by Denko on December 31, 2009
Lots of New Year’s resolutions posts and tweets out there. As a serial resolver, I looked over the landscape and compiled this long, redundant and often contradictory list of ways to keep your resolutions. Gretchen Rubin’s are the most thoughtful, and with her book, charts, groups and site, she’s also probably more responsible for more resolutions being kept than anyone out there.
1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
2. One step at a time.
3. Ask yourself: Am I being overoptimistic?
4. Can it be measured?
5. Schedule multiple resolutions over time.
7. Make changes that feel good.
8. Allow for slipping and sliding.
9. Consider 17 days in a row a success.
10. Write it down.
11. Go public. Tell others.
12. Ask: “What would make me happier?” More of something good, less of something bad.
13. Keep it concrete, not abstract.
14. Follow the one-minute rule.
15. Ask: “Am I starting small enough?” Underestimate, don’t overestimate.
16. What is the smallest action you can take in the direction of the resolution?
17. Frame your resolution in concrete actions.
18. Keep a chart
19. Carry resolutions with you. Review. Score. Constantly.
20. Join a group.
21. Work towards something big.
22. Think small. Look close to home for ways to improve and grow.
23. Ask for help.
24. Consider making only pleasant resolutions.
25. Consider giving up a resolution.
26. Keep the resolution every day. It’s easier to do something daily than every few days.
27. Set a deadline, but don’t give up if something interferes with your deadline.
28. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Clean your desk, not the whole house.
29. Keep the list short.
30. If you falter, let it go and try again,
31. Stay humble. Overestimating resolve leads to failure.
32. Remove temptations.
33. Post reminders everywhere.
34. Reward yourself for successes.
35. Recalibrate resolutions when conditions change.
36. Choose resolutions carefully (for instance, those with the greatest impact).
37. Create bite-sized portions.
38. Create a time-frame and use it to plot progress and measure success.
39. Take notes.
40. Take responsibility. Put yourself in charge.
41. Keep goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time based (SMART).
42. Remind yourself of the benefits of achieving your goals.
43. Try just one resolution.
44. Try a new resolution rather than revisiting an old, failed resolution.
45. Make the resolution a reflection of you, not the crowd.
by Denko on December 29, 2009
Searches are cyclical. Just type words like “cupid” or “chocolate” into Google Trends and watch the spikes spring up every year around February 14. “Earnings” yields quarterly peaks, and the word “bored” – which for some reason is most popular in Australia – jumps every year around Christmas.
So I put in the word “marathon.” No particular marathon – just the word. And while the New York Marathon certainly shows up every November (sometimes as a double-peak with Chicago), it’s nothing compared to Boston in April – despite the fact that Boston has fewer participants because (1) you have to qualify to run and (2) it’s not a particularly fast or easy course.
What to conclude? Boston attracts more popular interest. And marathons like Berlin and London aren’t even registering in the public consciousness.
by Denko on December 5, 2009
When one guy takes up three seats because he can’t keep his legs together, it’s your duty to push back. If he’s obese, that’s one thing – he probably feels like a misfit, and he can’t get any smaller. But when he’s small or skinny, that’s different. One man, one seat.
That’s the rule. And you’re the enforcer.
On Thursday I put this belief to the test when sitting next to an elderly man at the opening of a play. The theater was filling up, and his left leg was splayed all over the last seat in the row. I asked if the seat was taken, sat down, put my leg up against his and kept it there in a polite but insistent way. There was a silent struggle for a minute or two until he withdrew to his own territory. He intruded a couple of times during the first act, but I stood my ground. After the intermission my wife and I moved to better seats when the folks in front of us left.
After the play I mentioned this epic struggle to my wife. And she said, “Did you notice that you were sitting next to Ian McKellen?” I looked up and there he was, coming out of the theater. Gandolf. Magneto. The new Number Two. I felt a chill. Even without his staff, he could have summoned lightning with a single thought. Thank God it wasn’t Saruman or Professor Xavier who was trying to take up two seats. I wouldn’t be here to write this.
by Denko on November 30, 2009
He’s Walter Zable, a former player for the New York Giants, and you can see him way out on the right tail of the gorgeous normal distribution below. Along the horizontal axis are the ages of all of the Russell 3,000 CEOs – youngest is 31, oldest 94 – and the vertical axis shows how many CEOs there are for each age.
