We often catch “public people” like celebrities or politicians in breaches of ethics that seem absurd. Absurd for two reasons: not only because the actual behavior is atrocious, but because it seems like it should be obvious that it’s atrocious.

You’ve seen this happen, I’m sure. A public figure gets caught doing something horrible, but the manner in which they got caught is because they just talked about it openly to people or made no attempt to hide it (or at least, no attempt that would pass even the most basic level of investigation).

Why does this happen? Is it that some people are so horrible that they flaunt the most basic moral rules with utter disregard?

That might be a small percentage, but I think there’s a different force at play. I think the “obviousness” of ethical rules relies on a certain kind of life, and that life gets wildly distorted when you reach the outer fringes of publicity. In other words, I think some people just enter a world that’s so weird, and stay in it for so long, that the basic ethical rules stop being obvious.

A lot of “ethics” is us mostly trying to figure out how to live in a society in which we have relatively comparable (even if not actually equal) levels of power and authority with the people around us. In its most basic form, for example, you learn as a kid not to hit people primarily because you don’t want to be hit, and anyone you throw a punch at could throw one back. So we try to figure out the rules that keep us all safe and happy.

But imagine your life was such that it was actually impossible for anyone to hit you? For a really long time? And any time you even accidentally hurt someone, no one ever called you on it? And when other people in your world hit people, nothing bad happened to them? How long might it be before it was no longer obvious to you that you shouldn’t hit someone?

So then you might punch someone in the face and not try to excuse yourself or cover it up, not because you’re flaunting the basic rules of an ethical society, but because you don’t actually realize what those rules are.

The broader lesson here is to be very aware of how our circumstances can affect what we view as correct moral behavior. Be aware of your own biases – and the biases of others. Don’t let your weird world go to your head – or poison your heart.

I am strongly, massively in favor of emotional regulation. I think it’s the ultimate skill; I think pretty much everything else flows from it. I think it’s one of the most important lessons to teach children; in fact, it’s so important that if it’s the only thing you teach you’re probably a great parent. I think many parents don’t teach it, and as a result lots of adults don’t know it, so it’s good for everyone.

Because of this stance, many people who interact with me regularly think that I’m anti-emotion; that I’m cold or repressed because I don’t fly off the handle even when things upset me. But nothing could be further from the truth. I think our emotions are incredible; they bring us the joy that makes life worth living. I don’t think we survive despite them; I think we thrive because of them.

But I want you to imagine something for a moment. Imagine a piano, but someone has tampered with it. They’ve gone inside and they’ve taken every string and moved it, so that instead of all 88 being in order they’re essentially random. There’s no correlation between which key you hit and what sound gets made. And every other day or so, this prankster goes inside while you’re sleeping and moves them around again.

No matter how carefully you pressed the correct keys, the piano would never make the sounds you wanted. The beautiful melodies would be replaced by discord.

Emotional regulation isn’t pulling out the strings entirely. It’s putting them back in the right order so that the actions we take produce incredible music, instead of cacophony.

It means aligning our actions and the emotions we want, and understanding how our emotions drive the next action we take. It’s putting ourselves in harmony so that we can enjoy our emotions, rather than letting them torture us until we run from them. It’s turning noise into rapture.

Like playing piano, it takes practice. Like the most beautiful song, it’s worth the effort.

The best time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished is before you get to work on it in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe in reflection, even if I’m not great at it. But if you’re trying to specifically reflect as a learning exercise, then it’s not worth very much unless you’re comparing it to a prediction. Remember the scientific method? First you form a hypothesis, then you experiment. If you experiment first, you’re exposing yourself to all sorts of bias.

So if you’ve just accomplished something and you want to reflect on how you did – don’t. You don’t have a counterfactual, you’ll attribute to skill what might be luck, and you won’t know how to repeat it yet. Instead, form a hypothesis about how you might do it again – and how you might repeatable-ize it. Then when you’re done, you’ll have something to compare it to, and your reflection will be worth far more.

You cannot change your nature. You can only change your actions, but your actions can change your nature.

If you find yourself saying “I wish I was [insert quality here]…” Stop. Immediately ask yourself the question: “What do people with that quality actually do?”

Commit then to doing that thing, over and over until it becomes habit. Only then will your nature change.

Each individual bad thing I did in my youth was probably a net negative, yet taken together my life of mischief yielded incredible superpowers as an adult. I wonder about this.

Once I jumped off a roof and broke one of my fingers. Rather than get in trouble, I set it myself. I got lucky that it was a clean break and wasn’t much trouble, but it certainly could have been a more severe injury. I don’t even recall now what I did that night (I was sneaking out), so surely it can’t have been – individually – worth the trouble. But the additional knowledge of my own capabilities was valuable, and I wouldn’t want to give it up.

Every piece of mischief in our lives is an extra thread in the net. We have to have something to fall into even as we try to do good – and mischief makes friends, too. Mischief gets you out of ruts.

Go get up to something.

