Wednesday, January 30, 2019, Los Angeles, California


Notes From My Journal

Why “Best Books” Lists Are Sort of Silly… and My “Best Books” List for 2018

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When I first read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, I read it quickly. It was the selection of the month for my November book club – and by the time I got to it, I had less than two days to go through it.

No problem. I arrived at the Cigar Club, book in hand, with plenty to say. And most of that was a mixture of admiration and dismissal. Among other things, I said that it was “the best-written book that told me things I already knew.”

Two weeks later, I listened to it on Audiobooks, and I loved it. And now I’m reading it again…  and I’m thinking it may be one of the best books I’ve ever read!

Each chapter is a book in itself. And each section of every chapter contains at least one idea that feels big and new and important. This is a book that I will read over and over again.

I felt the same way about Pride and Prejudice when I first read it, which was 12 or 15 years ago. I’ve read it twice since then, and I’d be happy to read it again today.

But had I read  Pride and Prejudice as an undergraduate, I might have dismissed it as superficial and melodramatic. I know I felt that way about Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors when I read them for Dr. Powers at the University of Michigan. I pretended to admire them because he did, but they felt insignificant to me then. (“Brilliant writing about trivial human affairs,” is what I said in my journal.)

I don’t feel that way about those two novels now that I’m older and less cynical. Quite the contrary, I think they are brilliant and deep.

And that’s one of the problems with lists of the “best” books. The pleasure we get from books depends greatly on the level of intellectual and emotional sophistication we have when we read them. On the one hand, a book that strikes us as luculent in our youth might seem dim or even dimwitted decades later. On the other hand, a book that bores us in high school might thrill us in our middle age.

The same can be said of almost any aesthetic object. That painting of the young girl with the huge brown eyes that swept us away when we first saw one in Woolworth’s when we were nine years old now looks like the intentionally bathetic work of a commercial panderer.

I’m not suggesting that there is no such thing as bad, better, and great books. I’ve made the point elsewhere that I believe very strongly that the potential pleasure and elucidation we get from a book depends primarily on its intrinsic qualities. As a general rule, books that are broader and deeper and also subtler tend to get better the more you read them because they are better. They are better because they have complexity, depth, and subtlety, qualities that are enhanced by rather than diminished by repeated exposure.

What I’m saying is that best-books lists should be seen as what they are: the temporary feelings of one person – the list maker – at a particular time.

That said, here is my list of “best” books that I read (or reread) in 2018:

  1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
  2. The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
  3. Brief Questions to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
  4. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
  5. Beyond the Grave by Jeffrey L. Condon
  6. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  7. Fox 8 by George Saunders
  8. 21 Lessons for the 21stCentury by Yuval Noah Harari
  9. Dress Her in Indigo by John D. MacDonald
  10. The Soul of America by Jon Meacham
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Monday, January 28, 2019, Los Angeles, California


From My Work-in-Progress Basket

Four Proven Ways That Employees Can Get Big Raises and Retire Rich

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It’s commonly said that you can’t get rich working for someone else. That the only way to achieve financial independence is to own your own business.

This idea feels true when you are stuck in a thankless job, working long hours for mediocre pay. But it’s nonsense.

It’s perfectly possible to become wealthy as an employee. You’ve just got to (a) be working for the right kind of company, (b) chart a course for yourself that takes you from ordinary to valuable and from valuable to invaluable, and (c) make sure you get the compensation you deserve.

I know this to be true for three reasons: I did it myself. I mentored at least a dozen employees that did the same thing. And I looked at a foot-high stack of research on highly paid employees that confirmed my experience.

(In this essay, I’ll outline the principal ideas I’ve developed on this subject. I’ll present them just as I presented them to those I’ve mentored: as observations and advice. Sometime later this year, if I can get someone to help me, I’ll expand this essay into a book. But what you are about to read should get you going and keep you moving in the right direction, if you are interested.)