Walter’s an anomaly in ways other than his age. As you might guess, he started the company that he runs (Cubic Corp), still owns a big piece of it, and won’t let go until the keys to the executive washroom are pried from his cold dead hands.
Google Visualization API Sample
Meanwhile, the youngest CEO, 31-year-old Iranian-born Sardar Biglari, is a turnaround investor who started his first company at 14 for $15,000 and sold it at 22 for over $1m. Biglari looks for strong brands that have lost their way (indolent boards, inefficient operations and a general lack of direction). His first project was Friendly’s Ice Cream, which worked out well; now he’s running Steak n’ Shake, a magnet for the folks you see on the “People of Wal-Mart” site.
It’s hard not to like a CEO who, a la Warren Buffet, quotes from John Maynard Keynes, Isaiah Berlin and Charles Darwin in his most recent letter to shareholders. And Sadar is like Warren in another way: He has used the cashflow from Steak ‘n Shake to buy a 10% stake in a much larger firm, Fremont Michigain Insurance.
The median age of CEOs is 59. Thank goodness I still have a few years left to climb through the last 10 layers of management.
by Denko on November 11, 2009
How is today different from all other days? This morning the scale was 30 pounds below what it was in August. Nobody has noticed that I look like a stalk of bamboo. And whether the weight will stay off, I don’t know. Still, 30 pounds in 80 days – not bad.
I owe it all to public humiliation. Not that anyone reads this blog. But the act of weighing, tracking and displaying has psychological power. Every few days I input my weight into a Google spreadsheet and update the annotated timeline. When it goes down, the world smiles. When it goes up, imaginary fingers wag. The result has been surprisingly effective.
Until my mid-40s, I didn’t have to work to get skinny. My weight would creep up to 210 or 215 pounds. I’d go out and start running again. Make a token sacrifice like quitting soft drinks. Soon I’d be back to the low 180s again, with the belt a couple of notches tighter.
But that era is over. It became impossible to burn enough calories to offset those Coca-Colas and Dipsy Doodles, and I’m too old (and too heavy) to run even 30 miles a week without getting injured.
Here are the rules that worked for me.
The Good Stuff
- Breakfast is free. Eat a good one. No Cinnabon, but don’t worry about oatmeal, bacon, eggs and buttered toast.
- There’s nothing wrong with half-and-half in your coffee. Or heavy cream, for that matter.
- Know what’s nice before bed? A big spoon of peanut butter.
Keeping Track
- Weigh yourself every day at the same time. (Cheating is OK. Just be consistent about it.)
- Make a chart. Look at it. Obsessively.
- If you weigh less than the day before, no need to do anything. You’re golden.
- If you weigh more, keep that thought in the back of your mind during the day. Be careful about portions. Walk home from work. Spend more time hungry than full.
Portions
- Eat a little, see how you feel, then eat a little more. No seconds without a wait.
- Eat until you’re 80% full. Don’t eat again until you’re 80% empty.
Eating and Avoiding
- Eat: Oatmeal, apples, salads, diet soda, rice, any kind of meat, poultry or fish.
- Avoid: Potatoes, sodas, desserts, anything with Bisquick.
Living in Manhattan requires a good bit of walking. I took a two-day bike trip, a few long walks and short runs, and had to fast for a day before a colonoscopy. But that’s pretty much it. Once I got momentum, it wasn’t that hard.
One habit I had to break: scarfing down cereal and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches late at night. The solution: that heaping tablespoon of peanut butter before bedtime.
