The Price is Wrong. Or, Ego is Never On Your Side

The Price is Wrong

Last week, I published an analysis of spinning the wheel on The Price is Right.  Even if my original assumption was correct, there are still mistakes in my analysis.  However, the logic in my original assumption was not sound.  Here was my assumption last week:

If the probability that you will not bust on the next spin exceeds the probability that you will win by staying where you are at, then you should spin again. 

 This was incorrect. Instead, the assumption and logic should have been as follows:

If the probability that you will not bust on another spin AND you end up winning exceeds the probability that you will win by staying where you are at, then you should spin again.  

Under this assumption, the calculations are more difficult, but doable.

Ego is the Enemy

I'm currently reading Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. This fits perfectly with what I was trying to accomplish with the last few posts.

When I posted about how to escape from prison, I had thought about that problem all week, bouncing ideas with a colleague who checked my work and kept me in line.  When I finally stumbled upon the solution, he confirmed it worked before I wrote it out.  In other words, I was able to keep my ego in check.

Now, guess what happened with the post about the Price is Right?  I didn't confirm with my colleague, and get a second opinion.  I was confident in my answer and let my ego take control.  My ego is not on my side, and it would be very good for me to remember that. 

Posting an incorrect solution for the world to see was a great reminder.

A Day Without an X

Not Breaking the Chain

Previously, in my blog post Homebrew Daily, I referred to the habit building technique that requires you to keep track of each day that you devote to building the habit.  This can be done by marking an X on the calendar, thereby building a chain of days which you psychologically do not want to break.  It is a great method.

Not stated in that blog post, but something I started on that same day, was learning Norwegian on Duolingo.  According to Duolingo, I'm on a 66 day streak today.  

However, I started this 67 days ago. I missed a day.  

I also missed a day of my Homebrew Daily ritual.  

The Day Without the X

On my last blog post, I wrote about choosing your suffering.  I wrote about how I chose to suffer through a 100 mile bike ride one Saturday.  What I didn't write about, was that on that same day, I couldn't mark an X on the calendar. I missed studying Norwegian. I missed learning anything about homebrewing. 

Somewhere between 20 and 30 miles into the bike ride, my phone died. Even using it in airplane mode, my phone went to the dark side.  Little did I know, it would be for good.  

Upon finishing the bike ride over an hour later than I thought I would (I took a wrong turn at one point that took me 5 miles out of my way), I was not going to make the 6 pm dinner that Erin and I had planned with friends Ed and Mary in Lawrence.  

I was able to shower at the facility where we started the ride, and get on my way.  However, my phone would not charge. Not only could I not contact Erin to let her know I was OK, but I couldn't ask for directions to Ed and Mary's place. Although I had been there twice, and could have probably got myself in the general vicinity, I didn't know exactly where it was. 

Using someone's phone at the first gas station I pulled into in Lawrence, I let them know everything was fine and got directions. 

There was much fun and wine drinking at the dinner party.  Eventually, it was determined that we should stay the night instead of driving back to Topeka.  

Up until that point, I had a plan of working from my iPad or desktop computer as soon as I had arrived back home to complete my daily habit ritual. I began thinking of alternatives. Maybe I could ask to borrow their computer for a little while?  

Or maybe I shouldn't worry about it.  Maybe I've built a great habit, and am going to stick with it, and don't need another X in a calendar day to do that. Maybe I should enjoy the moment that has been dealt to me.  

Perhaps we should allow ourselves a "Weekend Amulet" that can be used to put a temporary freeze on your streak of days.  You remember those days when you did a little extra work building your habit?  Maybe you were earning yourself "lingots" that can be used to purchase "Streak Freeze Amulets" for when they are needed.  

It is important to completely own a great new habit that you have built.  But it is probably just as important for that habit not to own you.  

Choose Your Suffering

A pretty view during a recent bike ride around Shawnee Lake

A Subtle Art

In Mark Manson's book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, he presents a counter intuitive approach of looking at life.  For some it may work.  It worked for me last weekend. Here is how it works.

We all suffer on some level. In fact, life can be alternatively viewed as just a long time of unavoidable suffering.  With each decision you make, you choose some level of suffering. 

Earlier last week, I was informed of the Buffalo Bill Century Ride in Leavenworth, KS.  The ride had 25, 60, and 100 mile road options, along with a 50 mile gravel ride. The 60 and 100 mile rides grabbed my interest.  

When the weekend came, I was under no obligation to choose to get up at 5:45am to get ready and travel to Leavenworth to begin riding 60 or 100 miles at 8:00am.  I could have chosen a lesser form of suffering.  Sitting on the couch, reading, studying, or maybe watching some TV could have been my choices.  I only would have suffered my own feeling of guilt for not having taken advantage of such an adventure. 

