It's Not How Well the Dog Dances

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And Speaking Of Flexibility…

I did my third yoga class yesterday. It turns out to be a lot of fun, except that every time I bend over my enormous belly reminds me that I’m almost 51 years old and 40 pounds overweight. Sigh. Hopefully more yoga will help — I don’t expect it to help me lose weight, but maybe I’ll at least be able to move it out of the way somehow.

One thing I like about yoga, at least so far, is it doesn’t seem to make me stiff the next day like I was in a boxing match the day before. The battle against being completely seized up and walking around bent over like an old man gets worse every day, so anything that makes me more flexible is a very good thing.

There’s a bigger thing though, which has been apparent to me for a long time although I haven’t acted on it: I do much better at exercise with a supervisor. The chances that I will really push myself working out alone on the erg are almost vanishingly small. If I’m in a group or with a private instructor, though, I will obediently put myself through all kinds of searing pain just because they say I should. Why should this be so, I wonder? Suggestion and expectations are powerful things.

I’m pretty sure there is a lesson hidden in here about management…

Flexible Expectations

A big part of my role at Red Hat these days is supporting events that connect researchers on topics we care about. One great example of this is the first-ever Microarchitecture Workshop, a one-day mini-conference on hardware security vulnerabilities that are exploitable via what is called “side-channel attacks.” The most celebrated of these attacks to come about recently was the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, explained nicely here by my colleague Jon Masters.

The Microarchitecture Workshop, which happens next week at Boston University and is shaping up to be a great success, is a perfect example of something that happens to me all the time: I start off pushing to make a thing happen with a vision of what that will be, but because I refuse to pay close attention to the details (I am a Connection Tilt, after all), the thing morphs into something quite different from what I was expecting. For a manager, this level of uncertainty can be quite terrifying, and I often promise myself things like “Next time I’ll make sure to get the details right on this thing!” But of course I never do.

Fortunately for me, it normally doesn’t matter whether I dig into the details or not, because what I do actually pay attention to is the people I hand things over to. In this case, I found a researcher at BU, Ari Trachtenberg, who was willing to be involved although he had a quite different vision for what the event would turn into. The result? A smaller, more focused gathering than I had imagined, but I think one that will turn out to be more effective than the larger symposium I had originally envisioned. I was also very fortunate to have help from the very capable Jen Stacy at BU, as well as my new team member Sarah Coghlan. (Sarah keeps telling me how much she loves her job, to which I say “Guess I’d better give you more work then.” So far this is working out beautifully.)

I’ll report back here on how the event actually went, but it looks like it’s going to be a really smart collection of people. Gatherings like this sometimes prove to be turning points in the path toward solving real research problems — maybe this one will fall into that category. Good thing I didn’t try to micromanage it.

(Like that would ever happen…)

The End Of Winter

I hate snow.

As a southerner, you might expect me to be “filled with wonder” or “possessed with child-like joy” when a snowstorm comes through. That would be because you don’t know I lived in Michigan for five years, at the end of which time I declared that if I never ever saw another snowflake, or a piece of ice outside of a gin and tonic, it would be too soon.

Despite this I now find myself in Boston, which counts among its less endearing qualities the expectation of a substantial annual snow total. So you can imagine my joy when yesterday’s weather forecast included a prediction of 25 cm of snow accumulation. Groan.

Disturbingly, the forecast was incorrect, as has often been the case last winter and this. Instead of a big pile of accumulated frozen crap, we got an evening of snow, followed by rain, which has melted and washed away most of it. So, #winning for me.

Having said all of the above, I do find myself somewhat disappointed. I moved here with the firm expectation of long, cold, snowy winters, like it or not. Instead what we are getting is long, not-all-that-cold, rainy winters — more or less what we had in Brno or even Philadelphia. So I’m not even getting enough snow to actually hate it. Definitely disappointing.

Pff

Kalyan Kumar [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I let Kim take me to my first-ever yoga class yesterday. A couple years ago I would have said “Pff” and waved her off. Turns out it was a pretty good workout.

A big part of the yoga class was stretching. Normally I say “Pff” and wave it off — doesn’t do anything. But I feel way less stiff today than usual after a new kind of workout.

I’ve invested a lot of time in learning languages over the years — best way is private lessons with a good teacher. People have suggested Duolingo to me. Normally I say “Pff” and wave it off — waste of time. But a couple weeks ago I decided to give it a shot as a way to practice while on vacation. Turns out it’s a fantastic way to practice, although I wouldn’t use it without also taking private lessons.

Maybe I should Pff less and try more?

What Makes Me Happy?

Like many folks my age (I suspect), I am engaged in a constant battle to eat less, drink less, exercise more, and use my time more productively. A lot of angst and self-disgust flows through this process. It is hard to shake the feeling sometimes that I am managing within myself a team of recalcitrant workers who mostly do random things that advance no agenda at all, but occasionally exhibit such brilliance that I can’t just show them the door.

So for example I have the guy who loves to drink too much wine and have a good time… but that also drives social connection and building friendships with people. I have the guy who is compelled to eat every last bite on the plate — I think this is some form of OCD, honestly — but also motivates love of cooking and all kinds of food. I have the guy who is always starting new hobbies and wants to try just about everything, to the detriment of success at anything — but also is responsible for some of my most important experiences and personal growth.

Of course, I realize that there is only one “me,” only one responsible party for all my actions. What I find interesting though is the idea that there can be such a thing as “self-control” or even “self-management,” which there certainly is, and which implies that no there is not one responsible party, there is a big untidy bag of drives and needs and interests that somehow are yoked together into something that gets up every morning and tries to act in a coherent way. And somewhere in there there is a manager, the poor bastard who has to try to point this motley crew in a single direction.

Interestingly, the lesson that comes out of this is not unlike one of the big lessons we learn about managing people, which is that confronting yourself head-on is often not the right thing to do. You have to be smart and tricky and manage your energy and pick your battles. So, for years and years I wanted to write a daily personal journal, but I never did, because I always thought it should be the last thing I do in the work day. When my coach suggested I try writing it first thing in the morning instead, I was sure that wouldn’t work… but it did. So I am now a dedicated journaler, because it is the very first thing I do every day. And I didn’t get there by force of will or self discipline or effort, I did it by tricking myself and creating a routine. And I have learned that that routine makes me happy, because I guarantee myself time to reflect — to think about my own wants and needs and priorities and what actions I should take to meet them.

What else makes me happy? I’m not sure… I’m still trying to work it out. There are some obvious things, like my wife and my cat and a great meal and a lovely glass of wine. Then there are achievements, like playing the Bach Chaconne on the vibraphone, or getting a private pilot instrument rating. The rest is a balancing act and I fear it is not nearly as well managed as I want, but I will get there. It’s just a matter of finding the right tricks.