Tag: Philosophy

The Stress of Managing as a Clown

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I’ve… never managed people before. 

We set a deadline. Each week we check in. The work continues. I’ve yet to see problems. 

On Thursday, my project manager said they would pull the electrical and plumbing permit either that day or Friday or Monday. Today is Monday. They haven’t pulled the permit. Should I be concerned?
Today, I asked my project manager what they’re aiming to complete by Thursday. He said demo would finish today. I looked around and mostly believe him. (But, like, what about the current bathtub?). He says the next step is framing the walls. 

How do you know when the work is on schedule? Probably by looking at a schedule. I wonder if they have a schedule. If I can see a copy of that schedule. If I can follow it. He does have a waterfall plot. I should grab it. 

Otherwise, I’m just trusting their word every week. And that doesn’t work super well for me. It stresses me out. And I’m already stressed. I don’t need 14 more weeks of stress. 

I imagine when they send me the updated scope, it can come with a specific timeline. (Or if it does not, I can ask for one.) Then, each week at our weekly in-person check-in, there’s a process of “What did we do last week? Where are we? What will we do next week?” 

I tend to execute poorly those sorts of same thing every week. But Partner might do them well! 

Bad-with-possibility is still bad

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This post requires knowledge of the game Starcraft: Brood War. For those unfamiliar, skip to the bottom for an AI-assisted translation. 

Even if you’ve studied the deepest recesses of a bad strategic pathway, it’s still a bad strategic pathway. 

In season 10 of the Starcraft Broodwar ASL tournament, Protoss player Bisu cannon-rushed his Zerg opponent, Shine. The Zerg had fast-expanded despite the mineral structure in the natural expansion making cannon rushes incredibly difficult to block and Bisu being literally the person who invented the forge fast-expand (so he’s almost definitely going to have a forge!). 

After the cannon rush kills Shine’s expansion, Shine switches into lurker drops, where he sneaks two lurkers into the mineral lines of Bisu’s main base’s before Bisu has detection. 

Bisu micros for a hectic ~4 minutes, but holds this counter and wins.

The kicker: maybe Shine intended this all to happen. He’s the sort of player who finds a weird timing and takes his opponent down this unusual pathway. The sort of player who would “bait” Bisu into attempting a cannon rush so he could catch Bisu off-guard with the lurker drop. 

But even in that case, Shine would have had to throw away 300 minerals, his first set of zerglings, and a small handful of drones. Not worth it! 

Don’t get yourself into a bad position because there’s a chance you can win it. Get yourself into weird positions because they’re actually superior. 

—

AI-assisted translation: 

Two players face off. One of them, Bisu, is the most famous practitioner of a particular safe, standard opening — an opening that involves building a defensive structure early. Everyone knows this about him. It’s his signature move.

His opponent, Shine, chooses to expand his economy early anyway, on a map where that expansion is unusually hard to defend against exactly the kind of aggression Bisu’s signature structure enables. It’s like dropping your guard in a duel against the man who invented the thrust that goes exactly there.

Bisu does the obvious thing. He attacks the expansion and kills it. Shine loses the investment, the units he’d built to protect it, and part of his workforce.

So Shine pivots. He sneaks two units into the heart of Bisu’s home base — units that Bisu, at that moment, literally cannot see, because he hasn’t built the thing that lets him see them. For about four minutes, Bisu is fighting blind against something that can kill his entire economy. He survives it by hand, one frantic decision at a time. Then he wins.

Here’s the interesting part: Shine may have wanted all of this. He’s known for finding strange timings, for dragging opponents onto unfamiliar ground. It’s completely plausible that the undefended expansion was bait — that the whole point was to make Bisu commit to the attack so that the counterattack would land on an unprepared base.

And even if that’s true: the bait cost him a large chunk of his economy, his first defensive units, and several workers. He engineered a situation where he had to play nearly perfectly, against one of the best players alive, just to get back to even.

A trap that costs more than it catches is not a trap. It’s a loss with a story attached.

Don’t take a bad position because you can imagine winning from it. Take a weird position because it’s actually better.

Sing, Talk, Play

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Walking down 113th st in Harlem, a man jumps out at Partner and says, “Boo!” 
Partner responds by singing “It’s a hard knock life!” in his face. (The song they were playing on their boombox.)
He laughs. 

At the gym, I asked the lifter in front of me: “Can I use the 70s for a set?” He said sure. I returned the 70s. I saw his jacket. “Did you go to Yale SOM?” He says no, but he was admitted and chose Columbia instead. 
We talked for the next 20 minutes. We exchanged phone numbers, then I did my last two sets and met Partner in the lobby. He walked out shortly after that. The three of us went to an Ethiopian restaurant together. Everyone is a stranger until they’re a friend. 

This afternoon, I taught a couple friends how to play a card game (tichu). It took two hands for them to get the rules, and the strategy would take even longer. I wanted them to learn the strategy faster, so we did an open hand: I walked through the logic in different spots. They would have learned much of this strategy eventually, but I’d rather they learn faster, and they’d rather start on level two. 

