Goals, questions, slow productivity, and more!
RWL #383
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! It was unseasonably warm today, but this weekend we kept the fire roaring all day. I have to confess, I’m not quite ready for it to get warm yet. I guess that’s a good thing because we’re getting an arctic blast tonight. And it doesn’t really get warm until June anyway. So plenty more time to sit by the cozy fire in the LHH.
Internship placements continue at a good pace. My 17th (of 24) kid received word she had been selected for an internship today, so seven to go. I feel good about most of them - it should just take a few more days for most of them to hear. But it’s always the last couple that are hard. The problem, as usual, is I have a mismatch of where the opportunities are and where the kids live. But three weeks till spring break - I’m still hopeful I will hit my goal of 100% placed by the time they go out on break.
The links below are some of the things I have been thinking about this week. For personal reasons, I’ve been especially impacted by the Honestly interview with Shrier. But I have been sitting with a couple of things on accomplishing goals. Am I really accomplishing all that I should be? Probably not. That’s what draws me to these articles. A few other things for you to check out.
As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: HBR, 5 Ways to Set More Achievable Goals
https://hbr.org/2022/08/5-ways-to-set-more-achievable-goals
Why: You know I’m always trying to think about how to improve my goals. If you don’t have goals, you will get somewhere because we are all going somewhere, but you won’t have chosen where the somewhere is. You will just get there, and, as those philosophers The Talking Heads once said,
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
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What: EconLib, Is Arabia the New America?
https://www.econlib.org/is-arabia-the-new-america/
Why: I’m a long-time fan of Scott Sumner, an economist who mostly writes about macro policy, but occasionally comments on social issues. In this article he makes a contrarian argument that maybe the Arabian Gulf countries are doing a better job of managing their migration and international labor markets. From the article:
An American or a European might smugly assume that we don’t have the bad working conditions that they’ve read about in the Gulf. But why is that? Isn’t that largely because we’ve built barriers to stop tens of millions of desperately poor people from reaching our countries? For every story of a Filipino worker being abused in the Gulf, there are a dozen stories of migrants being robbed, raped or drowned while attempting to reach the US or Europe. These tragedies exist because desperately poor people are willing to put up with things that most of us cannot even imagine, in order to have a shot at a better life.
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Watch
What: Connor Neill, Powerful Coaching Questions: 6 Types of Questions that Great Coaches use (7 min)
Why: I always appreciate Neill’s advice. His six questions provide a good framework for thinking about what you need to do to achieve your goals.
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Listen
What: Honestly with Bari Weiss, Why the Kids Aren't Alright (85 min)
Why: Here’s a startling set of statistics:
American kids are the freest, most privileged kids in all of history. They are also the saddest, most anxious, depressed, and medicated generation on record. Nearly a third of teen girls say they have seriously considered suicide. For boys, that number is an alarming 14 percent.
My wife and I were always baffled by the clinical language our kids used - social anxiety, OCD, ADHD, etc. They and their friends were constantly talking about their mental health diagnoses - some they had received from clinicians, some they were just giving each other as street psychologists. My wife and I constantly asked ourselves what has changed? According to the author, Abigail Shrier, what has changed is our engagement with the mental health field. We medicalize more behavior that used to be considered normal. But we are letting mental health practitioners dictate more of what is normal across society. Our kids have been leaning into their diagnoses, even if when we were kids, that behavior would have just been considered normal.
Perhaps the most significant idea I came away from this pod with was the idea that talk therapy could have iatrogenic harm. Iatrogenic harm is when the medical provider hurts the patient. I had never really thought about the idea that therapy done wrong could be harmful. I always just assumed at best talk therapy could be helpful, and at worst it would just be a waste of time. But Shrier argues for iatrogenic harm, and our leaning into medicalizing normal has done real damage to a generation of kids.
Even if you don’t agree, this is worth a listen. I just received my copy of her new book, Bad Therapy, and intend to read it shortly. I will let you know if I think it is worthwhile.
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What: The Journal, Fentanyl Is Bad. ‘Tranq’ Might Be Worse. (19 min)
Why: What in the name of all that is holy:
The animal tranquilizer xylazine, also known as “tranq,” is finding its way into opioid supplies and wreaking havoc all over the country. It’s rotting people’s flesh, leading to amputations and complicating drug treatment.
This is truly horrifying. As if the opioid epidemic wasn’t bad enough.
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What: Tim Ferriss Show, Cal Newport — How to Embrace Slow Productivity, Build a Deep Life, Achieve Mastery, and Defend Your Time (139 min)
Why: An interesting exploration of how to be more productive. It made me feel guilty about how unorganized and unfocused I am. I could achieve more of my goals if I could free myself from more distractions. I kind of like my distractions. Still, some thoughts about what is important if we are to lead a worthy life.