Month: January 2024

The greatest hockey player to ever play was Wayne Gretzky. Some may argue about Gordie Howe, but we will leave that for a bar discussion. The records he holds according to Wikipedia include most goals, most career playoff goals, assists, points, hat-tricks, most goals in one season, game-winning goals, and a bunch more. He was fun to watch and changed the game of hockey.  

Meanwhile there was a kid who realized he did not have the skills to play professional hockey. His dreams of winning the Stanley Cup were not in the cards. Chose to become a police officer for a living. He stayed involved in the game, becoming a scout first (part time) while he was keeping the streets safe. He was not in the conversation of the best to ever play the game like Gretzky.  

If you had to choose between the two, who would you want to be your head coach? The greatest player of all time, or a Cop who was a part time scout. If you guessed the part time scout named Pat Burns you would be correct. Wayne coached the Arizona Coyotes to a record of 143-161-24 (Wins-Losses-OT Losses). He never won a Cup as a coach, nor even took the team to the playoffs. Pat Burns meanwhile had a record of 501-350-161-14 (Win-Losses-OT Losses-Ties) and leading the NJ Devils to a Stanley Cup in 2003. 

This was something that always amazed me, why can’t the greatest of all time coach players? Why is someone who had an unreal understanding of the game, and incredible insight not be able to translate that to team success? And recently I came across a study comparing Tenured to Adjunct Teachers. I found this while talking to my kids about their teachers and decided to search to see if there was a difference. What amazed me about the study is that first-year students with Adjunct teachers did better than ones with Tenured teachers.  

Now the conclusions the authors produced, as well as the plethora of news articles were interesting. Many suggest that colleges can cut expenses by not using tenured teachers, others stating that tenured teachers do not put the effort into teaching etc. I somehow looked differently at the situation. And I find myself trying to avoid the Gretsky problem. 

I find on occasion when working with younger employees that some concepts that I believe are common knowledge, well they do not grasp. I find myself getting frustrated with why they do not understand something that I know. This happens to me when helping my parents, friends, or other relatives, when helping them do something on their computer or smart phone also. I spend a lot of time learning new things and skills and assume those skills are common.  

So let us put this all together. What connects these was something my daughter said while we were skating. She was asked by her old coach if she would be interested in coaching skating. She replied that she might, but then later told me she was not sure she could deal with teaching kids how to start. She would like to teach some of the advanced things, but just getting them on their feet would not be fun. Gretzky, being a talented player could struggle to get through to players what he knew. He was so much better than anyone else it was hard for him to be able to get players to get to his level.  

What about Tenured (or tenured tracking) teachers? Teaching in most colleges is not the driver, it is publishing and research.  At Carnegie Mellon one teacher had us proofreading his book as students. In fact, most college professors are not taught to teach, not even have a teaching degree. Teachers in 4-year schools have several responsibilities and teaching is one of them. With the focus on research, they also do not have the skill or training to teach. Einstein, who could be considered one of the best physicists, struggled to teach, at one point having to cancel a class when no one registered. The GOAT researcher, obviously not that great at teaching. 

Let us think about when your are the student. When I am a student, I need to make sure the person who is trying to teach me understands the limit of my current knowledge. Thus, he can first get me to the based understanding or get my skills where they need to be to be able to tackle the more complex problems. Learning is a two-way street, it is not just the teacher who must adjust, but the student must also make changes to get the best out of the engagement. Pat Burns was not the greatest player, but he was able to teach the game and coach better than the best player in the world. When you are in the position of mentoring, teaching, or coaching remember that, and you can be the best teacher in the world. 

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

As a child one of my favorite things to do on weekend was watch Kung Fu Theatre on channel 5. There were classics like the Flying Guillotine, The Five Deadly Venoms, and many others. What stood out were the original Bruce Lee movies. And to me the one that was a bit bizarre was Game of Death. Watching the original was out of place, there were people with Bruce Lee cut out masks etc. Of course, as a young teen I did not understand what was going on, nor know the story behind it. 

In 2019 on the 46^th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s death the film was revived using the original footage, but also answered many questions. For those of us who were fans of Bruce Lee, we saw past the movies and investigated him as a philosopher. His public letters were published in a book by John Little who also authored several books including one of my favorites the Warrior Within.  

Learning about some of the ideas behind Bruce Lee’s movies made them even better. Knowing he wanted to be Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon was intentional. The Game of Death also had this hidden agenda. Now people make documentaries, put their agenda front, and center, or make a movie the intentionally scares people about a topic, but Bruce was different. The meaning was deep in the story and not surfaced unless someone looked deeply. 

For those who read my blog often you know that I am in technology and manage a team. I studied User Experience (UX) even post school as it was intriguing. In producing my philosophy for building systems, I talk about there are levels of systems for the user. The first is called Data, you need to understand the data you are working with and build a system that manages the data. Once you really get good at that you can think about the tasks people do with the data. Thus, your user experience is now not about the data, but what the users are doing with it. Users like this better than data systems as it feels more natural. Lastly there is something that is called Goal oriented systems. These look beyond the data and tasks and create a system the seamlessly allows the user to accomplish the goal with the least amount of friction. I call these steps the tower of UX, and that you need to learn one to move on to the other. 

