Misery and Maximizers

John Maeda made a brilliant observation in his TED talk about simplicity.  To paraphrase: people like complexity in things they enjoy, and they hate complexity in things they dislike.  Yes!  Complexity in music & books captivates me, complexity in my tax returns makes me want to jump in front of a train.

In 2010, I’ll be trying to reduce some of the unnecessary complexities in my life.  As an organization freak & computer lover with a subconscious lust for complex systems, this won’t be easy, but I think Maeda’s point provides excellent guidance.

I’m also getting some terrific input from a book called The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, a psychologist and professor at Swarthmore College.  The book aims to explain why a culture with greater freedom & variety than any other in history is causing people to be unhappier and less satisfied with their decisions.  In Chapter 4, Schwartz explains the difference between maximizers (those who must find the best possible choice for every decision) and satisficers (those who settle for good enough and don’t worry about the existence of better possibilities).  Guess which one correlates more strongly with less satisfaction with life, less happiness, less optimism, and more depression?  As a solid maximizer (as evaluated by the survey in the book), I wasn’t happy to learn the answer.

One recurring theme of the book: reducing the number of options often leads to greater satisfaction with a decision.  I think that’s something I can work with.

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This week, the girl you see here turned 25.

You might think a 25-year-old should be more mature.  I blame her boyfriend for being a bad influence.

Rerouting

In July, I went to Paris.  Physically and mentally.  And with my girlfriend.  Amazing Paris comic journal courtesy of Lucy Knisley.

Lengthy vacations allow us to pull up the anchor and drift for a bit.  The difference between today’s Johnny and June 2009 Johnny is probably greater than the difference between June 2009 Johnny and the Johnny of one year prior, and not just in fromage content.

As such, New Johnny’s in charge now, and he’s plotted a new course for the ship.

For starters, I’m cleaning house.  Earlier tonight, I dropped a load of clothes and rarely-used household items at a local non-profit resale shop that funds LGBT services.  (If anyone needs a white noise machine or a shaving cream warmer, hit up the Brown Elephant on Halsted.)  More of my apartment detritus is going up on eBay later this week.  A friend is stopping by tomorrow to pick up half a dozen dress shirts that have been too big for my scrawny frame since the first day I bought them; their departure is long overdue.

I’ve also begun making changes in my computer use.  Patton Oswalt said in his recent AV Club interview, “You can replace the internet with five really smart friends,” and wow, there are a lot of things I like about that brief quote.  As a technophile, mitigating my habitual and at times junkie-like interaction with personal technology is a difficult and evolving process, but I’ve made a few inroads.  One big help: Leechblock, a Firefox extension that lets you lock yourself out of websites you choose, during time frames you choose.  I’ve configured it to keep me away from Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and several other sites after 9 PM.  It also locks me out of certain sites after a time limit of my choosing; this keeps me from spending all day on 4chan or some other such internet sinkhole.  Per Aldous Huxley via Neil Postman, I’ve ruined many hours on the internet, and I’d really, really like that to stop.

This post will have to end here.  I’m approaching the dangerously recursive territory of losing sleep to spend time on the computer writing a blog about how I should spend less time on the computer.

In Which I Am Maybe Unmasked As Sexist?

Last week, Lucy told me about The Bechdel Rule, and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since.  Actually, I’m not fascinated by the rule itself, but rather by how powerful a statement it makes despite its simplicity.

Alison Bechdel is a comic artist, creator of the long-running strip Dykes To Watch Out For and the autobiography Fun Home, which was nominated for numerous awards and appeared on many of 2006’s best book of the year lists.  The Bechdel Rule, as it is informally named (though Bechdel credits a friend with the concept), appears in a DTWOF strip circa 1985.  Two lesbians are walking past a movie theater, and one shares her criteria for seeing a movie.  “One, it must have at least two women in it who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.”

Sounds simple, right?  OK, everyone reading this right now: try to think of how many movies you’ve seen that meet these three criteria.

I’ll tell you right now, that number is pretty small in my case.  When Lucy & I scanned our DVD collection, we found four (4!) movies out of roughly 50 or 60 that stood up to The Bechdel Rule.

One conclusion that was immediately apparent was how my demographics – white male from the suburbs – affect my choice in movies.  Of course, there are other factors at work, such as the type of movies Hollywood makes, which movies are selected for screening by local cinemas, etc.  Still, I feel vaguely guilty over my somewhat sexist entertainment track record.

