Inalienable

In honor of America's 250th birthday this year, I have been reading a number of books on the Revolutionary era and more specifically the United States Declaration of Independence.  One of the best books that I've read so far in this genre is The Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson.  Isaacson takes a surprisingly in-depth look (the book is only 80 pages long) on the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Wait a minute...is this another example of the so-called "Mandela Effect" that I mentioned in an older post (see "I once knew a gold robot with a silver leg....")?  I could swear that the Declaration says that these rights are inalienable and not unalienable.  I looked again, and sure enough, it does say inalienable.  Have you ever made that mistake?  It's a nearly unavoidable one, as it's just a difference of the first letter (substituting i for u), and according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, there is absolutely no difference in meaning between the two words.  Here's what Merriam-Webster's has to say about the derivation of the two words:

Alien, alienable, inalienable—it's easy enough to see the Latin word alius, meaning "other," at the root of these three words. Alien joined our language in the 14th century, and one of its earliest meanings was "belonging to another." By the early 1600s that sense of alien had led to alienable, an adjective describing something you can give away or transfer to another owner. The word unalienable came about as its opposite, but so did inalienable, a word most likely borrowed into English on its own from French. Inalienable is the more common form today, and although we often see both forms used to modify "rights," it was unalienable that was used in the Declaration of Independence to describe life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If you've ever visited the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., and only if you were really paying attention, you may have noticed that the panel bearing the Declaration's preamble also substituted the "i" for the "u", whether by mistake or by intention:

Importantly, while the final version of the Declaration of Independence used the word unalienable, some earlier drafts (including several of the early drafts in Jefferson's own handwriting) used the word inalienable instead.  It seems then that the Jefferson Memorial includes the version of the preamble that Jefferson himself had preferred.

There is a footnote from a classic 1922 book on the history of the Declaration (The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas by Carl Lotus Becker that adds some additional context.  The footnote reads:

The Rough Draft reads "[inherent &] inalienable." There is no indication that Congress changed "inalienable" to "unalienable"; but the latter form appears in the text in the rough Journal, in the corrected Journal, and in the parchment copy. John Adams, in making his copy of the Rough Draft, wrote " unalienable." Adams was one of the committee which supervised the printing of the text adopted by Congress, and it may have been at his suggestion that the change was made in printing. "Unalienable" may have been the more customary form in the eighteenth century.

I know what you are probably thinking.  "Does any of this really matter?"  As I will cover in another post soon, there were other mistakes made in transcribing the Declaration from Jefferson's pen to the piece of parchment that we see displayed in the National Archives today.  For today's post, though, let's just say that my curiosity got the better part of me, and I actually jumped down the proverbial rabbit hole to find out more information on this particular part of our American history.

I came across an article written by Scott Barnes that appeared in the Panama City News Herald on July 13, 2013 ("Comparing inalienable to unalienable rights").  Apparently, there are at least some legal differences between the two words.  According to Black's Law Dictionary, which is the most frequently used law dictionary in the United States, unalienable means incapable of being alienated, that is, sold and transferred.  Black's Law Dictionary further states, "You can't surrender, sell or transfer unalienable Rights, they are a gift from the Creator to the individual and can't (under any circumstances) be surrendered or taken."  Conversely, according to another, albeit less commonly cited legal reference, Morrison v. State, Mo. App., 252 S.W.2d 97, 101, inalienable rights are rights which are not capable of being surrendered or transferred without the consent of the one possessing such rights.  In other words, unalienable rights are ours for eternity and can never be taken away from us.  Neither can we given them away, even voluntarily.  If we wanted to do so, we could surrender our inalienable rights.

Not to confuse things even more, the 17th century English philosopher John Locke wrote about what he called natural rights in his Second Treatise of Government.  Natural rights are in essence the same as inalienable rights (or unalienable rights).  Locke argued that all individuals are naturally born with fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property, which exist independently of government.  Note that Jefferson borrowed heavily from Locke when he wrote the Declaration's most famous passage; however, he substituted pursuit of happiness for property (more on that in a future post, perhaps).  Locke also argued that individuals are equal with regards to these natural rights, in that these rights are part of what it means to be a human being, no individual or group of individuals could take away or limit these rights, and governments were legitimate only to the extent that they protected these rights.  Here was the fundamental point that America's Founders used to justify breaking away from England.  King George III had violated this principle by taking away or limiting some of their natural, God-given rights.  As a result, King George III (i.e. "government") had violated the principle that governments existed to protect natural rights.  Hence, King George III's government was no longer legitimate, and the American colonists could declare their independence ("...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...").

