Exercise hurts. But not nearly as much as the many issues you will face if you don't exercise. My first few exercise attempts were painful, and I had "the excusinator" running in full force. It was a rocky start, and I still occasionally have short periods where I succumb to life's temptations, and don't exercise. But I come back to it, and each time I come back to it I realize more how within 30 seconds of starting to exercise, my brain gives me some nice dopamine, and other natural chemicals that reward us for doing something good for us.

I used to run to see how fast I could get, and was disappointed when I wasn't improving. Then last year I started to just run for fun, and not let my running time matter. In a 5k last year, I tried running with a smile on my face. I set a personal record. Two weeks later I ran with the smile on again, and a funny thing happened. I beat my previous personal record.

I learned something from smiling while I ran. We will never be the best we can be at something until we truly enjoy it. It is in the enjoyment of an activity that we subconsciously apply the energy necessary to excel. So when I run, I never run at a pace that hurts, nor do I ride my bike at a pace that hurts. This doesn't mean that I hold back, it just means that I give my energy to the task at hand, but respect my body in the process. Ignore pain, no brain.

When on the mat doing yoga, I often feel pain. It can be a prolonged downward dog, or some difficult twist that causes the ligaments and tendons to implore the excusinator to petition me for release. But we learn what is a real pain, and what is a pain caused by our inner voice, and we settle into the pose, putting the excusinator on notice that it isn't allowed to control the body. As we teach ourselves this control of the inner voice, we experience the pleasure at the edge of pain. The sweet pleasure our body experiences as we return to a recovery position rewards us for the pain. And each time we practice, we recalibrate the limits of our body as well as our minds. The recalibration of our minds is where our growth comes from.

Life is all about our free will, and the choices we make. Are your choices creating a better life for you, or are they setting you up for the pain that has no reward of pleasure? 

Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) Day 1 of 4

The following is my submission for the Great Backyard Bird Count. It's not too late to participate! I was busy looking out of the back windows of our home, and my honey looked out the front and saw an adolescent Bald Eagle in a tree by the reservoir. We have seen as many as 7 of these gorgeous birds at one time. 


For information about the GBBC visit their Web site by clicking here, or watch the following video.







If you want to look up more information on any of these birds, visit Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
___________________________
Thank you for entering your observation in this year's Great Backyard Bird Count.  Below is a report summarizing the bird checklist you submitted.

Here is the information you gave for this observation.

Record ID: S7625266
Email: 07649, Oradell, Bergen County, NJ
Observation Date : FEB 18, 2011
Start Time: 7:00 AM
Total Birding Time: 1 hour
Party Size: 2
Skill: excellent
Weather: excellent
Snow Depth: 10 - 12 in (25.4 - 30.5 cm)
Habitat(s):
       suburban
       freshwater
Number of Species: 17
All Reported: yes
Checklist:
       Canada Goose - 7
       Bald Eagle - 1
       Mourning Dove - 2
       Downy Woodpecker - 1
       Northern Flicker - 1
       Blue Jay - 2
       Black-capped Chickadee - 1
       Tufted Titmouse - 1
       White-breasted Nuthatch - 2
       European Starling - 1
       Fox Sparrow - 1
       White-throated Sparrow - 8
       Dark-eyed Junco - 3
       Northern Cardinal - 2
       House Finch - 2
       American Goldfinch - 1
       House Sparrow - 2


Information submitted through February 21, 2011 will be included in online reports within 60 minutes.  Information submitted after February 21, 2011 will be included in online reports within 2 hours.  To see how your results fit into the big picture, go to the Great Backyard Bird Count home page http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/ and click on "Explore the Results."  If your bird checklist included unusual species or high numbers of individuals, you may receive an email from a regional editor requesting more details.

Thanks for participating in the 2011 Great Backyard Bird Count. Please join us again for next year's count. Mark your calendars for February 17-20, 2012.

If you enjoyed the Great Backyard Bird Count, check out eBird at http://www.ebird.org, where you can report the birds you see every day of the year. eBird helps you keep track of your lists--and archives your sightings so they're accessible to everyone, including other bird watchers and scientists. It's easy and fun to use--and it's absolutely free!

