Tag: kids

My Kid Learned More from Mario Maker than I Did from a Marketing Major

Mario Maker teaches marketing
Image courtesy my iPhone. Weird mustache courtesy Nintendo.

I’m not kidding.  I just watched my kid grasp basic marketing truths that took me years in the professional world to get. (I might be a bit daft, but that’s another story).

I didn’t end up graduating with a major in marketing, but it was my major for several semesters of useless university.  The only things I remember from those classes are the words “target market” with no real context.

That’s just it.  I needed a lived context.

So my son builds these levels on the WiiU game Mario Maker.  He’s posted some of his favorites to the network so others can play them and, if they like them, give them a star.  He checked in the other night only to find two of his favorite creations had been removed from the network because they did not get enough stars in a given time span.

Here comes the pain.  And the learning.

I watched him go through all the stages of grief.  “That can’t be right?!”…”How dare they!!”…”Maybe if I tweak it and change the name I can re-upload it?”…”It’s hopeless.  What’s the point of building levels”…and finally, after a long grieving process lasting almost minutes, acceptance.

Unaware of how enthralled I was with watching this unfold (because I pretended to still be reading) he repeated the entire situation to me, making a point to vent his frustration because of how hard he worked.

“The worst part is, that’s the level I worked on the longest and it was my favorite!  Some of my other levels are just silly and were easy to build, and they have more stars than this one.  I wonder why?”

Big Important Marketing Lesson #1: The labor theory is bunk

Karl Marx and a lot of other confused social scientists with bad beards (Adam Smith gets a pass on this one…no beard) like to claim that value is derived from the cost of production – the amount and difficulty of the labor that goes into it.  This is clearly false, and my son now knows it.

Even if you know this from a (rare) good economics teacher, you probably don’t really know it in your gut and know how to plan around it until you’ve experienced it.  Some of my favorite, most labor intensive blog posts get no love, while some silly Haiku I tap into my phone in a few seconds might get…well, a little more love at least (I guess my example isn’t that dramatic after all, since my readership isn’t that huge…Hi mom!).

This is an important lesson.  Sure, content is king.  Yes, build a better mousetrap.  The problem is that what you think great content and better mousetraps look like mightn’t be the same as what customers think.

There are two potential solutions: the product solution and the marketing solution (best used in tandem).  The product solution is to learn from what people do like and make products more like that.  The marketing solution is to learn what feelings people want to experience when using your product and do a better job of attaching those feelings to it, finding the niche of people who will “get it”, and getting the word out to them.

My son, a very stubborn and independent creative type not keen on compromising his design, immediately went with the marketing solution.

Big Important Marketing Lesson #2: 1,000 true fans, social proof, list building…

This is really a lot of lessons piled into one, but it all happened so fast it was like a single epiphany for my son.  It took me a long time to understand the value of building a “tribe” of loyal fans or customers (Hi mom!).  It took me a long time to see the value of capturing leads, doing personal one-on-one outreach to influencers and early adopters, and touting the real stories of happy customers to help draw in the more risk-averse with social proof.

My son had the epiphany less than ten minutes after his teary explosions during the second and fourth stages of grief.  Here’s how it went down.

He jumped onto some sort of chatroom type thing in the game and posted a question asking if anyone else had been frustrated by having a level removed for too few stars.  In minutes he was conversing with three or four others.  He checked out their profiles and levels.  He followed them.  They followed him.  Then they somehow came up with an agreement.  They would give each other the name of their newest levels and all play each others and give them a star, ensuring three quick stars, pushing it nearer the top of the newly added levels, raising the profile and keeping it from getting removed.

It was late and I was going to bed.  He doesn’t like to be the last one up, so he begged me to wait a few minutes while he dutifully played and starred some of their levels.  He double checked and verified that his new coalition had done the same for him.

Damn.

He went out and talked with people, built a tribe around a shared frustration, collaborated to find a solution, and engaged in what MBA douchebags might call “synergistic strategic partnerships” (I don’t know if MBA’s would actually say that, but I imagine they would and this is my article).  He added them to his followers so that there could be accountability, followup, and future collaboration.

As a dad one of my solemn duties is to always think my kid too quickly plays the victim and doesn’t take things into his own hands.  It’s the kind of self-righteous worry a parent feels entitled to.  Except this time he robbed me of the opportunity to start waxing about how in my day we had to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and mustached plumbers didn’t get any stars from anybody.

