Grant’s Blog Grant Nice

I'm sitting in the passenger seat of my dad's sedan, leaning forward to see if my milkshake has been made yet. My Purdue polo is still damp from our round of golf that morning. My forearms and neck are a little too red. Across the drive-thru window, I see the ice cream scooped into a cup and shoved under the blender. Whole Oreos are pulverized into tiny scrumptious bits. Just seconds until the treat is mine.
"So you've set this goal for yourself," my dad says in reference to my dream of working at Shell. "And you have to get all As in 13 credit hours in 16 weeks this summer, all while working a full-time summer internship, just to have a shot at an interview?"
The Scoops worker hands us our ice cream. I take a giant sip of my Oreo shake.
"Exactly right," I reply.
My dad pauses for a minute. It's quiet in the car as we pull away from the window and make our way to the next destination.
"Do you think anyone's going to feel sorry for you if you don't get that job?"
Silence.
"Well, probably not," I eventually say. "I'm fortunate to be in a major with great job prospects. I will eventually find something. It just might not be what I know I'm capable of." 
Staring out the window, watching green mile marker after mile marker fly by on the way home, I mull over his question, with some old memories coming back.
Every day of my freshman year in high school during gym class, I walked by a twenty-foot-tall, maroon and gold athletics record board in the corner of the Brebeuf Jesuit high school gym. It listed the sport, event, name and time next to the record. The best of all who came before, and a few still there, was recorded on the board. The bar for excellence was set, and I looked in awe at those who achieved them.
I had accumulated my own record board: a mental corner where I set the bar for what I had achieved and what I believed I could achieve. And I knew, sitting there staring out the window, my neck was craned up at the bar on my record board; there was an unsettling gap I had to try and jump for.
I think we fail to look up to the people we could be. We're enamored with our neighbor and their new job and new car, but not with the potential achievement of ours that's a year's worth of dedication away. 
These models of desire surround us: neighbors, coworkers, family and friends. By default, we see them and tend to inform our desires based on them. Their lives as reference points smack us in the face. But the person I could be as a reference point? It takes focus and energy to create an intentional model of that person. It is created not by default, but by disciplined design according to my values.
I want to look in awe at the person I know I could be.
As Matthew McConaughey phrased well in his 2014 Oscar acceptance speech, I’m chasing the person I could be:
So you see every day, every week, every month, and every year of my life, my hero's always 10 years away. I'm never gonna be my hero. I'm not gonna attain that. I know I'm not, and that's just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.
The line item on the personal record board that summer? Getting the job I considered amazing. And I wouldn't be humiliated or a failure if I didn't get it. It was the difference for me between good and great, not destitute and manageable life.
It was the difference between acceptable in the view of others and acceptable in my own. I knew I was capable of it – what would it mean if I didn't achieve it?
I was reminded by my dad that it wouldn't mean much to those around me, but it would mean a lot to me. The gap between my potential and today is something I have to fight for.
If you set a goal and achieve 90% of it, reaching some level of success previously unseen, that's great. Friends and family will reassure you you've done a great job. The last 10% is hard to achieve. They're ok that you didn't.
But are you?
The drive to reach my goal couldn't come from someone else. It had to come from me. It had to come fro

STROKE! STROKE! STROKE!
Water flies into my eyes as it splashes over the bow of our green canoe. The wind whips across the lake, creating white caps all around us. I squint hard, trying to keep a good view of the target path ahead. Dark clouds loom in the distance and a hazy horizon behind us gradually approaches.
I'm kneeling on the floor of the boat, bracing my knees against the inner walls for stability, doing everything I can to stay in position as I paddle against the waves. The boat rocks up and crashes down hard over and over again.
STROKE! STROKE! STROKE!
My sternman, Ian, and I labor against the waves, but they're too fierce to handle. Water crashes into our boat as the right side tips over an inch too far. Water rushes in, tilting the boat until we fall out into the cold Canadian water.
Our tent is floating left, our gear bags right. We wrangle each item and the boat, pushing them to the shore as our lifejackets helped keep us afloat.
The canoe is filled with water. We both grab the canoe and try to move it, but the water is too heavy. The boat doesn't budge. I reflexively grab my water bottle, ready to remove the water from the boat. I start bailing, but with every other bottle I get out of the boat, a fresh wave crashes over the side, filling it back up. It's an exercise in futility and I'm exhausting myself in the process.
Meanwhile, the remaining paddlers on the wilderness camping trip have become tiny dots on the horizon — far from shouting distance. While I was bailing the boat, Ian ran up the rocky shore, waving his hands to get their attention and help.
He gets the attention of our adult trip leader, Pete, and once he gets to us and sees me, he starts cracking up.
"You thought you were going to save the boat with a water bottle?" 
Me: “Yes?”
Pete had the perspective I needed. I couldn't bail the boat by myself. My initial plan to fix the problem was insufficient. I had to let go of my old plan and find the right one.
Why is it so hard to take someone else's advice? Is it ego? All the work we've put in so far on our ideas that we would hate to think was a waste? We’re often too slow to switch to better tactics, especially when it's someone else recommending it. But the path gets a lot easier if we decide to care more about getting through the problem than who gets the credit for solving it. It goes from bumpy gravel to smooth pavement. I didn't think about whose idea it was to get the water out of the boat — I wanted to get to our campsite!
Switching tactics to achieve a goal faster means abandoning something that worked for you in the past, but doesn't now. An idea you invested in and refined into something beautiful, but whose time has already gone.
If the tactic can't serve you in the future and you can't recover any value from it now that things are different — it's sunk. It's the canoe underwater and me using too small a bottle to fight too large a wave. 
Letting go of that idea releases you to find a new one.
A sunk cost is something you’ve spent (time, resources, effort building an identity, etc) that is irrecoverable and, therefore, should not influence your future decisions.
Sunk costs impact us all the time, but perhaps rarely as much as the sunk cost of our identity. 
Nobel Prize winner and author of "Thinking, Fast and Slow" Daniel Kahneman has a powerful view of sunk costs that stands strikingly apart from the ego-driven defensive arguing we so often see today:
"When I work, I have no sunk costs. I like changing my mind. Some people really don’t like it but for me changing my mind is a thrill. It’s an indication that I’m learning something. So I have no sunk costs in the sense that I can walk away from an idea that I’ve worked on for a year if I can see a better idea. It’s a good attitude for a researcher. The main trap that young researchers fall into is sunk costs. They get to work on a project that doesn’t work and that is not promising but they keep at it. I thi