The Great Backyard Bird Count and eBird are joint projects of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, and Bird Studies Canada. Please help support these and other efforts on behalf of birds by becoming a member. Visit http://birds.cornell.edu/join for membership in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, http://www.audubon.org/gbbc/index.shtml for membership in the National Audubon Society, or http://www.birdscanada.org for membership in Bird Studies Canada. Thank you for your support!

Head Start or Pisanki? Opportunity costs are lost in the government's process

Most activities in life are projects. Project management is the art and science of getting things done. A project is defined as having a beginning and an end, not to be confused with entitlement payments, which are by definition operations management, thus never ending.  Project management applies to so many areas of life. Vacations, home improvements, planting your garden, protesting our childish government, or updating your Facebook page are all projects.

Before project management was defined, organizations would have a thought (sometimes a whim, which is a little below a thought, but a higher level stimulation than a reaction) and apply resources to make an attempt for the thought to become reality. It would be supported by a big plan, and everyone would organize around it. Some organizations would have many thoughts, and pursue them all, straining their resources, running people into the ground, and burning up their resources. Sometimes an effort paid off, and the organization would reap the benefit of their effort. Many times the organization lost focus, didn't put their money into smart initiatives, and they ended up going out of business, or becoming insolvent and ineffectual. These concepts also apply to government.

Then along came project portfolio management. Some person came up with the crazy idea that if resources are limited, maybe the organization should determine what was most important, and apply their resources to the important stuff first. As the resources were depleted, less effort would be put into lower priority ideas, and some ideas would be abandoned completely. This way the organization wouldn't have to decrease peoples' pay, deprive them of food, or buy inferior toilet paper for the bathrooms to save money for funding projects.

In order to accomplish this, all of the efforts the organization was thinking about investing in had to be evaluated as a portfolio. Decision criteria had to be developed, and all proposed projects would need to be "normalized" by consistently applying the same criteria to all of them. In this way, an organization could make sure that the important stuff was identified, and got done first.

The way federal funding of programs and projects is completed now is some Congressman, the President, or someone at a town hall meeting speaking for millions of people comes up with an idea. The idea gains traction, and as a stand alone project, it looks like a great thing to do. Some examples of great things that were looked at individually are when our government gives a private museum that has assets in the millions of dollars a couple of hundred thousand dollars to restore their building.  The following items are from the 2010 budget, as reported on the Citizens Against Government Waste Web site:

$194,800 by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) for completion of the historic restoration project at the Historic Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.  According to Slater Mill’s website, it is “one of the most visited sites in Rhode Island with 30,000 visitors per year, 80 years of preservation experience and long-term partnerships with major universities, public school systems, cultural heritage organizations, tourism agencies, museums, guilds, artists, the business community and many others.”  The website also discloses that the admission fees are $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and $8 for children.  Besides being a popular destination, the organization does not appear to be on shaky financial footing.  According to the Old Slater’s Mill Association 2008 IRS Form 990, it has net assets of $2,573,254. 


Another example is providing a museum a couple of hundred thousand of the taxpayers' dollars so visitors can leave with a Pisanki egg. At $30 for the class, you'd think the cost of the paint would be covered, and they'd not need our money.

"...$250,000 for the Wistariahurst Museum, Holyoke, for renovation and expansion.  The museum charges for a number of events, including, “a hands-on demonstration in Pisanki - the tradition of decorating eggs and one of the most cherished cultural expressions of Polish heritage around the Easter holiday. Participants will leave with their own designed and hand-dyed Easter eggs. Fee is $30 per person”, and a “Trash to Treasure” in which “scouts and youths will use their creativity to turn castaways into fun and functional stuff, letting their imagination run wild in this hands-on session! $8 per person.”


Taken as a single item, neither of these gifts of our tax dollars seem like much, and many of the rare readers of this blog may think "good, I like that we fund the arts". But what is missing in the decisions to fund these two items is the analysis of opportunity cost, which is what a good project portfolio management system takes into consideration. 

When we look at opportunity cost, and use a prioritization process, we will see why maybe spending $200,000 on something different may be a better choice for us. With $200,000, we can have more than 20 inner city kids participate in a Head Start program. There's a choice I'd like to see a Congressman make - Pisanki eggs for museum visitors, or a positive lifetime impact on 20 inner city kids. Or how about choosing between Pisanki, or 40 miles of bike paths to combat obesity? How about $300 million to PBS or 6,000 miles of bike paths - per year - to combat obesity and protect the environment? The choices are never simple, but if they were simple, someone else could make them.