But the key to the change was measuring, displaying and reacting. I could have used a spreadsheet, but the visualization gadget was more fun. And the results weren’t bad at all.
by Denko on October 11, 2009
When I was in junior high school my father got very excited about buying this house, which was on the market for about $30,000. It was part of the plantation called Elizabeth’s Delight, on the site of a land grant dating from the late 1600s (though the house was built around 1850, replacing a log structure dating from the Revolutionary War). The house is about a hundred feet inside the Montgomery County line, but the landholdings extended in all directions to take in parts of DC, the University of Maryland, Takoma Park and Silver Spring.
The house is now divided into apartments, much of the yard is a parking lot, all around are overcrowded duplexes packed with illegal immigrants, and the nearby streets are full of MS-13 gang activity. It’s a weird feeling to walk along Ruatan Street and see a plantation house with a chapel, once surrounded by tobacco fields, now part of a vast suburban slum.
by Denko on September 28, 2009
Look for the outliers – high growth, low risk.
by Denko on January 11, 2009
A year or so ago my son and I were watching a History Channel show on how researchers had 
reconstructed the original topography of Manhattan, before developers flattened most of the hills south of 96th Street. One segment focused on a couple of geographers who used GPS to find original markers from the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which laid out the dreary grid that defines the island north of 14th Street. The markers – iron bolts sunk into the ground at each planned street intersection – would have been uprooted where streets were built, but might still survive in Central Park.
I went to look at a marker they found, couldn’t find it, and ended up contacting Reuben Rose-Redwood, who teaches geography at Texas A&M and was featured in the History Channel show. Reuben couldn’t have been kinder; he answered:
“As for finding the iron bolt, I actually sometimes get lost looking for the bolt myself! So, my best advice is to look on GoogleMaps for the intersection of what would have been 65th Street and Sixth Avenue.”
After a bit of climbing around the rocks just off the 66th Street Transverse, I found it snapped this picture with my cell phone. The bolt is sunk deeply into the Manhattan schist, which is the only reason it survived almost 200 years.
Where there’s one marker, could there be more? Probably not. After all, I had a hard time finding it even when I knew where it was. The professionals know exactly where the markers should be, and this is the only one they’ve found. Says Reuben:
188 survey bolt
“We’ve already looked through Central Park and Marcus Garvey with GPS and Randel’s survey notes in hand. Based on his field notes, we know where all of the bolts should be. We’ve gone to all the locations and can’t seem to find any others (which may be underground or destroyed).”
But there’s hope. What about Morningside Park or an eastern sliver of Riverside Park? It looks like the original grid included parts of both of them. If anyone has a GPS unit and wants to go looking for more bolts, leave a message in the comments.
by Denko on October 21, 2008
I see on Google Analytics that my bounce rate is about 80%, which means that 80% of the people who arrive on this page immediately leave. I think I know the reason: They’ve all come to see the only post that has ever gotten much traffic, Barack Obama Embellishes His Resume. If that’s what you’re here for, click on the link and time-travel back to 2005, when the post first appeared. Or you can just skip the post and drop your hate mail directly into the comments.
If you look at the pingbacks, you’ll see that the post has been picked up by Obama-haters. That’s certainly not what I intended. If I had worked with John McCain, I would have been happy to talk about his embellishments. I’m sure every politician has them. And whether you call him “the one” or “that one”, it’s a fact that Barack is a politician (albeit a good one) – something that we’ll all understand when inflated expectations deflate, a year or so down the road.
Where I live In New York City, Barack Obama will win close to 100% of the vote, including the votes of my wife and all of my neighbors, co-workers and friends. He may win my vote, too. The Republicans certainly don’t deserve to be re-elected, and Obama has a brain trust that includes many people I admire. Perhaps it’s not delusional to think that he’ll govern from someplace closer to the center. We’ll see. Until that moment in the election booth, I remain undecided.
by Denko on July 31, 2008
Psychologists and political scientists tell us that extremists are happier than moderates. Maybe certainty makes people happy, while a life of questioning brings misery. But what about the certainty that the world is headed for disaster? Are people with “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention” bumper stickers happier than the rest of us?