I work at an oil refinery. We process crude oil and make products that help our community function like gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, propane for grills, butane, and more.
We make a wide variety of products that each have a targeted and impactful end use, but the feed going into the plant is one big italian dressing of a mixture.
So how do we split up the italian dressing into all of the individual ingredients on the back of the bottle?
How do we create these valuable products?
We send the feed through a series of vessels of varying sizes at a wide range of temperatures (50 to 1000 degrees) and pressures (pressures up to the equivalent of being 5000 ft under the sea surface). Millions of gallons a day are boiled, cooled, chemically-reacted, and more.
Change a temperature and pressure at one step in the sequence, and the product goes off-spec. The sequence matters. That's why there are trained professionals monitoring the plant 24/7.
And as a result of the precise sequence of these steps, we create a product that enables a half-million pound plane to fly safely across the country.
The interesting thing is, it all starts out cold at the beginning, and ends up cold as a product. But the extreme variation in conditions in between make the product what it is. The product makes my Ford Escape engine work like a top; the feed would break it.
It's similar in life. Every experience you have prepares you for a version of the future, but the way you get there matters.
Who I was 10 years ago as a freshman in college would be overwhelmed by the responsibilities I have today; the person I've become can handle it.
So if I see an opportunity to grow my character—to engage with stressors that I believe will lead to long-term character development—I want to pursue it. I want to be refined, cast and shaped into someone of strong character, because that's what will maximize my resilience in the future.
That's what process goals can provide. This year, I'm writing more, reading my bible in a year, increasing the intensity of my workouts and coaching lacrosse for the first time. All of these involve discipline and commitment over time, not just sprints.
They each add their own version of personal pressure to my life. Pressure that I hope will refine, cast and shape me into a more capable person while having fun along the way.
The goal is to scale the pressure addition as quickly as I can, like a learning curve but for the disciplined pursuit of character-building.
And if I could find ways to do that year-in, year-out?
Wow, what fun that would be.


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I love this idea from Laura McInerny as quoted in the book Curious, by Ian Leslie:
When you live somewhere boring—and we all live somewhere boring—then we have a choice about the way we will see that place. We can spend our days thinking like everyone else, seeing the same things over and over, and never once wondering about how they got that way, or why they stayed that way, or how they could be better. Or, we can learn. And if we make the choice to learn, and to be curious about the things around us, then we are essentially making the choice never to be bored again. (Leslie 179)
I moved out of Indiana in 2016 to work full time in Mobile, Alabama on the gulf coast. I left a city I grew up in, and remember that when I moved here, people asked me what there was to do in Indianapolis. I always came up with the big name items, but realized I hadn't been to all of them even though I lived there for over 18 years. People come from all over the world to see the Indy 500, but it wasn't a big deal to me.
Why is it that people visiting your home city may experience more of its big ticket culture destinations in a week than you experienced in the decades you lived there?
As I sit here writing in Daphne, Alabama, thinking of things to do when I host someone from home, I realize I'm doing the same thing now! I struggle to think of interesting things that a visitor might want to do, because I've kept to my little bubble in Mobile. Why does it take someone from out of town visiting for me to venture out and explore all that my area has to offer?
By necessity, I started with eyes wide open when I moved here. But now I'm in a bubble. We all exist in multiple bubbles. There's an internet/social media bubble we live in. A physical bubble governed by the distance we're willing to drive on a normal day. And several more. Without intentionally avoiding them, bubbles form around you. It's like a frog that can't tell it's gradually boiling; you gradually build these invisible barriers around yourself through habits that keep you from experiencing new and exciting things around you.
That bubble could also be one of comfort level at work where you don't talk to someone because the previous person in your job never did. You think it improper by custom. And miss out on potential great relationships.
I don't want to go 10 years before I experience the best my hometown has to offer. I want to explore as much as I can so that when someone visits, I know I'm giving them the best of Daphne.
It starts with asking a question. How did things here come about? I'm with Laura—I choose to be curious and never be bored again.
“You can choose to use your curiosity to look at a situation differently. If only you're aware enough to realize you have a choice.” (Leslie 187)
What will you explore next in your hometown that you've delayed? Go try it out! You might just find your new favorite destination.


