Four months after I retired, I got an email from a friend at my former job asking for assistance on a technical thing.  Arrangements were made, and I stopped in to help. It was nice to be asked and I was happy to try.  In the end, I had lost my admin privileges upon retirement, so advice is all I could to offer.

The surroundings felt familiar and everyone was friendly and nice.  However, I was only there a couple minutes when the little voice in my head quietly whispered the observation:  I no longer feel a sense of belonging here.  I looked around wondering what had changed. What was different?

The interconnected sense of belonging I felt at my former job was gone.  I no longer wanted to immerse myself into the mix of life in that organization.  The “who said what, to whom” reality of life in the organization is irrelevant to me.  I care about the mission of the organization.  I care about the people in the organization.  But my desire to belong there was gone.

They did nothing to cause it, but my former job and I are on different paths moving in different directions.  What has changed is me.

This is paraphrased from a Wikipedia article:

“Whether it is family, friends, co-workers, a religion, or something else, people tend to have an ‘inherent’ desire to belong and be an important part of something greater than themselves. The need to belong is the need to give and receive attention to and from others”.

Based on what I learned getting my psychology degree (U of MN – BA Psychology 1975) and a lifetime of reading and experience, the need for feeling a sense of belonging is a basic part of human nature and a very real need of all humans.

We humans are a communal species.  There are serious consequences when humans do not feel they belong.  Being a lone wolf is not good for our survival.  Seriously, if you feel truly alone and like you do not belong, please seek help.  Not kidding. Take it seriously.  You do belong, let someone help you see it.

However, realities need to be faced.  I no longer felt the “we are all in this together” feeling I felt on every project team of which I was a member.  I no longer felt part of the solution because nobody copies me on emails so that we can together solve an unusual issue.  The camaraderie formed by jointly enduring endless project meetings is in my past. I no longer share an eye-roll reaction to the corny weekly emails from the commissioner’s office urging us to do our best.

The emails and meetings gave me a sense of belonging. I was part of an interdependent team of people who worked to accomplish a mission.  Our job bound us together and it felt good working together for the common good.  The feeling of belonging I had with my job is gone but I still feel I belong in many other aspects of my life. Just not at my former job.

My life is not empty because I no longer work for a living.  I have a marriage. I have friends.  I have family.  I talk to neighbors and relatives. I frequently rollerblade with my sister.  I attend classes and frequently get emails from the University reminding me I am part of their family. I have more Facebook friends from high school than actual friends I had in high school.

The need to belong is universal.  All people throughout history across every culture have the need to belong.  It is not a weakness of character.  It is not a gender thing.  It is not a generational thing.  It is not a national origin thing.  It is not an occupational thing. We all need to belong throughout our entire lives no matter what our individual circumstances. It is a human thing.

The need to belong is a very powerful motivator.  Otherwise, honest, intelligent well raised teen agers have been known to fib to their parents in order to sustain their sense of belonging with their friends. Some people will jump up and down in public screaming just to show they belong to group called fans of the home team.  People mourn the loss of a group member and celebrate when new members are added.

The need to belong guides many aspects of our lives.  How we dress.  Who we associate with.  How we behave.  It is a big part of our day to day life.  Politicians, advertisers, coaches, religious leaders, moms, dads, siblings, bosses, and the like all use our need to belong to motivate us into doing or not doing this or that activity.  We do the same to others.

Belongingness is a mutual thing.  There is no group of one.  “We” are a group.  I or you, alone, do not constitute a group.  Our group, not their group.  I affect the group; the group also affects me.  The need to belong is the need to give and receive attention to and from others.  Belongingness is a messy set of complex interconnecting relationships between real people who are interconnected.

A movie star is not a movie star unless others consider the movie star to be a movie star.  I can say I belong to a group called super smart geniuses.  I might in fact be a super smart genius however, I do not belong to the group unless other super smart geniuses interact with me and I with them.  Curiously I am still waiting to interact with other super smart geniuses, so I guess do not belong to that group either.

Over time, things change.  The need to feel a sense of belonging is always there.  What changes, for all sorts of reasons, are the groups we share the sense of belonging with.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

 

For those who do not know, my status is a 66-year-old retired person enrolled at the University of Minnesota (UMN) in pursuit of a degree in Communications.  One class a semester, about to start my third semester.  I am thoroughly enjoying the experience.

It feels like writing papers and making speeches is easier with a lifetime of experience under my belt than it was 45 years ago when I originally went to the U of MN.  I might be better at papers and speeches today, but I was better at test taking back in the day.

When class is in session, I averaged about 10 – 12 hours a week reading, doing assignments, writing papers, practicing speeches and the like.  We gave 4 speeches and took a final in my Public Speaking class.  For the Analysis of Argument class, we wrote two outlines and 3 papers, gave a 20-minute group presentation and a final exam.