Nothing I’m about to suggest will be especially difficult. It will take time. And commitment. And the willingness to do some things that you are not doing now. But there will be no big scary leaps required of you. Begin where you are now, with the skills and knowledge you currently have. Then move forward, taking small, sensible steps, acquiring the skills and knowledge you currently lack.

There are 5 stages to this journey:

  1. Make sure you are working for the right company.
  2. Become extraordinary at what you do.
  3. Develop additional, financially valuable skills.
  4. Expand your reach so that your business can’t do without you.
  5. Move from employee to stakeholder.

Work for a Business That’s Right for You

There are basically three kinds of businesses that can provide the environment you are looking for, where you can become rich.

Big corporations

Big corporations will pay you serious money if you are at the top of their food chain. A senior vice president of a billion-dollar business can easily make $350,000-$750,000.

It’s not difficult to accumulate an eight-figure net worth if you get yourself promoted into one of those highly paid jobs quickly. But the competition will be strong. You will be competing with dozens (if not hundreds) of very smart, very hardworking, very ambitious young people. You will have to be not only outstanding at your job and then move yourself strategically towards the money side of the business, you will also have to be politically shrewd. Because all big companies suffer from some amount of corporate politics. And even if you have what it takes to rise to the top, it will likely take 10-20 years.

Financial service businesses

Brokerages, banks, and insurance companies are particularly good places for ambitious people that want to get rich as employees because they are designed to motivate and reward their employees with commissions and bonuses. And if you are with the right company, those commissions and bonuses can be huge.

There are probably a thousand such businesses in the USA that are happy to pay their best people $250,000 to $1 million or more – if they can perform. Career paths at this level include portfolio managers, marketers, and salespeople.

Becoming a high-earning portfolio manager is a matter of knowledge, skill, and luck. If you are highly intelligent, mathematically oriented, and mentally disciplined, this could be an exciting and rewarding path for you. But be prepared for the emotional challenges. It is difficult to keep an investment portfolio’s performance above the pack. When the performance is up there, you are a superstar. When it drops below – and eventually it will – you will be a pariah.

A less demanding (in my view) career path is to become a broker – starting out working under another broker, developing leads and then signing up your own accounts, and then eventually having a team of junior marketers and junior salespeople working for you. Brokering is 80% salesmanship, 10% customer management, and 10% knowing what you are doing. To succeed as a broker, you need to be very good at all three.

Small companies with big potential

The third type of business that offers employees the potential to become rich is the small, entrepreneurial company with big growth potential.

This was my choice as a young man, and I don’t regret it. Starting out with a small company, especially if you are young, gives you a fast track to making big money that you won’t get in a big corporate environment. You are not competing against dozens of hyper-smart and uber-ambitious colleagues. And there is no formal corporate ladder to climb.

With small businesses, it’s generally easier to take on more responsibility. It’s also much more likely that you will be working directly with the founder, who will be very conscious of everything you are doing to make him or her rich.

Plus, working for a small business gives you a much greater ability to shape the corporate culture so that you can become not just wealthy but also proud of what you do.

Becoming a Valuable Employee

Whatever type of company you choose, your journey to wealth begins by establishing yourself as a valuable employee.

Most employees go through their lives working for businesses they care nothing much about, dealing with problems they’d rather not face and getting paid very ordinary wages. They would like to earn more. They may even be willing to do more. But their ambitions are sporadic and fleeting. Most of the time, they are simply showing up.

Such employees are never going to get substantial raises. They can expect their salary to rise very slowly and very gradually. From 1984-2017, for example, the average salary rose by around 3.5%, according to the Average Wage Index.

As an ordinary employee, that’s what you should expect. But getting a 3.5% increase every year will never get you rich. It’s barely enough to keep up with inflation.

Becoming a valuable employee, however, puts you on a different trajectory. Extraordinary employees can – and often do – get raises that begin at twice the 3.5% average and often jump by 10% yearly with periodic leaps of 25% or more.

That sort of arithmetic is why most college-educated employees starting out today can expect to quadruple or quintuple their salaries over a career span of about 20 years, whereas top-performing employees can easily double or triple that.