In his Panama City News Herald article, Barnes goes on to explain that he had stumbled across some original letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.  Remember that Jefferson, Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were part of the five-man committee that the Second Continental Congress had chosen to write the Declaration of Independence (just so you have it for pub trivia night, the other two members were Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston).  Jefferson originally used the word inalienable, but Adams greatly preferred the stronger unalienable to suggest that these God-given rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) could never be taken away or surrendered voluntarily.    Barnes goes on to suggest that Adams had refused to sign the Declaration unless this subtle change was made (which is completely in character - Adams was notorious for having a thin skin, short temper, and the need to always have the final word).

As it turns out, the question on whether natural rights could be taken away was not as clear-cut as Adams had suggested.  The 18th century English jurist and judge William Blackstone added an important clarification here when he defined natural rights in his Commentaries on the Law of England, writing:

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable.  On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

For example, if someone commits a crime (which usually infringes on someone else's natural rights), they are punished in some way (e.g. required to pay a fine or serve time in jail).  Blackstone recognized this point, as did America's Founders.  In fact, the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution clarifies this point rather succinctly, stating that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Ultimately, I agree with Merriam-Webster's dictionary that there is probably no real difference between inalienable and unalienable.  The important point is this - all of us have rights based on the fact that we are individuals and as humans.  Whether we choose to call these rights natural, inalienable, or unalienable probably doesn't matter.  What does matter, is that these rights are sacrosanct, inviolable, hallowed, and untouchable.  With only rare exception, these rights can never be taken away from us.  As such, we too can never violate someone else's rights, for to do so would de-legitimize their humanity.  

I can't end this post without at least mentioning what the historian and author Joseph Ellis calls one of the greatest contradictions involving the Declaration of Independence in his most recent book, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding.  By failing to end slavery, America's Founders contradicted their own views on natural or unalienable rights.  It was left to the future 16th President to redefine the principles written down in America's founding document and which define the essence of what it means to be an American today.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

Several years ago, my wife and two of our adult children (I think they had just graduated from college) traveled to Spain, France, and Italy on a cruise around the Mediterranean Sea.  I have a lot of great memories from that trip.  We visited the famous "Leaning Tower of Pisa" on one of our excursions (see my failed attempt at making one of those "forced perspective" Tower shots below).  It's a stunningly beautiful building, but if I were to be 100% honest, I doubt we would have visited it if the tower hadn't been so famous for the fact that it was leaning.  

The Tower of Pisa, as it is more simply known, is actually one of three structures in Pisa's Cathedral Square (Piazza del Duomo), which includes the cathedral and Pisa Baptistry.  The tower began to lean during its construction in the 12th century, largely due to the fact that the area's soft ground could not support the tower's weight.  The "lean" became progressively worse during construction, which wasn't completed until the 14th century (see my post "Cathedral Thinking").  The "lean" reached a five-and-half degree tilt in 1990, but thanks to modern engineering from about 1993 to 2001, the tilt has been stabilized to just under four degrees.

Today, this leaning tower has become one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world, receiving over 5 million visitors every year.  The irony that a colossal blunder of engineering has become a world famous tourist attraction is not lost on me.  A few months ago, "Reliability 4 Life" posted on LinkedIn and compared the Leaning Tower of Pisa to High Reliability Organizations - well, not exactly in the way that you would think.  The post claimed that the reason why the tower ended up with a four degree lean was that they tried to build it on a poor foundation.  Soft, sandy, swampy ground does not make for a good foundation.  In the same way, a High Reliability Organization's foundation is its safety culture.  Strengthen the foundation and you strengthen the reliability of the organization.  It's a great analogy, and I fully agree with the concept.

I think there is another lesson to be learned here, and that is this: Sometimes our greatest failures can go on to be our greatest successes.  There's no question in my mind that the engineers who built the Tower of Pisa never planned for it to lean.  I can only imagine what they were thinking if they had been able to see the finished product, which admittedly was probably cast as a colossal failure.  But I can't help think that there's likely no way that the Tower of Pisa would have become such a modern icon had it not been for the fact that it started to lean.  Failure is never the end.  Sometimes we can end up with a success, even when things don't always go according to plan.