Here is an actual question from my last final: Define Pathos as it relates to grounds for a claim in an argument?   Another question was something like: Match each of 7 terms with a definition from a list of 10 definitions.

Back when I last took tests at the U of MN, 1971 – 1975, the trick to tests was to understand the concepts.  Now, I think it is: know the concept, know the term for the concept and understand the relationships between related concepts.

How to study for an exam is a work in progress for me.  The phrase, “memorize to learn” is contrary to my instinct but might be the key to test taking, me thinks.

My professors took attendance every class period and lecture with slides.  They ask leading questions to get the students engaged in the topic of the day.  Students still try to avoid eye contact in hopes of not being called on.  There are still a student or two who raise their hand to answer anything that even sounded like a question.

The biggest difference then to now is the technology.  We access most stuff through the one-stop portal called MyU.  MyU is where we register, pay tuition, view our class schedule and generally interact with the University.  MyU is where we also find the app called Moodle.  Moodle is where things get specific to individual classes: the syllabus, assignments, handouts, grades, class list, etc.  It is where the professor and students interact with each other.

Preparing the group presentation was a ten-minute meeting at the end of a class. In that 10 minutes, one of the students created a Google Slides template.  We each then “volunteered” to author one part of the presentation.  As the next week progressed we all added our material and added comments to the material being added by others. Based on comments some modifications were made by the author of that section.  By the next class, there was a collaboratively developed presentation which got a very good grade by a group who only met physically together for 10 minutes.

My textbooks are online.  There was an option of getting a hard copy text, but it costs over 5 times more.

I took handwritten notes but most students take notes into an app on a device.  Which is what I will do next semester.  MacBooks are the most popular device but some have tablets or other devices such as a laptop computer.  Notes are taken using a note-taking app.  Notability is the most popular app although several other apps are also used.

My plan is to use an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard and an Apple Pencil.  I have been practicing taking notes in Notability.  I am getting better, but time will tell if it will work for me.

Linda had the observation that I approach my class similar to how I approach past projects. What I enjoy most is collecting the tools to do the project with.

I started with a Bluetooth keyboard paired to my old iPad mini. Then upgraded to the latest iPad. Of course, I needed  a new cover for the new iPad.  I researched note taking apps and purchased Notability ($9.99).  Then an Apple Pencil was purchased which meant I needed a new cover to replace the cover I bought month earlier with one that had a spot for the Apple Pencil.   Obviously, I needed a new bag to carry the iPad, keyboard and USB cables to class.

Taking a class is more than just attending the class.  To be a student one must actually become a student.  Go to class, do the reading, think about the topic, talk to others about the topic, study the materials, take notes, write papers, give speeches, make presentations and use the technology.

Just in case you were wondering.

• Pathos = Proof by emotion. Appealing to the sympathies of your audience.
• Logos = Proof by reason. The logic of the argument you are trying to make.
• Ethos = Proof by the credibility of the advocate. Who says it, can matter.
• Kairos = The context. Using the right word at the right time with the right audience.

For the record, these definitions did not come from memory. I looked them up. Although it literally only took 3 minutes because I understood them enough to know what to look for.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

The new neighbor down the street asked about my ancestry. I told him I was Swedish and Norwegian and maybe something else.  The maybe was a rumor that a great – great grandmother on my mother’s side entertained the sailors for money and who knows where the father was from.  It may or may not be true, but I like spreading the story. I am certain my neighbor’s curiosity about my ancestry was not sinister in any way.  However, it gave me pause.

Recently I saw a posted meme listing things about “us” vs. “them.”  One item stated “us” – Americans, not Muslins.  The logic was stupid, I have no doubt, the intent was sinister.

Nobody picks their ancestors, yet we did not get here without them.  Ancestral paths are long and often twisting.  The ancient world was brutal.  I suspect along the line we all have ancestors who ranged from almost saints to truly evil.

Fortunately, who our ancestors were, does not predetermine the settings of our moral compass.  No matter who our ancestors are, trying to be a good decent person is probably the best path for any of us to actually be a good and decent person.

The bottom line is our ancestors got us here, how we move forward is no longer their fault.  Sure, circumstances such as inherited propensity for addiction can cause us to stray from the straight and narrow but blaming our ancestors for what we did with what we got seems a stretch.

None of us is perfect. What would perfect even look like?  But here is the deal.  A good and decent person does not assume someone else is not a good and decent person based on that person’s heritage.  That is just wrong.  We judge others by their individual actions not the actions of their ancestors.

