"It's so easy, you could teach a monkey to do it!"

I hope you found my last post to be more light-hearted than some of my other posts.  That was absolutely my intentions - we could all use a little more levity in our professional (and personal) lives.  Here's another lighthearted post for you, but one that I hope you will find interesting.  Have you ever heard (or ever personally used) the saying, "It's so easy, you could teach a monkey to do it!"  I'm not sure where that saying comes from, but perhaps it's related to the "Monkey See, Monkey Do" teaching concept, where students learn how to do something after their teacher models the behavior or task of interest.  

Actually, wouldn't it be more impressive if we could teach a less intelligent animal to perform a task?  Monkeys are very intelligent (maybe just as smart as humans), so I'm not sure the old cliché makes sense.  Most animals are a lot smarter than we typically give them credit (see for example this video of an octopus opening up a jar from the inside or this post from the Audubon Society talking about research showing that birds have the intelligence of a five-year-old human).  And, as it turns out, there is at least one famous example of a monkey working on the railroad!

"Signalman Jack" was the name of a Chacma baboon who served as an assistant to railway signalman James Wilde for the Cape Town-Port Authority Railway service in South Africa during the late 1880's.  Apparently Wilde was known to all his friends and co-workers as "Jumper" because of his habit of leaping from one railway car to the other, even when the train was moving.  Predictably, one day in 1877 Wilde mistimed the jump and fell under the moving train, and while he survived, he ended up losing both legs at the knee.  He managed well despite his permanent injury with the help of two wooden peg legs and a small wooden trolley, which allowed him to continue to work at the Uitenhage train station.

And then he met Jack.  One day a few years later, Wilde (still known as "Jumper" by the way) was visiting the market and saw a baboon driving an oxcart.  He was so impressed that he bought the baboon and made him his pet and personal assistant.  At first, Wilde trained Jack to push him on the trolley on the half-mile commute back and forth to work every day, but soon Jack was also helping with household chores like sweeping the floors and taking out the trash.  

Back in those days, whenever a train approached a station, they'd too their whistle a specific number of times to alert the signalman which tracks to change.  Jack was able to watch Wilde perform this task enough that he eventually could do it on his own!  Jack was able to do the job so well, in fact, that soon Wilde didn't even have to supervise him.

Of course, one day one of the train passengers saw the baboon manning the train switches and complained to the train company.  Wilde wrote the railway superintendent, George B. Howe, "Jack knows the signal whistle as well as I do, also every one of the levers."  Howe would later visit and personally witness how well Jack worked on the job, deciding to keep both Wilde and Jack on the job.  He wrote about Jack, "It was very touching to see his fondness for his master.  As I drew near they were both sitting on the trolley.  The baboon's arms around his master's neck, the other stroking Wilde's face."

Jack was given an employment number and was paid 20 cents per day and half a bottle of beer weekly for his services!  He worked for the railway for nine years, and died of tuberculosis in 1890, never having once made a mistake.  Apparently his skull is in the collection at the Albany Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa.

An amazing fish story

Imagine, if you will, sitting at a posh seafood restaurant as you look over the menu.  You've already ordered a cocktail (say maybe, an Old fashioned), and the server comes to your table to take your order.  The server asks whether you would be interested in tonight's special, grilled Patagonian toothfish.  You respond, "That sounds a little too exotic for me, but how about the Chilean Sea bass instead?"  The jokes on you though, there's actually no such thing as a Chilean sea bass - it's actually a Patagonian toothfish!

As a matter of record, Lee Lantz, an American fish wholesaler was on a trip to Chile in 1977 looking for a new kind of fish to bring back to American restaurants.  He came across the Patagonian toothfish, a fish so ugly that the local fishermen called it the "trash fish" (whenever they caught one, they would just throw it back out into the water).  The name certainly fits, because the Patagonian toothfish is one of the ugliest things your eyes will ever look upon!  It has huge googly bugged-out eyes and a protruding lower jaw full of teeth, and it grows almost to the size of a small adult human (check out the photograph below):

But as Lantz found out, the fish tasted amazing!  He knew that the fish would sell well in the U.S., and better yet, nobody but the kitchen staff would ever actually see the fish whole.  However, he knew that the name just wasn't going to work.  So he changed the name to Chilean sea bass.  The funny thing is that the Patagonian toothfish is not exclusive to Chile, and it isn't even a member of the bass family!  As Dave Trott explains in his article, "Drinking the label", "It's not a secret formula, you must have supply and demand.  So the job is twofold: discover (or make) a good product, discover (or create) a demand."  

