Achilles & Aristotle

Dining Alone

For possibly the first time in my adult life, I went to a restaurant last week and ate alone. What came over me?

As a kid I loved restaurants. When we moved to Holland for my Dad’s work, I went to the Eurotel restaurant, all by myself – aged 9 – to have dinner and my very own portion of sauté potatoes – smilingly served in an oval stainless steel dish. Mmmm.

Pace adult life: travelling the world on business and subsequently living in France. A world of opportunity. But if I found myself alone, I’d never deviate from room service and TV dinners. Eating solo, whatever the city, whatever the food – it just felt wrong.

My regular – but unusually absent – lunching partner sent me a quote from Epicurus in response to the photo above:

“We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf”.

He asked me which I was: lone wolf or feasting lion? I’m not sure I was either. But facing an uncomfortable afternoon in a management meeting, I thought ‘what the hell’, I need some blood sugar, I’ve got one hour, I don’t want anyone in my face – lets have a tasty plate in preparation and quiet contemplation.

Epicurus might have raised an eyebrow but it was fine. Nobody stared at me. I didn’t howl or roar. I just quietly and quite contentedly devoured.

Life, Psychology, Work

What gets measured…

I’d consider myself to have better than average self-discipline. But I have to concede – what gets measured gets done.

And it needs measuring often. I didn’t see off my half stone of blubber until I started counting exactly what I was eating throughout each day. I didn’t make the healthy changes to my daily routine (and still don’t) unless I tick them off every night.

And at work – where someone once said: ‘We all want to know precisely how we’re going to be measured, but absolutely not be measured precisely’, I’ve decided to bite the bullet, commit to some challenging targets and see if I can fire up people to measure and hit them.

My latest measuring gizmo is the Nike FuelBand: steps, activity and calories counted as you go. It syncs with an iPhone – so there’s instant data and no hiding. And it colour codes your progress all through the day…

The good thing about constant measurement is small stuff gets done a bit more often – which over time can add up to big changes.

Humans are lousy estimaters, expert self-deceivers and eternal optimists. These are three of our vital survival skills – but they don’t always get the job done.

Life, Science

Chameleon

I read this week that science has discovered when a lizard re-grows a tail – having dropped the original to escape a predator – what grows back is not the same. It looks the same. But the new tail has a cartilage tube instead of vertebra and very little sensation except at the tip. A pale imitation.

This reminded me of a conversation with a good friend on Friday – who’s looking very lean. What you expect to see conditions how you view what you are seeing. I saw ‘thin’, thought ‘he’s ill’ and started worrying. But on closer inspection he is actually in tip top shape.

We had our ’25 years on’ University reunion yesterday, along with ’40 years on’, ’50 years on’ and ‘past counting’. My year all looked older. Not a lot older – you’d still recognise us on the fresher’s photo. But inescapably older.

The classes of 1972 and 1962 though were in a different league – much much older. I couldn’t help wondering how we’ll see each other when we are that group. How much will we see each other’s age, how much will we still see the people we were aged 18?

Talking to folk I’ve not seen in years, I was surprised by what they expected from me. Of course everyone remembers you as you were, not as you are. I was famously grumpy, but I’m not now. It’s funny how people couldn’t quite cope with that. They all prefer the cheerier 21st century me, but couldn’t quite believe it.

What we expect to see conditions what we do ‘see’ even when all the evidence is to the contrary. People can look the same and be very different, look different but still be the same. I can still do grumpy, but I’ve found a happy colourful chameleon has more fun than a grumpy one.

Achilles, Life, Psychology, Sport, Work

Average White Male

Shock news from the Harvard Business Review this week: men who are ‘agreeable’ suffer a 20% deficit in earnings versus those who are ‘disagreeable’. Add this to one earlier in the year, where men who are slim also suffer a 20% deficit – and I’m in trouble.

Average height costs me another 15-20%. And entering the jobs market in a recession (1990) means a £200,000 lifelong deficit versus those who entered the labour market in a ‘boom’. Any more ‘deficits’ and I’ll be paying my employer for the privilege of working my nuts off.

My remedy – West Indies cricket of the 1970s and 80s. Master your sense of injustice, focus on what you are great at, forget the conventional wisdom and play to win.

Joel Garner, Michael Holding and Curtly Ambrose were very tall. Malcolm Marshall was average height, but the most feared fast bowler of them all. Viv Richards took whatever blows were necessary, before whacking everything and everyone all around the ground with controlled power and aggression.

Finally Clive Lloyd. He captained in virtual silence – an inclination of the head, a quiet word. Total authority. His loping, slightly stooped walk to the middle, enough to make the whole crowd pause and pay attention.

The Harvard Business Review says if I respect the average, I lose. So like the great West Indians – time to change the rules of average white males.

Life

Thin Skin

…I reckon I’ve got it. An ‘in your face’ blog in The Telegraph the other day accused our Prime Minister of not having learned in ‘the school of hard knocks’ – not having the appetite to enjoy scrapping it out with all comers.

Montaigne for his part advocates garrulousness:

I love stout expressions amongst gentle men, and to have them speak as they think.

His argument is there is joy in debate and disagreement:

The contradictions of judgments, then, neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise, me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and present ourselves to it.

I’m a bit equivocal on all that. I like to get to the right answer and certainly don’t need to be right in the process. But I don’t like being shouted down – or shoved about. Montaigne though seems energised by it.

When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger: I advance towards him who controverts, who instructs me; the cause of truth ought to be the common cause both of the one and the other.

Perhaps I should be work on being a bit more argumentative – up for a rumble. I don’t like cheap shots and low blows, but I’m trying to stand my ground a bit more this week. Let’s see if I get a bloody nose.