I'm a card-carrying member of the funny last name club

If you’re not a member, you’ll never know about the time I’ve wasted spelling and respelling my last name for people on the phone and then telling them about the origin of it. I wish I was more self-aware at the time to realize my career choice, which included spending a lot of time on the phone exacerbates the issue. I find it comical today.

Having to spell one's name over and over again is an irritating experience; phonetics don’t work well on the phone. I have tested various strategies, such as phonetics, word games, and the military alphabet.

What’s your last name? Diversiev. Die-Vur-See-Ev 

How do you spell that? It’s like two words: Diver and Sieve, with no ‘e’ at the end. (Sieve is an infrequently used word.) It looks like the peak use of “sieve” was in 1940 and has decreased by at least 62.5%. And, realistically, when was the last time you heard someone use that word who wasn’t elderly or a plumber? 

How do you spell that? D I V E R S I E V, 

Is that E Z at the end?  Is that E I V? Sigh...

 I’ve resorted to using the military alphabet.  

Delta India Victor Echo Romeo Sierra India Echo Victor 

The problem here is many people don’t know the military alphabet. Sometimes, I’d find myself saying Indigo vs. India. Ha.

Dealing with people for whom English is not their first language ratchets up frustration about spelling out my name. I learned to speak Spanish from my mother, as well as subsequent practice in the real world.  I often speak with clients in Spanish. My last name sounds the same with a Spanish inflection but the combination of the letters is alien, so it definitely sounds foreign. 

God help me when I went through this in Japan after university. This should have been a red light flashing before me about the complexity of my last name. I ignored it.  If you’re a student of Japanese, you may realize that my last name is really difficult to convert to katakana, the alphabet for foreign words and names. 

In Japanese, there are many foreign words that are recognizable as an English listener. Reading in Japanese is a whole different animal. If you hear words like “te-re-bi” or “in-taa-ne-to” you might be able to make out their meanings. “Te-re-bi” is short for terebishun, which you probably recognize as “television”. “In-taa-ne-to” means internet. 

There’s no “er” sound in Japanese nor a “t” ending sound. Most consonants are attached to a vowel except an ending “n sound”.  The consonant vowel pairing gets a little more complicated when paired with vowel “i” and my last name becomes:

Ji-baa-shi which I ended up truncating because the last part made it even crazier. 

チ”バーシ

Ironically enough, I’ve often used this strategy -- truncating and mispronouncing my name to grease the skids of social interaction. Meeting someone new, if I’m not feeling like giving the spelling and history lesson, I’d often introduce myself as George Diversey. There’s a street on the north side of Chicago called Diversey which I often adopt as my own. Some people believe there’s a relation; there isn’t.

As for the origin of my name, my dad is Bulgarian. This often starts another tangent on the phone that I try to avoid. A lot of people hardly know anything about Bulgaria so I'm pressed to give a geography lesson which often doesn’t stick. Growing up in Chicago twenty years ago, the only other Bulgarians I’d ever met were at a Bulgarian church that we sporadically attended. These days I’m proud to read about Maria Popova’s success with Brainpickings.org, or Polina Marinova Pompliano of The Profile, or Nina Dobrev of the Vampire Diaries, or even Maria Bakalova of Borat fame. Being Bulgarian is cool again.  

I don’t think I’ll ever change my name and as much as I relay the issues I’ve had. I’m grateful for being in the funny last name club. I have a built-in advantage on Google too -- something the John Smiths of the world can never have.

A tribute to Tony Hsieh, someone I hardly knew at all

I don’t know why I’m struck with a little bit of sadness upon hearing about Tony Hsieh’s untimely death. Maybe, it’s because he’s my age. I think it’s because I read his book, Delivering Happiness and still think about some of the things he wrote about as he built Zappos and successfully sold it to Amazon.

I took notes at the time I read it about this time of year, two years ago. My note taking system was a brain dump to a google doc. The notes I took seem irrelevant now except for two or three, as I take time to digest them fully. I’m thankful of what a gift to the world a book can be. Thank you, Tony!

Lessons Learned

He had a internet banner advertising business he could have sold for $1M but he didn’t sell at that point. There’s a lesson there. if you have a business that someone is willing to buy - chances are they see a much larger opportunity than the selling price is projecting. The hard part is figuring what the multiple should be. 5X, 20X, 200X? Tony ended up selling that business for $250M.

He earned $30M and almost lost it all building Zappos. This is another lesson here. No amount of capital can guarantee a businesses success. He was thinking about his business. He learned, he iterated. My notes say: He learned he could not outsource fulfillment and that he iterated the business model five times from drop-shipping to ultimately controlling inventory.

