[via Devour]

Being human is never easy. But that’s the point. Perhaps as an unintended consequence of our relentless quest for more, bigger, faster, cheaper, now, we’ve comfortably acceded to something akin to a minor-league contempt for the richness and grandeur of life unquenchably meaningfully well lived. Hence, call this post my tiny statement of rebellion. Hex me with all the bland management jargon in the world, zap me with all the perfect theories and models you like, but I’ll never, ever accept the idea that triviality, mediocrity, and futility are appropriate goals for any human being, much less our grand, splintering systems of human organization.

I’m developing a serious man-crush on Umair Haque, author of the above book and internationally renowned thinker on management and economics. This quote is from a recent article he wrote for Harvard Business Review, called “Create a Meaningful Life Through Meaningful Work.”

Oh, and then he tweets stuff like this:

I’m at the mall. Tebowing.

— umair haque (@umairh) February 4, 2012

Guys, I get it. I really do.

You’ve been taught all your life to avoid “girly” things. People have told you to be “be a man,” and possibly made fun of you for doing something that appears feminine. You’ve been given an innate fear of weakness, beauty, and other qualities that have somehow become only associated with the fairer sex.

Maybe this led you to play a sport you didn’t really care about. Or pretend to like an action movie you thought was actually poorly produced. Or hide your love of things like poetry, or the “Real Housewives of Orange County.”

You’ve gravitated towards things like man aisles in grocery stores, or sites like The Art of Manliness, because they’ve supposedly made it easy to tell what a real man does – to differentiate yourself from feminine things. New shows like Man Up and Last Man Standing appeal to you for the same reasons.

Enter the new site Gentlemint, which does the same thing online. You’ve heard about Pinterest, the wildly popular online pinboard where people can “pin” images and videos to curated boards for everyone to see your interests. But you’ve also heard that Pinterest is dominated by women, so you’ve hesitated. And now Gentlemint has given you an option that will clearly say, “I’m a man!” Everyone wins, right?

Wrong.

Here’s why I’m going to advocate that you avoid things like Gentlemint. The first reason – the most important reason – is that those assholes in high school (who, let’s face it, may have included your own father) who advocated for you to “be a man” were telling you that because of their own insecurities. The anti-femininity (and thinly-veiled homophobia) that is rampant in locker rooms and around dinner tables in America is a moral failing that not enough parents – not enough fathers – have the courage to address.

We need to be better than this. Because right now, we’re intentionally creating intellectual and cultural ghettos from which men are incapable of escaping. We’re ceding the marketplace of ideas and innovation to women out of a fear of becoming like them – no, out of a fear that other men will perceive that we’ve become like them. And in the process, we’re making the very idea of men a caricature that no one can take seriously.

This is a small window into why some are declaring the end of men. The ghettos we’re creating extend beyond television and websites – they include professional tracks and education. (“You want to be a nurse? That’s a girls job!”) Fear is leading men to a permanent place of second-class citizenship. Sure, we’re not there yet. But I for one don’t want to see my son growing up in a world of shrinking opportunities for men created by our imaginations.

This is one of the reasons why I created FWD – I want to get the marketplace of ideas back. I want to make it OK for men to think big again. And I hope you’ll join me.

On an average day, the busyness is palpable. Hours are filled with obligations, to one party or another or your offspring. The sun rises and sets, and you try to get through it – from one point to another – while trying to find little moments of respite.

You count the little victories, and if it’s a special day, you have to use two hands. Usually one will do.

“The last year in the mountains new people came deep into our lives and nothing was ever the same again. The winter of the avalanches was like a happy and innocent winter in childhood compared to that winter and the murderous summer that was to follow…”

If you’re lucky, if you have the presence of mind enough for that day, you might remember to notice things. Like the taste of your food when you make yourself breakfast. Or the woman who’s afraid to ask you for your seat on the train. Like how the peaking sun mixes with the chill January air to create a sensation of brisk warmth.