This train of thought is like an offshoot of the current controversy over some statements made by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.  She’s discussed how her background informs her decisions as a judge, and for some reason this is a big deal?  Where was the outrage from the Right when Samuel Alito said the following during his confirmation hearing:

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender.  And I do take that into account.

That quote was recently used in a Salon.com article; hit the link to see Alito’s full statement defending the empathy he draws from his personal background.  In fact, just read that whole article: like The Bechdel Rule, it’s short, but it packs a punch.

The burden of choice

Lately I’ve been mining the archives of presentations at the annual TED conference.  Each 20-minute talk addresses a subject from the field of technology, entertainment, or design, and many are presented by geniuses: Stephen Hawking and Frank Gehry’s talks are lined up in my downloads right now.  Three of the talks that I watched recently share a common theme: choice.  Their juxtaposition in my queue was coincidental, but maybe I selected them through a subconscious desire to excuse my occasionally lousy decision-making skills.  (I tend to vacillate endlessly and research exhaustively when presented with an important decision, such as which new brand of toothpaste to try.)

Barry Schwartz – The paradox of choice

More options don’t always result in greater satisfaction.  In this talk, Schwartz discusses the hidden costs that come with freedom of choice.  In his words, they are:

1. Regret and anticipated regret
2. Opportunity costs
3. Escalation of expectations
4. Self-blame

There’s an excellent anecdote in there about buying jeans that illustrates his point perfectly.

Malcolm Gladwell – What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

Gladwell explains how experimental psychologist Howard Moskowitz handles the difficult task of figuring out what we want when we don’t really know what we want, and how companies use the results to provide us with choices that didn’t previously exist.

If I asked all of you, for example, in this room what you want in a coffee, you know what you’d say?  Every one of you would say, “I want a dark, rich, hearty roast.” … What percentage of you actually like a dark, rich, hearty roast?  According to Howard, somewhere between 25 and 27 percent.  Most of you like milky, wheat coffee.  But you will never ever say to someone who asks you what you want that I want a milky, wheat coffee.

David Pogue – When it comes to tech, simplicity sells

Pogue argues convincingly that extra features commonly hurt tech products.  I agree wholeheartedly, as this idea has fueled my recent interest in interaction design.  My favorite part comes at the end, when Pogue praises the latest version of his favorite speech recognition software.  The new version added no new features; the company just greatly improved the speech recognition accuracy and made the software much more enjoyable to use.

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PS – Our houseguests this week are Lucy’s comics friend Erika Moen (who does the fabulous webcomic DAR, please check it out) and her husband, Matt Nolan.  To see Erika interview Lucy, check out The Erika Moen Show on Ustream.

Stories of the Road, issue 33: The Great Gray North

This blog post is long overdue, but with good reason.  My latest client is headquartered in Vancouver, a city that's been on my top destination list for quite a while.  I was determined to make the best of my time there, thus I resolved to spend my weeknights seeing Vancouver rather than writing about it.

I'm never sure how much my feelings about a new city are influenced by my predispositions.  I've long imagined Vancouver as a Canadian San Francisco, so I had an easy time spotting similarities: the waterfront geography, the West-coast attitudes, the seafood-heavy menus.  There was even a dense fog (which the locals repeatedly assured me was uncharacteristic) languishing in the streets for most of my stay, reinforcing the impression that Vancouver was separated at birth from its American counterpart.

Vancouver's air is charged with the same ineffable energy found in other distinguished metropolitan locations.  I felt it as I walked to pick up dinner after work, wearing a smile that seemed to spring from my chest cavity.  I'm not a spiritual man, but I'm positive that some cities radiate a metaphysical verve yet undefined by science.

The travel requirements for this project were aggressive: Sunday night arrival and Friday afternoon departure for four weeks straight.  Lucy flew in for a ski weekend in between.  I tested my snowboarding skills, which were almost so rusty as to be worthless.  After three hours of scraping down the face of Grouse Mountain in thrift-store snowpants, my ass was ready to mutiny.

The food quality was top notch throughout town.  The sushi restaurant population downtown seems too large to be sustainable.  I never had a bad piece of fish in my time there, and I'm certain that my blood now contains enough mercury to manufacture several thermometers.  Oh, and let's not forget the poutine.

Why hasn't America appropriated this dish yet?  It certainly meets our minimum legal requirements for sodium, cheese, and fried food content.

Kudos to monstro (AKA Steve Wolfhard) and his friends for showing us a good time at Gyoza King.  Lucy drew a fantastic Vancouver travel journal when she vacationed with her dad last fall, so I have to plug it one more time.