I chose a higher level of suffering, because that was easier in my mind. I would suffer the open roads of eastern Kansas.  

Along the route, there was a fork in the road. To choose right would mean only 60 miles, and to be done with the ride in a more reasonable time frame. To choose left would mean a commitment to 100 miles, and more suffering.  I chose left.  

The pains that one goes through in a 100 mile ride are really not all that bad when compared to other forms of discomfort. I'll take the swollen underside over a guilty conscience. I will take the sore quads and aching back over the simple discomfort of more decisions that would need to be made in a normal day (like, what beer I should have next? Or, should I leisure read longer or take a break and do some push-ups? Perhaps I should go to the library and rent some movies.) 

For me, framing it in terms of suffering helped me get out there and on my bicycle.  I like to have a full calendar, and to schedule each moment of my day.  This requires a lot of decisions, and as such, a small amount of suffering. I didn't want that suffering.  I wanted the decision free kind of suffering of an increasingly stiffening neck and shoulders as the day wore on.

The next time you need to make a decision on doing something difficult, you might give this method of framing your decision in terms of suffering a try. 

Failure

This is the name of the exam that I failed

This morning I woke up a little before 5:30 and remembered that yesterday was the first Tuesday of the month. I failed at getting my post in on time. This wasn't on purpose, but it completely fits into what I was going to write about.

A week ago (well, a week and a day ago now), I sat down for a four hour actuary test. Through the Society of Actuaries, it is the third exam and it is called Exam MLC, which stands for Models for Life Contingencies. I did my best. That, however, was not good enough. I failed.

There were three steps I went through that were not too different than the steps my friend Jonathan suggests in his blog post: Failure is Good. So are You Failing Enough?  These three steps were as follows:

1. Feel the pain. Failing the exam gave me a depressing feeling. I felt very psychologically drained. I knew it would pass eventually, but I did not force it to go away. I let myself feel what I was feeling. After all, we're human.
2. Begin focusing on whatever positives that come from this. I couldn't see these right away, but they surfaced soon enough.  I was able to share the experience with my students, show some vulnerability, and let them know that I knew what it was like to be in their shoes. I noticed Sharing Your Failures came in quite handy. 
3. Think about what I have to do for next time. There was a simple fact: I wasn't ready.  I didn't realize that until about a week before. I now know what to expect, and the strategies I need to use in order to pass it. 

The next MLC Exam will be in October. Since this is too much time, I will need to do some fortnightly drills to stay with the material over the summer before I begin to go into full study mode when the Fall semester begins at the end of August.  My Fall semester will be light this year with old and familiar preps, so those two months will be sufficient enough time to master the material. 

Yesterday was full of failures. It was quite the unusual day. 

I failed to get to a candidate breakfast on time. 

At dinner with my wife, Erin, we found out that our calendars were a week apart with regard to a two and a half week period of time that involves the Bike Across Kansas and our trip to the Pacific Northeast. I failed at communicating with her for the past several weeks - specifically, noticing that the dates she was mentioning were not the dates I had in my calendar.  We have some work to do to rectify this failure in communication. 

Although I'm getting better at using a calendar for my day to day activities, yesterday was a clear indication that I have some work to do. 

A Fisherman's Buoys: The Most Influential Books of 2016

I've only read five of these books. But I plan to read them all.

First, I should mention the book Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Although I read this book in 2015, I believed it has paved the path to all of my future reading by putting a name on a philosophy that was already part of my being.

When it comes to human psychology and philosophy, I think labeling is important. Prior to reading Minimalism, I was like a fisherman floating around an endless sea every now and again finding a spot that was good for fishing.  Then I would aimlessly set out again to find another good spot, sometimes getting lost in the process. Once I had read the book, it was as if monstrous-sized buoys with LED lights were placed in all of my good fishing holes. Not only could I easily see them now, but I could navigate between them with ease.

The buoy system is my philosophy of Minimalism. The buoys themselves are the tenets of that philosophy, focusing on passions, relationships, contribution, health, and growth.  How I decide to navigate between them defines my psych, I suppose.  It was this navigation that led me to all of the books I decided to read in 2016. 

So, which were the most influential? (A total of 33 books were read in 2016, just FYI).

• Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
• Give and Take by Adam Grant
• The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
• Republic, Lost by Lawrence Lessig

One of my passions is reading. There are several books I have read for the pure enjoyment of reading them or to learn something new.  One such book that I found very moving was Half the Sky. It is a tough book to get through, but a very important one.  It opened my eyes to a world I think very little about in my own little bubble, and that is the way women are treated globally.