Numbers occupy most of the space of the day. The number of tasks accomplished. (The greater number unaccomplished.) The balance of your checking account. Budgets. Train numbers. How many emails. How many meeting minutes. How much productivity.

“In the mechanics of how this was penetrated I have never tried to apportion the blame, except my own part, and that was clearer all my life. The bulldozing of three people’s hearts to destroy one happiness and build another…”

At the end, the meetings accomplished, the children put to bed, the time for the two of you. The twilight hours for rest, or romance. But usually rest. The day has stolen your energy, your will to make an effort. Decision fatigue has left you incapable of doing the right thing. Or of doing anything.

“Any blame in that was mine to take and possess and understand.”

In A Moveable Feast, this is what Hemingway knew all too late. How happiness is penetrated one day at a time.

Or.

You don’t let it be. You put up a fortress, brick by brick, around each other. You look into each other’s eyes. You fight, tooth and nail, bloody, injured, for the other person. You see each other, daily. You count the little victories together.

“The only one, Hadley, who had no possible blame, ever, came well out of it finally and married a much finer man than I ever was or could hope to be and is happy and deserves it and that was one good and lasting thing that came out of that year.”

And I’m back. How are you?

My holiday was… interesting. More on that later this week.

Right now I want to share with you guys a fun exercise I’ve been going through in the last couple of weeks. Last month, I was thinking about what I had accomplished in 2011 and what I wanted to get out of 2012. There is quite a bit on my life agenda, and figuring out what the next step is has always come with some difficulty for me.

Then I had an epiphany: what I needed was a strategic plan.

Strategy is a big part of my day job. So when I started thinking about what my goals were for 2012, what were my important action items to get to those goals, etc., I thought, This sounds familiar. Honestly, I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me earlier.

The exercise of actually doing strategic planning for myself has been really interesting. I’ve done everything from laying out my mission, vision and values to doing a SWOT analysis for myself. (Laying out your weaknesses is not fun. Talk about a humbling experience.)

The result has been something tangible that I can hold on to that allows me to say, I’m doing this right now or I want to do this, but it’s not for today. I’ll do that in a few months (or years). The latter I think is more important for me, because lists like this can easily make me feel like I’ve got to accomplish everything right away. It’s very freeing to be able to say no to things.

I won’t bore you with all of the details of the plan, suffice to say it focuses on the next three years, and involves five interconnected spheres of living: mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational.

Here is a quick snapshot of where I landed on those for 2012:

• Mental – Write, write, and write some more. A lot goes on in my head. Time to get some of that on paper (per se). Plus it moves me towards a few of my list items.
• Physical – Fighting in a boxing match has been something I’ve wanted to do for a while now, and I just started to dip my toe into this project in 2011. I want to take it up significantly this year.
• Emotional – I’ve alluded to the fact that I don’t have a relationship with my biological father. The task I’ve given myself this year is to start making inroads into finding out more about him. (More on that soon.)
• Spiritual – Last September I started getting up really early in the morning in order to get stuff done. This has been amazingly successful for productivity, but this year I also want to use this time for centering, stillness, and talking to God.
• Relational – This really has two pieces: family and friends. I’ve realized that it’s really easily for me to exist in isolation, physically and mentally, from everyone else in my life. In 2012, I want to be intentional about being with the other people in my life.

Now you’ve seen under my hood a little bit. What are your goals for 2012?

Image credit: Menage a Moi

Feeling inspired after last night’s FWD event. Feel like joining us nuts for the next one?

[via Swiss Miss]

Serendipitously stumbled across this video series by men’s grooming brand The Motley last week. Billed as an “on-going conversation with men who create, explore, advocate and inspire,” the series looks at young men who are creating something new and pursuing their dreams.

Love the idea of highlighting men that are out there doing it. Check it out.

[originally via Finer Cut]

I’ve never been a Black Friday person, but I understand the appeal. When you have a lot of people to shop for, saving money wherever you can is important. Understanding this, retailers have over the years pitted human against human on this mad dash to savings, opening at increasingly ungodly hours to let the madness begin earlier and earlier.

