Needle, Meet Haystack

Have you ever been in line while running what was supposed to be a quick errand, like at the post office, bank or supermarket, when you find yourself stuck behind some schlub talking the ear off of the employee you’re waiting to see?  Maybe they’ve opened up their wallet to show off some family photos, or perhaps they’re making an excessive amount of idling small talk.  These are the people who are entirely too excited to hear about a new store credit card, and the folks who argue about an expired coupon (from 1997) until a manager acquiesces.  Meanwhile, the normal folks who want to get on with their lives are stuck staring daggers into Captain Oblivious and hoping that another lane will open up.

I was in danger of becoming one of those people.  And I don’t mean the innocent bystanders in line.

A big part of being an active communicator is finding a receptive audience.  You need to seek out those who value your input and attention, or you’ll be spitting into the wind with a long string of unanswered emails, unreturned phone calls, and IMs that end before the first greeting is ever typed.  Those of us without an audience will hold hostage those who cannot escape communication: people who are working.  After all, they can’t turn away a (seemingly) friendly customer, right?

Unfortunately, this leads to many people, friends and family included, tuning the speaker out, sometimes ceasing communications entirely.  The thought of the most meaningful talk I would have all week being with the barista at Starbucks freaked me out.  If my over-communicating was pushing my friends away to the point of radio silence, I would have to change things.  I had to become reactive.

In the classic Seinfeld episode, “The Opposite,” George Costanza decides that after a life of bad decisions, he will go against his natural instincts and urges, doing, thinking and saying the opposite things.  “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right,” Jerry muses.  To George’s surprise, this works.

In order to avoid a fate of awkward one-way conversations with uncomfortable retail workers, I must become George Costanza.  Conversationally and communications-wise, at least.

After much soul searching and a couple of beers, I compiled a list of habits that I had picked up with seemingly obvious ties to one-way (re: bad) communication.  This list includes:

• Calling and texting responses almost immediately - I kvetched about this a while back, and have been doing the same with increased frequency.
• Trying to get the last word in – Apparently, I have something of a compulsion to say/type the last thing at the end of a conversation, OR ELSE.
• Calling and leaving a message which usually amounts to, “Call me back,” but saying it in a roundabout way.  Not only does it waste time, but it could be a lot more fun.
• Telling a story instead of giving a straight answer.  IE: “Is it clear to make a right turn?” “Well, the closest car is about three blocks back, so it’s probably safe if we go now.”  (The answer should be “Yes.”)
• Calling at inconvenient times.  Not that I can always tell when a time would be inconvenient, but my precision is getting to be telemarketer-like when it comes to inopportune moments.

All of this might seem like small potatoes, but think about how you present yourself in the manner in which you communicate.  Do you prefer nonverbal, written communication, even with the ever-looming threat of Poe’s Law fighting your every word?  Are you one who enjoys talking on the phone, enjoying a verbal and tonal connection while still maintaining visual privacy?  Or are you a fan of in-person chats, where you have more transparency between communicators?  If you fail at any of these forms of communication, you risk alienating those who prefer using them.

The most effective way to cover for this? Ignorance and laziness.

There’s an old business strategy that underscores the importance of timing: the person who comes in late is important because others had to wait for them.  Taking slow, deliberate pauses while speaking adds weight to one’s words, as others have more time to parse over them.  So it stands to reason that responding too quickly demonstrates both a lack of importance and social power.

Brevity is another source of positivity.  Both the success of Twitter and an increased rate of information consumption have led to a renaissance for quick, effective messages.  Rather than droning on or over-sharing details, it’s much simpler to keep things short and let the audience fill things in.  As one of my English teachers once said, “Show, don’t tell.”  An increased time spent talking and giving details where they are unnecessary only devalues the speaker and the message.

I noticed an immediate shift in my interactions with others after taking inverting my usual communication patterns.  Friends were now calling me with increased regularity, and my response rate on everything from Facebook messages to work emails increased exponentially.  The strategy of “The Opposite” freed me from what could have become a lifetime of angry glares from other shoppers at Walgreen’s.  If only some of my fellow shoppers could come to the same conclusion…

I don’t have a nice picture smile.  When someone tells me to “say cheese” or grin or look like I’m having a good time, a rictus of uncomfortable proportions corrupts the lower part of my face, and if there’s flash, a blink is usually involved as well.  And even though it requires fewer muscles to show off one’s pearly whites, I can always manage a good scowl.  I guess I like a good challenge.

The past week wasn’t about flipping the frown upside down; think of it more as a relaxing of the right facial muscles to ease the transition.

When I started the experiment last week, the plan was to put a bit more a spring in my step, to lighten up my disposition, and remove a bit of the sarcasm and self-effacement that served to gloom up some of my thoughts.  I would be “winning” by returning to a perpetual state of zen awareness and would come away with some great insight on how to better navigate my moods.

That plan didn’t come to pass.

No one noticed that anything was different.  Whether that’s due to my natural temperament being sunnier than I perceive it to be, or a lack of notice on the parts of others, there was no mention made on any significant external change to my personality or interactions.  Although I felt more confident, even those who were aware of the experiment said that they didn’t notice any changes.  On the outside, it seemed, I was the same guy.  But on the inside, it was different.