A valuable employee, earning only a minimum increase of 7% a year, will see his compensation grow from $50,000 to $193,000 in 20 years. At 10%, he will see his compensation break into the quarter-million-dollar range.

There are basically four ways to distinguish yourself as a valuable employee and see your compensation accelerate at a faster pace:   READ MORE

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Saturday, January 26, 2019, Los Angeles, California


Notes From My Journal

No, You Didn’t Choose It… And, No, You Can’t Change It… So What Are You Going to Do About It?

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You didn’t choose and cannot change the locale of your birth.

You didn’t choose and cannot change your ethnicity or your parentage.

You didn’t choose and cannot change the color of your skin.

But you can choose to change almost everything else.

Dwelling on what you didn’t choose and can’t change does you no good.

It doesn’t soothe your pain.

It doesn’t change the past.

It doesn’t lift you up.

It doesn’t give you hope.

And it cannot improve your future.

Feeling victimized by what you didn’t choose and can’t change actually hurts you.

It makes you angry,

Which depletes your energy,

Which makes you weak,

Which makes you less capable of moving ahead.

Ultimately, this way of thinking is a tragic waste of your precious time.

So why do so many supposedly smart and learned people promote it?   READ MORE

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Thursday, January 24, 2019, Delray Beach, Florida


From My Work-in-Progress Basket

A Letter From a Man Whose Mother Is a Bank

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I received a letter this morning that began as follows:

Dear Mark – I hope all is well with you and yours. I want to reach out to you because you can help me…

I looked at the signature. A name I didn’t recognize. Perhaps I had forgotten. I asked Gio to look him up in our files. She couldn’t find him.

Notice his rationale for “reaching out to me.” It was because I could help him.

I was intrigued. Either I did know the man and he was making a claim on that relationship, or we had no relationship and he was oblivious to how arrogant his request was.

His letter continued:

I am living at home in a toxic environment trying to launch my internet business. I haven’t worked for months; jobs are hard to land these days. I do not want any handouts, I just want the opportunity to explain my circumstances.

He went on to tell me all about his life… his dreams and his challenges. He explained that his current financial problems were “not his fault” but the fault of his “dysfunctional family.”

And then, in the very next sentence, he mentioned that he had been using his supposedly dysfunctional mother “as a bank for almost nine years.”

I was now reading with the utmost interest.

“My livelihood is on the line,” he said. He had “boxed himself” into a fast-disintegrating financial corner, but he was not going to give up. Where there is hope, he believed, there is hope!

And what was that hope? Words of advice from me? Perhaps a free copy of Automatic Wealth? Or Seven Years to Seven Figures? Or Living Rich?

No.

“To be totally transparent with you,” he said, “Money will take care of the aforementioned problems.”

Aha! So it was as easy as that. All he needed was some quantity of my money. All I had to do was sign a check and send it off… and presto! He would be in fine shape.

Every week, I get letters from people asking for advice. And I answer every one of them. Sometimes with a quick suggestion but usually by suggesting that they read one of my books. But it’s rare that I get a request like this.

I believe that no one has an inherent right to wealth. I believe that we are born into a universe that guarantees us nothing. But I also believe that the acquisition of wealth – enough to sustain oneself – is a fundamental human responsibility.

It requires three things:
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Tuesday, January 22, 2019, Delray Beach, Florida


From My Work-in-Progress Basket

Principles of Wealth #24*

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The banking industry promotes the idea that money stored in cash instruments (such as saving accounts, CDs, and money market funds) is safe money and a riskless financial strategy. But it is not true. Cash, like every other asset class, has risk.

On Saturday, Ted reads an article in The New York Times predicting that the president’s new tariff plan will decimate international commerce. Sunday morning, he reads a WSJ article pointing out that the stock market is dangerously overvalued with an average P/E ratio for the DOW of 25. At noon, he reads an essay by an economist he admires that points out that US debt is now higher than it has ever been.