Did you know, for example, that the U.S. is the worst among developed countries and ranks 61st globally in maternal health?

The Primal Blueprint has changed my life health-wise. I now live as Grok would, the fictional primal being referred to quite often in this book.

Republic, Lost has educated me and given me the depth I will need in order to make the contributions that I want to make in society. In particular, advocating for Represent.US and Our Revolution.

Daring Greatly has done wonders for my personal development and growth. I cite this often now, and most recently on the first day of my statistics classes.

Although Give and Take may fit more into the contribution and growth categories, I'm using it here to highlight my relationships with people. In Give and Take, you will read about givers, matchers, and takers, and it will get you thinking of what type of person you are in life. When I thought critically about my relationships with students, I feel like I've been more of a matcher. This book has been very influential in how I will develop relationships with students from now on as I strive to be more of a giver. 

Less Than a Week Left of Winter Break

Standing on the Top Platform of the State Capitol Building in Topeka

It was Tuesday, with one more week until class begins, and the alarm went off at 5am. I put on my suit and tie, had a leisurely breakfast and some coffee and went over my speech one more time. Then, I drove to the Sunrise Optimist Club of Topeka. 

Once I mingled with them for a while, drank some more coffee, and they went through some announcements and drawings for a few different raffles, I was introduced as the morning speaker. Then, I gave one of the most passionate talks of my life about the Represent.US movement. 

There was a naysayer in the crowd, which was great. Although this caught me off guard, I eventually got him to admit out loud that he really didn't care about what the general public thought. It was too bad that this admission wasn't during my talk (it was in private afterwards), but I got it out of him nonetheless. It was a great learning experience, and I will be better prepared for the next talk. And the next one after that. 

After just giving a talk in Atlanta at my math conference on Friday, it hit me that I've been getting a lot of public speaking in lately. According to Warren Buffet, I'm getting some good practice with the number 1 skill that will increase my worth by 50 percent. 

After my talk, I changed into something a little more comfortable and went to the office to work on getting my classes ready. Somewhere around noon, I needed a break. 

I thought to myself, "Hmmm. I've never been to the Capitol. When's the next bus?"  

Over at the northeast corner of campus, I struck up a quick conversation with someone waiting for the bus. The bus arrived quickly. My campus ID gets me anywhere in Topeka for free on the Metro. I really love this since it provides an easy avenue to reduce my carbon footprint. 

The Kansas State Capitol Building has about five floors to explore. One of the highlights was this mural of John Brown outside the Senate Chamber. It is called Tragic Prelude by John Steuart Curry.

Kansas is very proud of John Brown. This picture is recreated in many different murals in businesses around Kansas. Take Wichita Brewing Company or John Brown's Underground in Lawrence as a few examples. 

The literally breathtaking highlight of the Capitol visit was to get a Dome Tour. I was the only person on the tour, so it turned out to be a private one! The tour guide must go on the tour with me, however, which meant that she had to ascend the 296 stairs to the top with me. I kind of felt bad when she started breathing very heavily.  Like I said, it was literally breathtaking. 

It was also figuratively breathtaking as the opening picture suggests. When I walked out on the platform, it was hard to combat the vertigo. In the year and a half that I've lived here, I had no idea that you could go outside on the platform on top of the Capitol!  

When you come to visit, and the schedule isn't packed, can guess where I'm taking you?  

On a complete side note, it got to 60 degrees today in Topeka. That means a bike ride has to occur since I'm trying to ride 2017 miles in 2017. Well, 1995.5 to go! 

When Depth is Important

In my last class of Theory of Interest, I began describing an idea that we had already learned in a very complex, convoluted way when a student interjected, "Why wouldn't we just do it the easy way? When would we ever want to use this method?"

I answered him honestly, and told him that in the real world, you would never use this complicated method.  Then, I used the opportunity for a teaching moment about depth.

We can all walk away from an amazing presentation in which we felt we learned a lot, but what we have actually received is a surface level understanding.  Sometimes, that is all we need or desire.

Until it comes time to apply it, talk about it, or write about it. At this point, you are slapped in the face with a huge disconnect from seeing someone else apply it, talk about it, and write about it, believing you can do the same, and then ending up like Homer here:

Depth becomes important.

In my own life, I have been reading all I can about how money corrupts our government. If you've spent any length of time with me, you've heard me talk about it. The depth I've had to go to in order to do that much is vast. There is so much more that has moved me that I want to share, but I haven't gone to the depth I need to in order to convey it in a sensible manner.