I became more conscious of the content of my conversations.  My words were chosen more carefully, my thoughts shifted in a way to look at the more positive aspects of things.  It was like having a mental editor determined to add smiley faces to everything.  It worked well enough for a while; I was slower to get grumpy, and I noticed that I was less tired and stressed.

The problems came when I was with other people.  When conversations turned to gossip and complaints, it was hard not to empathize with them.  In doing so, slivers of pessimism crept in, and yet I still felt good.  It was almost like a different type of schadenfreude; though dealing with negatives, I felt positive over the content and my reactions.  Even when speaking against someone or something, voicing my thoughts helped me to feel better.  Confession is good for the soul, after all.

So if I’m now optimistically viewing the guy who cuts me off in traffic or the girl who kicks me when she walks by, does that actually improve my disposition?  Or is it just a mental cover to the same brain full of more morose considerations?  After one week of trying, I’m really not sure.  I can say that I’m “winning” until the cows come home, but that doesn’t make it any more true than if I were to mutter, “losing.”  I can choose to calm myself and not get angry about someone else’s actions, but the repression might make me less happy in the long run.  When it comes to moods, there’s simply too many variables.  And try though we might to control them, their capricious and malleable nature ensures that a solid grasp on any one of them will never last long.

But frowning does seem more difficult now, like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.  Maybe I’m on my way to actually winning, instead of trying to force myself to think that I am.  That could be something to smile about.

This is not a blog post about Charlie Sheen.  It’s not about the man himself, his current media blitz, his living situation, or any personal or professional issues he may be facing right now.  As someone who finds it impossible to understand the lifestyle of a second-generation famous actor and fantastically wealthy celebrity, I won’t profess to understand the the psychological underpinnings of what said upbringing and existence might be like.  I could care less about his barrage of Internet meme-ready quotes or the bizarre stories about him that are coming out at a rapid clip, seemingly every hour.

No, this is about his philosophy, which, I must admit, is pretty good.

It first came to my attention that he was on to something when I read Tuesday’s PVP, an excellent webcomic from the esteemable Scott Kurtz.  In the comic, one of the characters utters a line that struck me as one of the most sane things that I’d read in a long time:

“You gotta admit, it’s a solid philosophy.  No matter how bad things get, just keep telling everyone you’re winning.”

Anyone who’s spent more than 10 minutes in conversation with me can attest to my pessimism.  A friend once lovingly referred to my sense of humor (when I’m funny) as “self-deprecating to the level that it’s barely acceptable in polite company.”  Also, work has been a little stressful lately.  So, with those powers combined, I decided to try a new tactic: unbridled, unabashed, irony-free optimism for a week.

The plan is this: whether it’s spoken aloud or kept internally, I will attempt to restrict any negative thoughts, instead finding positive elements in even the most depressing situations.  Not going to be able to get out of the office until late?  That time carries over so I can leave early tomorrow!  Come home to find my dog barfed on my sandals?  They needed a good Febreeze-ing anyway!  Someone cuts me off in traffic?  Hey, there’s plenty of reasons that they might have done it!

I also found that uttering the phrase “Winning!” whenever I feel a bit put-upon helps; it’s impossible not to smile and realize that despite the temporary grievances that are going on around me, my life is pretty good.  I might not have tiger blood in my veins, but I’m gainfully employed, healthy, and doing pretty well socially.

The biggest hurdle, though, isn’t even something I was conscious of until it had already happened: the negativity of gossip.

Spontaneous trait transference is a tricky piece of psychology, best described by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project:

“People spontaneously and unintentionally associate what you say about the qualities of other people with the qualities of you yourself. So if I tell Jean that Pat is arrogant or stupid, unconsciously Jean will associate that quality with me. On the other hand, if I say that Pat is brilliant or hilarious, I’ll be linked to those qualities. Ever wondered why people want to kill the messenger who brings bad news? Trait transference”

The thing about spontaneous trait transference that I discovered today is that it works internally, too.  Though I might feel some alleviation of stress by describing something that someone did that I didn’t appreciate in fairly colorful terms, I usually wind up feeling upset with myself for not confronting the actual person with the issue.  Speaking negatively easily leads to thinking negatively, and it can infect one’s entire thought process and just make a mess of the day.

Emotions can’t be controlled at the flick of a switch, but they can be adjusted.  Looking for the signs of onset grumpiness, pessimism or depression, like a change in heart rate, vocal tone, thought processes or demeanor can go a long way to heading off negativity at the pass.  Simply recognizing these changes can be all that it takes to calm down.

I may never be a total bitchin’ rock star from Mars with fire-breathing fists, and I have no interest in melting my face off getting high on Charlie Sheen.  But for today, and for the next week, I’ll be winning.  And that’s a pretty good philosophy to live by.

Your calendar has been lying to you.

Whether it told you that February 14 was Valentine’s Day, Anna Howard Shaw Day, Arizona Statehood Day or Oregon Statehood Day, none of those are particularly important.  It might have whispered in your ear that you get off from work next Monday because the 21st is President’s day.  And it might even try to convince you that the 27th is tops in February, because it’s the birthday of Adam Baldwin, Chelsea Clinton, Josh Groban, Noah Emmerich, Elizabeth Taylor and Ralph Nader, but it’s lying.  You see, the most important day this month is actually today, February 15, and here’s why:

It’s all about you.