Pretty soon, Chilean sea bass was all the rage!  The fish was so popular on restaurant menus that there are now regulations about how much fish can be caught.  Lantz had discovered the product and created the demand.  Trott further writes, "What Lantz had understood was what all chefs understand, presentation: before you eat a dish with your mouth, you eat it with your eyes. Although in this case it was: you eat it with your ears. The name creates the image, the image creates the taste. There’s a saying in beer advertising: you drink the label."

It's an amazing story (dare I say, "fish story"), particularly if you like to eat fish!  Apparently it's a common one too.  Have you ever heard of the slimehead fish?  While it sounds pretty gross, it's actually sold as orange roughy.  As one marketing firm suggests (and they are absolutely right), "Perception is reality.  The way something's described makes a tangible difference in how people judge its quality.  Toothfish had to at least taste decent.  But an appealing description is what truly hooks people's interest."

"What is important is seldom urgent..."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States and former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II famously once said, "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important.  The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."  Based on this particular quote, Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, developed a well-known time management tool that now bears Eisenhower's name, the Eisenhower Matrix.

Here's how it works.  The Eisenhower Matrix is a 2x2 matrix that helps you prioritize tasks based upon whether they are important or not important, and whether they are urgent or not urgent.  

First you have to distinguish between what is urgent versus what is important (they seem similar, but in this particular 2x2 matrix, they are not).  Urgent tasks require your immediate attention - there are clear consequences, usually adverse ones, if these tasks aren't completed by a certain deadline.  By stalling or putting off completing these tasks, you are actually creating more stress and more work for yourself in the long run.

Conversely, Important tasks may not necessarily require your immediate attention.  These tasks will also help you achieve either your long-term goals or your organization's goals.  These tasks may require more thoughtful planning and preparation.  

In the top left quadrant (Urgent, Important) are the tasks that you should just go ahead and do (remember Mark Twain's admonition to "Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.").  These tasks should receive your highest priority.  The bottom left quadrant (Urgent, Not Important) represent tasks that you should delegate or hand-off to someone else to do.  The top right quadrant includes the tasks that are important, but not urgent.  Due to their level of importance, you are going to have to make a decision on when you will complete them - go ahead and schedule some time in your day to finish these tasks.  Lastly, the bottom right quadrant represent tasks that are neither important, nor urgent.  These tasks are ones that you can just forget about!

There's a good chance that you already have a "system" on how to prioritize the work that you have to finish.  If not, the Eisenhower Matrix is a great tool to help you prioritize and be more productive!

“I just want my kids to be happy"

The end of the school year is always a special time of year for teachers, students, and parents!  My wife is a middle school math and social studies teacher and recently heard an incredibly inspiring commencement address by the mother of one of her graduating 8th grade students.  She asked the audience, "When someone asks you, as a parent, what you want for your children as they grow up, how do you answer?"  She answered her own question by saying, "I answer that I just want my kids to be happy."  

Admittedly, both my wife and I would have answered the same way, and as it turns out, most of the 8th grade parents nodded their head and agreed that they would also respond with that answer.  The parent went on to explain, "The problem is that no matter how good you have it in life, there are going to be times when you just aren't happy.  And that's okay.  Instead, when asked that same question now, I answer I just want them to be kind."  What a powerful message.  

I am not certain, but my wife's 8th grade parent may have read an article written in The Boston Globe by two Harvard University education researchers, Richard Weissbourd and Alison Cashin ("Parents' obsession with raising happy kids is a big problem").  They write that "too much focus on our children's moment-to-moment well-being can actually make them less content.  If we want our children to grow into truly happy adults, we should teach them how to care about other people."  In other words, we should focus on teaching our children to be kind.