If you go back far enough, all of our ancestors come from South Africa. As we migrated from one region to another, over many thousands of years, slight differences in DNA developed between groups in different regions.  Persons from different regions often had different skin tones, certain body types, propensity for certain diseases and the like.  Today, it is possible to test a person’s DNA and estimate what regions their ancestors inhabited.

To be clear there is only one species of human, Homo sapiens.  All of us share about 99.9% the same DNA.  When they test for differences between us they look at the 0.1% of our DNA.  Persons from every region can and do successfully mate with one another.  We have about the same amount of variation in our DNA between persons within our primary ancestral region as we do between persons from different ancestral regions.

In the past 500 years or so, new transportation methods allowed persons to more rapidly move between the regions.  For example, in the 1700s, ships brought people from Europe and Africa to South and North America.  The people native to both North and South America were nearly wiped out by disease that the Europeans had developed an immunity to.  Today, ships, planes, trains, autos, motorcycles, and who knows what else are mixing the populations between regions.

The population of almost any region on earth now has mixed ancestry.  The results of the Ancestry.com DNA test never came back 100% South African. All of us have ancestors who migrated over time.

I was born in the Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis. That hospital is now HCMC (Hennepin County Medical Center). I have lived in the Twin Cities my entire life.  Over 3.28 million people live within the Twin Cities metropolitan area.  The ancestries represented within this region include people from every continent (except maybe Antarctica) and most countries within those continents.

Virtually every one of the 3.28 million people who live here are not native to the area.  The thing is because we live there now, the Twin Cities metropolitan area is now part of our ancestral line.  All descendants of the 3.28 million people living in the Twin Cities area will have ancestors who were from the Twin Cities area, even if it was just a short while.

Me saying I am Swedish and Norwegian actually means three generations ago I had some relatives who lived in Sweden or Norway.  Thus, I can say I am from Sweden and Norway.

Sure, you can pretend some who live here are “them.”  However, once we live in the same area we are from that area. Everyone who lives here is an “us.”

If you live in the Twin Cities area, you are from the Twin Cities area.  The Twin Cites is part of your heritage.  Since the Twin Cities has people from all corners of the earth, like it or not, so does your heritage.  The Twin Cities region has people of many religions and many who are not religious.  It has educated people and those not so educated.  It has the cultured and the not so cultured.  It has the rich and poor.  It has all sexual orientations.  It is a diverse area by virtually all measurements of diverse.

Yes, we and our ancestors come from many different backgrounds. Our children and our children’s children don’t even see most of the silly things we think made us different one from another.  The result is an area with an amazing diversity and richness of culture.  It is not always easy for those of one culture to understand those of another. Sometimes it can seem threatening for some.  Yet,  together we are what America is and always has been.

So, let me end with this thought.  We should each do our best to be a good and decent person.  Look around a bit and realize you are part of a wonderful community where we judge people by what they do as individuals, not by some weird idea that we should be judged by our heritage.  The golden rule is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.  However, remember, most often the “others” are not them, we are all us.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

I was a management analyst.  That is no longer my job.  I retired.  Being a management analyst is still part of my identity, but it is no longer a good description of who I am. My retirement goals are not about becoming a better management analyst or about even being a management analyst.

Once I retired, it only took a couple days to realize management analyst no longer describes who I am.  I turned in my ID key card.  They waited for my retirement to remodel my former workspace. My space has been replaced by a new configuration of meeting rooms and a break room.  I may still have the skill set needed to do management analysis work. What I no longer have is that job. I do not regret having been a management analyst, however, I am moving on.

My old job was largely satisfying.  I liked most of the people I worked with.  However, it was how I made my living, it was not my life.  Management analyst matched my skill set and I enjoyed the work.  It was a decent way to earn a living and being a management analyst became a large part of my identity.

The weird thing is, now that I am not a management analyst I do not feel there is a vacant hole in my identity.  I was me then and I am still me now.  The sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening.  My life changed upon retirement, but I still spend 24 hours a day being me.  My identity is not about my old job.  My life is about how I spend my time now.  My identity is about my life now and not what it was a couple months ago.

It is a cliché but life is a journey, not a destination.  Turns out my identity is also about the journey and not some sort of destination.  I am a work in progress.  My identity is a person who is trying to move forward on the journey I call my life

So, now that I am no longer a management analyst, who am I?  The reality is that while much has changed, mostly the fundamental stuff is the same.  My sleep schedule is a bit different, however, I probably get about the same amount of sleep as I used to.

I still eat food. All of my bodily functions are pretty much the same.  Socially, I still interact with people both in person and online.  I still have friends.  I still do things with them.  I am a student at the U of MN, so I am still trying to learn new things, some of which are challenging.  My daily routine has changed but the results are pretty much the same.  The house gets maintained, laundry gets done, meals get prepared and eaten.