He goes to bed feeling uneasy.

Monday morning, he calls Joe, his stockbroker. “What’s going on with the market?” he asks.

“You’ve seen the numbers?” Joe replies.

“What numbers?”

“It’s down.”

“How much down?”

“About 10%.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s not good.”

“And my account ?”

He hears the tapping of fingers on a keyboard. “You should be relatively okay,” Joe says. “Your portfolio is very conservative.”

A bit more tapping. Then, “You are down just a bit more. Around 11.5%.”

“Shit,” Ted says. “I knew this was going to happen. What do you think I should do.”

“That depends on how you feel about the future. Our analysts believe this is a dip in a long-term bull market.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ted says. “Sell.”

“Sell everything?” Joe asks.

“Everything.”

“And do what with it?”

“Just leave it in cash.”

The tapping again.

“Okay,” Joe says. “You are out. Your money is sitting in cash.”

“Good,” Ted says “I feel better.”

“Then you made the right decision,” Joe says. “What could be safer than cash?”
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Notes From My Journal

The Pain of Climbing Kilimanjaro and Other Humiliations

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Sunday, January 20, 2019

Rancho Santana, Nicaragua.- At 43, Bonner Paddock has already accomplished what, at 68, I have failed to accomplish three times: He has retired.

I was intrigued by his story, So I pressed him for details.

He told me that he had busied himself with “various projects” for several years, and ended up moving to Nicaragua. (He pointed out where his house sits, on the beach directly past Mag Rock.) He’d had a successful career as a marketing executive for a large western US beverage distribution company… and decided, one day, that he had enough money to retire.

I wondered how much “enough” was. As an employee of a brick-and-mortar business, even as superstar marketer, he could not have accumulated, at his age, the sort of money that most people feel comfortable retiring with.

I asked him if he knew of Mr. Money Mustache. He didn’t. I explained how Mr. MM had also quit working at an early age, and then wrote a blog about his ongoing attempt to live well on an income of only $30,000 a year.

Then I told him about my three failed attempts to retire, and how (with my therapist’s help), I had finally gotten to the point where I don’t beat myself up for doing what I obviously want to do.

We were there to talk about working together: FunLimon, my family’s community center in Nicaragua, and his charity, which helps children in developing countries with cerebral palsy and similar disabilities get the therapy and special education they need. (CP, by the way, currently affects more than 500,000 children worldwide.) The idea was that we (meaning FunLimon) were going to provide a facility and equipment for the programs. And he was going to find the people and the equipment to make it happen.

Bismarck and Number Three Son Michael, co-directors of FunLimon, had agreed in principle to the joint venture. I was there because everyone wanted my input.

I won’t get into the details of our discussion. What I liked, and very much, was that Bonner agreed with me on the challenges of charitable giving. He believes, as I do, that charity brings with it a great responsibility.

I asked him how he got involved in his charity. He told me it started when he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. “No shit!” I exclaimed. “So did I.”

We slapped five. (I know. Don’t say anything.) And I told him my horror story.

“I was miserable, too,” he agreed. “Every step of the way.”

“I wrote an essay about it,” I said. “I’ll send it to you.”

He thanked me and then told me why he did it… which made me feel like an idiot for even mentioning how much I had suffered on the climb. I had done it because… I don’t know why. But he had done it for a reason. He had cerebral palsy, he told me. And he had done it to bring attention to the challenges that are faced every day by people like him. Turns out he was the first person with CP to climb Kilimanjaro unassisted.

Then, rather than offering me an essay on his experience, he promised to send me the documentary movie he’d made about it. And, if I wanted, his NYT bestselling book.

And if that were not enough humiliation, he went on to tell me that he had taken on another challenge to raise money for his charity: to be the first person with CP to complete the Ironman Kona triathlon.

I must admit that when Bismarck first mentioned his name to me, I was dubious. “Who gets to have a power name like Bonner Paddock?” I thought. So just to be sure, I googled him. And sure enough, he is the real thing.