Should everything that is good be funded, or should we only fund what we can afford to fund?

Birding St. Croix, USVI and bird banding basics

My honey and I recently returned from a very relaxing vacation on St. Croix, USVI. As the rare reader knows, we are both bird watchers. We pretty much always travel with our binoculars, and sometimes with a spotting scope and tripod. For this trip, we had our binoculars and one birding book, "Birds of the West Indies".

This is the first time we were able to see and record bird tags on two birds. One was a Ruddy Turnstone, and the other was a Great Egret. The Ruddy Turnstone had a flag, colored band, and numbered aluminum band attached to its legs. The Great Egret had a very large sheet of some synthetic paper with a color spot, and code written with a Sharpie. This was riveted through the bird's wing, and on both sides of the wing.

If you want to learn more about bird banding, click here. Banding is used to study migratory routes and destinations. The USGS manages the registration and tracking of tagged birds. There are some species of bird that fly between the Arctic and the Antarctic. Some people think the birds are escaping the cold, but if this were the case, they'd all move to Florida and stay there. They are actually flying north to take advantage of the huge bug hatches, and other high density food sources present in the northern summers. Protecting this northern habitat is crucial.

Three of the following birds are what is referred to as a "lifer", meaning it is the first time I recorded the sighting. The "x" notes that there were too many to make the counting worthwhile. I have 343 on my life list, but don't go to extreme lengths as many twitchers do to grow the numbers.

Tagged Ruddy Turnstone

Migratory Birds
American Kestrel     2

Spotted Sandpiper     1
Ruddy Turnstone     21

Red-tailed Hawk     1

American Oystercatcher     5
Belted Kingfisher     2

Great Egret     1 tagged, submitted to USGS

Killdeer     6
Northern Mockingbird     1

Ruddy Turnstone     6     One tagged, submitted to USGS

* Lesser Yellowlegs     1

Little Blue Heron     1
Osprey     3

Tagged Great Egret

Yellow Warbler     1

Local Birds

Magnificent Frigatebird     6
Antillean Crested Hummingbird     x
Bananaquit     x
* Bridled Quail-Dove     6
Black-faced Grassquit     5
Common Ground-Dove     5
Black-faced Grassquit     10
Brown Booby     1
Semipalmated Plover     2
Tropical Mockingbird     1
Pearly-eyed Thrasher     x
Scaly-naped Pigeon     x
Smooth-billed Ani     4
* Helmeted Guineafowl     15
Brown Pelican     x
Cattle Egret     x
Green-throated Carib     2
Gray Kingbird     x
Zenaida Dove     x

The secret to happiness is - nothing

As Americans (or part of the connected civilization), we are constantly bombarded with marketing images telling us how to find happiness from purchasing products. A new car, cold soda, salted snack, or vacation on a cruise ship holds the key to our happiness. They want you to believe that happiness is only found in a tangible item, something we can see and touch.

There's a very interesting book I read recently titled "Buyology", where the author justified his manipulation of consumers' minds with the position that he was only unlocking our hidden desires  for useless junk. I recommend reading this book, so you will be forewarned to the dangers of the constant bombardment you are subjected to, and the subtle ways the marketers go for your neurological triggers. After reading this book, you may unplug the box.

In the early '80s a friend and I noticed that roads connected Alaska to NJ. Over the course of two months, this friend and I decided to drive to Alaska to see what it was like. We made the drive, and I stayed there a couple of years. He stayed longer.

There's no place like home

I lived in a cabin on the outskirts of Wasilla, and worked for a construction company. (No, I never met Sarah Palin.) For about 8 months I lived in the tiny village of Holy Cross. There were 470 people living in the village, with a mix of people with Yupik and Athabascan ancestries. There were also a few non-indigenous residents, and about 15 of us building houses. The houses we built were on "Housing Road", and "New Housing Road". "Housing Road" was built first, and "New Housing Road" was built second. If they expand the village, the new road will be named "New New Housing Road", or 'Newest Housing Road". Relativism is so simple, yet so difficult to keep going over time.

