Surrender to Win —repost
Giving up can be a way to move forward. So why do we struggle to let go of things that aren't working or have run their course?
For the summer Ashley, Margaret, and I will have one original post and one repost per week. This post about knowing when to give up from July of 2023 feels particularly appropriate for what’s turning into a frustrating summer. — Tom
Conclusion first: Addicts know a lot about how hard it is to stop a behavior that’s not working. The recovery community has a slogan that’s counter intuitive but incredibly powerful: surrender to win. It mean you can’t get out of a hole by digging faster. You have to stop digging. It’s an idea that runs counter to our current, grit-obsessed, just-work-harder era. Faddish ideas (AI!) change, but foolishness (keep digging!) and wisdom (stop when it’s time to stop) never go out of style.
The world of motivational posters, t-shirts, and bumper stickers is rife with pithy quotations about not being a quitter. For whatever reason, we really let these things get into our heads. This is bad, in part because motivational quotes are always out of context, and often wrongly attributed. Churchill is often quoted as saying, “Never, never, never give up.” The U.S. Marine Corps, or maybe Bruce Lee, but certainly some ballet teachers say, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” And Epictetus allegedly said, “The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it.” Yet in so many things, we must accept failure to get better. Addiction, bad relationships, crypto, watching the news… lots of things only get worse the more you do them, and the only way to get better is to stop doing them.
Book Signing this Saturday!
Tom will be at Wild Birds Unlimited in Lion’s Head Village on White Bridge Pike this Saturday, June 15 from 11 to 1 signing copies of A Dog’s Book of Wisdom and celebrating the 16th birthday of Harley the shop dog. Join us and get your bird seed and autographed books for dad!
If you come Saturday, you can stroke Harley under his chin, too. He’s too old to run away.
Wisdom and grit don’t mean “never, never quit.” Wisdom is knowing when to quit. Grit is staying with something until you know it’s time to quit, and having the strength to start something new.
At Fortune’s Path, we like Henry Ford’s view that “failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently,” but we doubt he ever said that.
Return to Office: Time To Admit That WFH is Here to Stay
“No, but seriously, this time we really mean it: You have to come to the office to work.” For the past three years, corporate decision-making around work-from-home and hybrid policies have felt a bit like parents “trying to impose rules on an unruly home.” And now the powers that be have decided it’s time to come back to the office. Why? Because they said so.
The shift to firmer deadlines for returning to the office have taken some workers and recruiters by surprise.
The opportunity: Managers can collaborate with employees to find procedures that work for everyone, and not just the few. We can all develop better ways to measure productivity than time in seats. And pay by the hour needs to die—it’s a complete misalignment of incentives.
Hard Truths About Climate Change Force Mankind’s Acquiescence to Nature (Sort of)
Arizona officials announced in June that they won’t issue any permits for new subdivision construction in certain areas of Phoenix because the groundwater supply in these areas cannot support more growth. (Howard Fischer)
Arizona is running a 4% deficit between the water it has and the water it consumes. If you run this deficit for long, you run out of water. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has taken an odd lesson from this fact:
“My message to Arizonans is this: We are not out of water and we will not be running out of water,’’ she said at a news conference Thursday.
To her credit, she’s taking $40 million of COVID relief funds to start projects for Arizona to make more efficient use of the water it has, but from an addict’s point of view, saying you won’t build in places where there’s not enough water while also saying you will build everywhere else, even though pretty soon those places won’t have enough water either, is like saying, “I’m not gong to drink grain alcohol anymore, but everything else is fine.” In politics, this counts as a good start. In life, it’s insanity.
The opportunity: Be honest with the electorate. You can’t build as much as you want anywhere you want and have a sustainable future in a desert. Stop believing that the single most important thing you can do for your voters is to keep your job.
Social Media Failed at Being Social
Every social media app was launched with the promise of connection. But because they have to satisfy their investors and advertisers, they’re all fated to manipulate and disappoint us in the end. The product evolution of social media apps has led them to a place where they can’t even be called social anymore. (Ellis Hamburger)
You can see Ellis here on YouTube, too:
The opportunity: A need for truly social media still exists, but the users need to be the customers, not advertisers. So real social media will need to be non-profit. Thank you, Wikipedia, for showing the way.
“I always know when to give up. If something is hard, I give up.” Margaret the Pug
one of my favorites so far.