So I am inspired and motivated to make our partnership work. And confident that Michael and Bismarck will work with him to make it everything it can be.

But I’m also simultaneously inspired and humiliated by how Bonner Paddock has thrice outdone me in a lifespan that is 25 years shorter than mine!

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Friday, January 18, 2019, Rancho Santana, Nicaragua


Notes From My Journal

Horse Ears

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“Do you know how horses communicate?” Beverly asked at the beginning of our riding lesson.

My mind trotted back (it cannot race anymore) to the last time I heard Beverly ask this question. I was sitting on this same bench in the Rancho Santana stables a year ago. Or was it two years?

Trot. Trot. Trot. Just as I was pulling open memory’s file, she answered her own question: “With their ears.”

“When your horse is feeling comfortable and happy, his ears are upright,” she explained, using her cupped hands to demonstrate. “And when they are not happy, what do you suppose they do?”

“They are pulled back!” I nearly shouted, responding like the eager school child her style of pedagogy implied.

“And when their ears point forward?” Andy asked.

“Good question!” she said. “When their ears are pointing forward it means that they are no longer paying attention to you. Their ears are pointing towards what they are interested in or what they’re about to do.”

Rancho Santana, as the name suggests, has always been a ranch. Long before we bought the property 20+ years ago, horses were stabled here, along with cattle and occasionally goats.

The stable we were in is the third one in my time. The first was essentially a covered corral near the beach. The second we built a year or so after we bought the land. It housed six horses and was replaced by the current one, which is about three times larger and way nicer.

Today, the stable and surrounding paddocks are home to 15 or 20 horses. And the ranch itself frequently hosts a dozen more that somehow get onto the property and graze on its fields – free food, basically – then make their way back to their owners’ casitas at night.

I’ve never been a much of a caballero. I like the idea of riding a horse and the way a body looks sitting upright in the saddle. But I’ve never enjoyed the riding itself. When the horse is walking, it feels clunky and slow. When the horse is trotting, it’s uncomfortable. (Horse people say otherwise. I don’t believe them.) And when the horse is galloping, it’s frightening. And dangerous!

Still, I feel some sort of obligation to “use” the stables when I’m at the ranch. So I usually book one ride per stay.

Cecily, Andy, and I arrived at the stables at four in the afternoon. We figured that would give us 90 minutes of daylight in the cooler part of the afternoon. And after Beverly’s lesson (which we did enjoy), we saddled up and she tested us on the basics: going forward, backing up, and turning.

Since these horses are accustomed to amateur riders, they are very responsive. We all passed muster, so Beverly turned us over to Lorenzo, chief horse master or whatever, and his two sons. (Apparently, she felt we each needed a handler.)

Lorenzo asked me which of the half-dozen routes I wanted to take. I told him I had another idea. He looked concerned. I said I wanted to ride all the way to Los Perros, at the southern end of the ranch.

“But that will take more than an hour,” he said. “It’s not good for you to be riding back in the dark.”

I told him that my plan was to get there just before sunset and enjoy cocktails as the sun dropped behind the horizon. “You and your boys can take our horses back.”

He seemed okay with the plan, so that’s what we did.

Lorenzo was at the lead, followed by Cecily and Andy, followed by Giovanni, Lorenzo’s youngest son, followed by me, and with Lorenzo Junior at the tail.

The trip took just about an hour. It was mostly walking, with the occasional 50-yard trot. But there were steep ups and downs that tested our leg muscles. Along the way, I paid close attention to my steed’s ears – which were, I am proud to report, generally in the upright position. She labored well, up and down those hills, carrying me, at 210 pounds, on her back. By the time we arrived at Los Perros, I’d had my fill of riding for the day, and I believe my horse was happy to have me dismount. Walking stiffly to the beachside cantina, Cecily, Andy, and I agreed that it had been a good idea to make the ride one-way.