If you’re not a fan of holidays like I am, you might not be aware that in addition to today being Canadian National Flag Day, Susan B. Anthony Day, Serbian National Day, Singaporean Total Defense Day and (Potentially) George Washington’s Birthday, it is host to three disparate and unrelated yet very similar holidays.  February 15 is Parinirvana Day, John Frum Day, and the last day of Lupercalia.  Unless you’re furiously searching through Wikipedia right now, chances are that you might have heard of only one of them.

Buddhists and yoga fans will recognize Parinirvana Day as a particularly significant day: it’s the day that the Buddha transcended his physical life and achieved Nirvana.  It’s a day that celebrates life, honors death, and is a time for reflecting on the future.  As Buddhists believe that our existence is in a state of flux (or impermanence) in any particular form (see: reincarnation), one could say that Parinirvana Day could be summarized by the phrase, “This too shall pass.”

John Frum Day, meanwhile, is simply absurd and wonderful.  A holiday celebrated by some of the cargo cults in the South Pacific, its origins mirror the plot to the film The Gods Must Be Crazy.  During the early Twentieth Century (and especially the Second World War), a sudden influx of modernized goods, weapons and culture from the outside world invaded the indigenous populations of many small islands.  The manufactured goods and new technologies that appeared in front of the natives led them to believe that the soldiers there (‘John Frum’  might be an interpretation of the introduction, ‘John From America’) were prophets who would help usher the tribes into a new age of prosperity and happiness.  And while the cargo cults have a bit too much emphasis on material wealth and coveting, a day celebrating the hope and promise of a better life and success is something that can be admired.

Unless you are a devotee of ancient Roman traditions or a huge Shakespeare trivia nerd, it’s unlikely that you celebrate or have heard of the three-day festival of Lupercalia.  Without delving too much into the practices (participants are encouraged to run around naked and make animal sacrifices, among other things), the festival was one of fertility and purification; evil spirits were symbolically cast away in the hopes of improved health and fertility.  The festival was a way of starting with a clean slate to look towards a brighter future, much like we do each New Year’s Day.

So when we combine these three celebrations, we find that February 15 is a day in which we look towards the future with hope to plan for future success while recognizing that any negative issues we currently face are only temporary.  This is a chance to brighten one’s outlook with renewed optimism, to shake off the cobwebs and try again.  It’s a chance to take a few steps down the road to become the person you want to be.  And that’s something worth celebrating.

So, in honor of this sentiment, February 15 shall now be known as the (unimaginatively titled) Improvement Day!  Here’s how you participate:

Do something that makes your life better, right now.

It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture or a major act; it might be something as simple as cleaning out your email inbox or stretching after sitting in front of your computer for too long.  Just do something that affects you in a positive way with an immediate payoff (without detriment or harm to others, of course).  Maybe it’s a little thing you’ve put off doing, like recycling a few empty soda cans at your workstation.  Maybe it’s something you’ve been hesitant about committing to, like clearing your ex’s number out of your phone.  Whatever it is, just do it.  Right now.  Get it done, then come back.

With that simple action, you’ve taken your first step.  So maybe it’s time to consider larger steps, like improving communications with a co-worker, or taking the time to plan out the rest of your day so you know what you have left to do.  You could take small steps towards larger goals: buy a few healthier things when you go grocery shopping, or pay off your latest credit card bill.  As long as it’s something that has a positive impact on your life, get it done.

When we celebrate the new year, it’s often in the form of a hangover and resolutions.  ”I will do [something]” or “I’ll start to do [something]” or “I want to do [something]” – it’s an act of planning out eventually acting on a desire to accomplish a goal.  But there’s no pressure to resolve on Improvement Day, or to make drastic snap decisions without much consideration for how you’ll accomplish them; it’s about just doing things that make things better for you.

Every day, somewhere in the world, there’s a holiday celebration going on.  But why wait for a special day you might not even recognize?  Celebrate yourself.  That’s something that you can do any day of the week.

Your brain is working against you this very instant, crushing your hopes and dreams as quickly as you might think them up, pushing down your fantasies, and destroying an infinite number of possibilities for your future.  It’s building walls that you will never be able to overcome, pushing you down a more limited life path, keeping you from discovering untold adventures and limiting your own beliefs.  Every one of our minds has been designed, over centuries of evolution, to prevent us from being our fullest, best, truest selves.  No one is exempt, and no one is safe.  But for those of us who realize these limitations, there is hope.

There’s nothing that’s really stopping you from making friends with strangers, pursuing a lifelong goal, or improving yourself to be the person you wish you were.  The limiting beliefs that you possess are just that: beliefs. They’re not physical structures that you have to break down, but metaphorical and psychological barriers that need to be cut down to size and overcome.  All you have to do is forget everything you think you know about how to behave.

There are mental blocks that have built themselves over time that prevent us from acting how we want.  They can come from almost any source – friends and family, culture, religion, entertainment, politics, or random happenstance.  While some of these things can be good, like those that keep us from hurting one another physically, most are designed to help reinforce a status quo that we all accept because we’re comfortable with it.  Living a certain way allows each person the freedom to focus on a set number of things with which they might discover new enterprises; all that it costs is the freedom to do much else.  And it boils down to two simple words: conscience and regret.