The only way in was the gravel runway
welcome to Holy Cross

During my time working there, I had the opportunity to interact with many of the locals. They were for the most part hardworking and decent people, with a few of the lowly types every town is afflicted with. On my rare days off,  I hunted duck and bear, and explored the mazes of the Yukon River with a couple friends of mine - Beanie and Walter. I provided the fuel, they provided the boat, engine, and buckets for bailing the water out of the leaky boat. Crossing the Yukon in bad weather, with a heavy chop was pretty exciting. We'd be in construction coveralls, with our pockets loaded with shotgun shells, and no flotation in site. Walter would have to vary the speed of the boat to keep us in the middle of the 4 foot troughs of glacial silt-filled water that rolled against the wind. Beanie and I would bail to keep the boat afloat. I shudder when I think back to these dangerous days.

I never could grow a 'stache

Carpenters and plumbers
waiting for flight 

As the construction project approached the winter, we could see that we'd be out of work in a few weeks, and would have to wait until the spring thaw to install more pilings into the permafrost. As my colleagues finished their work, they'd fly out of the gravel runway on one of our company planes, and our numbers would decrease. As our end date approached, an elderly woman in the village invited me to her home for coffee. She lived outside of the village, close to the river. I accepted the offer, and headed out.

When I arrived, she was a gracious hostess, kept my coffee cup filled, and served me some homemade cake. Her husband headed outside to get some wood, and the hostess quickly made me an offer. She had no money, but was wondering if I would be willing to trade my Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun for a Marten hat. Marten are valued for their gorgeous fur, and it was considered very stylish to have a Marten hat with multiple tails off of the back. I accepted the offer, and we made the trade. I still have the hat, and often take it out of the box to admire the fur.

After her husband returned with the wood, our conversation was around his memories of growing up. He remembered the white traders who came down the river, and that his father and uncles would take pot shots at them as they made their way past the village. One family name in the village was "Whitemankiller". This wasn't some ghetto rap name invented to look cool, it was history in a name.

Holy Cross, AK, 1984

As always, I get off topic as I open up the memories my mind is filled with. Now back to the story. One of the things he said to me was something I never really understood until much later in my life. He said that the people in the village didn't know they were poor until the white man arrived. Until then, the village was isolated, and lived off the land. Your hunting and fishing were your currency, and life was active and fulfilling. People worked together, and there was little jealousy or greed.

Looking around the village, I could see the two stores with all the junk food you'd need to destroy your health, a. gas station to fuel up your car to drive in endless circles around the village, satellite dishes to bring in the endless infotainment of television, and the regularly scheduled boat with the contraband alcohol loaded in the lock box. Alcohol was illegal in most Alaskan villages, and the smugglers would lock the booze up on their boat, requiring the State Police to get a search warrant to open the box. Getting a search warrant rarely happened when the nearest judge was hundreds of miles away. .

The day after the alcohol boat left, a gambler would show up on one of the small planes, organize some card games, and leave with all the money before the drunken villagers woke up from their drunken stupor. We had many of our locally hired craftsmen who came back to work broke, asking for advances or loans to feed their families.

I remembered the old man's story last week, as my honey and I relaxed on a Caribbean island. We were in a cottage without television, phone, cell signal, or any technical diversions. We lived to the rhythm of the day, enjoying books, time together, the view of the ocean and stars, the hikes along the ocean cliffs and in the forests, and walking barefoot on secluded beaches, as well as swimming in the clear and refreshing waters. We were happy and relaxed. We talked about our past, the present, and the future. We wondered if we could spend the rest of (our hopefully long) life in this rhythm. We acknowledged that a year or more ago, we couldn't do this. But now life is different, and we can envision a life at a slower pace, enjoying the simple pleasures.

Our daily happiness should be based on simple criteria, and not on stuff we accumulate. Health, love, shelter, food, and warmth are pretty simple areas that we should look to for our happiness. Everything else is just a potential distraction. Happiness comes from the intangibles in life, the things we can't touch physically. "When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose", Mick Jagger may have sang the secret to happiness long ago.

What makes you happy? Is it things you can touch, or is it things you can only experience?

Super size, or stupor size?

Bigger is better. Big stores bring us big savings by driving down production costs, buying in volume, and passing on the savings to us consumers. Big cars make us safer, and help us merge in traffic. 