Most days, I still create a mental to-do list and get some satisfaction from completing the tasks on the list.  I still try to have some long-term, mid-term and short-term items on my mental list.

The short-term items give me a daily feeling of having accomplished something.  The long-term items are more like goals that I spend at least a little time working on. Taking classes to try to be a better writer is a long-term goal.  Long-term to-do items give me a sense of heading in a positive direction.  The mid-term items give me a sense of working on something of a bigger scale than making the bed.  Cleaning out a lifetime of old stuff as we transition to a lifestyle with less baggage or weight is an example of a mid-term goal.

I no longer have a job so, yes, my identity is a bit different.  The fact that I no longer have a job does not make me a different person.  I still have short-term, mid-term and long-term goals.  I still work every day to make those goals a reality.  I still have hope that I can make a positive difference in the world.  I still try to make that hope a reality.  The venue where I try to implement my hope has changed.  I no longer work at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.  I am still an environmentalist but the environment is no longer where I focus as much of my energy.

All of that said I am still who I was, which is a person working on becoming a better me.  My identity is still evolving like it always has been.  As long as I can remember my goal and my identity have always been to just keep moving forward and to help others around me to do the same.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

I am now retired but over the past 35 years of public service, I have been behind the closed doors of government.  I have been in the room.  I have been in the back-room.  I have seen and heard things that cannot be unseen and unheard. I know them, I was one of them.  It is time the truth is told about who they really are and who they are not.

They, public service workers, are individual people with individual differences.  They are not clones of each other. I think the individuals who make up any group of people are always different one from another.

Every single government employee I have ever worked with or even heard about, is a unique individual.  None of them are the same one to another.  They are not all alike. Some are male, and some are not.  Some are smarter than others.  Some are older than others. They have different personalities from each other. Some are outgoing, and some are not.  They do not all think alike.  Some are more compassionate than others.  Some are married, and others are not.  They act and are, pretty much, as normal as any group of people are, which is to say some are not normal at all.

Next time you hear someone talk about all government employees as if they are all alike, please know that person is misguided and or misinformed.  Government employees are as individual one to another as any group of individuals are.  Some government employees are not good at their jobs.  Some government employees really do not care about your personal well-being.  However, most government employees are good at their jobs.  Just like most people, most government employees do care about the well-being of others.

Compare any government employee with any other government employee and you will be amazed at the individual differences between them.  Some are very funny and some not so much.  Most just do their jobs the best they can just like most other people do.

Public service people are unique individuals and there is only one thing that is the same about every current or former public employee, the fact that they were or are a public employee.

It is human nature to want to categorize people into groups and then think of all members of that group as if they all share the same characteristics. It is much easier to assume that all moms are the same and that all dads are the same.  It is mentally easier to think of all salespeople as being the same.  Name the group and by our very nature, we humans most often will categorize that group as having the same characteristics.

The fact is, all humans are different, one to another.  None of us are the same as any other individual human.

It might be human nature to think that “they”, whoever they might be, are all the same one to another.  We all have stereotypes of people who belong to certain groups in our head.  But get to know some individuals in that group and you will come away thinking they must be the exception because they are not like the stereotype.  The problem is they alone are not the exception, everyone is the exception.

Not all moms are alike.  Certainly, all moms share the same characteristic that they are a mom.  There are, for example, many moms who have not given birth to the person they are mom to.  We have all known several individual people who are moms.  Are any of them, as individuals, even really even close to having the same characteristics as your mom.

My point here is simple really. Always remember, the stereotype of any group does not really represent the reality of the members of that group as individual people. Almost never do all members of any group act a certain way or even close to the way the other members act.

All public employees are not the same one to another.  They are individuals who happen to work in the public sector. Think about other groups of people that you think are all alike.  Then take a step back and remember that they also are individual people with many individual differences.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

Soon my payroll pay status will be, “retired”. For the first time in about 55 years, (paper route at age 11) my income will not be dependent upon me putting in my time. Instead it will derived from having already put in my time. It has been an interesting ride but it is time to get off and let someone else have a turn.

I have learned a ton from my past jobs. Those experiences are part of what has made me, me. They are part of my identity.  As I face this new beginning, I am not starting from scratch. I am standing on a huge pile of ….., well, let us call it “experience”.  Where I have been will influence where I am going and who I am about to be.  However where I am going is yet to be fully defined. The question is not who I was, the question is, who I should be now.

A retired friend told me what he misses from his working days is the challenge of solving problems. I have taken that to heart. On a related note, almost everyone suggests keeping mentally active. I think being mentally active is literally the definition of being alive. So yes, it is my hope that my retired future includes having brain activity. I am looking for a level of brain activity somewhere between calmly functional and challenging, I guess.