There will always be a road not taken.  Though not every choice comes down to one of two options, some people spend their lives wondering what they might have done had they made one different choice.  They debate whether or not they would have been better off, by how much, and what they could have achieved.  In decision theory, this difference in payoff between what could have happened and what did happen is called regret.  It’s a defensive barrier that guards against taking risky chances in the future based on past performance, and is used as an unfair weight while judging decisions.  After all, it’s a comparison of the tangible occurrences that one has experienced versus the imagined history of what never was.  By unfairly weighing the odds through regret, many people prevent themselves from ever moving forward or taking advantage of the opportunities that they have.  Instead, they look to the past, frozen in a permanent state of “what if.”

The cliché angel and devil on opposing shoulders are supposed to represent conscience and baser instincts (respectively), and have been used countless times to illustrate moral conundrums.  But it’s not that black and white.  When someone “goes with their gut,” or uses intuition, isn’t that similar to baser instincts?  After all, very little conscious thought or empirical evidence is used in any of those cases, except maybe in hindsight.  When we act on instinct, the results can prove favorable; think back to when you made a good decision in the heat of the moment – everyone has at least one that they can remember.

So if the devil on your shoulder isn’t quite as evil as they seem, what about your conscience angel?

There’s a large number of definitions for what conscience is, but essentially, it’s conforming to what one believes is the right course of conduct.  So if you think that it’s immoral to eat the last cookie in a box, your conscience will tell you not to eat it so someone else can have it; if you believe that nobody should go more than 5 miles over the speed limit, when you’re going 53 in a 45 mph zone, you will feel guilty.  But since conscience is personal, that means that it’s also rather subjective.  We define what our conscience tells us to do, and can manipulate it as we see fit (and if you’ve ever seen Dexter, you know exactly how this can go).  Your conscience isn’t set in stone; it’s a rough guideline of minor things that you should and shouldn’t do.

Both regret and conscience work together to hold us back; it’s easier to keep things in and mitigate the guilt than take a risk to feel worse.  As such, they’re two powerful mental motivators to stay risk-averse and preserve our expected experiences.

This makes sense: from an evolutionary standpoint, it was imperative that those in a tribe work together to maintain a survivable and livable situation for the entire community – and deviation from proven methods could literally kill the members of that tribe.

Financially speaking, it seems logical: the risk of a short- or long-term potential payout might lead to greater rewards, but the equally great risk of losing as much (if not more) capital frightens many people away.

It’s uncomfortable to take chances and innovate.  Trying and failing has been ingrained in our minds as one of the worst things that a person can do.

But isn’t it worse not to try?

If you’re actively attempting to reduce your regret and “what if” quotient, wouldn’t taking the chances you might miss out on actually improve your life?  At the very least, you could use the experiences to make more educated decisions in the future.  And similarly, if you define what your conscience tells you, wouldn’t following it down the safer path only sate your personal code of conduct only for so long as you define proper action as what you do right now?

If you actively understand the fallacies within the mental conditioning that limits your self-concept and perceptions on what you can do, it’s easier to get around them and achieve your goals.  It might not seem like the sane, rational or responsible thing to do, but that’s because you’ll have to fight against your brain.

Besides, who wants to be sane, rational or responsible?  Go with your gut.

“Every generation of American children has been endlessly conditioned to believe that their lives are supposed to be great – a meaningful life is not just possible, but required.” -Chuck Klosterman, “Through a Glass, Blindly,” Eating The Dinosaur

I know enough about myself to hold no delusions that there would be any hopes for personal success on a social media fast.  After finally getting up thanks to the third alarm of the morning, the first thing I do is stumble over to my desk, fire up my laptop, and check my email, Facebook and Twitter.  It’s instinctual at this point; it’s been so ingrained in my morning routine that it seems impossible to break.

But even after scrolling through the inbox, News Feed and Tweet stream (or whatever it’s called), I make a deliberate effort to forget almost everything that my friends may have posted.  Save for pictures from a party in a faraway city, an interesting link, or a post that I really was hoping didn’t come from my teenage cousin, it all goes to the memory trash bin.  I like to cling to the delusion that I can still be surprised when I ask a friend what they’ve been up to, and what’s new with their life.

The problem is, I already know what’s new with them, and their lives sure seem a lot more entertaining and exciting than mine.  Sure, I might never want to hit the bars seemingly every night with a girl I worked retail with one summer during college, and I might never get the elitist-hipster commentary over The Next Great Underground Band that my Austin buddy seems to discover every other night, but it would be nice to pretend that I had anything near that going on.  Instead, it makes me feel unaccomplished.

I’ve also discovered a subsection of people within those I slightly e-stalk: the Peanut Butter Crowd.  Members of the PBC are essentially social butterflies; they fit in effortlessly with nearly any group (just like peanut butter with disparate elements like jelly, chicken satay, beer, ice cream or chocolate) but stand alone as persons of interest (like peanut butter being eaten off of a spoon with no accompaniment).  We all know a few people in the PBC – they seem to know at least several of our friends, are involved with far too many activities and organizations than one would think humanly possible, are successful at darn near anything, and get along with almost anyone.