They write further, "In our work over the past decade, we have seen parents, especially those in more affluent communities, increasingly obsessed with their children's moment-to-moment happiness.  These parents often as 'mood police,' obsessively checking in with their children to see how they're feeling."  However, obsessing about our children's happiness is problematic for a number of reasons.  First, it can make them self-centered the point that they're happiness takes precedence over everything else in life.  Second, it can rob them of essential coping skills needed to deal with peer conflict, failures, or other types of adversity.  Third, it can harm their relationships with others.  As a corollary to the first point, selfishness not only makes you a lousy citizen, but it also makes you a bad friend and partner.  Given the fact that our well-being is often tied to the relationships that we have with others, creating self-centered kids by an obsessive focus on their happiness only backfires in the long run, making unhappy adults!

It's a very powerful and very appropriate message as finish up another school year and so many parents are sending their children off to high school, college, and beyond.  "So next time you're about to tell yourself, a friend, or your child, All that matters is being happy, take a moment to reflect.  Maybe you should say, All that matters is making the world a bit happier than you found it instead."

"Fought & Lost"

I've been taking a brief hiatus from blogging the past week or so, but I am ready to get back into it!  My wife and I finally watched the last two episodes of Ted Lasso Season 3 ("Mom City" and "So long, Farewell").  There have been rumors all year about whether or not Season 3 is the final season of the show.  I have to be honest, as much as I've enjoyed the show, Season 3 was not as good as the first two seasons, and at times, some of the episodes were complete duds.  These last two episodes though were incredible.

Throughout all three seasons, the show's soundtrack has been amazing.  For example, there was a great song near the end of the episode "Mom City" called "Fought & Lost" by the British singer Sam Ryder.  If the song sounds familiar, it's because Ryder sounds a lot like the late singer/songwriter Freddie Mercury, and Queen's guitarist Brian May is featured on the song.  As May said on an Instagram post, "Some of you know what this is.  But I'd like the rest of you folks to wonder, just for half a minute, who you're listening to, on this glistening new track...and what it might be telling us."

Ryder explained the song further, stating "This is a song for the hope seekers and the faith keepers.  The ones who foster the dream and keep its fire burning regardless of the knock backs, the almosts, the falls, and the failures.  This is a song for the down but never out's, not to be sung cold-eyed, muttered and muted, but to be belted towards the heavens as if wrenched from the spirit itself...for defeat looms in that glimmer of a moment right before life's magic is spun."

Everyone experiences defeat at some point in their lives.  The true champions in life keep going.  As Winston Churchill said, "Success is not final, failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts."  And as the Japanese proverb admonishes us, "Fall seven times, rise eight" (mentioned in my post, "The Oak and the Reeds").

Just take a look at the lyrics to Ryder's song, or better yet, listen to the song.  But most importantly, keep going and never, ever give up.

Congratulations on your jubilation

Our hearts are breaking underneath all the applause

This devastation is of our own making

But we've never tasted this much bitterness before

And everybody falls

But some of us are born to fight, and fight, and fight some more

So, we will see you here

Same time, same place, next year

And you may win this battle but you'll never win the war

Better to have fought and lost than never fought at all

Go take a bow

Your audience is waiting

We'll take the shadows since the limelight isn't ours

We wanted it so bad

Gave it all we had

Oh, but wanting it doesn't always make it yours

This time was ours to lose

But fortune favors those who ride the storm and make it through

So, we will see you here

Same time, same place, next year

And you can take this battle 'cause we're gonna win the war

Better to have fought and lost than never fought at all

So, here on the same ground

When the tables have turned around

Oh, and your tears fall as your world is crashing down

I hope, when you see me

You remember that feeling

Oh, 'cause we've both seen the world from both sides now

And everybody falls

And life will tear you down to show you what's worth fighting for

Oh, we will see you here

Same time, same place, next year

And you may win this battle but you'll never win the war

Better to have fought and lost than never fought at all

Better to have fought and lost than never fought at all