RWL Newsletter #85
So there I was, dropping off my youngest daughter at college yesterday morning. Wow. Life goes by so fast. She'll be studying photography at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. We toured a couple of art schools and I have to say, they are all make me think of Hogwarts. Every room is filled to bursting with fun things to play with and explore. Picture above is of their letter press room where you can use early 20th century technology to make prints. Dropping her off marked the next stage in her life, and ours. No more kids living at home! Of course today the freshman moved in to UNH, and classes start Monday. So there is not much time to enjoy empty nesting.
Some good stuff this week that I think you will enjoy: narrative as a creative process, learning to suck, and asking for help. Sounds like it all goes together? Probably in some abstract way. Enjoy!
Read
What: The Atlantic, Life's Stories
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/08/life-stories-narrative-psychology-redemption-mental-health/400796/
Why: One of the lectures I attended during my recent trip to the Academy of Management was with Kathy Kram (the godmother of mentoring in the workplace). Kathy is now retired from teaching, but still doing research. She's part of a team looking at our understanding of retirement. I bring this up because a conversation I had with my colleague VP during an interactive part of the lecture was about personal narrative. I was saying to VP that I think we all have internal narrators that tell us our life story in an internal film noir voice-over kind of way, and that some of us (and by us, I meant people like me) have particularly loud narrators that really have to be beat down before you realize that your internal narrative no longer matches your lived reality (think James Joyce's The Dead in The Dubliners). So on my way home I came across this article in the Atlantic that talks about the importance of our internal narratives and I knew I had to share it. From the article: "This narrative becomes a form of identity, in which the things someone chooses to include in the story, and the way she tells it, can both reflect and shape who she is. A life story doesn’t just say what happened, it says why it was important, what it means for who the person is, for who they’ll become, and for what happens next."
Watch
What: Peter McKinnon, It's OK if you Suck (3 minutes)
https://youtu.be/YarKjguI94w
Why: I am not a perfectionist. I try a lot of stuff. Most of it doesn't work out. But trying a lot of stuff is the key to innovation. The price is accepting a lot of failure. But sometimes you get a big win, and you're like "Yay!" Now the key to this approach I learned from Nassim Taleb's book, Antifragile. The approach goes like this: take lots of small chances that have a small cost of failure, but have big potential upsides. It's kind of like playing the lotto, but hopefully with better odds. Most of the time you lose, but you don't need to win a lot because the wins are big (or just cool). So this little video kind of goes along with that philosophy. Try something new all the time. Make it low cost, so that if you suck, it doesn't mean total failure. It just means it's time to move on to the next project, and you will have learned something in the meantime.
Listen
What: HBR Ideacast, Getting People to Help You (22 minutes)
https://hbr.org/ideacast/2018/06/getting-people-to-help-you.html
Why: I ask for help a lot. Early in my career, I was afraid to ask for help, and I found myself laboring away in the dark, afraid people would figure out that I didn't know what I was doing. If I could go back in time to my 22 year old self, the biggest thing I would say is, "Newsflash - they all already know you don't know what you are doing. What they are wondering is why you think they don't know." These days I ask for a lot more help. Most of the time, people are honored to be asked. But I still find myself getting shut down sometimes, so I wonder if I'm doing something wrong. This podcast has a nice discussion about how to go about asking for help.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line by e-mail, or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
Also, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
Have a great weekend and do amazing things!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." - Henry David Thoreau