For a long time, I wanted to be in the Peanut Butter Club very badly.  For several years, I devoted myself to learning enough about dozens of topics so that I would be able to talk with anyone.  I practiced new speech patterns to have a more aesthetically pleasing voice, exercised to improve my physical appearance, joined groups I had no real interest in so I would get to know people outside of my social circle better, and shunned activities I had previously enjoyed since they were either “childish” or “unpopular.”  And I never understood what was missing.

A new psychological study reveals that people have a tendency to overestimate the happiness and social worth of others, something that has been compounded through the expansion of over-sharing on social media.  Whenever we look at our friends’ statuses, our minds create stories about the grand adventures that they’re having, making our lives look pale in comparison.  While these beliefs are in no way necessarily true, our own insecurities play it up enough to make it seem to us that our lives are left wanting compared to the exotic adventures that everyone else seems to be having.

But if we all think this, and if everyone else thinks this too, then maybe things aren’t so bad.

One of my oldest friends is a lifetime card carrier for the Peanut Butter Club.  He’s easygoing, agreeable, friendly, and can strike up friendships instantly with almost anyone.  I’ve seen him run into people he met years ago for a brief moment, remember them exactly, and find that they remembered him too.  But I also remember that years before he was a social adept, he was a bit lonely, struggling to find a way to relate to his peers, teachers, and family.  It took him years before he ever really found a comfortable social situation, and I remember finding out that he would often stay late after school, talking to different teachers so he could pass the time while waiting for his parents to pick him up.  He eventually gave himself a bit of a personality overhaul, eliminating most of his introverted tendencies.  But even now, I wonder if he’s still trying to compensate for that early loneliness.

Sometimes, when I’m absentmindedly flicking through the Facebook pages of people I haven’t seen in months, years or decades, I get pangs of regret that I’m not being more productive and working on music, learning a new language, tackling a new side project, or working on a blog post.  Instead of enriching my life, I’m reading and living vicariously through my social network, which makes me more depressed about my procrastination and seeming lack of ambition.

I know that I don’t have to be the most interesting guy around, but it can feel so much worse when it seems like everyone else is living life more fully than I am.  But now that there’s scientific evidence that I’m not alone in thinking this, it makes me feel better about myself.  Maybe I’ve got time for a few adventures after all.

“No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.” -John Donne, Meditation XVII

Let’s get one thing straight: I freaking love Community (as evidenced by its spot on my Best Of 2010 list) – it’s a smart, funny show that can cover a wider range of stories than most of the formulaic shows on television, and is, as far as I’m concerned, required viewing for anyone who wants to understand how disparate people can come together to be a makeshift family.*

With that being said, let’s get one more thing straight: this isn’t a post about Community.  This is a post about joining an online community, and why ultimately, you have to leave it.

Every community and group that we belong to is ultimately based on a purely utilitarian view.  We participate in society so we can trade goods and services with others, which make our lives easier.  We make friends for emotional gain.  We go to school for educational advancement.  We find religion for spiritual fulfillment.  We fall in love for personal completion.  Each and every thing that we do, even the most altruistic of acts, is based on this single truth.  And we are stronger for it.

We enter some groups to enhance our own skills, be it through group feedback, collaborations, or the sharing of ideas.  By exposing ourselves and our work to others of similar interests, we gain a wider scope of knowledge and can push past the invisible barriers that we alone could not cross.  By entering a community, we become a part of a whole greater than the sum of its individual members, aiding ourselves exponentially.

But at the same time, the community itself falls victim to the pair programming paradox.  Pair programming is a technique in which one software developer creates code, while another developer observes their work, collaborating with the programmer to create better software.  However, depending on the match-up of developers, the time it takes to complete the work, as well as the effectiveness of the final product, pair programming can ultimately become more of a liability.

In the case of the programming example, when the developer partners are too similar in their habits and strategies, they end up overlooking flaws and errors.  When the developers are too different, the software takes longer to code, and is often more convoluted.

When it comes to communities, too many like minds produce a group that supports its members, but doesn’t have much in the way of differentiation between the outputs of the individuals (a group of “sheeple“, if you will).  If the opinions, focus and strategies of the members of a community are too different, there will be too much tension and too many arguments to produce something as a cohesive group.  In both cases, it does not benefit an individual to remain in the community; they will derive no additional benefits from participating in either instance.

But even when a group has enough homogeneity among its members to form a strong bond between them with a dash of heterogeneity to mark said members as individuals, the onus is now on identifying the parts rather than the whole.  And though a community itself may be supportive of the success of its members, an inequality in said success levels can work to the detriment of those on either end of the spectrum.

In many supportive communities, those who reach the upper echelons of success (by whatever metrics the members have deemed to be ‘success’) can face either harsh criticism (selling out) or by a growing number of supporters who only serve to copy the successful and fluff their egos (sheeple).  In short, a community is only truly successful so long as all of its members have similar goals and are at similar stages of development.  True, some of the more successful members could mentor the newer charges, but that approach is more personal than being part of a larger collective.

Eventually, all birds must leave the nest to make their own way.  Those with a wanderlust must strike out on their own.  Ships must cast off from the pier so they can set sail.  And once the utility of being in a community has exhausted itself, we must leave.