Another retired friend confided in me that as a retiree, other retired people care very little what you used to do for a living. Everyone is up for a good story but that thing that happened on your job ten years ago generally does not make for a good story. His point was you need to have an active retirement so your stories are relevant today. Otherwise you will likely be boring.  I figure boring is not the worst thing I could be, however, I will strive to have new experiences to mitigate my boringness.

“Retired” is an adjective meaning “having left one’s job and ceased to work.  In other words, I used to work for a living but soon, I no longer will. The retired part of how we think of ourselves, our identity, is about the past, not the present or the future. I plan to periodically reminisce about past glories. However, I hope not to live in the past. For better or worse my plan is to live in the present with an eye to the future. The past is past.

So all of the above begs the question, who should I be once my pay status at the State of Minnesota = retired. I suspect you will not be surprised by my plan. I want to report out to you what I see when I look closely at various topics.  Blogging will be a part of that. Who knows what other forms of communication at which I will take a stab. At least for a while, I plan on continuing my communications coursework at the University of Minnesota. My goal is to take it seriously and improve my communications competence.

We want to periodically do some traveling. We want to stay engaged with family, friends and our community. Plays, concerts, events, games, and the like will, I hope, continue to be part of our lives.  There is a fountain in my back yard that needs to be listened to while I sit on the deck reading. With any luck I will tackle cleaning out and remodeling the basement.

Someday I would love to have enough views produce some income so I could legitimately call myself a professional writer.  Note that my standard for being a professional is very low, a couple bucks would be enough. I am already enjoying the satisfaction of others taking my writing seriously.  That is very nice.

The number one thing I hope for my future is that I am able to live in the present.  I cannot do anything about the past.  I have profound faith the future will take care of itself. I am certain life will throw some challenges my way.  My lifetime of knowledge and experience is the best I can do to handle those challenges should they come. I do not want worry to define me any more than I want regret to do so.

The answer to who I intend to be now is a person who is actively living my day to day life as best I can. I enjoy learning new things so I want to continue to do that.  I like researching and thinking deeply about topics and I hope to continue to do that.  I need to work on my interpersonal interactions.  I can be a bit of a hermit, so I hope to work on that.  If I start telling you the same stories about my past over and over again please do me the courtesy of gently reminding me I need some new experiences.

Mister Rogers was maybe the nicest and maybe wisest person who ever lived.  He had the following advice:

“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.”

“We don’t always succeed in what we try, certainly by the world’s standards, but I think you’ll find it’s the willingness to keep trying that matters most.”

I think I will still be me.  It is just time to get off one ride and onto another.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

I just counted, there are about 75 apps on my iPhone. I regularly use only about 25. Most of the 25, are the standard apps like mail, phone, contacts, calendar, Maps, Safari, and News.  Others I use regularly are Amazon Music, Fitbit, Gmail, Facebook, Weather Bug, Toy Blast, etc. There are about 25 others I use only once in a while such as Amazon Alexa, LinkedIn, etc.

I have a note organization app (Evernote) that I thought would be useful for my class, but I have never used it. A paperclip on the 15 pages of notes seems to work just fine.  However, several of my fellow students use Evernote so I don’t delete it, thinking I might learn to use it sometime.

I have plenty of room on my phone for more apps so there is little consequence for having some apps that I do not use.  In my secret Paul world (imagination), I want to be one of the cool tech people who use cool apps for like everything.  In my real world, that seems like it would be lots of work.

I read and hear there are several life-changing apps I should use. Unfortunately, I do not take the time to be better at the apps I have already, let alone search out the “cool” apps and learn to use them. Clearly, I have to come up with some clever excuse for my laziness.

Contrary to the evidence showing I am a below average user of tech, I probably check my phone over 50 times a day. I check my phone at odd times: On a short elevator ride. In the middle of writing a sentence. A couple minutes after I just checked it. It is fairly common for me to miss portions of a TV show because my device has my attention. Linda often asks me to put the device away.

The truth is I spend more time than I probably should on apps like these: Slotomania, Facebook, WeatherBug, Toy Blast, TriPeaks, Spider, Caesars Slots and the like.  Not that I spend hours in each of them but I spend more time, more often, than I intend to spend in them.

They are, as a group, the free apps which show me advertisements rather than charge me a fee.  These types of apps use all sorts of methods to maximize my advertising views, which is how they make their money on an app they give me for free.

We exchange our time viewing ads for the “free” entertainment provided by the apps. The apps that get us to view more ads are more successful than others. Sometimes we buy what they advertise. It is not sneaky or under-handed. Facebook has to have some revenue to pay their 25,000 plus employees.