Big cruise ships and big airlines provide us with cheaper vacation options, and many destinations. Big fuel provides us with a reliable flow of gas for our automobiles. Big trees provide us shade, protect us from the winter winds, and yield lots of lumber.

There is safety in numbers. In the animal world, we see herds of four legged game staying together. They travel, eat, and sleep with their herd. When predators come, they often defend themselves as a group, or when faced with overwhelming fear, will run in a group to escape the danger. As I often say when I am hiking with friends, I don't have to out run the bear, I just have to out run you. 

Big companies are often thought of as a safe employment option. With so many employees, it is less likely you will be singled out to be downsized. It's the herd mentality, without the bear. If you can make sure you aren't in the back of the pack, you can feel safer in your job. 

When my honey and I raced sailboats, we preferred larger fleets. The same herd mentality applies here. With a large fleet, we could expect a certain number of boats to have equipment failures, make tactical errors, mess up a tack or jibe, or not be hearty in bad weather. We improved our place in the regattas by just showing up and crossing the finish line. In a small fleet, finishing 3rd out of 4 boats sounds bad. Finishing 15th out of 20 sounds much better. 

But is bigger better? Safety in numbers is statistically accurate. You're less likely to be the loser when there are more players. But I've never seen a hungry hawk after it chased a flock of birds. 

Terrorists don't attack sparsely populated areas, they look for density to perpetrate their crimes. They have more targets there.

Large ships have become the favorite target of the pirates. Their size makes them hard to hide and not very maneuverable. 

Big cars are only safe when they are light. Big heavy cars are dangerous not only to the occupant of the car, but also to those around it. 

Big trees fall and crush homes. When was the last time you had a sapling cause heavy damage to your home? 

When big businesses fail, whole divisions of "safe jobs" are sent to the streets for the reporters to take pictures of. Think of Enron, Global Crossing, Merril Lynch, and we saw the Big Three Automakers downsie, along with companies that supported them. 

We've also seen large investment funds disappear. People must have felt very safe adding a hundred thousand dollars to a fund worth $50 billion. Safety in numbers. A small player on a big field. One in a large herd. A small fish in a big pond. This equates to less you have to worry about. 

In a large fund, every investor is represented by numbers. There is an account number, and a balance number. Humanity is removed. No longer is the hundred thousand dollar investment associated with your neighbor Joe, it is a number in a large pool of numbers. A faceless victim, "they should have known better", and "better them than me". 

Look at our government. Approximately 10% of the American workforce is employed by our tax dollars. This represents a tremendous voting bloc, and the dollar amounts are huge. 

How else would a group of people think that spending a trillion and a half dollars for a short term bailout is a good idea? This equated to 10% of our entire economy, and coincidentally, 10% of our existing national debt. 

As the numbers get bigger, the numbers mean less. A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. How can we not fund a billion dollar program when our numeric reference is so big? Trillions? What is that?

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That was one of my Dad's favorite sayings. He usually threw that one out there over the top of the Daily News when a politician took a hit. 

Maybe bigger isn't better? Throw a small rock into a lake. The splash is small, the ripples are low, and they don't last long. Now throw a big rock into the same lake. Note the difference in splash size, the height of the ripples, and how far they travel - they often reverberate, bouncing back and forth across the surface.

Maybe smaller is better. Small is manageable. Small is agile, it can change as needed.  Small is easy to understand, we can get our arms around it. Smaller food servings, smaller waists, smaller health bills.

Small banks, where we know the employees and they know us. Loans would be written based on our ability to pay, not some big algorithm crushing numbers in a big data pool. 

Small is green. Over half of our workforce works for a small company. Small homes, small obligations, and most importantly, small government. This will mean small tax bills.

Small must be the status symbol of our future. We must get back to being small. Smaller is better. 

A framework for individual performance feedback

I was recently asked to participate in defining a new performance management process for a group I work with. In the first couple of meetings, we had a free ranging, and often emotional discussion around what is not working in the current process, and what structure would support the implementation of a good process. I for one find that performance management is often focused on treating everyone the same, when we all know we are each different.