I doubt it. How about “If you’re not grateful, you’re not paying attention“?
by Denko on November 8, 2007
She doesn’t look blackish. In fact, she’s a blond. Her maternal grandparents emigrated from Sweden, where she still has a passel of second cousins.
But it turns out that her grandmother, Jane Helm of Drake, Missouri, was passing all her life. And she carried the secret to her deathbed.
Suddenly it all made sense. The face powder. The parasol. The elbow-length gloves. The high-necked dresses. It wasn’t Victorian formality carried into the 20th century. It was a cover-up.
The evidence of Jane’s ancestry comes from two sources: Census records and a mitochondrial DNA test.
Jane Helm had a brother – my wife’s great-uncle. Born April 4, 1893. Strangled by the umbilical cord. The mother’s “nativity” is Negro. The son’s race is black.
We don’t have the birth certificate for Jane. But we know that the mtDNA test, which traces ancestry through the mother’s line, lists L-type haplogroups, which are typical of West Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique.
Jane Helm’s father came from Switzerland to America, bought a farm in rural Missouri after the Civil War and married a black woman. I imagine that only a foreigner would have done it. Southern Missouri is still the South, even today.
The ironic part is that Jane’s living children, even after seeing the mtDNA results and the Census records, won’t accept her heritage. They talk about the “Mohawk” in the family – a phrase that Southerners tell me is a codeword.
by Denko on November 7, 2007
by Denko on November 7, 2007
What comes to mind when you think of the Democratic presidential candidates? Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd haven’t been pegged yet, as far as I know. But here’s my list for the rest:
- Edwards’s $400 haircut and 28,000 square foot home
- Obama’s palmed cigarette
- Biden’s plagiarism
- Kucinich’s UFO sighting
- There are so many possibilities for Hillary that it’s difficult to choose. Go way back to commodity trading (when I realized that I could never trust her) or recently, when she learned to move her mouth without saying anything.
I’ll say one thing for Hillary: She’s managed to cloud the air so much that it’s next to impossible impossible to reduce her to a single word or phrase.
I’ll do the Republicans next.
by Denko on November 2, 2007
From Will Fitzgerald’s blog at the NY Times: The number of words spoken at the last Democratic ebate correlates precisely with each candidate’s poll numbers. Hillary is on top (25% of the words) and Joe Biden at the bottom (7% of the words).
The exception is Chris Dodd, who talked himself within shouting distance of John Edwards despite being stuck at half a percent in the latest Zogby poll.
by Denko on November 2, 2007
From Statistical Modeling and Social Science: Rich people in red states tend to vote Republican. But in blue states there’s no strong link between income and party affiliation. The well-off are no more likely than anyone else to embrace the elephant.
This blog is an aspirational read for me, since the statistics are usually over my head. But when these guys – Gelman, Yajima and the Slovenian hunk Jakulin – get hold of real data, it’s always interesting.
by Denko on November 1, 2007
Popular bloggers may disable the comment function or delete the missives of their attackers. Not me. I feel like a kid so starved for attention that he’s grateful for any notice, no matter how negative. And the surprising thing is – for someone as thin-skinned as I imagine myself to be – that there’s a lot to agree with, even among those critical of the “memories of Obama” post.
To Peter, who said “I read envy in the whole article!”: You’re not the first person to say that.
To KL Moore, aka Voice of Reason: I hope you got all the anger out of your system. Sincerely, Cool White Guy.
To Knemon: Maybe not everyone used drugs. But I’ll bet every presidential candidate – OK, maybe not Guiliani – has gotten high. Barack is the only one with the guts to admit it.
To Ksun: You’re right – race shouldn’t matter. But we all know that it does. Race has a lot to do with what we hear and how we judge it. And a guy like Obama – with one foot in Kansas and the other in Kenya – can say things to both blacks and whites without being accused of racism. Even if he does embellish his resume.
Finally to all the Business International people who commented: Thanks. I remember all of you fondly. Let’s get together on LinkedIn when Jeanne Reynolds sets up the Business International alumni group.
