Apolo Ohno

Check out this workout schedule.

Ohno hired John Schaeffer, a kick boxer turned trainer, in 2002. Schaeffer’s résumé included work with swimmers, boxers, weight lifters, mixed martial artists and N.F.L. players, but never before had he encountered someone with Ohno’s intensity, recovery ability and capacity to endure pain.

“I don’t know anybody, honestly, who could train with Apolo,” Schaeffer said.

He traveled with Ohno to Italy for the Olympics and to Los Angeles for “Dancing With the Stars.” He once ran Ohno up the mountains near Reading, Pa., three times each day for three days, “like a goat.” ...

A typical workout: eight sets of two repetitions at 1,000 pounds on the leg press, one leg at a time, holding the weight between each set. Then bench hops. Then one-legged hops. Then, in the afternoon, treadmill training, alternating each minute between 12 and 15 miles an hour for 20 rotations.

It's often easy to see the greatness and forget about the hard work. And we sometimes dismiss it as genetics -- he's great because it's in his blood.  But there's always unbelievable levels of hard work and practice behind it. 

In our jobs, we're not really trying for Olympic-level extreme greatness.  But imagine what you could accomplish if you really pushed yourself.  Not up a mountain three times, but at least hard enough so that it hurt. 

*Uncommon* by Tony Dungy

Tony Dungy is one of those guys you can't help but root for.  First, he had he a Super Bowl taken away from on the verge of winning it at Tampa Bay, so you had to pull for him to win it at Indianapolis.  Then, a year after his son died, you had to pull for him to win it the next year when his team made it.

The underlying reason shines through in Uncommon.  NFL teams test and time potential draft picks, and then record codes about whether to draft each one.  A guy might be too slow or unskilled to get drafted.  Dungy may be the only one with a code DNDC -- "do not draft due to character".  This extends beyond trouble with the law or recklessness.  It includes work ethic and team orientation.  As Dungy mentions, they have lost out on some major talent due to this provision, but he firmly believes it was worth it. 

Uncommon is a motivational book, well-suited for sports team building at the high school or college level. 

There's no incentive in bonus

I've been blessed enough to see a big bonus and cursed enough to see the smallest.  The problem is, neither of them affected my motivation -- and not because I'm such a dedicated worker.

When I got a big bonus, I felt good of course.  The next day, the same problems confronted me, and I didn't work any less or more hard to solve them.  You can't make your brain pump out more than what it does, or come up with more innovative solutions suddenly.  The best I could have done was maybe type a little faster.

When I got a small (ahem, zero) bonus, I was very unhappy of course.  But a guy that I enjoyed working with expected me to deliver some code by the end of the week, and I spent the rest of the day dedicated to fulfilling my commitment.  That guy didn't affect my bonus one way or the other, so why should he suffer?  (Another demonstration that friends at work contribute significantly to your job enjoyment.)

The kicker is that my own productivity was one of the smallest factors.  Much bigger: profitability of the company, industry trends, macro-economic conditions.

In good years, a few people felt good, but most had mixed feelings.  After all, most people view themselves as above average, but most will receive an average bonus.

In bad years, everyone felt bad: people that had worked hard felt cheated, and those who didn't were upset just out of disappointment.

So, on net, bonus day as practiced on Wall Street is typically a mixed to negative experience.  It's supposed to reward and thereby encourage performance, but it's so weakly related to performance that it's more like a lottery.  This is the mechanism setting the culture at all these financial institutions that are too big to fail?

*The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People*

This is an old book that everyone knows.  I was drawn to it by the title.  Effectiveness continues to be a top priority.  Habits indicates hard work, no shortcuts; I'm a believer in practice making perfect.  Highly, as opposed to Super or Awesomely, is understated and again indicates realistic goals.

Also, the title is much better than How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Apparently, we've learned to be slightly less obvious in our ambitions.

I particularly liked the section on being more proactive.  I mentioned in an earlier post that he has the best definition of proactive, one that actually means something.  I don't know if he coined "proactive" or "win-win", but he might have been the one to popularize them.  Now, those words have been so overused that they barely resonate.

Covey also has a strong smell of authenticity.  You really get the sense that he lives what he's preaching, that he would be living that way even if he knew he couldn't package it up and sell it, and gives the whole thing credence.