The contacts and friendships we make can come with us, and we can look fondly at the past and what we’d learned.  But in order to face the future, the step must be made to move on, either to a solo expedition or into a new community in the higher echelons of one’s practices.  As individuals, we cannot be defined by those around us at all times; we must carve our own niches and identities, to be successful on our own terms.  Being a member of a community is a way to get to the stage where one may achieve that success, but it is not the final goal.

We join communities out of the utility that they provide for us.  And really, that’s not so far off from watching Community for the humor and joy that it brings its viewers.  But just as with any television show or group, it’s okay to leave when your time is done.

* Speaking of which, there’s new episodes on every Thursday on NBC, and you can catch previous episodes on Hulu.  This is an unpaid and unsolicited endorsement of an amazing show.

There’s a lot that’s been said about consistency in personal branding, enhancing your social standing through a single image, and being your truest and best self.  Most of it boils down to the philosophy that people should present themselves as honestly as they can while maintaining some semblance of “quality control” over how they come across to others.  But the problem is consistency.

We’re never the same person with all people.  In fact, it might be more problematic if we treated our family, friends, co-workers, significant others and strangers exactly the same.  We cultivate different relationships for different reasons, and we show disparate, sometimes opposing, facets of ourselves depending on our audience.  Consider a typical day:

Face 1a: The Riser If you’re anything like me, when you wake up, the first problem that arises is gaining full consciousness.  It takes a while for all of the mental batteries to boot up, so while your spatial awareness might come first, your memories from what exactly happened last night might be a bit dim.  This is your lizard brain of essential body function slowly evolving into your mammal brain of cognitive awareness.  It’s based on instinct over consideration, which is why hitting the snooze button is such a good idea, and we only curse about it later, when we get to…

Face 1b: The Morning Ritualist Think you don’t have any morning rituals?  Tomorrow, try to start brushing your teeth from a different spot than usual.  Or switch up the order of parts you’re washing in the shower.  Without making a conscious, committed effort, you won’t do it.  The time between waking and school or work is all about getting the things you need to get done finished, while your brain is preparing for the rest of your day.  You might come off as unintentionally scatterbrained, curt, or even overly aggressive if something (time , an extra errand, something you forgot to do) creeps up on you and disturbs the ritual.  Regardless of whether or not you’re a “morning person,” you will be defined by your morning patterns, all of which are done to get you on the way to…

Face 2: The Commuter The nice thing about driving to work is that you’re essentially anonymous.  The bad thing about driving to work is that other drivers are anonymous.  You can sing loudly in your car (with the windows rolled up), yell at the idiot in front of you who’s singing in their car and hasn’t noticed that the light is green yet, or can try to find the station with the music coming from that car next to you because it sounds really good.  Protected inside of the bubble-world of your vehicle, you can do whatever you want, without judgment from others.

Even if you take public transportation, you still have a good degree of anonymity.  The lines are often so clogged that other commuters will see you as one of a larger group, rather than an individual.  Unless you’re that jerk who hits the emergency stop button or who won’t give up their seat to someone more in need of sitting down, you can be virtually invisible on the ride, and can silently pass judgment on other commuters, read the paper, or try to get past level 4-14 on Angry Birds.  You can vent and de-stress before you get to your place of education or employment, at which point, you will find yourself making one of the following three faces:

Face 3a: The Boss For any who work below you, this is the face of experience, confidence and knowledge that you project.  You can be a little jovial, but try to remain more professional so as to better maintain your authority.  You keep this face stoic and reserved, making sure that you can command respect.

Face 3b: The Co-Worker The level at which you interact with your peers, trading information and resources.  Of the three faces, this is the most relaxed.  However, you may have different defenses by way of competition with your co-workers for a raise, promotion, or the attention of your superiors.

Face 3c: The Subordinate This is the face you make when with your superiors.  You are at your most reserved and supplicant here, deferring to others in the hopes of gaining their favor and merit points.  You’ll be at your most professional here, wanting to project the strongest positive impression that you can on the higher-ups.

You will flip through these faces at an alarming rate of change and regularity, often more than one at a time.  But once the work day is over, you will find yourself switching to…

Face 4a: The Friend It seems a bit disingenuous to group together all of your friendships under one banner.  After all, we never really have the same relationship with any two friends; it’s based on any number of circumstances, like shared experiences, mutual hobbies and tastes, and even the circumstances of how you met.  But nonetheless, the face you show to your friends is rarely professional (even if you work together) and is much more relaxed, open and honest.  It’s actually pretty similar to…

Face 4b: The Significant Other The personality that you share with your paramour will be different depending on what stage of the relationship the two of you are in, but it will always be separate from the side that your friends and family see due to the added element of romance.  In fact, some often believe this side of themselves to be their truest self, as they are more open with their partners than anyone else.  But for others, they find this to be the case with…

Face 4c: The Family Member Your parents, grandparents and siblings may have all known you since you were born (or vice-versa, in the case of the latter), and thanks to your mental development and upbringing, they have seen you go through numerous changes over the years as your personality developed into who you are today.  Though relationships with separate parents, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and different siblings may all be unique to the individuals involved, there is at least some pervasive behavioral trend that can best be seen at large family gatherings.