"Compared to Ranger school, combat was easy..."

The United States Department of Defense, at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's direction, recently announced a controversial plan to begin mandatory testosterone testing for all male service members age 30 years and older.  Secretary Hegseth has previously stated that he believes that screening troops for "testosterone deficiency" is necessary to keep them operating at their "absolute best".  Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for the Pentagon said that "by proactively identifying and treating suboptimal hormone levels," we will "invest in the health of its warfighters, strengthen their performance, and maximize force readiness."  The plan for the moment excludes female members in the military.

The Pentagon's plan is controversial because (1) medical professionals currently do not recommend universally screening testosterone levels in men (testing is recommended only for those individuals who report signs and symptoms of decreased testosterone, including low libido and depressed mood) and (2) there is limited, if any, evidence to suggest that replacing testosterone has any appreciable effect on energy, vitality, physical function, or cognition (testosterone replacement can, however, improve sexual function and bone density).  Importantly, the Pentagon's plan does acknowledge the limited medical benefits of testosterone replacement, and the new policy does not make testosterone replacement mandatory.

As I was reading about this new Pentagon policy, I couldn't help but think of a study that I read a few weeks ago showing that men and women respond differently to arduous physical training.  In addition, there is evidence to suggest that certain high stress military environments can deplete the body's normal testosterone levels, at least in men.  For example, consider what participating in the Ranger Training Course (RTC) does to a soldier's body.  RTC (also known as "Ranger School") is a rigorous 62 day small unit tactics and leadership course designed to push soldiers to their absolute extremes.  The mixed martial artist and Ranger Tim Kennedy reportedly once described RTC as "a place that starves you and denies you sleep for over two months."  Colonel Robert "Tex" Turner claimed that he once woke up from a dream while serving in Vietnam and said, "I woke up in my foxhole in a cold sweat. I had a nightmare that I was still in Ranger School. Thank God that I was in Vietnam. Compared to Ranger School, combat was easy."  Several studies have shown that soldiers have progressively lower levels of testosterone and growth hormone during RTC, and by the end of their training (if they make it to the end - only about 50% of soldiers complete the entire training course), most soldiers have testosterone levels that are consistent with a medical diagnosis of secondary hypogonadism (if you are interested, the links to these scientific studies are here, here, and here).

Historically, female soldiers were not allowed to complete the Ranger Training Course.  However, since the first two women - Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver - graduated from RTC in 2015, approximately 175 female soldiers have completed the training to become eligible to wear the Ranger Tab on their left upper shoulder.  Accordingly, Samantha Goldenstein and colleagues conducted a study to determine if females would experience a similar decrease in metabolic, growth, and sex hormones during RTC.  The results of their study were published this past year in the July issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology.

Goldenstein and her team studied 26 men and 10 women who completed RTC.  They measured body composition, resting energy expenditure, energy balance, and blood and urine levels of key metabolic, growth, and sex hormones at baseline (prior to starting RTC) and then at periodic intervals during the three different phases of training (general field, mountain, and swamp training).  Overall, as expected, energy balance was negative in all three phases, which resulted in an average loss in body mass and decreased resting energy expenditure throughout the entire course compared to baseline.  However, males experienced a larger negative energy balance in the first two phases (but not the third phase) compared to females.  

Thyroid hormone remained suppressed during all three phases in male soldiers, but only during the second phase (mountain phase) in females.  Growth hormone was suppressed in all three phases in both males and females.  Similar results have been reported in a study of females participating in a 61-day Antarctica expedition (similar decreases in body mass and resting energy expenditure, but no significant change from baseline in thyroid hormone).  Female sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone) only changed during phase 2 (mountain phase) of RTC compared to baseline.  Male testosterone levels were significantly lower than baseline during the first two phases (but not phase 3).  Finally, inflammatory markers did not change significantly in either males or females (this may be due to the transient nature of the increase in inflammatory markers associated with acute exercise).

Goldenstein and colleagues conclude that "Females exhibited minimal alterations of physiological status that were largely phase-specific, whereas males demonstrated consistent changes in many markers of health across the course, despite experiencing similar energy deficits."  They go on to state that "male physiology may disproportionately be affected in multistressor environments." 