The Most Important Lesson

In the mean time, he also made his company a place where people wanted to work. The one idea that resonated deeply with me, even two years after reading Delivering Happiness, was the idea of career path at Zappos. I didn’t even take notes on it but still think about this idea often. If you worked at Zappos and wanted to get ahead, you had a roadmap for how to do that. Does every employee want such a thing? Not necessarily but it’s immensely valuable to those who do. Simplicity works, Do A, Get B. Do C, get D, etc.

He also paid people to quit if they were unhappy. Someone who endures a hated job will have a hard time delivering happiness. Today on Twitter, @jasonrapp shared an email from Tony Hsieh explaining why a delivery would be late. He encouraged his customers who weren’t experiencing undue hardship but who might be extremely annoyed, to call in and ask the customer service representative to do something weird or embarrassing like sing “I’m a little teacup” or do their best audio impression of a cute little kitten. You can read the Twitter thread here.

As you can see from the thread, not everyone loves this idea, but true to Tony Hsieh’s intention, this sort of thing done by his customer service team was able to deliver happiness. If your employees can have a little fun, your clients will benefit too.

In the end, making things simple was one of Tony Hsieh’s gifts. He thought about happiness and described it thus.

Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships) and vision/meaning ( being part of something bigger than yourself.)”

Thanks to @garrytan for sharing this on Twitter.

Zappos was Tony Hsieh’s successful experiment that was able to test his happiness theory - some of the examples above illustrated how these principles were worked. The Zappos career path gave some control and a measurement of progress. He gave the control to self-select if the Zappos culture was for you or not. Some might attest that Zappos representatives connected deeply with their customers. The career roadmap to something bigger than just a job but a possible long-term role in an endeavor that was much greater than simply selling shoes.

Tony Hsieh, I didn’t know you but I thank you for your work and for sharing that work with the world. You will be missed.

Can Neal Stephenson's sci-fi make you a better parent?

Imagine for a moment, you’re eavesdropping on a conversation between Elon Musk and his trusted lieutenant, who is also his super-star engineer.  Instead of talking about rockets to Mars or driving cars autonomously, they talk about what it takes to be a productive adult in society. 

What is the best way to lead an interesting life? 

In his book, The Diamond Age, subtitled  “The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer,”  Stephenson dissects the question: what is the best way to lead an interesting life?  That question is debated and “how-to” theories are tested, as the story unfolds.  As the father of three children, these ideas are deeply important to me as I ponder what success for my own children will be and what role I play in it.  Warning: this essay contains spoilers.

Neal Stephenson introduces the concept of the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, an interactive, artificially-intelligent book that “imprints” with the reader, a young girl. The Primer notices details from the girl’s life and environment and incorporates those elements into the lessons, stories, and education that the Primer imparts.

I’ll be referencing the arc of the stories of each of the young ladies who receive the Primer featured in The Diamond Age.  If you don’t want to learn about what happens to them before reading the book, you might want to stop reading now and head to the last section of this essay.

The Primer gets disseminated to three girls: Nell, Fiona, and Elizabeth — instead of only Elizabeth,  as was originally intended.  Each girl interacts with the Primer in her own way.  The primer has a curriculum with some interactive elements and, eventually, the girls attend finishing school together.  Ultimately, we learn how each of the girls turn out as a result of their education.  

Trying to map lessons from Stephenson’s work to the lessons I try to pass on to my own children turned out to be more difficult than I originally thought, as I worked out this essay.  The essay below is where my thinking took me.

The Basics

Initially, Nell, who first obtains the primer, doesn’t know how to read. The primer starts by teaching her this. I remember the countless hours with my own children spent singing the ABC song, teaching them the sounds of each letter, then making simple words, reading BOB books, reading and re-reading Green Eggs and Ham. I also remember the utter joy I felt when they would read independently. That joy was not without sorrow as I would check in on their comprehension - I could help train a mechanical reader but learning how to think took longer than I planned.

It goes without saying that a science-fiction novel would include discussion of science and technology.  The primer presented many challenges that required the reader to learn computing principles. Otherwise, the reader couldn’t advance in the story. In many ways, it reminded me of a video game where you have to beat the boss level to continue.  This idea of self-learning is one of the fundamental ideas behind a good education. There’s so much advice out there about information abundance and self-learning. My job as a parent is to guide, persuade, and demand that my children follow their curiosities while developing how-to skills so they can reach the next level, hopefully, all without my help.

The primer also instructs the young ladies in the area of physical fitness and martial arts. This is age old wisdom. One’s mind is part of one’s body. Neglect the body, eventually, the mind will suffer.