Face 4d: The Master People treat their pets in funny ways, but many times, it is because they see parts of their own personalities reflected back at them through the scaly, feathered or fuzzy faces.  In some cases, it can be taken a bit far and the owners make the pets independently wealthy, but the relationship that a pet owner/food provider/trainer has with their animals is different from what they might have with any humans.

Face 5: The Dreamer After you’re settled in and relaxed after a long day, the last side of yourself is one that you can keep to yourself.  While others might only hear snoring and see drool on the pillow, your brain is still working.  And depending on how you believe things work, your sleeping mind either enters another state of consciousness, pulls images from your day and combines them in an odd way, generates random coded messages to you, or becomes a plaything of the heavens.  Regardless, the way we choose to interpret our dreams (or ignore them) can literally change the course of our lives; sometimes, our dreams can even have a subtle influence on the other aspects of our personalities (or in some cases, entire personalities).

There are many faces that we all show to the world each and every day.  Sometimes, they work together, while other times, they seem to be completely opposite.  And though these different faces may struggle to find any consistency, they are all essential parts of the greater whole.  So embrace the different facets of your life, and don’t worry if you come across as someone a bit different than how you see yourself when you’re dealing with extenuating circumstances.

And don’t keep one face on for too long; it might stick that way.

Long-time readers may recognize my affinity for nerdier pursuits, like sci-fi, alternate universe theories and comic books (especially those of the billionaire hero variety).  In fact, I’ve made numerous posts using the example of one of my all-time favorites, Batman (see here, here and here).  But despite my love for the character, I am by no means The Internet’s Foremost Batmanologist, an honor which belongs to Prof. Chris Sims of the Invincible Super-Blog.  In a recent post in his weekly “Ask Chris” column at Comics Alliance, Professor Sims was discussing the divide (or lack thereof) between Bruce Wayne and Batman:

“Batman is consistently shown as being a man who does everything in his power to stop crime at every level. One of the common arguments that people often go to in order to dismiss Batman as a character is that dressing up in a costume and beating up the mentally ill doesn’t do a whole lot to effect real change, but as Bruce Wayne, that’s exactly what he does. As a billionaire philanthropist, he creates charities, employs reformed convicts, gives misguided people second chances and donates a massive high-tech crime lab to the GCPD free of charge, and as a super-hero, he stops muggings, murders and the literal destruction of the city. In both aspects, he’s devoted to fighting crime, but he doesn’t go about it one way or another.

“In other words, it’s Batman who punches out the abusive pimp, but it’s Bruce Wayne who gives the girl a way to find a better life.”

Although the argument is in reference to the mental condition and effectiveness of a fictional gentleman who dresses up as a flying rodent to punch psychotic clowns and other evil-doers in the face, Sims makes an alarmingly insightful point not just about Batman, but about consistency of action and character.  He continues to make a similar point regarding Superman as well:

“Superman doesn’t really need a job — it’s not like he’s got rent to pay on the Fortress of Solitude — but assuming that he wants to have a secret identity and not be Superman all the time, Clark Kent could do quite literally anything for a living… [he] becomes a reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper, meaning that his actual day job is to seek out truth and expose the guilty to justice, in a way so American that they put it in the First Amendment. In essence, Clark Kent and Superman both stand for the same things, just like Batman and Bruce Wayne both battle against crime in specific ways. Same person, same goals, but a wide range of methods.”

One could argue that this tracks back to an old metaphor about cats and methods of removing their skin.*  But it goes beyond simple problem solving, to touch on another issue entirely: effectiveness and scope.

When it comes to your career, there are literally hundreds of tiny permutations that separate your job skills and responsibilities from those at a competing company.  When it comes to your education, there are many different paths that your knowledge could take that make what you learn at one school distinct from what you might learn at a different institution, or even with a different professor.

Once you’ve obtained enough knowledge to be proficient in your field of choice, you have two options: keep learning or stop learning.  If you choose to stop learning, you will rely more on experience and previous cases to solve problems.  But if you keep learning, you will always discover alternate methods to improve your performance, and will eventually come to the realization that you need to expand laterally.

If you’re a programmer for your day job, you might spend some of your off time building up your skills in other languages, which will not only make you a greater asset professionally, but will give you more freedom privately, and could create future job opportunities down the line.  If you spend your days as a recruiter, you could also work with unemployed people, buffering their resumes and helping them to improve their employability.  Some doctors work at clinics or work as consultants in their off time.  But regardless of one’s career and extracurriculars, the fact remains the same: expanding your knowledge and skills can only be a greater benefit to you.

Of course, this isn’t to say that everything you do needs to have a 1-to-1 correlation.  For example, if your goal is to create your own marketing firm, and you spend your 9-5 time working at another marketing firm, you could spend your off time developing other necessary business competencies, like learning accounting or developing your leadership skills (which you could do via online games).

Regardless of if you’re out to fight crime and injustice or if you’re just looking for a promotion, there are plenty of ways to achieve your goal.  Just think like Batman and Superman, and don’t keep yourself confined to one method.

*Apologies to any cat-lovers out there.

There are levels of closeness that we feel with others, often built over time and through shared experiences.  Though we might drift away from them, there are still memories that anchor us to these people, bringing us back to times when we were closer.