This book is particularly good for someone who is in a funk, or maybe between jobs, and needs some direction.  He offers practical ways to implement what he's saying, though I found the "private" / personal changes to be more interesting than the "public" / interpersonal one, perhaps because the interpersonal ones have been re-done and re-stated so many times since then.

Two ways to know you are good

1. when you announce you are leaving, management makes an effort to retain you.  This could come as a salary match, or as a pitch with new title / authority.  It certainly includes sincere regret and the belief that your departure leaves a big hole in the group.

2. as others leave, you find new responsibilities being driven to you.  I'm not talking about being required to take on more repetitive crapwork, but exerting more responsibility and decision making.  As you become the "veteran" of the group, your expertise become more recognized, and you are increasingly viewed as the expert.

As always, these aren't definitive, but you might recognize these patterns as the job market thaws and people leave.

What is enthusiasm worth?

Consider Dan Quayle.  The former vice-president said many ridiculous things that made him seem foolish.

Contributing greatly to the perception of Quayle's incompetence was his tendency to make public statements which were either self-contradictory ("The holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history.… No, not our nation's, but in World War II. I mean, we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century, but in this century's history."), impossible ("I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future") or confused and inappropriate, as when he addressed the United Negro College Fund, whose slogan is "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," and said, "You take the UNCF model that what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

In his run for the presidency in 2000, he limped in the back of the pack because "his campaign was hampered by the legacy of his vice-presidency." 

Consider Sarah Palin.  Her crazy comments during the 2008 campaign piled up cars in a traffic accident.  Her legendarily bad interview with Katy Couric required its own Wikipedia page.

Yet, Sarah is still going strong.  She unofficially reigns as the leader of a dynamic, headline-making political movement. 

And the only real difference I can see between Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin is that Palin is Quayle with spunk.  She's got undeniable enthusiasm.  Her overabundant enthusiasm may be one reason for some people not to like her, but it generates far more good will.

You definitely get the feeling she's going to be around for a long time, regardless of how many mistakes or enemies she makes.  Like her or not, you have to admire her willingness to stay in the line of fire, probably knowing that she is outgunned in every way except her personal enthusiasm.

What would happen if you brought more enthusiasm to your work?  Maybe you'll make mistakes, but you'll likely rebound more quickly from them and go higher.  Maybe some people will be annoyed by you, but you'll likely find more people wanting to be part of what you're doing.  Maybe you'll make more enemies, but more people will seek you out.

Perhaps you're not a people person like Sarah -- lots of introverted programmers, after all.  Maybe you can be enthusiastic about your programming language, or your willingness to constantly refactor, or your openness to helping out when someone else is struggling, or your efforts to make the team more unified.

Enthusiasm doesn't come from emotional bubbliness.  It ultimately comes from conviction: believing in what you do and your own team.  If you can't be excited about that, then something is seriously wrong. 

Think about an important aspect of your job.  How can you make it even better?  How can you convince others?  How can help your team do it more effectively and/or efficiently?

Too much of a good thing

This description blew up all the ways I usually think about team culture:

Despite his forty-year police carer, [John Guido] was never part of the NYPD culture...  "The Irish thought the job was a calling," Guido liked to say to me.  "To me, it was just a job." ... the consummate outsider, he did not mingle with colleagues.  He refused to attend formal police functions like retirement dinners or testimonials staged by wealthy police buffs."

Sounds a someone you don't want on the team.  Not a team player!

But the reason he kept his distance was to avoid the sleazy side of the job.  By keeping himself clean, he eventually became Chief of Internal Affairs, and earned high distinction.

"There are many cultures in the New York City Police Department, but corruption is the strongest one," he said.

A group like the NYPD has the opposite problem of most organizations: too much sense of team and identity.  Corporations would kill for that kind of loyalty.  We usually think of a strong culture as being good, but in this case, Guido points out that it can easily work the other way.  They're so loyal to each other, even the clean ones won't report the dirty ones, sometimes known as the Blue Wall.  As a result, many of them succumb to the temptation of power.

In a job like the police, with its danger and also the dual role the "policed" play as both customer and problem, the cultural problem isn't generating camaraderie and team pride, but doing the opposite -- without killing the pride that you still want good police officers to have in their job.  After reading NYPD Confidential, it clearly isn't easy to do.