All-Gender Urinals

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At the theater yesterday, I entered the door that said, “All-gender restroom: urinals” to find three urinals and a toilet, all open-air. The closest urinal was occupied by a man peeing. The farthest urinal was inaccessible due to a trashcan in front of it. I approached the second urinal. 

A woman followed in behind me. She looked at me, the other guy peeing, and the toilet. She turned to leave, then stopped herself. She sat down on the toilet, lowered her underwear (she was wearing a dress), and began to pee. The other man finished his business, washed his hands, and left. A man opened the door, saw her, said, “Oh, sorry!” and left. The peeing woman said something to him along the lines of, “No, it’s fine! Feel free to come in” 

I finished my business and washed my hands. She commented to me, “I was going to leave, but then I thought, ‘If it’s okay for you guys to do it, it should be fine for me, too.’” 

Just one of many reasons I plan on marrying her. 

Meh-ntalist

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In freshman year of highschool, my theater teacher told me: “There are no magicians. There are only actors pretending to be magicians.” 

Tonight we saw neither. 

Suhani Shah bills herself as “the world’s most subscribed mentalist. I have no way of disproving that claim. 

What I can disprove: 

  1. Around ~30 minutes into the show, she wrote a number on a whiteboard, attempting to match the number that had been written while she was blindfolded. She failed. The audience did not clap. She commented on the audience not clapping. I told her “It’s wrong.” (I was on stage at the time as an audience participant.) 
  2. Around 3 minutes later, she told me and the other on-stage participant to select one of us to draw on the board, and tell her who it was. We neglected to tell her. She incorrectly guessed it was me. 
  3. There was another part where she had someone say a number that was on their mind. The reveal was to be EITHER that she had written the number both on the white board AND on a piece of paper already on stage, OR that she was wrong on the whiteboard as a dramatic intensity-heightener, and then MAGICALLY CORRECT with the paper on the stage. I can’t tell which, because 1) the numbers didn’t match, and 2) she didn’t play off the note-being-correct in a way that was obvious or compelling. 
  4. At ~the 75th minute, she performed an actually-shocking trick that I have no idea how she did. (She received random three-to-five-digit numbers from the audience, which combined with an audience member’s “random” button presses of additional numbers summed to the first 6 numbers on a twenty dollar bill and a pre-written scroll.)
    1. Okay, I actually just figured out one way she could do it: have the “calculator” app not actually be a true calculator, but be a program which only looks like a calculator but actually inputs the desired digits at the audience member’s presses. 

Today was her first day performing in New York. On ~3 occasions, she found herself a bit bowled over by audience members being very forward. For an audience-participation show, New Yorker culture is, I would suspect, quite specific. We move fast. Give us an inch and we’ll take it immediately. Say to the audience, “We need someone with a handkerchief. Raise your hand if you have one. One of you, join me onstage.” and someone will arrive immediately. 

She also mocked the audience participants more than I’m familiar with. This may be a cultural difference, but it rubbed me a bit the wrong way. (Partner didn’t notice or care.)

If you’re a mentalist, your job is to seem like you’re doing magic. Part of that success comes from playing off your mistakes well. 

Tonight was opening night. In two weeks, I hope she’s more successful. 

Sometimes You need a Pre-Conversation

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Partner & I should have had the pre-conversation earlier. 

A friend of ours would be a great fit as our roommate. He told us today that he signed a new, year-long lease. We didn’t know he was looking – he had mentioned his current sublet ends in October and he’s going on tour – and if we had known, we would have told him to move in with us when our apartment renovation finishes in around 4 months. 

We had discussed the concept with him, but evidently not been sufficiently direct or explicit, because when the topic came up he expressed interest (and not just as polite dismissal, but actual interest). He had just never connected “These people want to live with roommates” with “I like spending time with them” and “I’m looking for a place to live” to arrive at “Therefore I should be their roommate.” 

We have one other friend who is also a great fit. Now we know to have the pre-conversation. Not to commit to anything – just to ensure that we talk to each other before he signs a new lease or we fill the rooms. 

Fortunately, the failed-friend is choosing his current place in part because it’s easy for him to sublet. 

So, in 4 months, after he’s had a successful sublet, it’s time for us to chat again. 

There are only three ways to lose a game: 

  1. Exhaust all possible resources. 
  2. Give up. 
  3. The clock expires. 

The clock has not expired. We have many more available resources. We refuse to give up.

Pickled Frogs

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If you do work first thing in the morning, you get to spend the entire rest of the Sunday playing games, which really makes the rest of the day much more joyful. If you play games first thing in the morning, then you spend the day dreading the work, and then you’re tired when it’s time to do the work. The work is much more grumbly, which is worse. Or, as Benjamin Franklin once said, quoting Mark Twain: “If you’re going to bed early and rise, be sure to be healthy, wealthy, and eat frogs.”

