Lessons learned in 2007

Nearly done with the year, let me reflect on some of the trends of this year, and the lessons I should have learned from these.

Everybody cheats, deal with it
It's been a fantastic year to cheat your way to a victory. You could do some fancy blood doping and win the Tour de France, take some steroids and smack away several hundred home runs, or just bet on the games you're refereeing. You could freakin' video tape your opponents signals to predict which plays they're gonna run, for crying out loud.

Everybody then becomes all high and mighty about keeping the sport pure and leveling the playing field, but c'mon... The Mitchell Report mentioned so many major league baseball players, the only people not mentioned were the ice cream vendor and the third base umpire. If you actually took away all the cyclists from the Tour de France that were completely clean, only ten or so guys would run. That doesn't make good TV - remember the Indianapolis Formula 1 GP a couple of years back? And speaking of F1, you can't tell me that every single team doesn't have their eyes on every single new fancy detail on their opponents' cars. To single out McLaren is just slightly hypocritical.

In effect, the playing field is level. Everybody is cheating. It's just that the playing field is a little dirtier and seedier than the media wants the public to strife for. But if everybody gets off their moral high horse, things will be a little closer to the actual practice. Basically you cannot hide behind morals and the rulebook to be lazy.

Of course the way to fuel the moral outcry, is to point out the excesses and the tragedies. The Benoit slayings are a key argument against drugs and steroids. That even one of the most seemingly level-headed and most respected individuals in an industry can succumb to the temptation: less pain, more strength, more success. The Rapid Wolverine cheated his way around and apparently paid the price with his sanity and eventually the lives of himself and his family.

And have these warnings helped? I doubt it. Wellness programs or not, professional wrestlers will still use additional help to heal, to perform, to one-up the competition. That's the way the cookie crumbles. The public wants people to perform at superhuman levels, at their convenience. And sometimes that requires a little outside help. That's what we - the public, the fans - inherently expect from our heroes. To expect them to do so without cheating, is to be extremely naive, or at least to be extremely unrealistic in what you require for your entertainment.

Or you could take a page out of rugby union's book, which to my estimation is about as honorable a sport as you can get.

You cannot delegate responsibilities
There are lots of people who have good ideas and/or good intentions, whether it be at work, in social circles or somewhere else. Organizing a party, passing a new law or legislation, working on a project, or even just doing a proposal. Now if the task at hand is small, and can be handled by yourself, then you are in complete control of its progress, and only have yourself to blame if it doesn't work out the way you envisioned.

However most tasks are actually quite large and elaborate, and require more people to help to bring your idea to life. That means that all these ideas need to be explained, worked out, communicated... and that's where most tasks break down. Implementation suffers, schedules are not kept to and eventually the entire idea fails to meet its goals.

Of course many things cannot be thought of upfront. Requirements and directions tend to change, unforeseen incidents and accidents happen. People in general are not very good at all at seeing into the future, so every idea is naturally flawed. Unfortunately, this knowledge makes people lean towards two tendencies:

• laziness; because not every single effect is recognized up front, people will use this as an excuse to not think about anything at all. people expect that everything will be alright in the end, because there's always someone else who will help out, play the hero, take responsiblity. People offload responsibility of implementing their ideas on someone else. And that's not the way. As I understood from a PM course, you cannot delegate responsibility. You can only delegate a task, or move into another role which doesn't have this responsibility.
  
• lack of commitment; it's a classic problem. You can't think about everything and anything that can happen, so you just let it up to the gods how things go, the laissez-faire. You'll take things in stride, and tackle problems as it may. You trust your ability to solve problems and feel confident about overcoming adversity. In fact, you trust that everybody simply understands the spirit of your ideas and acts accordingly. Unfortunately, to the outside world that looks a lot like indifference. And if things do go wrong, it's negligence.

So what is the way to go? There can be no good idea without implementation. Everyone who forgets the last part, should own up to their flaws, and proceed with mitigation. Make sure that everybody understands that.

Of course, I'm fully aware this very sentence is actually contradictory to my point.

Being happy is the hardest choice
I went to London and to Chicago; I'm learning to speak (slowly) a handful of languages; I partied with cheerleaders; I crunk and I salsa; I worked overtime when I deemed it necessary. I spent truckloads of money on racing, seminars, parties, clothes, video games even. I have the Italian car. I stay put, when everybody else and their uncle say the logical thing is for me to go. I've been picked up in at least four different languages.

I have completely and utterly done whatever I think I should do. Regardless of what other people think I should. I have not stopped for anyone, did not let myself get led by other people's likes and wants. And that is not taken lightly. By neither side. I've been told I don't seem like a consultant. I've been told I don't act as a close friend. Unfortunately for me, those are statements that I cannot rebuff. The very act confirms the premise.

Doing what I think I should do is not as much making me happy, as it makes me confident that I'm doing the best thing in my circumstances. It's the feeling that I haven't been constrained, or held back; and that if I have been, that I only have myself to blame for it. No one else.

I'm confident some of my choices and actions are not meant to improve my happiness, or that of someone else. In fact the things that are in my personal life right now and those that aren't, are the direct result of one single inclination I have: (I'm paraphrasing a quote from House now)
"I see the world as it is. I see the world as it could be. What I don't see, is what everybody else sees, the giant gaping chasm in between. I'm not happy unless things are just right. Which means... I'll never be happy."