Doomed New Year's Resolutions

“Men who have discovered the limits of arrogance make better company: You notice more when you're not running around imposing your will on everything.”
- Virginia Vitzthum

Change is a difficult thing but every year, millions of Americans purpose to do just that. Maybe I'm just so old that I've accepted who I am and have difficulty imagining myself as someone different, but it seems like this industry of New Year's resolutions is one based on well intentioned delusion.

The other day, I was talking to what seemed to be a darling woman. She said that she was going to get more organized for the new year and was even able to list out all the benefits of doing just that. "So why aren't you more organized already," I asked. My own suspicion is that she has made such resolutions before but finds herself, once again, resolving anew to be who she is not. Such an endeavor seems like such a waste of energy when she could, instead, build on what everyone else sees as unique - or at least rare - strengths. New Year's Resolutions can too easily be attempts to be like someone we admire rather than self actualize.

According to First Break All the Rules, what distinguishes the really extraordinary managers from those who are merely very good or even mediocre is how they deal with shortcomings. The motto of the extraordinary managers in regards to their employees seems to be, "Don't try to put in what was left out. Instead, draw out what was left in. That's hard enough." In other words, we all arrive at life with missing pieces. We can spend our energy and ambition trying to address this obvious and sometimes distressing lack, but it's not clear that it'll ever make much difference. Or, we can acknowledge what we actually brought to the party and find a way to make that work. It wasn't that Einstein failed to work hard, he just (as far as I know) didn't spend much effort trying to be a world class dancer. It takes a great deal of effort just to be good at what we're good at.

If you have to make a New Year's resolution (and given it's already 11 January you probably don't), make a resolution to enhance or strengthen what you already know to be a positive part of you. Save the scary and often unrewarding work of trying low probability goals for experiments when you are already feeling confident and are less likely to make failure mean too much.

Fame, Fortune, & Tom Waits

I was sitting at the lunch counter of a local institution last week when a guy named Don struck up a conversation with me. From Don I learned that I graduated from the same high school as Don and his buddy, singer / songwriter Tom Waits.

Tom Waits is a musician's musician, a fascinating fellow who I've listened to since my high school days - blissfully unaware that he had wandered the same hallways and skipped the same classes as me, perhaps even had some of the same teachers a decade earlier.

I came home and googled Tom to confirm that he had, indeed, attended Hilltop. He had. But this is the most fascinating bit: the graduate from my high school to go on to the most fame and fortune didn't actually graduate from my high school He dropped out.

As I thought about it, I wondered what any teacher at Hilltop could have taught Tom about his future. He has created a fairly unique sound and although he has some obvious influences he has put them together into rather unobvious songs. As much as any "popular" musician, Tom has defined his own path and his own genre.

We know how to crank out people who fill roles, sure. But what do we know about helping people to find a path in life, to create a life and a life's work that somehow expresses what is unique about them? And of the little we do know, how much of that ever finds its way into school curriculum? Are our institutions destined to waste the time of our creative geniuses?