My only post about the new Malcolm Gladwell book, I promise

As Lucy's comic suggests, I'm a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan.  I could blog my thoughts on almost every chapter in his latest book, Outliers, but I'm not sure I'd be able to curb my desire to just copy the book into my blog verbatim in an attempt to expose more people to his fascinating socio-economic hypotheses, so I'll try to keep it brief.  Here are a few points of interest from his recent writings.

• Convergence tests & divergence tests

Many of the tests we take in school can be categorized as a convergence test.  For example, on a multiple choice test, a list of possibilities are presented for each question, and you have to converge upon the correct answer.  A divergence test, on the other hand, requires your mind to move in as many different directions as possible.  In the example used in Outliers, students are asked to write down as many different uses as they can think of for two objects: a brick and a blanket.  Gladwell discusses these testing methods while writing about different kinds of intelligence, and uses them to explain why affirmative action graduates of Michigan's law school, who didn't perform as well academically as other students, enjoy careers that are every bit as successful as their white counterparts.  In the same chapter, he convincingly suggests that Harvard should introduce a lottery structure to its admissions process.

• Unconventional comparisons

In Gladwell's latest New Yorker article, he likens the selection of public school teachers to the selection of NFL quarterbacks.  Blogging about the response to this article, he espouses the value of drawing parallels between seemingly unconnected things.

"...non-symetrical comparisons are far more interesting and thought-provoking than symetrical comparisons. If I wrote a piece about how finding good point guards in the NBA was a lot like finding good quarterbacks in the NFL, the comparison would be exact. And as a result, it would be relatively useless.  What new light does the addition of a second, identical example shed on the first?"

This pretty well summarizes why I find Gladwell's work so interesting: he's good at combining ideas in previously unrecognized ways.  Would that I had such insight.  When I was younger, I was amazed at how musicians, scientists, and other creative minds were able to produce brilliance seemingly out of nothing.  The older I get, the more often I see that breakthrough discoveries or artistic achievements are the result of (or the combination of) many preceding accomplishments & influences.  My definition of creativity has been reshaped with time.

Stories of the Road #32: The Lost Post

Hi, all.  It turns out that my work didn't appreciate my last post, which combined the company name and booze, drinking, etc. in such a way that my blog was spotted by their saved Google searches, and I was asked to take it down.  Here are the bonus items from the bottom of the post.

1. Quimby's is hosting a release party for Lucy's book on Tuesday, Oct 14th, starting at 7 PM.  If you're reading this, you should totally come.  Lucy's been busting her ass putting together the presentation for her book tour and Quimby's will be the debut performance.  Come!  Seriously!
2. Lucy & Johnny puppet blog #2 is here!

Writing about writing

Hi, all.  About two weeks ago, my lungs turned into the La Brea tar pits, and I've been a wheezing bag of slime ever since.  Luckily, in between games of Super Mario Galaxy and meals of greasy breakfast foods, I've found a few interesting things to read.  Here are two pieces I'd recommend to anyone interested in dusting off the old quill and inkwell.

Through Merlin Mann's wonderful blog on 43folders.com, I found a short essay by Kurt Vonnegut entitled, "How to Write With Style."  The entire article is here and you can read it in 5 minutes if you don't get distracted - more difficult than it sounds while at your computer, I know - but I'll summarize it for the convenience of those short on time or up too late (like me).

1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers

My favorite line from the piece is the last paragraph for point 5:

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

For those with lengthier attention spans, take a look at The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White.  (Coincidentally, I was about halfway through this book when I read the Vonnegut essay, which recommends Elements of Style at the end.)  The advice is more mechanical & dry: omit needless words, use the active voice, keep related words together, etc.  These guidelines are linked by the book's central theme: writing should be clear and vigorous.  Strunk best expresses this idea with four words, elegantly practicing what he preaches: every word must tell.  There's also a great analogy in there about how there are no unnecessary lines in a drawing, so why should there be unnecessary words in a book; unfortunately, my copy of the book is 1,700 miles away right now (Stories of the Road returns soon!) so I can't quote it exactly.

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Lucy & I collaborated on a comic!  I wrote it based on a true story about our internet French lessons.  Guess which version is mine and which is hers.

The Move, Part Two

Lucy & I are now two weeks into our cohabitation.  We've reconciled our inventories, and a few more items are going to go on the eBay/Craig's List/Freecycle chopping block.  Purging is my newfound love, but it has not replaced my lifelong passion: organization.  Luckily, the two complement each other nicely, and our ménage à trois has produced a sweet little living space.  Of course, it didn't hurt to have a girlfriend with excellent taste.