Where did I get this? The connection is simple, it was really the Game of UX vs the Game of Death. Well the Game of Death has a meaning behind the movie. The climatic scene is where Bruce Lee needs to get to the top of a tower and at each floor there is a different martial art expert that he needs to defeat.  

This is Bruce Lee’s original drawing. Now in the movie the foes have different weapons and distinctive styles of fighting, and Bruce struggles at first. He eventually learns the weakness of his opponent, changes his style, and can defeat his foe. The key here is he is learning at each level of the tower. The meaning he was teaching was that life is a series of levels. At each level we need to learn something to advance. We might struggle, and we may need to think differently than we do now, but we need to persevere and change to reach the next level.  

This notion of levels is what I talk about with building systems. It comes with all props to Bruce, and it is a philosophy I must remind myself of when I am struggling. When building a system, I ask my team what level we are at. If we do not understand the data yet, we need to start there. If we understand the data, do we understand the tasks? These are lessons we need to learn to make better and better systems for our users.  

I use this notion of the Tower and give credit to Bruce as it was his philosophy. When you are struggling, just remember you are supposed to. Learning is something you constantly need to do to get better. The lesson that comes with the current situation allows you to progress to the next level. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them. 

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

On Friday I decided to have a cheat day on my diet. If you followed my progress, I went from over 200 lbs. to now a healthy 166, and I have mentioned what I learned about working out has to do with being a better person. As I munched down on this wonder of a sandwich, I was thinking about what cheat meals can teach me.  I will put some pictures of how I made it and the final product so you can enjoy it also.  

1. Balance is important: When you deprive yourself of things you enjoy, often you get frustrated and angry and almost resentful. The word diet has become a negative, but technically your eating style is a diet.  We only use the word diet when losing weight, but bodybuilders use it for building mass, athletes’ diet for better performance.  Finding a balance in your diet allows you to hit goals but enjoy it. In life, you cannot deprive yourself of things you enjoy, you build resentment. No relationship, job or anything should demand so much that you cannot find to enjoy life. Do not be too busy building a life to enjoy one

2. Life is more like a Rollercoaster than a Carousel:  It will have a series of ups and downs, it will not be simple and easy, and not boring.  With a cheat meal you will not have the energy or have a crash unlike a well-balanced diet.  You will feel that downswing and will allow you to feel the upswings of eating healthier. 

3. Listen to your body: When eating a cheat meal, or a meal incomplete in nutrition you often still feel hungry even though you ate a lot of calories. This is your body telling you that you are missing nutrients. Your body is wonderful at giving you alerts; the expression listening to your gut and listening to your heart does have some science behind it. Your body will tell you things, including yes, a cheat meal is a good thing.

4. Rewards are a good incentive: You need to reward yourself for progress, and a cheat meal is one way.  Purchasing new clothes as you hit that goal is another.  Finding the right rewards for your fitness goals helps the progress continue. Rewards are helpful for other facets in life also (besides fitness.). You should reward yourself when you get a promotion, hit a milestone etc.   Even words of thanks and gratitude to someone else who obtained something are rewarding to them.  

5. Do not overuse rewards: The cheat meal is on the bad side, and having too many disrupts it. Use these things sparingly, as if you reward yourself too much it is no longer a reward. This is true not just with cheat meals but any other reward or goal. When at a previous company they would promote people ‘yearly’ which eventually people were thinking it was an entitlement not a goal or achievement. 

6. One bad meal or day should not ruin the rest of your plan: If you have $86,400 dollars and someone took $600 from you, would you throw out the other $85,900?   Well, there are 86,400 seconds in a day, a bad meal is what a 10-minute decision. You are going to throw out the other 85,900 seconds (just short of 24 hours) you made a good decision.  I do think you would. Think of it of spending that money on something frivolous you never use, but the rest you spent wise

7. Build some flexibility into your life: My cheat meal was on a Friday, next week it will be on a Wednesday as my sister is coming into the city. Having the ability to be schedules and regimented in a way that you can always have some flexibiity make success easier. Consistency is one key to success, and having a structure and schedule helps. But occasionally this flexibility does not break you, the cheat meal is just that. 

8. Willpower is a muscle: You need to work it out like any other muscle.  But you do give your muscle a rest day, and a cheat meal is a rest day for your willpower.  Just like Steve Jobs wore the same clothes all the time to improve his decision-making in other areas, scheduled meals and the schedule cheat mail will reduce your decision-making.  If it is not your cheat meal, then you must eat healthy (choice over). People do complain they do not have the willpower, and it is more they have not developed it.  Thinking of it as a muscle they need to work on and the cheat meals as the rest days make it easier to train

Well Sorry I am not giving ten plus an extra, but it is interesting to start looking at myself and figuring out why things work and how what I did to get healthy relates to my life as a parent, my job and me being a human being.  I wonder what lessons are in store for me in 2024. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them. 

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them.