So, what does all of this mean?  First, in regards to the Pentagon's new policy of measuring testosterone levels in male soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen, the timing of when testosterone levels are measured will matter a great deal.  Measuring testosterone levels following a lengthy deployment or period of arduous training would not make sense, as testosterone levels would be expected to be lower than normal at these times.  Second, males and females clearly react differently to chronic stress, and further information is required to help support the overall health of our military members.  Third, we need to determine the impact of these changes in endocrine function on the overall health with additional studies.  To that end, this same group recently published a study on the sex differences in physical performance, sleep, and psychological response to RTC (see their follow-up study here). 

"Meetings are broccoli"

Several years ago, I posted (see "Death by Meeting" from March 2020) about an online article written by Michael Mankins for the Harvard Business Review (see "This Weekly Meeting Took Up 300,000 Hours a Year") that claimed that one weekly executive level meeting ended up costing an organization 300,000 hours per year!  Mankins estimated that one of the executives attending that weekly meeting spent up to 7,000 hours per year meeting with direct reports in order to prepare for it.  Each of the executive's direct reports in turn spent time with each one of his or her direct reports to prepare for the meeting with the executive.  And so on.  And so on.  If you add up all of the hours spent meeting in order to prepare for just that one weekly executive meeting, the total time spent in meetings by the organization was a mind-blowing 300,000 hours per year! 

Mankins asked a fair question (more than fair actually) about whether all that time spent in meetings was worth it to the organization?  He added that the 300,000 hours per year didn't even include the time spent outside of meetings gathering information and preparing for the upcoming meeting.  He then stated, "Research shows that 15% of an organization's collective time is spent in meetings...No amount of money can buy back that time.  It must be treated more preciously."

A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides some additional perspective on how much time (and money) is spent in meetings.  David Deming and colleagues utilized a large administrative database managed by Statistics Norway and covering "the universe of workers and firms" in the country of Norway, with a specific focus on data collected from 2022 to 2024.  The data was linked to a national survey performed by Norstat which sampled approximately 10,000 individuals who worked at least 20 hours per week at the time of the survey (a 3 month period from May to July in 2025).  Here is what they found:

1. Workers spend a lot of time in meetings.  

The survey showed that the average worker spends approximately 4.7 hours per week in meetings (12% of the standard 37.5 workweek in Norway).  While about 40 percent of workers attend less than one meeting per week, 21 percent spend up to 8 hours per week in meetings.  Among those workers who attend meetings on a regular basis, the average time spent in meetings is about 80 minutes per day.

2. Organizations spend a lot of money on time spent in meetings.

Deming and his team estimated the annual labor cost of meetings by combining the number of hours spent in meetings per worker per week combined with an individual worker's wages.  The average worker accounts for 88,000 Norwegian kroners (NOK) (US $9,000) every year, which when extrapolated to the entire Norwegian economy accounts for NOK 230 billion (US $24 billion) every year!  Similar to Mankins' analysis mentioned above, these estimates do not account for time spent organizing or preparing for meetings or for travel time to and from meetings.

3. There is a lot of heterogeneity in the time spent in meetings between different industries and different types of workers.

The average cost of meetings (using the method described above) is highest in the knowledge- and coordination-intensive service industries, such as finance, insurance, information and communication, professional services, and administration.  The average cost of meetings is lowest in the transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, and retail industries.  Managers attend meetings much more frequently compared to non-managerial workers.  College-educated workers also spend more time in meetings.  Similarly, the time spent in meetings is higher for professional and technical occupations compared to production and manual occupations.  Finally, perhaps not too surprising, workers in remote and hybrid employment arrangements spend more time in meetings than workers who are primarily office-based.

4. Meetings play a larger role in organizations with greater complexity and coordination needs.

Individuals who work at larger firms spend more time in meetings.  Similarly, workers in capital-intensive firms, firms with higher revenue per worker, and heavily unionized firms also spend more time in meetings.  These patterns suggest that meetings are necessary in those organizations in which substantial communication and coordination between workers is required.

5. Workers report that meetings are necessary to facilitate coordination.

When workers were individually surveyed, the three most common stated reasons for participating in meetings were to receive updates on projects and tasks, facilitate collaboration and problem solving, and discuss planning and strategy.  In contrast, networking, informal conversations, administrative matters, and feedback conversations accounted for a considerably smaller share of meeting activity.  These activities were stable across different industries and occupations.