The other night, The Lady & I watched Fight Club and I was reminded of one of the great Tyler Durden lines: The things you own end up owning you.  This is never more apparent than when you move; even trying to get rid of your stuff becomes a burden (as I complained about in my last post).

At the end of the day, I'm glad to have an incentive to lighten the load.  I'm mentally streamlined - my psyche is now a dolphin.  Let's hope that this new dolphinness isn't countered by cable TV, which I'm enjoying for at home for the first time in 5 years, and which is more likely to turn one's psyche into algae.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped with the move!  The Honor Roll:

• Mom
• Dad
• Erika
• Lucy's mom
• Elliot
• Kevin
• Pam
• Jason
• Dan
• Sean

Also, check out this comic Lucy did about the move, in which she selflessly pretends that she's been the grouchy one over the course of the last few weeks.

The Move, Part One

Tomorrow morning, I'm hopping on a 6:55 AM flight to Boston, where I'll meet Lucy and her mom and then drive 2 hours to White River Junction, VT.  For the next 2 days, we'll be packing Lucy's stuff up and loading it into a van, and for 2 days after that we'll haul it all to Chicago.  On Tuesday, July 1st, we arrive in Chicago, load my stuff into the van, and bring it all to Logan Square for The Unpacking.  All able-bodied men & women who are willing to help will earn my unending gratitude - and, more importantly, will be fed with Lou Malnati's pizza and the beverage of your choice (beer included).

It's been 4 years since I last changed addresses, and there's one thing that has really surprised me above all else: it is HARD to get rid of your stuff in an ecologically friendly way!  Actually, let me modify that statement: it's not too hard, but it does take planning.  Selling stuff on eBay & Craig's List, giving things away on Freecycle, disposing of hazardous waste properly... all of these things require scheduling far in advance of the move.  It must have been a month ago that I started taking my clothes to Milwaukee Ave. to see if Crossroads or Buffalo Exchange would take them.  I've now reached the point where I'm so sick of looking at my own stuff and wondering why I have it - what the hell am I doing with 9 pairs of shoes, anyway? - that I'm about two boxloads away from renouncing all physical possessions and moving to India.  If the happiest man in the world did it, why shouldn't I?

 

Tuesday the 1st, big move-in party at my old place and then my new place, please come and join the fun!

long live Tim Russert

Anyone who's ever wondered what a perfect eulogy for a perfect life sounds like would do well to watch last Sunday's episode of Meet The Press. Tom Brokaw and group of Tim Russert's closest friends reflect on the life of a devoted father, a loving son, a fiercely loyal friend, and a paragon of journalism. No one could hope to be remembered more fondly. Keep the tissues handy.

Good luck and Godspeed to Tyler and Dan on their upcoming road trip! You know what Elliot says: watch out for snakes.

Less than two weeks until Lucy & I move in together! Tuesday, July 1st is the big day. All parties interested in helping will be given a hero's welcome. And free beer & pizza. Luckily, Lucy will have a lot less stuff to move in than she did two weeks ago since she sold a shitload of stuff at the MoCCA Art Festival this year. Check out her wrap-up comic blog post here, with yours truly in a supporting role (love interest to female lead).

Stories of the Road, issue 30: Invading Mennonite territory

Thanks to everyone who made our party a rousing success!  Pam's piñata was a smash hit (ha!) and we damn near drank the place dry.  Also, we raised $55 in donations for my autism walk this May!

The party kicked off an insane 48 hours for me.  After going to bed around 5 AM on Sunday morning, I woke up at 9 to start working - as in work working.  I left the house at 2:30 Sunday afternoon to fly to Morris, MN, which is about a 3-hour drive west of Minneapolis.  After arriving at the hotel at midnight, I proceeded to pull my second-ever work-related all-nighter - the day after our party, mind you - and showed up at the customer's office at 6:30 Monday morning for a sales presentation.  Which, miraculously, I nailed.

After that I flew straight to Atlanta, where it was 70 degrees and sunny all week long.  One coworker was upgraded to convertible for free.  None of us know why.

 

 

Somehow, Lucy's ukelele love song to me (which I also linked to in a previous blog) was one of the featured videos on YouTube's home page last week.  In a two-day stretch, the video pulled in 700,000 views, 5,000 comments, and was favorited about 4,000 times.  How do you follow that up?  With another awesome ukelele love song video, of course!  I am crushed with adorableness.

 

To try and prove that all of the talent in this relationship didn't end up on one side, I put a new song up on the Tiger Stance MySpace page.  You can download it there or listen to it here:

share your files at box.net

John Horstman, the recommendation engine

Hey gang.  Since my last post was all about recommendations made by computers, I thought I'd balance that out with some recommendations made by humans - namely, me.  The following recommendations are my attempt to better your lives.