Their goal is to have you spend more time viewing ads.  My problem is their methods to increase the time I spend in their apps actually works.  In my mind, I am going to play Slotomania for like ten minutes and two hours later the news comes on and I squeeze in three more games which turn into five.

It is a weird dichotomy, I probably check and use a device too often.  However, I also do not use the device as well and often as I want to.

Our devices are powerful and useful tools. They can also be a waste of time. They can both help us connect and prevent us from having better connections.  It is easy to look up great information on a device. It is also easy for the device to lie to us.  A device can make us feel part of a community of friends.  It can also make us feel part of a group who use fake names to obscure their real identities.

The secret sauce the programmers use to get us to spend more time on their apps is not as diabolical as some would let you believe.  In addition, there is nothing wrong with spending hours playing Slotomania or interacting with any other app if that is how you want to spend your time. The problem is not that I play the game, it is that I play the game far more than I really want to.

We all make choices about how we want to spend our time. We read books, watch TV, play with the kids, walk in the park, take classes, make dinner, get ready to go to work, you get the idea. Think for a minute about what motivated you to spend your time as you do.

The secret sauce that makes us spend more time in an app or doing almost any other activity is called operant conditioning:  a combination of positive/negative reinforcement and positive/negative punishment generally dictates our behavior.  The wait staff who just took your order has learned to be nice and smile because, in general, they get a better tip if you think they like you.  It is not rocket science or a diabolical plot to overtake the world. It is positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment avoidance.

The weather app encourages us to check frequently just in case the weather forecast changes.  It encourages us to go from one screen to another to give us the full weather picture.  Not coincidently, each page we check, shows us another ad.  By design, the app gets us to view more ads. In exchange, we are able to intelligently discuss the weather with the next person who asks what we think of the weather.

So there I am checking the weather app far more often than any rational person needs to. I check the weather like ten times a day. I check Facebook like 10 times a day.  I check for texts, the news feed, my emails, and it adds up.  My games give me free bonuses spaced periodically through the day so I need to check them also. The bottom line is that I check my phone over 50 times a day and spend way more time on a silly game than I want to.

Maybe how often I check my device is not the relevant question. Maybe a better question is: Am I spending my time as I want to spend it?  Once we decide how we want to spend our time, then we can decide if our device is best used to that end. Devices are powerful tools, how will we use that power is the real question.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

This is my 33^rd blog post. My blogging process starts with writing a short summary of the idea for the post.  Then I research. If the research supports the idea, I write the first draft. I rewrite until it feels right. Linda and or a co-worker named John proofread my posts prior to publishing. I usually end up publishing the third draft.

Less than half of the short summaries I write up get past the research stage. Even most of the ideas that survive the research stage get drastically modified because the research does not support some of my assumptions.

For example, I had an idea based on an assumption that about 25% of the population watched Fox News.  After looking it up, I discovered only about 2.3 million people (0.7% of the population) watch any part of prime-time Fox News on a given night. My assumption of 25% was off by a factor of 35, only 0.7% actually watch it. Which is why I have never posted about the Fox News’s propaganda machine.  It gets blamed for a lot of the bad in the country but the reality is less than 1% of the country actually watches Fox News.

This happens to me over and over again. The premise of an idea for a new post ends up not being supported by the facts.  I have a college education.  I have read tons of books. I have a couple decades experience as an analyst. For 15 or more years, several days a week, I have read information from multiple established news organizations.  Before I started blogging I was confident that my opinions were in the range of being well supported by the facts. However, once I started fact-checking myself, I soon discovered my assumptions about most things are often off by an order of magnitude or more.

It was and still is disconcerting to realize so many of my assumptions about the world were way off.  Was I losing my mind? Was old-age taking its due?  I am 65 and time does march on, like it or not. Am I an idiot? Just plain stupid?  Maybe the information I looked up was consistently wrong.  No matter the cause the process was taking a toll on my self-esteem. I had hard evidence that my assumptions about the world are often wrong.

So I was going to write about the importance of having self-confidence even when that self-confidence is being challenged by reality. In doing that research is when I ran into the concepts of the false consensus effect and the false uniqueness effect.

False consensus effect is where we overestimate the extent (feel there is a consensus) to which our opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical of those of others. The false consensus effect is important to our self-esteem. When we feel like a normal person it is much easier for us to feel good about ourselves.  Unfortunately often when confronted with evidence that we are not normal (a consensus does not exist), many of us assume that those who do not agree with us are defective in some way.

False Uniqueness Effect is our tendency to over-estimate how uncommon certain of our abilities and traits actually are. In other words, we tend to think we are more special than we really are because we have an ability to do this or that thing.  It is important to our self-confidence up to a point.  It makes us big headed beyond that point.