6. Meetings are beneficial to organizations (and to the workers).

Workers in firms with higher wages, total revenue, and average revenue per worker spend more time in meetings.  Importantly, the opportunity costs associated with the time spent in meetings is higher in firms paying higher wages, which suggests that either firms receive larger benefits from the communication and coordination activities that occur during meetings or (less likely) they are more tolerant of unproductive time.  Importantly, wage growth over time is higher for workers spending more time in meetings (in fact, meetings are the strongest predictors of wage growth), suggesting that workers benefit from the time spent in meetings.  Workers in the organizations that spend more time in meetings reported substantially more learning on the job, which suggests that meetings not only facilitate coordination and communication to the benefit of the organization as a whole, but also that they help to facilitate learning and professional development for the individual workers.

There's no question that the quality of meetings can be improved.  For example, there have been several excellent articles on improving the quality of meetings published by the Harvard Business Review (see the link here).  The bottom line though is that we would be short-sighted to do away with meetings altogether.  As the authors of the NBER study discussed above conclude, "Meetings are the broccoli of work – widely disliked, but probably good for us anyway."

When you know...

I recently came across this great cartoon from The New Yorker magazine by Paul Noth.  Those of you who are familiar with the famous "Trolley Problem" (see also a great video clip from Harvard professor Michael Sandel, who introduces his course on "Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?" with a discussion of the "Trolley Problem" ) will recognize the point immediately!

The "Trolley Problem" is a philosophical thought experiment first described in a 1967 article by Philippa Foot, an American philosopher (and, on an interesting side note, granddaughter of former US President Grover Cleveland).  While Foot described the thought experiment, Judith Jarvis Thomson dubbed the experiment the "Trolley Problem" in a 1976 paper.  

The thought experiment basically asks whether it is ethically acceptable to kill one person in order to save five people.  In essence, the problem is usually set up as follows:

1. There is a runaway trolley moving down the tracks. 

2. Up ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied down to the track and unable to move. The trolley is heading straight towards the five people and will likely kill them. 

3. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. 

4.  Up ahead on the side track, there is one person tied down to the track and unable to move.  

The reader is left to ponder one of two choices - do nothing, in which case the trolley will kill the five people on the main track, or pull the lever, which will divert the trolley onto the side track, killing the one person (but saving the five).  

The "Trolley Problem" has become very popular since Philippa Foot's first description in 1967.  The television sitcom M*A*S*H, which was about a U.S. Army mobile army surgical hospital (which explains the abbreviation) during the Korean War and ran on CBS from 1972-1983 used a version of the problem in its series finale episode, "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", which aired on February 28, 1983.  More recently, the problem also featured in episode 19 of the television show The Good Place (check out the video clip).  It's been the subject of a number of articles and books, both in the popular press as well as the academic literature.  

Kudos to The New Yorker for identifying one of the most frightening possible uses of artificial intelligence (AI).  On the one hand, it doesn't seem so realistic that AI would ever make a decision involving the kind of ethical trade-off posed by the "Trolley Problem".  On the other hand, I could envision several real-world scenarios that involve a similar ethical decision posed by the "Trolley Problem".  

Two patients need an organ transplant.  There is only one organ available for transplantation.  Who gets it?  

Alternatively, imagine a critically ill patient admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) who is not expected to live.  If the patient's organs could be harvested, five or six lives could be saved, assuming the patient could donate both kidneys, liver, heart, and lungs.  Should the medical team continue to provide care for the patient, or should they withdraw support and proceed to harvest the patient's organs?  

Alternatively, two patients need care in the ICU.  There is only one available ICU bed left.  Who gets the bed?

Imagine autonomous (driverless) vehicles!  If the car encounters a sudden brake failure, should the computer force the car into a barrier in order to stop it, thereby risking the life of the passenger?  Or should the computer force the car out of traffic and on to a sidewalk, risking the lives of pedestrians who may happen to be walking there?

When you consider all of the permutations of the "Trolley Problem", it's frightening to consider that one day in the not so distant future, it could be a computer, and not a human, making the decision!  Should we allow that to happen?  These are exactly the kinds of questions that will confront society as the use of AI continues to grow and expand.