After the first couple of meetings, I began to mull over performance appraisals, and what about them doesn't work. One of my strengths is that I see patterns in most things in life, and use these to identify frameworks. If we can identify and put a name to something, it is much easier for us to address it. So as a recent meeting started, I began to jot some notes about how performance feedback works in the real world. The following table is the draft I presented to the team, and it was accepted. I may make modifications to it, but for now, this is my framework for understanding performance feedback.

In most organizations, there are three types of feedback. Impromptu is immediate. The reason for the feedback is fresh, usually based on an interaction in a meeting or as part of an initiative. Threshold-Driven is based on feedback at intervals during or after a project. This is a triggered event, and can be based on the size, complexity, or duration of a project. It can also be based on a certain number of issues surfaced during a project. Periodic performance feedback is generally used to identify individual performance trends, and is typically set to occur at certain times of the year. It is usually conducted to document performance for the human resources function, and to allow the person being evaluated to agree, rebut, or modify their approach to completing their work in the next rating period.

Source defines how feedback is initiated. Feedback can be unsolicited, meaning that the person receiving the feedback hasn't asked for it. The feedback is coming anyway. This is usually precipitated by an event, and can be positive or constructive. Solicited feedback is when the person being evaluated, their performance manager, or human resources requests feedback.

Feedback is then provided through a Channel. Direct feedback is when the person being evaluated receives the feedback directly from the person providing it, and they have an opportunity to contextualize the feedback and discuss it. Indirect feedback is when a colleague provides feedback to the individual's boss or colleague. This feedback is usually viewed as under-handed when the feedback is derogatory.

The above table is mix-and-match, meaning that feedback can be defined by selecting any one value from each column. Periodic reviews may have a mix of Source and Channel, but each instance of feedback is defined by one value from each column. Love it, hate it, or disagree with me, (in the comments section please) but this is how feedback occurs in an organization. Does your organization differ from this framework?

My most formative professional experience in life is derived from my 23 years of service in the Army Reserve. When I first joined, all performance reviews (periodic) were graded as exemplary. If you received anything less than exemplary, your career was over. In the late '80s, the Army changed how the evaluations were conducted, and after a few review cycles, the process became more equitable, and people could use their evaluations to work on improving their performance. Leaders could use the performance feedback to determine order of merit.

The Army utilizes an After Action Review (AAR) process that is focused on fixing issues that arise during and after missions. These are threshold or event driven feedback processes. In these AARs, issues are addressed in the open, and people who caused the issues learned that it was better to learn from their colleagues in the open, than to have them complain behind your back. Everyone shared in the success or failure of a mission, and as a result, the meetings are very productive. These AARs address issues, not people. But all missions and projects are executed by people, and people learn to change their performance for the good of the team. Many issues raised in these meetings allow units to redefine processes and workflow.

When looking at organizational maturity, my observation is that an immature organization (this has nothing to do with workplace wedgies, it means they don't have stable processes) has primarily impromptu, unsolicited, indirect feedback as their primary performance management system. This supports a dysfunctional culture, and breeds a damaging political climate. If Harry doesn't like what Fred did, Harry goes to Fred's boss Mary to provide the feedback. Fred may or may not ever receive that feedback, and many times if he receives the feedback, he knows that Harry provided it, and workplace trust takes a hit. Or Mary takes the comments as facts, and modifies her view of the Fred (or of Harry), causing Fred to be treated differently, without him knowing why. Without trust, the culture changes, and dysfunctional habits grow exponentially.

I observed a fantastic method for shutting down the impromptu, unsolicited, indirect feedback. Several years ago while managing projects, I was providing impromptu, unsolicited, indirect feedback (okay, I was complaining) to a new department head about a site director from a different office who often monopolized my time. She looked at me thoughtfully, and asked "when you said this to 'name withheld', how did he react?". I was stopped dead in my tracks, and learned that if I couldn't provide feedback directly to the person who needs the feedback, then the problem is mine, not the other person's. I added this to my management toolkit, and have pulled it out many times when confronted by someone complaining about someone else. I've even offered up this tool to others who are facing this challenge. Try it, you will like it.

As an organization matures, it will usually adopt a periodic, solicited, indirect process. A process of this type provides the centralized human resources function with what they perceive as a fair and equitable way to gather and analyze feedback. The data generated is used to create nice colorful bell curves for leadership to place in PowerPoint presentations. Periodic feedback is great, but feedback must be timely to be effective. Also, in order for people to maintain anonymity, much of the feedback lacks context. If the feedback lacks context, it is generally not actionable.