Nurture

Nell’s hardscape existence prevented her from being taught by her mostly absent mother. Yet, she was nurtured by a motherly actress who connected with Nell through the interactive parts of the primer. Her beginnings diverge from children’s relative comfort both physical and psychological. Yet, in the other girls, Fiona came from affluence and Elizabeth from extreme wealth. 

Fiona received psychological sustenance from her father who performed the interactive parts in the primer. Elizabeth’s interactions with the primer were different “ractors” (i.e. interactive actors)  every time, so she could never establish a connection.  It seems the book was designed to give the girls another way to be nurtured or perhaps have that nurturing off-shored which, as a parent, saddens me.  

In Carol Dweck’s Mindset, there’s an anecdote about how parents respond to their child’s performance on a multi-part math test. During one of the breaks, the parents encourage but also offer tough love, reminding them to work harder, inspiring the open mindset which is another tool in the success toolbox. 

Nature

David Sandler, who wrote “You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar,” tells a story about a spider and a frog. The spider asks the frog to swim him across the river on the frog's back. The frog replies, “no way, you’ll bite me and I’ll drown.” The spider replies, “If I do that, I”ll drown too.” The frog agrees to take the spider across the river. In the middle of the river, the spider bites the frog. The frog, before drowning cries out, “Why did you do that?” The spider answers, “It’s my nature.”

There are some things that cannot be changed about us. While I write about the Dweck’s open mindset and the idea that we can mold our minds and mold our bodies, there are some things that cannot be changed.  Consumption of lead (from old peeling paint) does impair cognitive development. Living in an environment with poor air quality can lead to asthma. These types of issues can be further complicated by negative nurturing where life choices begin a vicious cycle.

Some people are born with natural tendencies and preferences. Minds oriented in a technical direction can tend towards that direction. Stephenson himself is an example of that. His father was an electrical engineer, his grandfather, a physics professor.  As an engineering graduate myself and my wife, a computer programmer, I’m now starting to see if our children have inherited that seemingly odd inclination towards numeracy and advanced mathematics. My son and I have battled over many advanced homework sessions. It often led to tears. Yet, after two years of struggle, he’s developed some muscle memory that he can endure short-term failures and those mistakes are simply feedback. They are not permanent. 

Gender 

Stephenson loves strong female characters. Nell is the heroine of the Diamond Age but in many of his other books feature successful women in many contexts.  As a father of two daughters and a resident of the west, where women are starting to receive equal treatment, any example that shows my girls that women can grow up to be smart, powerful and successful is important to me. There are many more examples of successful women today than 20 years ago, and I hope this is a trend that will continue. 

This is an equally important idea for my son and the lessons he learns from me about how to treat women. How to understand their goals and needs will make him a better man. 

Birth order 

Among our three children, I’m the silent observer of the complex social dynamics of birth order. David Sandler has some thoughts about this too. These dynamics are further complicated by gender mix. If we had three girls or three boys, I could eliminate the gender variable. Yet, I wouldn’t trade it for the world - and I’ve heard that men who have sisters become better life partners. I haven’t explored this idea further - maybe another essay down the road. 

Even the Brady Bunch made mention of birth order. Jan couldn’t stand being the middle child. The first born monopolizes a parent’s attention at birth and has no competition for attention. The baby is the one who monopolizes attention later. It’s tough being Jan! Birth order dynamics can set up an alternative nurture environment where siblings reinforce certain behaviors and disincentivize others.  My youngest daughter considers herself to be her older sister’s peer. My son, the eldest, presents himself as an authority figure sometimes. 

These birth order interactions happen in a safe psychological sandbox. They can test being angry, elated, despondent, silent with someone near in age to them. They can observe, respond,  and react in real time and build the strong tools they’ll need in the social aspect of their lives. As for the three young ladies from the Diamond Age, both Elizabeth and Fiona were onlies, meaning they had no siblings. Their interactions with others near their age would have been at school. Nell had a brother who provided the majority of Nell’s care as a child. While she loved her brother very much, the sibling dynamic seemed muted and one-sided due to their financial circumstances.

What does success really mean?

Nell became the leader of a nation. I won’t elaborate further about success but I am reminded of a very funny story. A friend was dating a cardiologist. If you are a cardiologist, you’re already in the top 1% in a lot of areas. At a family gathering, she was discussing how impressed she was at his accomplishment until she learned that his twin became an astronaut; an endeavor where less than 1% of 1% succeed . There’s a lesson there — understanding and making peace with different levels of success. 

Fiona became a bohemian actress.  Her decision undid the years of conditioning and guidance  provided by her mother that was supposed to sweep her into proper Victorian society. 