As a courtesy, I invited Lorenzo and the boys to have drinks and snacks with us. He surprised me by agreeing. We sat at a table overlooking Playa Iguana. The waves were gentle. The sky was turning orange. My Margarita was salty, not sweet, which is the only way to drink it. I asked Lorenzo if he minded taking the horses back in the dark.

 

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Wednesday, January 16, 2019, Rancho Santana, Nicaragua


Notes From My Journal

If I Were in Charge of These Hills

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There is an unwritten rule when building your house on top of a hill: Keep the roofline below the treetops. When you violate this rule by setting a two-story structure at the very crest of the hill, you create an ugly and permanent blemish on the profile of that landscape. Any sensitive someone looking at the hill from afar would have his pleasure ruined – the vista’s soft and undulating strata of green interrupted by an ugly man-made block.

We have such violations in Nicaragua, along the Pacific coastline north of Rancho Santana. One of them is a restaurant called Mag Rock (short for Magnificent Rock), a barn-like, three-story structure perched at the top an outcropping of rock that rises above and juts out from the shoreline like a prow heading into the ocean.

Every time I look at it, I get annoyed. What kind of shallow, selfish, and aesthetically demonic person would do this. And stupid. You can get your view, even of both sides, without destroying the tree line. All you have to do is cut the structure into the hilltop. (See illustration below.)

So when Andy and Cecily said how much they enjoyed their lunch at Mag Rock, with its “mag-nificent” view and all, I had to say something.

“I’d like to burn it down,” is what I said.

Cecily decided to ignore me. Andy took me up. I explained my theory about building on hillsides.

“There should be a law,” I said.

“Maybe there is,” he said.

I like to think of myself as a classic Libertarian – i.e., that if forced to choose, I’d choose freedom over other social values. But when it comes to beauty – and let’s be real for a moment, sooner or later nearly every ideological view comes down to deeply held views about beauty – I’m a law-and-order monger.

“Lots of people think the world would be better if they were in charge ofeverything. I just want to be in charge of beauty,” I said.

“A Grand Minister of Aesthetics?” Andy offered.

“Exactly.”

I smiled and thought about it.

“It would be a big job,” I admitted. “I’d need help. Several ministries beneath mine. I’d need a Ministry of Landscape, a Ministry of Architecture…”
“A Ministry of Interior Décor?”

“Certainly. And a Ministry of Attire… and Jewelry… and Watches… and Cars…”

“With you at the helm?”

“Naturally. Someone has to set and approve the standards.”

“And would there be penalties? Fines perhaps?”

“Not tough enough. Corporal punishment. Torture and death.”

Seriously, just think about how much better – i.e., more beautiful – the world would be if we could do away with all the ugly things.

Forget about eliminating war and poverty for a moment. Think about how wonderful it would be to wake up each day to a world devoid of aesthetic abuse.

Think of all the things that would not be. Such as:

* Buildings built upon hilltops

* Brightly lit, quasi-Italian restaurants

* Boca-styled mansions

* Boca Raton itself

* Duck backs and comb-overs

* Gold-plated faucets

* Almost any fixture plated in gold

* Which is to say Trump Tower

* Earth shoes and tube socks

* Plastic furniture coverings

* Renoir reproductions

* Any sort of stretch material on unattractive bodies

The list goes on.

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Notes From My Journal

Dinner at Mad Dog Pizzeria

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Monday, January 14, 2019

Rancho Santana, Nicaragua.- Dinner last night was at Mad Dog’s, located about 20 minutes west of Rancho Santana on the coastal road by the turnoff to Guasacate.

It sits in the corner of a brand-new shopping mall that is said to have been built by “the Italian guy that owns that huge house with the giant blue dome on the beach.” I find that easy to believe. Both structures are wonders in bad taste.

Partly because it is new, but mostly because tourism in Nicaragua has all but disappeared since the political protests began early in 2018, the mall has only this one tenant. (And three cars in the parking lot last night.)

It’s called a pizzeria. And although it does serve pizza, one can see that it’s really a wannabe restaurant, with a menu that includes appetizers and entrees, as well as wines, beers, and desserts.

