quotes, thoughts

Changing Your Mind is not Indecisiveness

1 Comment

Sorting through some old work papers the other day I came across an item which was obviously originally posted on a forum somewhere. Sadly I hadn’t noted the source or the author. However reading it struck a chord so here is a (slightly edited) version, with apologies to whoever the original author was!

There is an interesting corollary to the “fog of war” which I [the original author] came across in Robert Cialdini’s Influence.

In a chapter on “Commitment and Consistency” he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson:

A foolish consistency is the Hobgoblin of little minds.
Usually we think consistency is a good thing, but the foolish rigid variety is not. Now, automatic consistency is really useful most of the time, since we often need to be able to behave in appropriate ways without thinking. A dilemma. And the only way out is to know when such consistency is likely to lead to poor choice. Cialdini says there are two separate signals to help tip us off.

The first occurs in the pit of our stomach when we realize we are trapped in to complying with something we know we didn’t want to do. It’s probably happened to you a hundred times. Cialdini recounts his experience with a young woman carrying a clipboard who knocked on his front door. She tells him she’s conducting a survey. And he, wanting to make a favourable impression on the young woman, stretched the truth in his answers to her “survey” questions. Then using his answers against him, she tells him that she “can save him up to 1200 dollars” if he joins the club membership she is selling. “Surely someone as socially vigorous as yourself would want to take advantage of the tremendous savings our company can offer on all the things you’ve already told me you do!” she says. And he, feeling trapped, feels his stomach tighten. He actually complied with her request although he defends himself saying that it was before he started his study of influence.

The second is not so clear. It’s in your “heart of hearts” and can be heard in answering the tricky question: “Knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time, would I have made the same choice?” Sometimes circumstances change, and with those changes, is your original decision still valid? Changing your mind or acting inconsistently with your previous actions is not indecisiveness. If the answer to the knowing-what-I-know-now question is “No” then reversing or changing your position is the responsible thing to do. This strategy can help tremendously when re-evaluating those sunk cost decisions. Especially for revisiting decisions to continue with projects that may no longer be viable.

I try not to tie my ego to my original position, and remember that it’s okay to change my mind.

Moral: know when to change your mind!

natural history, photography, topographical

Green Woodpecker


Green Woodpecker, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This Green Woodpecker was visiting my west London suburban garden earlier today. I certainly don’t see them regularly, maybe just 2 or 3 times a year, and they are always a delight especially when they stay for a few minutes to feed, as this one did.

It’s not a brilliant photo as I was trying to hand-hold my biggest telephoto lens, in poor winter afternoon light, while leaning out of the window.

current affairs, natural history, pleasures

Advice for Pond Keepers

BBC News today has an item suggesting the the freezing over of ponds is actually good for them, contrary to apparent logic.

I see the basic logic behind the article, emphasising that freezing over could increase the oxygen levels in the water, although I would like to see some evidence of this being true.  However as a long-time pond keeper (aka. fish keeper) and as the moderator of an online aquatics forum, I would not agree with a number of the ideeas and suggestons made in the article which I think are potentially misleading (or worse) …

Received wisdom says that pond owners should break a hole in the ice to allow oxygen to reach the water.

NO!  Never break a hole in the ice.  They get it right later: “make a hole”.  Do this either by keeping an area clear (eg. with a football or a pond heater) or by melting a hole with hot water.  Never, never smash the ice if there are fish in the pond: the shock wave will likely kill the fish.

Making a hole in the ice makes very little difference to the amount of oxygen in this water

This is probably true, but a hole could make a difference if there is a concentration of other unwanted gasses in the pond water.

The only time that pond owners should intervene is if they own fish, or the bottom of their ponds are full of silt and dead leaves.  Then it is worth stirring up the water

Again I would disagree.  If you have fish, do NOT stir up the water.  The water may be layered into thermoclines with slightly warmer water at the bottom which will benefit the fish.  Moreover if you have fish and a silty bottom (!!) then disturbing the debris can release potentially toxic gasses like ammonia – it may also disturb hibernating amphibians.  If you’re going to stir up the bottom of your pond to remove detritus, then do it in mid-summer.

memes, people, personal, photography

Story of My Life Meme


Story of My Life Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is to design the book of your life, giving each of the chapters a title. And what could be more appropriate for my birthday!?

1. Title (front cover): Zen Navigation
2. Introduction: Evening, All
3. Chapter 1: Family History. Tragically I was an only twin
4. Chapter 2: School Days. Rocking-horse brains
5. Chapter 3: Idle Students. Information is the flotsam left by the tide of entropy
6. Chapter 4: Research. Faultless inaccuracy
7. Chapter 5: The World of Work. Bean counters and biro command
8. Chapter 6: Everlasting Love. If you don’t concern yourself with your wife’s cat, you will lose something irretrievable between you
9. Chapter 7: Anthony Powell Society. Keeping the ball running
10. Chapter 8: Retirement. Large print audio books
11. Epilogue: Some things were never meant to make sense
12. Back Cover: Utterly forgettable

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Boating, 2. Police officer G20, 3. twins (only not really), 4. WW12: Rocking Horse Head, 5. Urban Relics, 6. Ammonite Parkinsonia dorsetensi , 7. Look We’ve Got Pens, 8. Shasta | Gone Home | 3/9/00-3/28/08, 9. Macro marbles, 10. “Nature Combined with Nurture Makes People Mature!” 🙂, 11. Quite a Yarn, 12. Backlit Red

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

current affairs, science

Flexible Working

3 Comments

Jilly, over at jillysheep, has touched today on the cultures which is part of current working life; cultures which mostly shouldn’t be there!  What follows is verbatim my comment to her post, reflectng my experience of this in a large IT company over the last 10-15 years.