An egg-citing study about Superchickens

I remember watching a cartoon growing up about a superhero chicken (see a video of the opening sequence here).  It was never one of my favorites, and I think the only reason that I watched it was because I knew it was going to be short and that another cartoon (that I liked better) would follow it.  Superchicken's alter ego was Henry Cabot Henhouse III (in a nod to the politician Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr), who seemed to be a mix between Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne, Zorro, and the Scarlet Pimpernel.  Superchicken's sidekick was a vegetarian lion named Fred, who also served as Henry's butler.  When called upon to fight crime, Fred would hand Henry his "super sauce" served in a martini glass, which would turn him into Superchicken after he drank it.  You just can't make this stuff up, folks!  

Well, it turns out that a professor from my Alma mater Purdue University created a whole henhouse full of super chickens, and he didn't even need any "super sauce"!  The results, though, are not what you would have expected.  Muir selectively bred the highest egg-producing hens in an attempt to create genetically superior egg producers, or super chickens.  His results were published in the journal, Poultry Science in 1996.  

Muir compared two kinds of selection for egg productivity in White Leghorn chickens.  The hens were kept in cages, with several hens per cage.  In the first experiment, the most productive hen from each cage was selected to breed the subsequent generation of chickens (within-group selection).  In the second experiment, all of the hens from the most productive cage were selected to breed the subsequent generation of chickens (between-group selection).  With the first experiment, Muir found that the most productive chicken achieved her productivity largely by bullying the other chickens in the cage.  After six generations of breeding, Muir learned that he had bred a hyper-competitive, hyper-aggressive group of chickens that attacked each other and sometimes even killed each other.  Egg productivity, in the long run, plummeted in the first experiment.  Conversely, in the second experiment, egg productivity increased with each subsequent generation.  By the sixth generation, Muir learned that he had bred a docile group of chickens that lived peacefully together and produced a lot of eggs (overall egg productivity increased by 160 percent).

Muir's results were important to the poultry industry and led to an industry-wide change in breeding practices.  However, after the entrepreneur and former CEO Margaret Heffernan discussed Muir's experiment and how the results apply to organizations in her 2015 TED talk, "Forget the pecking order at work", Muir's research started to get a lot more attention from outside the poultry industry.  Muir's experiment became a metaphor for how groups of individuals in organizations can better work together through cooperation rather than competition.  In her TED talk, Heffernan said, "If the only way the most productive can be successful is by suppressing the productivity of the rest, then we badly need to find a better way to work.  And a richer way to live."  

Behavioral scientist and author Jon Levy (see also his book, Team Intelligence: How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius) suggests that too many organizations today are set up exactly like Muir's first experiment, in which the most productive individuals are rewarded for "hitting their numbers, even if they damage everyone around them."  Levy goes on to state that even professional sports teams are set up in this manner and thus fall victim to the "too much talent effect".  He cites statistics that reveal that when more than 50 to 60 percent of a sports team is composed of superstar-caliber talent, performance, in terms of wins and losses, actually declines (see also my post on the Shane Battier effect).

The bottom line here is that teams work better together when they work as a team, rather than as individuals.  When teams work together, collaborate, and cooperate, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."  Conversely, when the individuals on the team are competing with each other, the overall performance of the team suffers.  As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off."  

Pause and take a breath...

How many times have you been told to pause and take a deep breath, particularly when you've been visibly upset or stressed out?  I've read a lot about stress reduction techniques over the years, and breathing techniques always seem to rise to the top of the list.  So, I was particularly intrigued about an online article that mentioned how "tactical breathing" is used by individuals in the United States military to relieve stress and stay focused during stressful situations.  The technique is specifically called "box breathing" because there are four parts to the technique:

1. Begin by expelling all the air from your chest and keep your lungs empty for a four-count hold

2. Slowly inhale through your nose for four counts

3. Hold the air in your lungs for four counts

4. Release the air in your chest for four counts

Investigators at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington published an abstract in which emergency medicine residents performed the lifesaving procedure of tracheal intubation (inserting a tube into the trachea in order to facilitate respiratory support with a ventilator) while undergoing simulated stressful situations while using the "box breathing" technique.  The overall success rate in the control group (no stress, no "box breathing") was 96%.  The success rate in the simulated stressful situation without "box breathing" was 85%, which increased to 100% with the addition of "box breathing". 

If it works for the military and emergency medicine, maybe there is something to "box breathing" that we can leverage in our own stressful situations.  I plan to try out this technique and will let you know what I think!