Now that it's not so cold that every moment spent outdoors is spent swearing, I've started taking walks and listening to podcasts.  This American Life, The Savage Lovecast and Meet the Press are all about an hour long and updated weekly.  A single episode episode of any of these shows makes for a perfect companion to your daily constitutional.

Forget the iTunes Store.  From here forward, there's no reason not to buy your digital music from Amazon instead.  It's cheaper, it has no DRM, and it comes in .mp3 format (as opposed to the .m4p files Apple sells, which can only be played with iPods/iTunes).

If you've always found online blog authoring tools to be too clunky, give Windows Live Writer a shot.  It's an offline tool that's helped me to rediscover the joy of blogging.  Adding links, pictures, tags, video, etc. has never been easier.  You can save drafts of your blogs, preview them before you post, and when they're ready to go you can publish directly to most blogging services with a single click.

Watch Helvetica.  It's a documentary about a font.  And I love it.

Listen to the new song I posted to the Tiger Stance MySpace page a week ago, Trees in Retrograde.  Here it is:

Read Lucy's blog.  Seriously!  It's so good!  She updates regularly, she gets plenty of comments from her fans, and most of the posts include a new comic.  Also, I'm in there sometimes.

Finally, I'm participating in Walk Now for Autism this May, so if you'd like to do a little bit of good in the world then I recommend that you make a donation on my page.

New puppet blog to come soon, featuring puppet me!

Stories of the Road, issue 29: Vermont Trip Puppet Recap

Stories of the Road, issue 26: An in-flight bibliography

*NOTE: This is my first post to Blogger, but I have blogged on MySpace for quite a while. To dig through my MySpace blogging history, go here.



After a thoroughly enjoyable month of employment based in the Chicago suburbs, I'm back on the road this week, writing this blog on my 4-1/2 hour flight to LAX. Fortunately, I brought along some excellent reading material that's making me forget that I have felt my legs atrophy significantly over the course of the flight - looks like my traveler's fortitude has suffered from the respite. The nice thing about evening flights is that you can play the cloud shapes game with the patches of light from the towns below; I just passed a crop of lights that looked like a giant beetle.



Malcolm Gladwell has finally returned from a hiatus of several months with a great article on how the FBI's long-revered criminal profiling methodology is really just pseudo-scientific cold reading. He spent his hiatus working on his next book, and although I have no idea what it's about I'm getting antsy just thinking that more Gladwell goodness will soon be rolling off of a printing press somewhere, rife with counterintuitive wisdom backed by rock solid case studies. Try to stay with me here, but there's something similar about Malcolm Gladwell's work and the web services/products that Google provides. In both cases, the simplicity of their packaging makes the content more intuitive. It reminds me of the way the word "elegant" is used in the context of computer programming to describe a solution that implies a harmony of simplicity and robustness. Leonardo da Vinci said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and I think that idea is manifest in output such as Gladwell's Blink and Google's RSS feed manager Google Reader.

But I digress.



I'm also slowly working my way through Naomi Klein's No Logo, which is an examination of the state of advertising, branding and marketing at the end of the 20th century. The big picture so far isn't too surprising - Guess what? Corporations are EVERYWHERE! - but the cited examples of out-of-control branding still strike your gut as foul, such as Fashion Licensing of America's line of Ernest Hemingway furniture ("designed to capture the 'brand personality' of the late writer"), or Nike internally coining the term "bro-ing" to describe its process of borrowing style, attitude and imagery from black urban youth. She just wrapped up a chapter on how the Seattle grunge scene didn't really stand for anything but an aesthetic, making it perfect for brands to swoop in and co-opt. That section is followed with some well-worded passages about how being interested in something ironically is a vapid cop-out, which I LOVED reading because I feel like I've never really understood the "so bad it's good" theory.

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I'm now in the cab on the way to the Beverly Hills Hilton, where a room awaits me. Let's see if I can still remember my hotel room arrival routine: open suitcase on second bed, put toiletries by the sink, iron and hang shirts... yes, yes, it's all coming back to me.

Lucy & I had a fabulous time this weekend seeing They Might Be Giants at The Vic, eating at our favorite Wicker Park restaurants, and falling asleep during two consecutive attempts to watch Ratatouille. We also had some heavy-duty conversations; it was good to get away from the catch-up we play over the phone every week, and to interact deeply with someone so close to me. Those experiences don't happen every day.