I agree with your comments on working life. Flexibility should be a “no brainer” for most employers. It is 1991 since I worked in the same office as my immediate line manager; well over 10 years since I had my own desk; and 5 years since I went in the office out of routine. On average over my last year working I think I went into an office (not even my base office) just once a month. I could do everything from home with a laptop, broadband, instant messaging, phone, and audio-conferencing phone number (we didn’t even need video-conferencing!). In the rare instance I was sent hardcopy mail it was simply redirected to my home address; but 99.999% of everything (even payslips) was done electronically. And I was managing $5M projects with a team spread across the world – some of whom I never met face to face!

When you put the cost of the technology required against the cost of office space, employee morale (from increased flexibility), efficiencies, savings on travel (cost and time), etc. the payback is probably about 1 year, maybe less. Flexible and mobile/home working actually means you get more work done because people will do a bit extra here and there as long as they are trusted not to abuse the flexibility.

The killer is the long hours culture. And not just long hours in the office, but also people feeling that they have to work long hours at home too — evenings and weekends because it is always there. I used to regularly work a 50 hour week; easily done by starting a bit early, taking little time for lunch and working a little late. I was fairly disciplined about the hours I would and did work – and was still reckoned to be one of the most efficient and achieving project managers in the team! Anyone who needs to work 70 or 80 hours a week (and many of my colleagues did) is either very inefficient (=ineffective) or is being abused by their management with way too much work.

OK, there are of course jobs you can’t do remotely. Anything where objects, food, drink have to be handled (and that’s everything from factories and farms to hospitals and pubs) you need warm bodies on site. But that still doesn’t preclude flexible hours providing you can get the people scheduling right. But anything office based should be easily done from anywhere with current technology.

The challenge is the huge cultural change; let’s not underestimate that. Management have to learn to trust their people to do the hours to get the job done. The company has to be prepared to invest up-front in the technology (and some support staff); that’s an investment usually over several years but with significant paybacks in efficiency (not necessarily overall fewer jobs, just different ones). The people have to learn to do without the office; you have to find ways of allowing people to continue to have a virtual coffee together and gossip. People also have to learn to be trusted, which means not being closely supervised all the time and being a “self-starter”.

Of course, as with anything else, there are people who cannot hack the cultural change; who need the office because (typically) home is too distracting. And this is no respecter of age, gender, role or seniority. I know secretaries who happily work from home and senior directors who have to work in the office; and vice versa.

How the working word has changed even in the time I’ve been working! And what was the prime cause of all this? Ultimately I suspect the PC.

beliefs, current affairs, people

Professor Edward Schillebeeckx RIP

Yesterday’s Times carried a full page obituary of Professor Edward Schillebeeckx, who died just before Christmas at the age of 95.  Schillebeeckx was probably the greatest Christian theologian of our time and one of the influential thinkers behind the work of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

Although I’m now a non-Christian atheist, I was in my younger days for a while close to the Roman church and Schillebeeckx was certainly an influential thinker amongst more liberal and intellectual Catholics along with the even more controversial Teilhard de Chardin.

I am unworthy, indeed insufficiently knowledgeable, to make further comment and will leave you all to read the Times‘s most interesting obituary of Professor Schillebeeckx.

memes, photography, pleasures

Animal Lovers' Meme


Animal Lovers’ Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week the Flickr meme is for animal lovers. We were asked to choose our favourite (or in some cases scariest) animals:

1. favourite animal of all time: cats (all of them)
2. favourite pet: cat (I’m convinced they’re magic and know where the 7th dimension is)
3. favourite zoo animal: meerkat (pure comedy)
4. favourite farm animal: geese
5. favourite animal from where you live: brown hare (they’re even more magic than cats)
6. favourite creepy crawly: hymenoptera (bees & wasps)
7. scariest animal: (wo)man [fx: big grin]
8. scariest creepy crawly: maggots (they really turn my stomach)
9. most fascinating animal: cephalopoda (octopus & squid)
10. favourite endangered species: tiger (just so majestic and so powerful)
11. favourite carnivore: all big cats but especially leopard an jaguar
12. favourite herbivore: parrots

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Sleeping time, 2. Ginger pussy cat wants another drink please bar keep, 3. Meerkat Lip-pursing, 4. Amsterdam Goose, 5. Brown Hare – mg_6330, 6. Ready to land, 7. I love being nude, 8. Fat 8 Maggots, 9. Untitled, 10. Hungry Tiger, 11. Leopard – Panthera pardus, 12. Hyacinth Macaw Cracking Brazil Nut

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

personal, quotes, thoughts

Where Am I?

1 Comment

Here, I guess …

There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit’.  It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over and let it go.  It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives.  It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.

[Ellen Goodman]