After a brief moment of feeling a victim of the system and being angry with idiot consumers who don’t appreciate good product, he saw his frustration as an opportunity.  Surely someone else felt the same?  Surely there was a way to work around it?  And he did.

He realized that intentions don’t matter, value creation does.  But value creation is not just in the product, but the feeling people have about it, the reasons they have to care, the connection you build with them.  Now even before building a level he preps his loyal allies to reduce the risk and boost the ratings when it is released to the network.  This is what authors do with their emails lists (sign up for mine here, I have another book coming out and you can be one of the early reviewers…you too mom!).

Teachers Aren’t Very Good Teachers

My kid isn’t some kind of special genius.  The world we live in is the most resource, information, and opportunity rich in human history.  If kids freely engage the world and follow their curiosity and intrinsic goals they will encounter a more diverse range of ideas and experiences than we can imagine.  When I try to directly teach my kids this stuff they scoff or sigh or roll their eyes or play dead hoping I’ll go for help so they can finally escape my words of wisdom.

In fact, unless we actively work to suppress it our kids urge to learn, experiment, innovate, create, and adapt will blossom.  That suppression often takes well-meaning forms like direct, mandated instruction from adult “experts” who know almost nothing about Mario Maker or other contexts kids actually care about.  It takes the form of classrooms and textbooks and tests and pressure to careerify interests.  It takes the form of parental worry that if their kid doesn’t learn the same bunch of arbitrary, mostly useless facts they were forced to memorize at the same age they did everything will fall apart and society will crumble.

Relax.  Your kid is going to be fine.  Even if they play a lot of video games.

…………………………………………………………….

Here are a few other examples of learning by doing from my own life:

Why LEGO is more valuable than algebra

How my son learned to read when we stopped trying to teach him

Stop Telling Good Arguers to Become Lawyers

I’ve met a lot of bright young people planning on law school or in law school.

I’ve also met a lot of unhappy lawyers.

I suspect lots of these young people will end up unhappy lawyers too, and I’ve got a theory as to why.

Lawyers are often “successful” in terms of external indicators and cultural prestige.  They tend to make good money and are held in esteem (lawyer jokes notwithstanding).  And, of course, lawyering is a perfect fit for some people.  I know some very happy lawyers.

But it seems a large percentage of the profession consists of unhappy people.  People who don’t particularly enjoy doing divorce or merger and acquisition paperwork.  Many who wish they could escape.

How did they end up there in the first place?

Because the educational conveyor belt doesn’t know what else to do with truth-seekers.

Everyone is motivated by a lot of things.  But most of us have one core value that, when push comes to shove, trumps the rest.  For some it may be freedom, for others security, adventure, or in the case of many an unhappy lawyer, truth.

Those whose dominant core value is truth are rather relentless.  They’re smart.  They like to argue, and they tend to argue well.  They want to get to the bottom of things.  They want to find the right answers.  They want correct facts and knowledge of right and wrong.  They are willing to examine and explore multiple sides of issues and ideas in the process.

Similar to those whose highest value is independence, they’re comfortable questioning authority.  But the freedom-seekers tend to be more willing to disobey or ignore the rewards and punishments of the education system.  They might rebel against assignments or good grades.  Truth-seekers on the other hand, though happy to question the status quo, are typically comfortable following basic rules and getting good grades as well.  They see winning at the grade system as a way of finding whatever truth is to be found there.

Herein lies the problem, and the beginning of their disproportionate and often unfortunate pursuit of careers in law.  The school system doesn’t know what else to do with them.

There are few ways to channel their truth-seeking desires in school.  There’s little in the way of philosophy, history doesn’t do as much debating as fact-spitting, and even the sciences pre-graduate level don’t really spend time questioning anything fundamental.

What’s left?  Debate and forensics.  Truth-seekers do well here.  They love it.  Most high school debaters will tell you it was the absolute highlight of their educational experience.  They finally got to question everything, look at all sides of issues, argue without being offensive or reprimanded.  And they got to “win”.