Today, partner and I reviewed the entire cabinetry purchase order for the apartment renovation. There were many tiny details that I wanted to measure and test, and it took around three hours. At the end, we went for a walk, during which I found new pickleball courts. I then bench pressed 175 lbs., which Partner is particularly impressed by because it is more than she deadlifts. I am excited at the prospect of buying pickleball shoes and going to play pickleball in the local park.

All this delight was enabled by awakening early and rising so that we could be healthy, wealthy, and having eaten a frog.

Winning from Others Winning

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Today, I went 0 for 3 in board games with friends. 

In the first two games I got absolutely trounced. Tied for last place in each game sort of trounced. 0 points in every game level of trounced. 

After losing those three so badly, I said something like, “And now I’m mad. I still love this game, and I’m pissed. I’m going to play it over and over again til I figure it out.” 

Another player – one who had also scored 0 points in both – said he was mad too. But that I didn’t seem angry or annoyed at losing: I was celebrating other people making good moves. 

I learned that skill at clownschool: something like “compersion”: sharing in the joy of others. Yes, I want to win. Yes, I will do everything to win. And also, I will respect you and appreciate you and support you when you have a great move. 

I will absolutely not tell you when you make a mistake. But I will share in your joy when you execute a beautiful combo. 

I find this method a much more joyful way to play games. 

🙂

On Mathemagic

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Tonight, Partner and I saw an off-Broadway show of a guy doing fast math in his head. He calls himself a “math-e-magician.” 

This performer does a great job of playing things off. One of his acts is to to guess the missing digit of the answer to an incredibly long multiplication problem. Starting with a 4 digit number from a previous trick, each audience member uses their phone calculator to multiply by a new 5 digit number that they don’t say out loud, and then they read all but one digit aloud. Give the digits in any order — he can still figure out what’s missing.

Magicians never reveal their secrets, but, for a math-e-magician, the reveal is part of the show. The trick is that he selected a multiple of 9 as the starting number. Therefore, the sum of the digits will always be a multiple of 9. So if The sum is 68? The next multiple of 9 is 72, so the answer is 4. The sum of the digits given is 34? The missing digit is 2 (34+2=36, 36/9=0). The sum of the digits is 45? Well, the answer could be 0, or it could be 9.

This is what separates the magicians from the math-e-magicians. And math-e-magicians reveal their secrets.

He cold-reads. He will say, “I’m going to read your mind… I’m getting a lot of nothing. It’s not zero, is it?” And if the audience member says, “That’s right!”, we’re good. 

But if the audience member replies otherwise, he can say, “Try thinking harder… It’s nine!”, just playing it off like it was part of the act.

Cold-reading psychics do this as well, where they might see a woman crying and say, “It’s not your husband, is it?” and if the response is yes, they say, “Yeah, I thought so.” But if the answer is no, they say, “Yes, I didn’t think so.” 

Either way, the phrasing gives you that particular out. 

My favorite and least-favorite part of the show was when an audience member kid said that he could do 75 digits of pi, and then he could not accurately do 75 digits of pi. The performer did a great job of making the kid not realize he was flailing. The performer had said, “We’re going to do 60 digits of pi, and then maybe continue onwards.” And since the kid was flailing, the performer cut him off. 

Partner’s favorite part was when he asked a little girl for her birthday, and did a whole act with the numbers in it. He then asked for someone else’s birthday, and the girl’s sister volunteered. But the sister was quick to point out that she’s not just a sister: she’s a twin. The performer chuckled and used the birthday anyway. 

This particular performer used to create magic squares to entertain himself. Now he performs math-e-magic in an Off-Broadway show. 

Starting early sure helps. 

The light goes out in my designer’s eyes

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My designer waved the white flag. 

After two months of haggling over specific lighting, he has assented that Partner & I are boss. He literally said, “I lose.” 

I didn’t want him to lose. I don’t think him feeling like he has lost is helpful for anyone. But I also don’t want to pay an extra $14,000 on lighting. I’d rather have a visible flange. So yes, he loses. 

Partner was the key technical driver here. In some areas, I’ve been the pusher (raising the ceilings, which Partner was skeptical about but is now excited for; getting a deep tub; ensuring the island countertop is 34” tall, so it’s ergonomic for Partner’s cooking). In this area, Partner’s prior technical knowledge of lighting (she was a professional theatrical lighting designer in a past life) lends itself to this new domain. 

The final straw: learning that the second-tier lighting suggested by the showroom has a beam of ~4 feet in diameter at 6 feet high, while the lighting we found has a beam of ~13 feet in diameter at the same level. The same cost gets us approximately the same lighting specs, but pi*6.5^2 = 133sqft of light vs 12sqft, or 10x the amount of light. 

Yes, there’s more to light than the amount of light (or else we’d just light the whole apartment with floodlights), but we’ve already checked those traits! They’re approximately equivalent on every other element, just these have visible flanges! 

So today, my designer assented to purchasing the lights we described. He is seeking someone to buy them from. (Why he won’t just buy them from the website I found previously, I don’t know.) 

10x the light, 10x my happiness, and 300 copies of future board games. 

Here’s to holding your ground. 

Thanks, Partner. I couldn’t have done it without you.