So think about this for a minute.  We, which includes me, think we are both more normal and more special than we really are.  We thus make assumptions about the world that are biased by both the false consensus and false uniqueness effects. So then if you fact-checked your assumptions like I started to do when I started blogging, you would likely discover, as I did, that those assumptions are often wrong.

The reality is we each have abilities at which we are better at than some other people but that does not make us unique in our abilities. If you are in the top 5% in IQ, 4% of the population has an IQ higher than you do. 

The reality is that the combination of our opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits actually does make us each unique. When is the last time you were at a restaurant and everyone around you ordered the exact same thing as you did? 

There is no language you can speak which is spoken by most people on earth.  There is no religious faith you can have which is shared by most people on earth. There is no type of food you can like which is liked by most people on earth.  No matter what age you are, most people on earth are not your age.  There is no lifestyle you can have which most other people have.

Do you personally know anyone who behaves and believes identically as you do?  Do you know anyone who has the exact same likes and dislikes as you? How about someone who has the exact same opinions as you do? Even identical twins who were raised together develop differences in their behaviors. We might know some people with similar backgrounds with similar tastes as we do, but clearly, even then, there are plenty of individual differences.

All humans are of one species. Genetically we are very similar too one to another.  That said, behaviorally, emotionally, intellectually, etc. virtually none of us are the same, one to another. There are 7.6 billion people on the planet, all of us are unique individuals.  Again there are 7.6 billion people on the planet no matter what your abilities are, there are many others with similar or better abilities.  Sure there are world champions but odds are, you are not one of those.

It has taken me a couple months to get my head around the above, however, I have to say I feel like I am in a better place. I now realize my uniqueness is what actually makes me normal. I also feel like my goal is to feel confident and comfortable in my abilities more than to pretend that somehow I am or should be the best at them.

I can say this, fact-checking one’s self will tend to make one humble.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

This article appeared in Govloop.ccom on January 19. 2018

The city hall was packed with what seemed like over 100 agitated residents. I worked for the county and was at the city council meeting to do a short, non-controversial presentation about an information item which had nothing to do with whatever everyone was so hyped about. The mayor asked if I would go on first. I asked if he was worried about the big crowd. He hesitated before responding, then looked me in the eye and said something like, “These people will make their point but I am more worried about the opinion of the other 30,000 residents.”

About 139 million Americans voted in the last election. About 187 million did not vote. Forty percent of those eligible to vote did not vote. Nobody under the age of 18 legally voted. The focus may be rightfully on the will of the actual voters but we need to be cognizant of the fact that the majority of people did not vote.

Agencies and other organizations have to focus on those who participate but remember there are large numbers of people within their jurisdictions who do not participate. There are all sorts of reasons people do not actively participate: apathy, too busy, shy other priorities, etc. Maybe they just feel your organization is not relevant to their lives. Maybe they are busy working against your agency and do not want to associate with the enemy.

Clearly, when someone does not actively participate, organizations should not treat them as if they do not exist. Those who do not participate still exist. The relevance of our organization is reduced to the extent we ignore non-active participants. School children do not vote but are important constituents for organizations wanting to reduce pollution.

It is no big revelation that connected technology is how an organization can connect with non-participants. Connected technology is pervasive. It is currently the only practical way to connect to a group with whom you do not have a current connection with.

Organizations already use connected technology. Whether the organization expands the use of the technology to also connect with non-participates is a question only your organization can answer. However, there is a question you might want to ask yourself. Would you as an individual employee of an organization want to work on the project to interact with others who currently are not active participants?

Whether you will have the opportunity is a whole other question. However, it is amazing how often wanting to do something leads to an opportunity to actually do it.

Here are some things to think about.

Do you agree that your organization needs to expand its relationship to include those with whom they do not currently interact?

Some people love working on the front lines with active participants. Are you one of these? Would the “mushy” work of building relationships with non-active participants be something you could adjust to?

Some other people want to be in the back room greasing the wheels to keep the organization running. They focus on policy or systems support. Do these people want to expand the organization’s relationship to include those with whom they do not currently interact?

Then there are people who define interesting as trying to make something where there is currently nothing. They want to move the ball down the field. They want the experience of building something new. Working to build an organization’s relationship with people who currently do not have a relationship with an organization is a challenge they want to undertake.

The mayor understood that the 100 energized people in that council room may or may not represent the views of the 30,000 who were not in that room. The effort to reach those who are not engaged means trying many different approaches, most of which will take time to work or prove they do not work. It will not be easy.

One of the characteristics of connected technology is that it generally scales pretty well. It takes the same amount of effort to do a Facebook post no matter how many people view it. There are all sorts of ways connected technology can be used to extend the reach of your organizations to people who are not currently engaged. Actually figuring out the secret sauce to make it work could be interesting.