Parents and teachers of young truth-seekers are so conditioned with the conveyor belt mindset that they struggle to see beyond an easily identifiable handful of job titles.  The work/identity trap is also strong, so whatever junior likes must immediately be mapped onto a business card.  A focus on external indicators of success furthers the tendency.  The common refrain for young debaters is, “You’re always arguing.  You should be a lawyer!”  What other possible avenues for all this truth-seeking could there be?

“I get to search for the truth?  I get to debate it?  I get to make everyone proud of a prestigious career?  I get to make good money?  Yeah, I guess I do need to go to law school!”

So lots of them do.

And lots of them end up wishing they hadn’t.  They find out too late that most lawyer jobs have little to do with truth-seeking.  The law itself isn’t primarily about truth, and most law jobs are even less so.  They’re about navigating bureaucracy and nearly impenetrable wordplay to help people do very simple tasks like buy and sell things, move money, end or begin professional or personal relationships, or draft up “just in case” language.  It’s a fundamentally conservative endeavor, concerned with protection from liability more than the caution-to-the-wind pursuit of truth that landed them there.

Law requires attention to detail, a high degree of literacy, and plenty of patience and problem solving.  Those things are perfect for some people.  But those whose core value is truth aren’t often among them.

Because their desire for truth was so quickly tracked and careerified, they never had the chance to explore.  Law school is particularly problematic then, because of its astronomical price tag.  Upon completion, more doors have been closed than opened.  There are only so many jobs that pay enough to service the debt.  And by now they’re closer to marriage, kids, and other financial obligations that make lower starting pay gigs tougher.  After law school, they kind of feel like they have to be a lawyer, even if it doesn’t scratch the itch for truth.

A decade later and the debt burden might be gone, but the golden handcuffs replace it.  Quality of life seems locked in.  Mortgages, cars, schools, and prestige can’t easily be downgraded, even if they are unhappy most of the day most days.  It’s lifestyle slavery, and it kind of sucks.

Where else might these truth-seekers have gone with their passion?  Perhaps philosophy.  Not just in the academic sense, which often comes with its own bureaucracy and BS, but more generally.  It’s true, you can be a philosopher and a lawyer or a philosopher and a great many other things.  Your source of income and who you are need not be the same.  Seeking, writing, researching, fact-finding, and questioning are such general and generally valuable traits that a true philosopher can apply them in myriad careers.  But law is a career that makes being defined by anything else particularly hard.

How many authors, podcasters, coaches, mentors, counselors, investigative reporters, or entrepreneurs are at bottom truth-seekers?  Truth as a core value is applicable in a great many areas.  Most of all, someone with the freedom to follow their passion for truth is likely to discover or create a career we can’t even yet imagine.  Sadly, the school conveyor belt tends to corral more than its fair share into law.

So here’s the takeaway: Stop telling good arguers to become lawyers.

Let them explore the world fully and freely.  Let them try a lot of stuff.  Let them follow their questions.  If after real exposure to the day to day reality a career in law appeals to them, great.  They’ll choose law school.  But don’t obsess about placing them on a list of predefined career categories and channeling their core values into it before they know what’s what.

I’m a parent.  I get it.  We worry how our kids will feed themselves and build a life.  If they love something, our mind immediately tries to formalize and monetize it.  My son loves video games and comics and superheroes, and more than once I’ve begun formulating ways to turn this interest into a career as a video game designer or illustrator and set him on that path now.

Fight that urge.  Open the world up to them, not just the few aspects of it that come with a title and salary today.  But everything that it is and could be tomorrow.

This leads to another good question…what are some other career tracks that young people with other core values get placed on too early?…

A Conversation About Ecuador

I joined the wonderful World Wanderers Podcast (hosted by Amanda Kingsmith and Praxis participant Ryan Ferguson!) to talk about our family trip to Ecuador.

I haven’t listened to the episode yet, but we recorded it less than a week after we got back from the trip and I remember wondering if I’d even been able to process the experience enough to talk about it sensibly.  I did talk about it (a lot…I think I probably rambled at length…sorry!) and give a sort of quick take on the good, bad, and ugly and some lessons learned.  Still, I’m sure as time goes on we’ll form more ideas about our experience.

It was really awesome and also really hard.  It didn’t go to plan, but I wouldn’t trade it.  A great adventure I don’t think any of us will forget!