It used to be that we would store these memories in photo albums and scrapbooks, saving contact information on index cards or in rolodexes.  But now, it’s all digital, and there’s no reason to ever let someone fade from your life again.

You can store hundreds of phone numbers on a cell phone.  You can have thousands of “friends” on any social network.  Your email address book could be stuffed to the brim with personal, business and random acquaintances.  You can contact anyone at any time for any reason.

But what’s the point?

One of the few things that I agree with the minimalists on is that there are some parts of everyone’s lives that could use de-cluttering.  I don’t really need the number of a fellow DJ who I played with at a club in New York about three years ago and haven’t talked to since.  There’s no need to keep the email of a friend who has long since stopped responding to my “how are you doing” messages – for all I know, she has a new address for those.  I don’t need to be Internet friends with a girl I went on one date with back in high school, when the extent of our communication is me wishing her a happy birthday every year.

Technology has made friend collectors of us all.  We don’t need to search out people from our past, because there’s a very good chance that we can just find them on one site.  It’s easy enough to revel in it, to enjoy it, and to live blissfully unaware of these habits.  But breaking the strings is easier than one might think, and it can lead to improved relationships, renewed social confidence, and a better understanding of your own personality.

I call it the Three Rings system.  It’s something you’re already familiar with, and really doesn’t require that much work.  You might know it better by the method people use when sorting clothes (Keep, Donate, Trash) or by the frequency strategy (always, sometimes, never).

The three rings are three layers of social communication, kind of like a misshapen onion.  The outer layer (ring 1) is the thickest, and contains the largest number of social contacts.  The middle layer (ring 2) is reserved for people you at least consider friends, or with whom you interact frequently.  And the innermost layer (ring 3) is your inner circle and core social group.  It looks kind of like this:

Thanks to that handy-dandy visual reference there (which you can click to embiggen), you should have a good idea of what we’re talking about.  And you should also be able to see which people in your life fit into which rings.  Sure, there might be some people who started at ring 1 and are now at ring 3, and there might be some who were once at ring 3 and have now moved to ring 1.  But hold on to your hats, kids, because it’s about to get REAL.

Each of the rings can correlate to a different form of communication.  On the outside with ring 1, where we have the most people, we need the simplest way to reach the widest audience, which works well for services like Facebook and Twitter.  For ring 2, we move on to things that might be a bit more personal or professional, to the point where we need at least occasional contact.  Instant messengers and email clients are good for this.  And for the innermost ring, the secret sanctum, that’s where we keep our strongest connections, and that’s where we should use our strongest communication devices.  Like our phones.

So, in short:

• Ring 1: Anyone you know – Facebook
• Ring 2: Friends and good acquaintances – Email
• Ring 3: Close personal contacts – Phone

But Andy, that seems silly.  You think.  My smartphone can cover all of those services, so what’s the point?  I can get to everyone on one device anyway.  But that’s not the point.  It’s not just about how you get to the data you use to contact them, it’s about frequency of use, and how you contact others.  If you’re not getting any utility out of keeping someone’s email address, and haven’t for a long time, the only thing it’s doing for you is cluttering up your address book.

But think about your phone: how many people’s names do you struggle to remember when you go through the list of stored numbers?  How many extra people do you scroll through to get to the ones you actually want to call?  And do you accidentally call some of those extra people, then dread the thought of them calling you back?

It’s a simple fix, despite the seemingly complex social rules of communication.  It’s just 3 steps, broken down by rings:

Step 1: Leave your social networks alone.  Personally, I try to avoid adding people who I’ve never met or heard of to my account, but with this one, casting a wide social net for ease of communication with others is fine.  The only real reason to remove someone you know on this level is if you absolutely can’t stand someone’s tweets or statuses and they are also not a resident of rings 2 or 3 (or subsequently fail those levels as well).

Step 2: If you haven’t emailed or chatted with someone in at least the past 6 months, delete them!  Even if it’s an old work contact who you think might be useful to you for a reference one day, or if it’s someone you used to chat with a lot, you’re not getting anything from keeping a collection of useless contact info that grows within your address book or buddy list like a fungus.  Besides, if you do need to get in touch with them, you’ve still got their info thanks to the first ring.

Step 3: Delete anyone from your phone where you need more than 5 seconds of looking at their name to remember who they are.  And if you do know who they are, but haven’t used the phone number in question to call and chat or text with them in the past six months, remove them.  Also remove them if they fail the following test:

Over the course of a week, use that person’s phone number to contact them at socially acceptable times.  Calls are worth 10 points, texts are worth 6 points.  If they haven’t gotten back in touch with you by the time they’ve “reached” 30 points, delete them.  But don’t feel bad about this; they’re still on rings 1 and 2.

By paring down your social contact lists, you will not only have faster access to the people you care about and want to communicate with, but you will be able to see your social circle in a more cohesive way.  Access to those who are important to you will become easier, and you can work on enriching those relationships, or even on improving them with people who seem to have drifted away.

When people talk about clutter, they’re usually referring to things that take up physical space.  But clutter can just as easily take up space in your mind, on a hard drive, or in a memory card.  And really, there’s no more reason to leave it there than there is to hoard anything else.  Just start with the first ring and work your way in.  You might be surprised about what your social life looks like once you’ve cleaned it up.