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I grabbed another ball, started a full sprint, and launched a shot at the goal. Then I jogged back in front of the lacrosse cage and did it again. And again. And again. Until I was gasping for air and had to sit down for a break.
The process had become a game.
A game where reps were the goal, not perfect shots or accolades. Without the shine of the field's lights or roar of the fans, it was just me, trying to get better.
And the crazy part was, I was having so much fun it didn't seem like work. When I began writing this blog back in earnest in early 2021, I started out having fun. But then after writing what I thought was a good piece, I told myself I had to write one just like it, and spend even more time on the next piece to hit the same bar of quality I established in my head.
What started as an hour or two turned into 10+ hours on a single piece. Because I knew I would have to devote all my week's free time to publish one post, I didn't even want to start climbing that mental mountain.
So instead of seeing it as a burden, I want to see writing as an opportunity to play.
John Cleese, one of the writers of Monty Python, referenced a study of architectural creativity in his book, "Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide." The study showed that a characteristic of the most creative architects was that they knew how to play with their work, or be "enjoyably absorbed in a puzzle."
I want to see the writing process as an opportunity for play, not punishment. So that I can have fun reaching my process goal of writing more frequently and ignoring the outcome goal of only publishing perfectly thought out arguments. I know that my future writing skill is proportional to the number of words written, not just the number of perfect pieces published.
So here's to writing more. To having fun with the writing process. And to the idea that what I was practicing with my lacrosse shot all those years ago wasn't just how to score a certain number of goals, but how to lovingly play with the process of getting there.
What opportunities do you see in your life to play, rather than go through the motions?


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My wife and I have our annual ballroom dance showcase this Friday, so this topic is especially timely for me. Hope you enjoy it.
I'm sitting in a long room with a 20-person meeting table. 3 classmates and I huddle at one end of the EPICS (engineering projects in community service) meeting room. Red and orange leaves fall against the floor-to-ceiling windows on one side, scribbles and sketches on the room-length whiteboard on the other. We discuss our latest ideas for meeting our community partner's needs, and how we could drive meaningful progress in one semester. I bring up an idea, and one of our group members, Ted (not his real name), shoots it down as impractical. I sit back and think, "man, why is he being so harsh? I hope I can contribute to this team."
A week later I had new ideas, and brought them up to the team again. This time, someone else questioned the idea, and I remember thinking: "hey, they just think that the idea's stupid, not that you're stupid." So I tweaked and reframed the idea to see if we could come to a better group decision.
I realized I could view his words as a criticism of my idea, not of me. By separating my identity from my idea, I was free to play with the idea. To refine it and make it better.
I wasn't under attack.
So, separate the criticism of your idea from a criticism of you. This is different than just having thick skin and not caring if someone makes fun of you. This is filtering feedback about your ideas from feedback about who you are as a person.
The idea I have is just a collaborative piece of art, a puzzle on a table with others sitting around it. I have a limited number of pieces I can bring to the table and my collaborators bring some only they can provide. It comes together to form something better than either of us could have created on our own.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write about this in their book, The Metaphors We Live By:
Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently. But we would probably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different. It would seem strange even to call what they were doing "arguing." In perhaps the most neutral way of describing this difference between their culture and ours would be to say that we have a discourse form structured in terms of battle and they have one structured in terms of dance.
How can we dance with our ideas, and what changes when we decide to do so?
No longer do you stop at first order consequences of your ideas because you're scared to subject them to scrutiny. You pour gas on the fire of your creativity because you allow them to be stood up against the inspection of others. Fear of attack stops us from thinking through things. Separating my idea from my identity makes me not have to be afraid.
You take a one-dimensional view on creativity where you're working alone and move to a multi-faceted, generative view where sharing and working on each other's ideas becomes the norm. Every conversation becomes an opportunity to learn and grow. Every conversation becomes an opportunity to compound toward improvement. Every conversation becomes an opportunity to inch forward in our understanding.
Next time you get into an argument, watch your counterpart's face when, instead of responding with equal aggression, you ask: "may I have this dance?"


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.grantnice.blog