Anyway, take a listen to the episode if you’re interested in hearing one person’s take on international travel with kids.  Oh, and listen to other episodes of WWP.  It’s a great show!

Here’s the episode.

Let Your Kids Suffer

I’m convinced one of the best things a parent can do is let their kids suffer.  It’s also one of the hardest.

I don’t mean suffer from imposed deprivations, scolding, withholding of affection, or physical illness.  I mean suffering from the things that are inevitable parts of life and without which no happiness can come.

Mastering a skill.  Learning social dynamics.  Resolving conflict.  Choosing between two good (or two bad) options.  Discovering who you really are and how you fit in with the world around you.  These all involve some level of suffering, sometimes a great deal.  Yet none of them can successfully happen if a parent swoops in to circumvent the hardship inherent in the process.

When your kids are fighting with other kids, or getting hurt feelings over misunderstandings, or in agony over inability to achieve a digital or physical feat it can be brutal to observe.  Every fiber of your parental being wants to intervene and stop the struggle.  Maybe at least offer to buy them a food they really like to ease the pain a bit.  But such interventions rob kids of the growth that comes from learning to adapt and discover their own unique method of achieving their goals and finding happiness.

Even boredom can be hard to watch a child suffer through.  But if we rush in to entertain them and ease their boredom with reams of suggestions and exhortations we short-circuit their process of learning to be interested and interesting.

One of the best parenting tips I have stumbled on, and one I remind myself daily, is simply to do less parenting and let my kids do more living.  Even when it’s not all rainbows for them.

Ecuador Update: Random Reflections from Abroad

  • The jungle is nice. Except for all the trees.
  • Hippies from every country are exactly the same.
  • Surfers do very little surfing.
  • Lines on the road are mere suggestions here and nobody takes them.
  • A “speed bump” in Ecuador is a large concrete protrusion on a major highway that, if taken at speeds exceeding roughly 3MPH, will dismantle your entire vehicle and several vertebrae.
  • Johnny Cash is a great English teacher on account of his slow singing.  Though phrases like, “The whirlwind is in the thorn tree” may have limited usefulness.
  • It is grossly mistaken to call underdeveloped living “the simple life”.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The lack of complex market institutions means the most basic of tasks become incredibly complex.  Getting food, water, medicine, or transportation necessitate various social networks, waiting and hoping on others, massive time and know-how, etc.  Survival amid simple institutions is very complex.  Conversely, highly developed and complex institutions make survival so simple as to require no thought whatsoever.  If you want a simple life, find the most advanced capital structure and complex web of market institutions and live there.  If you want complexity move to the jungle.
  • I vastly prefer Ecuador’s southern coast to the northern coast.
  • The jungle has a very weird and slightly dark vibe to it.  I understand The Heart of Darkness a lot better than I used to.
  • WiFi travels through bamboo a lot better than concrete.
  • Bamboo might be the most amazing plant on the planet.
  • WiFi and cell phones may end up being the greatest advances in human history.
  • Few things in the world are scarier than having a sick child in a remote place.  Also the jungle makes everything scarier.
  • For $40 you can get an excellent children’s doctor to take a quick break from the hospital and come meet you across the street in his private clinic for medical care.
  • For another $10 you can get three different medications from the pharmacy.
  • It cost $70 and four hours round trip to make it to the city to obtain these medical services.
  • I grew up in a town with a totally awesome name: Kalamazoo.  I just found one in Ecuador with an even better name: Jipijapa.
  • Country folk is country folk, no matter where you go.
  • How in God’s name are there so many kinds of fruit I’ve never heard of and several that apparently have no name besides, “Kind of like an orange”, or, “Kind of like a tomato” (translation: nothing like a tomato)?
  • Never have I felt the sheer stupidity of the “buy local” concept more than as a visitor to another country where signs everywhere urge, “CUANDO VAYAS A COMPRAR, PRIMERO ECUADOR!”  As an outsider, and one who is eager to exchange with people in this wonderful place it feels even more petty, inbred, and moronic than when I encounter “Buy American”, or, “Buy local” back home, which I’ve become more numb to.  Free trade is awesome.  Nativism is stupid. Always and everywhere.
  • In many poor towns and villages the houses and land are in great disrepair yet most of the people populating them have near immaculate personal appearance.  Clean, fresh, well-fitted and trendy clothes.  Neatly cut and styled hair.  It is a stark contrast to the dwellings and shops around them.  I don’t know enough to verify, but my hunch is that it’s an excellent example of the insights of people like Peruvian economist Hernando DeSoto.  The houses and shops are in shaky legal standing with regards to ownership, therefore improvements are subject to attract more attention and cost more in taxes, regulations, etc., whereas one’s person and attire have much clearer ownership.  Whatever the reason for the disrepair, it seems clear it is not due to a lack of interest in cleanliness or improvement on the part of most of the residents.  They look better put together than people at an average Target in the Midwest.
  • Do taste buds change with latitude or is instant coffee always this good?
  • If a person who is 10% proficient in Spanish and a person 10% proficient in English can have 80% of a deep, meaningful, hours-long conversation, what are we doing with all those other words the rest of the time?
  • I’m even more intrigued by Ayahuasca than I was before.
  • My laptop has made it known in no uncertain terms that she requires A/C and she’ll throw a hissy fit if her demands are not met.
  • A word about dogs.  Yes, dogs.  The dogs here are ownerless.  Yet they are hardly “wild” in the sense you might imagine.  Never have I seen more docility and friendliness among canines.  In the nicer villages they are healthy, amiable, incredibly relaxed, and utterly harmless.  Yet I have not once seen anyone hit, yell at, or engage in any action remotely resembling training or cajoling any of these creatures.  They put the unwieldy, kid-attacking, frantic-barking, yard-pooping, crotch-sniffing, leash-straining horrendous beasts from my cozy US suburb to shame.  I do not like dogs as pets.  Yet I actually kind of like the presence of dogs wandering and sleeping in the streets here.  It seems the most natural thing in the world.  Perhaps dogs are meant as autonomous human companions, keeping away other vermin, eating the scraps at the fireplace, and lounging around the gates of our dwellings and streets of our neighborhoods, rather than enslaved to chain-linked lots with leashes and newspapers and electric fences and Kibbles and fake “walks” and alternating neglect and indulgence and dog pills and dog counseling and dog daycare?  The pet-loving people of the world act shocked and appalled at my distaste for their dogs.  But who knows, maybe I’m the humane one…