The best thing I've noticed about getting off of social media, is that I'm talking to people more. I'm engaging in conversation more. I find reading and writing a very important part of gaining depth, but I've been missing out on discourse. This is a key part of personal growth.

Have you seen a good documentary lately that was moving? Could you speak at length about it, and bring me to the same level of heart-rending emotion that the documentary brought you to? Probably not, unless you pick up a book or two or three about it, write about it (in a journal or blog), and practice communicating it to others.  This is when depth is important.

Rule of Thirds on Motivation

Topeka just finished its 2016, "Those Who Lead, Read" program last week. I'm excited that they will be continuing the program in 2017.

On November 10th, Erin and I attended a presentation on Leadership Through Self Discovery & Vulnerability. The presenter was Elizabeth Lenherr, the Director of Learning and Development at Advisors Excel in Topeka.  The books she centered her presentation on were Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" and Brene Brown's "Daring Greatly." 

During the discussion at the end, a gentleman offered a simple rule of divvying your time among mentees, friends, and mentors. He cited Tai Lopez as the source for this inspiration. The idea is that you should be spending about a third of your time each with 

• Those who you can mentor, educate, or inspire in life
• Your peers, friends, and co-workers, or those on your same level
• Those who are far superior than you in areas that you want improvement

These fit perfectly into three of my five areas of philosophy: contribution, relationships, and growth. (Passions and health are the other two). 

In reflection on my own personal growth, I've come to realize that mentors are what is missing in my life.  

So, what am I going to do about it? 

1. Identify the areas in my life where I want some serious growth. 
2. Find some individuals that are far superior in those areas identified in 1.
3. Find a way to get past my extreme independence and the mentality that I can do anything or figure anything out on my own.
4. Reach out to them with a email, phone call, or a face-to-face interaction.

The first time I typed that up, I skipped what is now number 3.  I sat there and pondered the list without the current number 3 and tried to figure out why something so simply put was not so simple. 

Shame. Vulnerability. 

I first have to admit and embrace where I am deficient before I can get better. 

Meta Level Up

In David Allen's "Getting Things Done", he talks of next actions. 

Sometimes, what makes it on our To-Do list is too vague, or just too big a project to be jotted down so simply. To tackle such things, you need next actions. Sometimes, these are hard to come up with. 

Whenever I struggle with next actions, I remove myself from the situation and level up, metaphysically speaking. I think in terms of the writer of my life. Since I'm writing it at this moment, it doesn't have to be myself in the situation. For example, it can be Dirk Diggler. 

So, it is now my job to write about what Dirk Diggler is going to do next to get this job done. This frame of mind helps the brainstorming go a little easier. (Especially if it someone you aspire to be like, or simply a super version of yourself. The use of Dirk Diggler is not a good example at all here, and is used primarily for humor.)

This 'leveling up' method works great with other things in life besides next actions. 

In Adam Grant's "Give and Take", I read about someone who was able to become a good negotiator for himself and his family by leveling up. He was able to eventually make a break through and negotiate better raises, better rent, and better other things in life by playing a role of a mentor for himself. He asked himself how he would instruct someone else to negotiate for themselves in the same situation. Then he followed those instructions and played the part of the mentee.

Next time you have a chore on the to-do list and are having a hard time coming up with a next action, try leveling up. Ask yourself, "What would Dirk Diggler do?" 

A Way Forward

Like many Americans, I did not feel good about voting this year.

So, I decided to sign up on Represent.Us and volunteer to begin a chapter in Topeka. The entire goal of this organization is to bypass Congress (which is possible) to enact laws that will make corruption illegal.

If there is one thing that we know from being human, is that nobody should be responsible for regulating themselves. We should all be accountable to someone. Congress needs to be accountable to us.

It is possible, albeit a little tricky. It involves informing people, petitioning, and getting things on the ballot. And then it involves battling the big money campaigns that will inevitably attack such ballot measures. Getting a solid base of members that are educated enough to ignore these campaigns is one of the biggest challenges.

It is happening, though. All over the country. There was a big win during this election cycle that was overshadowed by the presidential election, and that was an Anti-Corruption Act was passed state-wide throughout South Dakota.

The simplest thing you can do is browse the sight, and sign up as a member. Read the emails they send you and stay informed of what is going on. Learn a little about it and talk about it with friends and family. Become a member of your local chapter if you have one.

Learn about the problem!  Watch some of the videos on the Represent.US site.  Read books like Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy by Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, and Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress-And a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig.

These may sound like depressing books, but they end on good notes. They end with hope. They motivate. Take some time to learn a little more by watching this TED Talk by Lawrence Lessig.