Most organizations define themselves by the participants with which they interact. However, organizations are an interactive part of a larger community. To be a relevant part of the larger community, the organization needs to interact with the larger community.

The way to expand the reach of an organization is to do what it takes. The organization has to reach out and interact. Theoretically, maybe it could happen by accident but generally, it takes a lot of work by dedicated professionals to get the job done.

The job is to make your agency relevant to the lives of all of your resident population, whether they have an active relationship with your agency or not.

I do not have kids in school but I think the school district should make an effort to keep me engaged in the education of the kids in our area. I will retire this coming year but I think the economic development folks should keep me engaged in what they are doing.

Of course, agencies have to focus on active participants.  However, we need to also focus on those who are not active.

All voices matter.

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

This article appeared in Govloop.com on January 12, 2018

Lots of people are willing to tell you what your opinion should be. Far fewer give you the information needed to form your own opinion. Fortunately, in the age in which we live, the information you need is readily available. Here is some practical advice on how to gather enough information to get a basic understanding of an issue.

Take a deep breath, you are smart enough to use an internet search engine:

Step one. Search for the information. Search not only for the first word or phrase that pops into your head but also for related or similar words or phrases.

Do not read any opinion articles about your topic of interest. You are looking for evidence from which you will draw your own opinions. Conclusions others have drawn will bias your learning.

Step two. Read a little bit from a couple of different articles. Get a general idea about the topic. Get used to the jargon, get a feel for how the topic is talked about.

For example, in researching for this post I did some research about knowledge, education, learning and experience. Here are the snippets I got from Wikipedia:

• Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions or skills, which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, or learning.
• Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits.
• Learning is the process of acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values or preferences.
• Experience is the knowledge or mastery of an event or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it.

Step three. Read one of the articles from your search. Pick one. Read it. Was the article actually on the topic? Lots of titles and opening paragraphs can be deceptive. Whether or not it turned out to be exactly what you needed, you learned something.

When you read a word or phrase or concept you do not understand, use the search engine to look it up. Read a bit to get the definition or general idea about that which you did not understand. Dig deeper if warranted.

Step four. Now that you know a little more about the topic, refine your search and repeat.

Here is an example. Rather than accept a brag about the massive number of twitter followers someone has, let us seek to understand more about the topic.

First step, gather some basic information.

How many people are there in the area of interest?  This sets the base line.

• World population = 7.6 billion
• US population = 326 million

How many twitter followers are there?

• Twitter has an average of 330 million active users
• Twitter has about 69 million users in the USA.

By doing a little math ((326-69)/326) 79 percent of Americans do not have a Twitter account. Ninety-six percent of the world does not have a Twitter account. Even if everyone with a twitter account followed a single person, the tweets from that person would only reach about a quarter of the people. Now let us dig a little deeper.

The ten most followed twitter accounts include

• @katyperry (105 million)
• @justinbieber (103.12 million)
• @barackobama (96.93 million)
• @talorswift13 (85.3 million)
• @rihanna (81.4 million)
• @TheEllenShow (74.92 million)

The person with the most followers is followed by less than a third of the people with accounts on Twitter. So unless a person is in about the top 10, the percent of the population, actually following them is markedly lower.

I have a couple of Twitter followers. They were all in the room when my daughter helped set up my Twitter account.

New knowledge is gained by building a foundation of basic information. We gather additional information by experience, education, reading, etc. Finally, we put all of the information in perspective relative to other information. From that, we form an opinion.

Sometimes after looking deep into a topic, I have not found what I learned all that useful. Other times I am shocked how wrong my previous opinion was. No matter what your reaction is to what you learned, remember, you learned more than you knew before. That is a good thing.

As a child, the librarian who lived next door told me this. If you read one source on a topic, you have one view of the topic. If you read three sources on a topic, you have enough views to start having some perspective on the topic. When you read 5 or more sources on a topic, you will have enough different perspectives on the topic to maybe have a worthwhile opinion.

Lots of people are willing to tell you what your opinion should be. Ignore them, you have the ability and means to gather the basic information to form our own opinion. It is not that hard. Gathering information and forming an opinion is very rewarding. You will feel good about yourself.

One caution: Keep in mind, nobody is any one thing. Liars do not always lie. Mean people are not always mean. No group ever shares all of the same characteristics. Geniuses do not know everything. People with very low IQs often do and say very smart things. When you read that “they” all have some characteristic or another, it is suspect. Do further reading on the topic.

Nobody is perfect, including you. Smart people, like you, see the facts and sometimes come to a wrong conclusion.  However, most of the time they come to an informed opinion.

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com