I like to operate in dynamic, flexible environments. When I’m working, I want to know that the rules that surround me have some give, that I’m able to shape my environment to suit my needs. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

If your environment is stone, then nothing can be changed. You can’t easily make upgrades (or at all, perhaps). You can’t change when new information becomes available. You can’t adapt. You have to do certain things because “they’ve always been done that way,” or even because “everyone else does them that way” (ugh, barf). You don’t want a stone environment; you want clay.

But if you go too far in the other direction, you don’t get clay – you get water. Clay is helpful because it’s flexible and moldable, but can hold its shape when you need it to. Water won’t hold any shape you give it. A “water” environment is one with so few rules or so little structure that nothing can get done. It’s having no tools, no support, no direction.

You want to ask questions early about an environment to determine whether it’s a Water, Clay, or Stone environment – especially before you commit to engaging there. If no one seems to be able to give you a specific answer about anything, it’s a Water environment. If the answers you get are rigid, inflexible, and do not invite your input, then it’s a Stone environment.

But responses like:

“This is how we generally do things, and these are the tools we use. We have a few different options depending on the specific challenge, and I’m curious to hear what you’d like to see added to that list.”

…are great indicators that the environment is a Clay one, and you can shape it to your needs.

A little over a month ago I hit the 4-year anniversary of this blog and just… missed it.

Glossed over. Completely forgot. Didn’t realize it until today, nearly a month later.

At some point in your life, there was a goal that seemed so impossible, but you gave your everything and accomplished it. Now, you do that thing without even realizing you’re doing it.

Growth is good, and recognizing that you’re playing on a bigger field is grand. But go back and remember the magic, too. Don’t let the fact that you’ve outgrown a milestone make you forget about milestones at all.

You have miles to go before you sleep.

I had a somewhat startling realization today – reading has become Type II Fun for me.

I used to thoroughly enjoy reading. It was intensely pleasurable, in and of itself. I could spend hours and hours lost in books.

Now, I read voraciously – but I’ve realized I don’t actually enjoy it. At least, not directly. It’s more of a workout than a leisure cruise. And “a workout” is a great analogy, because I also don’t like working out while I’m doing it, but love it as soon as I’m done.

I want the information in my head, in the same way I want the muscles on my body.

As soon as I realized that, a tectonic shift happened in my brain. Trying to work out and getting frustrated because you don’t enjoy it is the wrong way to view things. If you love lifting weights, more power to you – but even if you don’t love it, exercise is important. You have to learn to love the result and just be neutral on the input. Lots of things are like that.

Lately, I’d been frustrated because I wasn’t “falling into” books the way I used to when I was a teenager. But pretty much nothing in my life is as it was then, so that’s a silly thing to be frustrated about. Instead, I just need to acknowledge that it’s a healthy chore and set the time that way, instead of waiting for my desire to read to catch up to my desire to have read.

My father had a steadfast principle for selecting who he’d do business with: there needed to be someone he could physically choke if it was warranted.

It’s not that he’d ever do such a thing (…I think). It’s the principle that in order to do business with someone, it’s a good idea to have:

1. Proximity
2. Identity
3. Incentive

In order to do business, my father wanted to know that there was an identifiable person who was responsible for his business, that person was reachable, and that individual was personally incentivized to keep my dad happy.

Consider doing business with a company half a world away. You don’t have one specific account manager; you don’t know anyone’s name and individual transactions are handled by whoever picks up the phone. If you’re unhappy with something, no one individual is in danger of being written up or fired, and there’s nothing except their word to hold them accountable for fulfilling their promises.

Does this sound like an ideal business relationship to you? Would you feel confident doing business this way?

If you put all that together, having an identified “choke target” puts all that together. Hence, the general rule.

Keep it in mind. It’s not that you ever would go choke someone for screwing you over in business… but the threat sure keeps people honest!

Let’s say you come to a wall, blocking your path. There’s a little system, a checklist of sorts, that you can go through.

• Step 1: Try to climb the wall. If you fail to get over, go to step 2.
• Step 2: Go a different way. If you don’t want to go a different way, go to step 1.

Many people skip one of those steps. They try to scale the wall again and again and again, failing and getting frustrated and letting the failure begin to infest them with doubt and anguish. Or, they see a wall and don’t even attempt to climb it, they just immediately go a different way, forever taking the path of least resistance.

If you want to be happy, you must engage with that cycle.

First, try to overcome the obstacle. You might do so on the first attempt! But if you don’t, the cost of that path has now increased. Any time a cost changes, revisiting your desire for the objective is worthwhile. You can do that by choosing a different goal, and then gut-checking yourself. Are you just as happy with your new goal, or are you immediately thinking “Okay, I’m not quite ready to give up on Plan A just yet?”

If you’re not, then go back to the wall for another try.

If you don’t get over the obstacle again, then the cost has increased further, and so you rinse and repeat.

Not every goal is ultimately going to be worth the price you’d have to pay to get it, but quitting before you’ve even tried is a recipe for an unhappy life. This is the way to balance it – try to climb, try to run, and repeat until one wins out. But give each their due – make them take turns.