But this year, many are opening on Thursday evening instead of Friday morning – Thursday being Thanksgiving, the same day when you’re supposed to take time to be with your family and be thankful for what you have. And I think that’s going too far.

Here’s why: These retail stores employ what C-suite executives like to call “people.”

Thousands of them. And these people will have to cut their Thanksgiving holidays short in order to cater to the masses who want to get their holiday shopping done a few hours earlier than normal. Understandably, many are not happy about this. If stores open at 10, these employees will have to show up at 4 or 5, or even earlier. I’m all about capitalism and getting the economy going again, but this is just wrong.

Take it from someone whose mother has spent the last 20 years in retail. Many times I’ve watched her go to bed early on Thanksgiving because she had to get up at ungodly hours on Black Friday to prepare. The thought of her having to give up half of her Thanksgiving day just so someone can save $50 on a new flat screen TV pisses me off.

And this won’t stop with this year. Blame it on the ever-recession all you want, but if it’s a success, this will become the norm. Just like Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become staples of American society, Thanksgiving will disappear, to be replaced with Dealsgiving, the holiday where we get a four day weekend just to shop. Thanksgiving will be a relic from the past that we’ll have to explain to our grandchildren.

There’s a simple way to stop this madness: don’t go.

Don’t be lured away from your families by the appeal of slightly lower prices. Wait eight hours to begin the madness. If retailers see this as not being successful, or if the backlash of people saying “Enough!” gets plenty loud, then maybe we have a chance of stopping this thing. Or at least making a dent.

Because, really, you’re still going to buy your stuff, right? You’ll still stimulate the economy. Your loved ones still need gifts. But on Thanksgiving, they’d rather have your time.

I’ve been chewing on something I read recently that I wanted to share with you guys. It’s summarized in this TED video, but I also saw it here and here. The basic premise: the secret to success isn’t talent or hard work, it’s grit – the ability to follow through when things get rough.

It’s a hard quality to find, isn’t it? And how do you know whether you have what it takes? Luckily, Dr. Duckworth (featured in the video) came up with what she calls the Grit Scale, which she used to measure the grit of several of her most successful subjects.

You can actually take the Grit Scale test yourself. Take it, and let me know where you fall. Really interested to see people’s results.

But the real question is – now that you know where you fall, what are you going to do about it? Do you think you can learn to have more grit? (Do you want to?)

I’ve been trying to avoid this, but I feel compelled to address the non-controversy that has erupted in the dad/man world over a New York Times article about testosterone levels dropping in men after they have children. The article basically asserted that the more time men spend caring for their children, the more their testosterone levels dropped (by marginal levels).

Sure, I read it when it came out. You know what my reaction was?

Huh. And?

Is it really a surprise to anyone that taking care of your kids sends signals to your body that maybe it’s time to settle down? That was the conclusion of the article, that biologically this is proof that we’re meant to be active fathers. That we’re not just influenced by physiology: we can actually change our physiology by our behaviors.

To me, this is slightly refreshing news. I don’t know about you, but I need no upticks in my libido. Louis C.K. agrees, and when commenting on this article said, “A real man raises kids.” That’s it.

So my conclusion is that this is barely news. But the mini-controversy has been stoked by online parties who want page views – including the Times itself, who intentionally framed up the article with “This will make fathers angry – but it shouldn’t!” language.

These page views are coming from guys seeking reassurance about their manliness, after all the crap we’ve been fed about how related that is to testosterone. But you know what, as Doug French recently put it, “maleness” and “manhood” are not the same thing. One has to do with your body’s physical attributes. The other is something more intangible. Something that you have to decide for yourself.

If you want to let some arbitrary factors like your testosterone levels define who you are as a man, go ahead. I for one will let it be defined by the decisions I make – and let those decisions define my physiology, not the other way around.