Elizabeth rebelled against the system that provided any and every benefit she could ever need. She ended up joining a criminal organization. 

As a parent, I can’t fast forward 10 years into my children’s life and piece together a story that explains the impact of choices they made with or without my direction.  Stephenson leaves it to the reader to determine who has lived the interesting life and what success means to the reader. What I can do is simply try my best to keep them reading, keep them thinking, and reminding myself (and them) that the definition of success is personal. 

What works for me may not work for them and vice versa.

Trip with my son

The quarantine has kept us inside. Some more than others.  My son, Joaquin, is in many ways the typical teenager. He’s taken to his e-learning with diligence and hasn’t missed a beat. 

We recently went to his school to pick up his cap and gown, not sure what we’ll do with it since there’s no public ceremony. One of his teachers expressed congratulations and gratitude for him being him - a diligent, respectful, kind student. What I would call baseline human. I’m proud of helping him on his path to becoming fully-formed. 

I’m sure having a kid like that in your class makes a teacher’s life many times better. They can expect fewer disruptions. Maybe their lessons stick, so there’s less one-on-one instruction needed. I also wonder if that model behavior robs students who with a little extra attention could be inspired to go beyond the acceptable work they do already. That bit of attention, might spark something. 

I saw this a tweet, I think it was a tweet, and now I curse myself for not clipping it - about perhaps an advisor recommends that some of his masters degree students are talented enough to go for a PhD.  If you know what I’m talking about, please shoot me a tweet, my twitter search kung-fu is still no good.

I’m also reminded of a section in David Brooks’ The Social Animal when Harold gets some extra attention from his English teacher and with some guidance, he’s inspired to read more than what is required and to write something inspired. An added benefit - he develops a rudimentary writing system  It reminds me the system Ryan Holiday developed and used under his mentor, Robert Greene.

This leaves me feeling that maybe some “model-behavior” kids are getting short-changed by public education. Long term this can turn into a leak in America’s talent pool. It ends up creating what the Prussian educational system intended - compliant workers who understand and respect hierarchy but life is much more complicated these days. 

Those sentiments are the not the purpose of this essay. 

A drive alone with my son reminds of the song, Trip with my dad by Dada.  

The song is about a road trip that a father and son make together. 

There’s a lyric where the son mentions bringing his tapes - which I can only assume means his music. Sharing music with parents is difficult. I didn’t do it with my parents - but obviously I’m influenced by whatever music my parents played. I do remember playing the Beastie Boys "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" at what I considered an appropriate volume on our boombo. Mom didn’t appreciate that

My son introduced me to some of the rappers he follows, specifically Logic & NF - so we listened to a couple tracks of theirs. I’ve always appreciated rap as a musical art form for a long time. It can be poetry set to music. It can also be extremely intelligent. Some rappers are gifted writers using simile and metaphor to join topics that I am not culturally literate enough to understand. 

I was blown away noticing these rappers and their open discussion of mental health and their own challenges with anxiety, depression, OCD, suicide. Does the creation of art require a touch of madness? Do you have to be a little crazy to believe you’ll succeed as a rapper and when success arrives, does the crazy go away? Talking about pain is a musical mainstay and these guys have taken it to the next level. 

The rapper called Logic has a track called 1-800-273-8255 which is the phone number for the national suicide prevention hotline. He was interviewed about ithe track. His words below taught him a lesson and a when he realized after visiting in person with fans how important his work was.  The same can be said about writing and sharing. You never know who you are helping. 

Here’s Logic in an interview: 

When I jumped on a tour bus that started in Los Angeles, California and I ended in New York City and did a fan tour where I went to fan’s houses and shared meals with them, hung out with them, played them my album before it came out. Them along with other people on tour, just fans that I met randomly, they’ve said things like, “Your music has saved my life. You’ve saved my life.” And I was always like, “Aw so nice of you. Thanks.” And I give them a hug and shit but in my mind, I’m like, “What the fuck?” And they’re really serious. And they tat shit on their arms and get shit like lyrics that save their life and in my mind, I was like, “Man I wasn’t even trying to save nobody’s life.” And then it hit me, the power that I have as an artist with a voice. I wasn’t even trying to save your life. Now what can happened if I actually did?

And it’s beyond just this song. It’s the whole album. What can happen if I took myself out of my comfort zone and made a whole album about everybody and everybody’s struggles including my own which is one I’ve never done. What if I silenced my own fear and I say, “I’m scared talk about my race. I’m scared to talk about the state of this country but I’m going to do anyway. I’m going to persevere. Man, how many lives can I really save then?”