Organizations which implement only periodic performance feedback systems may have a hard time getting people to learn from the experience, and can create morale issues. Periodic reviews allow people to save up their constructive criticism for a point in time, and by saving it up, they deprive the person being evaluated of the opportunity to improve their performance when the issue occurs. As the only mechanism for feedback, the periodic review falls short in many areas. This can be said of utilizing any one performance feedback system as the only system.

It is my strong belief that the best way to improve performance is to encourage a culture that appreciates impromptu, unsolicited, direct feedback as its primary way for a person to evolve in their role. To implement this, both the person providing feedback, and the receiver must leave their egos out of the discussion. The feedback must be impersonal, factual, and clearly state the impact the issue had on the team. The person receiving this must appreciate that the person providing the feedback is simply trying to improve processes, or address an issue, and it isn't personal. If they disagree with the feedback, they must be capable of disagreeing without damaging trust (see "P.S." at the bottom).

As humans, we should have the opportunity and desire to continuously improve. This is where the direct conversations with colleagues becomes valuable. Adding periodic reviews captures performance trends, and should highlight areas of strength, and areas of improvement - that the person is already aware of from the direct conversations with their colleagues.

Moving to an open environment where people are willing to have the difficult conversations isn't an easy cultural shift. But as I stated up front in this post, once we can put a name to something, addressing it becomes much easier. What is your preferred method of receiving feedback? What is the worst way you received feedback?

P.S. - None of the above addresses what is probably the most challenging issue to address in performance feedback systems, which is the quality of the comments in a review. I will address quality of the feedback in a future blog.

A quick look at the bird feeders while getting a coffee refill

The European Starlings came in like hoodlums, decked out in their speckled feathers. They chased a few birds off as they ungracefully landed on the feeder pole. Then a Blue Jay landed on a feeder, shook the pole, and the Starlings decided to go elsewhere. 

Observation date:     2/1/11
Number of species:     8

Blue Jay     3
Black-capped Chickadee     1
Tufted Titmouse     2
European Starling     3
Dark-eyed Junco     6
Northern Cardinal     3
American Goldfinch     1
House Sparrow     20

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

Luck would have it

"Good luck!" What does that mean? Is the person doubting my talents, and hoping my expectations are met by some completely random occurrence? Do they think my life is such shambles that without luck, I am screwed? Why do I want luck?

What is luck? When someone wins a lottery, they are referred to as "lucky". A lottery doesn't require luck, it requires randomness, and a poor understanding of math. A lottery is a tax on people who slept through math class. Sometimes bad luck is mistaken as a simple case of being real stupid.

So why do some people have all the "luck", while others don't? Think of the people in your life who you consider lucky. Then consider why you think they are lucky. It is usually based on the person's position in life - their family stability, happiness, career, home, and activities. These attributes that make you think they are "lucky" may not have any basis in luck, and they are rarely tied to the abundance of money.

When you start peeling the layers of these people, you will probably see that these "lucky" people have a plan with goals, focus on the plan, put effort into attaining their goals, and make sound rational decisions. As a result, they have an optimistic view of the future, where they have a clear vision of what they want the future to look like. They continuously assess their life plan, and adjust it as needed.

We started to get lucky about 10 years ago. We sat down and discussed and documented what we wanted retirement to look like. We then talked about where we wanted to be in 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, and 1 year. This discussion wasn't easy, and required us to redo our long term plans as we faced received the cold slap of the short term realities. Even though it wasn't an easy discussion, the outcome of the meetings were that we had more confidence in our future. So the planning went beyond just counting our money, it forced us to ponder our future, and the fact that neither of us would get out of this world alive.

Since that first planning session, we have revisited our plan annually. We change it every time we review it. It is the process of this planning that has provided us the focus to achieve our goals. Our lives have improved dramatically since we started this process.

There are no guarantees in life, our planning could all fall apart tomorrow. But the peace of mind we have NOW, is the value of the planning process. Don't let life sneak up on you, and don't trust in luck alone. Luck backed up by a plan will have a much better likelihood of providing you with a better life than just luck alone.

So go forth and plan, and good luck! Oh, I mean good planning!