The layout is unfortunate: one oversize room, heavy on the marble, topped by a ceiling fresco of the sky and ducks (of all things). And the place is lit up like an operating room.

I’ve seen restaurants like this in some of the smaller cities of Italy. Just last year, we had dinner with Peter and Jill at one in Salerno. We would have never thought of entering based on its appearance. But it was recommended confidently (and correctly, as it turned out) by a pretty young woman on the street as having the best pizza in town. But that was Italy. This is Nicaragua.

Andy and Cecily were still on their way, coming back from a day-long adventure that included climbing the Mombacho volcano, visiting a coffee plantation, having a late lunch in Granada (the most perfectly preserved Spanish Colonial city in the Americas, according to UNESCO), and then zip-lining. (“We never got to take the boat tour of the isletas of Lake Granada,” Cecily complained. “We ran out of time.”)

So there were seven of us for dinner at Mad Dog’s, including my sister Gaby, who has lived in Rome for 30 years; Cecily and Andy, who met while working for me 30 years ago; Tommy, my friend of nearly 60 years; and Tommy’s 180-pound, 11-year-old son Billy, who was halfway through a warm-up pizza when we arrived.

The waitress spoke some English, which would have been unheard of 20 years ago when I first came to Nicaragua. She was far from fluent, but she was familiar with such idioms as, “I’ll check it out.” (I wondered about the history of that.)

The menu was odd. Light on salads and vegetables, heavy on pizzas, and featuring six entrees, half of which were not available. I chose the pork belly, which turned out to be a mistake. But everyone else’s meals were reported to be “good” to “very good.” Tommy said his lamb was the best he’ ever had. And “little” Billy finished his pizza and ordered a few tacos to boot.

As near as I can recall, the dinner conversation was mostly about nothing. But there were two discussions that I did enjoy.

One was about the difference between sweet potatoes and yams. (Most yams – and almost all sold in US supermarkets –  are actually a type of sweet potato, softer and more orange than the harder type that retains the name. True yams are entirely different. They come from a plant that is native to Asia and Africa, and are sold only in specialty shops.)

The other one was a brief argument about the meaning of the word “Palladian.” I had come across it during my daily exercise of looking for new or unfamiliar words. The reference I used defined it as somehow related to the goddess Athena – in particular, as “something that gives symbolic protection,” like the many statues of Athena that you see all over the classical world. But Cecily thought it had to do with architecture.

I looked it up – and we were both right. Palladian architecture is a 17thcentury neoclassical style – symmetrical and balanced – that was inspired by the work of the 16thcentury Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580).

It looks like this:

Driving back to the ranch in the blackness, the car’s suspension system rattling from the hard dirt and rock road, I thought about how lucky I am to be having ordinary dinners in such extraordinary places with people I’ve known for so many years.

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Saturday, January 12, 2019, Delray Beach, Florida


Notes From My Journal

The New Challenge I Give Myself Every Day

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I received a note from a former protégé who is using my personal productivity system (my “Goaltending Program”) to accomplish her very demanding schedule as editorial director of a growing publishing company.

I thanked her for the note, congratulated her on her success, and said, “You know, I’ve taught this system to dozens, showed it to thousands… yet you may be the only person besides me that is using it!”

Then I shared with her something that I’ve added to the Goaltending Program.

It’s a new challenge I give myself – four things I try to do in order to enjoy the satisfaction of an intellectually fulfilling day:

  1. Write something worth reading.*
  2. Do something worth writing about.*
  3. Read something worth recommending.
  4. Learn something worth teaching.

This is a quality-of-life challenge. There are no requirements in terms of “how much” or “how long.” For example, “Learn something worth teaching” might be how to adjust one’s side view mirrors so that there are no blind spots. And “Write something worth reading” might include this little journal entry that you are reading right now. (Of course, you are the judge of whether I’ve succeeded.)

*I got the first two from Ben Franklin.

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