We only get a set period of time with our children. As they get older, that time diminishes further. They want to spend time with their friends or alone. My advice is to savor those opportunities to connect listening to the same music, reading the same books. Trying to glimpse a moment of their lives through the lens of music or literature your children provide. Connecting other ways is also possible but music and books can provide richer context for other topics instead of discussion like mental health or racism. Logic has a throwaway lyric:  "Y’all know I’m half black like Obama.” which is provocative, humorous and fun - a great segue way into a difficult topic.

I hope to continue to learn from my children. They teach me new things daily. At the moment, I’m fascinated at my children use of social media They aren’t on the twitter bandwagon yet but I’m confident I can win them over. 

If you like this essay, feel free an reach out via twitter. @geodiv

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Evaluating the Investment of your remaining time

Keagan Stokoe wrote an essay about staying on the credential path. This post is in response to his essay.

I’m sitting at nearly 54% of the 750,000 hours allotment. That’s kind of a wake-up call. I have been success-chasing for a while; I’ve worked at least 48,000 hours. About 2/3 of that time has been spent in my current career as a tax analyst.  I didn’t come to this work in tax resolution until my 30s and was not actively seeking work in that industry. 

If I look at the next 15 years, I estimate I would have about 31,000 work-hours left.

Career-wise, I started off believing in the credentialed path.  Naively, I assumed that it was the only way to succeed. The credentialed path, to me meant doing well in high school, getting into a good college, and graduating into a good job. Maybe pursuing an MBA or law school down the road to continue the credential escalator, each step fighting for fewer positions wth higher prestige and income.

I believed it was a well-worn plan because it has worked for previous generations. The lifetime earnings of college graduates were higher than those who did not complete college. Sadly, this generation, saddled with extreme student loan debt, may break this trend. 

If you’ve followed Peter Thiel, he explains quite lucidly why he decided to get off the credentialing escalator. I think he came to realize that he was competing with many qualified people for one prize; in his case, a clerkship with a US Supreme Court Justice, which he didn’t get.  He did end up creating PayPal, and the rest is history!

—

Keagan’s essay reminded me a bit of Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t ignore you. Here’s a link to a useful summary.  In essence, following your passion is not a good idea. Focus instead on gathering rare and useful skills. Getting good can get you some autonomy. Autonomy can make things a little easier (and therefore, better.)

I’m not really sure how I got started on the credential life path. I didn’t have many role models. I was the first to go college in my family. I guess it was inertia. A life in motions tends to stay in motion. (My cousin had gone to university and it was suggested that I would go to the same university.)

I woke up a bit in university. I thought I knew that there was a big world out there. You can know that conceptually, but until you understand your own role in it, your thinking won’t undergo an irreversible change.

Like many firsts that one encounters — first kiss, falling in love (or what one believes to be love at that time), losing one’s virginity, becoming a parent — there’s no going back after certain things happen. Your thinking must change.

This recognition always reminds me of one of the first and very few quotes I have ever memorized from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. After kissing Daisy for the first time, Gatsby knew, his “mind would never romp again like the mind of God.”

It’s like eating fruit from the tree of knowledge. Irreversible. No going back to the bliss of ignorance, to the walled garden.  

Maybe what I call irreversible changes is just another word for perspective. I’ll leave you with words from Steve Jobs from 2011 which appeared on a PBS show called, One Last Thing. Grateful.

When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is – everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Here’s a very short summary of my career path:

Graduated with an engineering degrees.

Summer in Japan.

Grad school for engineering.

Masters degree (and some luck, making a new friend) got me a consulting job at the Uni.

Started selling financial services part time.

More life skills.

Took a higher, prestigious, consulting position.

Started selling financial services full time.

Learned how to sell. Selling in a different industry.

Then, applied all those skills selling in the tax resolution world - for the last 15 years!

—

Inadvertently following Cal Newport’s advice - I never followed a passion, but I just kept working. Inertia could have taken me somewhere else, somewhere less rewarding, but maybe I’m lucky. I got good at selling. Eventually, that allowed some autonomy which has provided some room to consider the future. I like to think of autonomy allowing for what Nassim Taleb calls the barbell strategy - where your current job allows you to some free time to try something riskier on the side and perhaps higher payoff.

I admire Keagan’s maturity and clarity of thought. I’m certain I wasn’t as mature at his age. Certainly, I had financial motives early on. I, too, made bold changes which, at the time, people thought were crazy. 

And as I reflect on my own career and its evolution moving forward, I’ve tried to be grateful for what success I’ve obtained and hopeful to have more. Writing is a big part of that. 

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Reach out on twitter: @geodiv