How to Not Let Your Parents Control You

This post is not just for young people.  I’ve known plenty of grown adults with kids of their own who cannot live, act, or think free from their parent’s emotional control.

This is not an anti-parent post.  Most parents mean well.  Many are unconscious of their own forms of manipulation and if revealed to them, they’d prefer to change it.

If you are to create a meaningful and enjoyable life you must break the power of parental control.  It’s a massive psychological burden and it’s sapping your energy, freedom, and fun.

I knew a guy who dated two very different girls.  At some point in both relationships, things got pretty serious.  Maybe this was going to be a long-term thing.

In the first relationship, the girl was smitten but her parents were not.  Not even close.  They did not approve of her dating this guy and they made that clear.  Things were icy.

He’d go with her for family holidays and it always ended the same.  Afterwards, she’d cry and share with him how hard it was to have them unhappy with her choice.  Even if he wasn’t there, every time she’d visit home he knew there would be fallout when she came back.  She’d confide in him just how much it meant to have her parent’s approval of the relationship.  This put tremendous pressure on him to live up to some standard in her parent’s head.

The relationship eventually ended.  It wasn’t too pretty either.

Time passed and he eventually began dating someone seriously again.

In the second relationship, the girl was smitten but her parents were not.  Not even close.  They did not approve of her dating this guy and they made that clear.  Here we go again.  He was nervous. He knew he couldn’t take another situation like the last.

But this time things never got icy.

The very first time his girlfriend’s father voiced his displeasure she said, “This is who I’m dating.  This is who I want to be with.  If you want me in your life you’re going to have to accept the choices that I make.”

Her dad did not disown her.  Instead, he had to overcome his own prejudice and work to get to know they guy.  He did.  Now they’re in-laws.

Consciously or unconsciously, parents can sense your need for their approval.  The stronger and more desperate it is, the more leverage they have to control you.  But the thing is, you’re parents don’t have that leverage in reality.  They want to have a relationship with you just as much or more than you do with them, and this feeling increases as they age.  That’s why if you are definite in your purpose and you make that clear to them, they will nine times out of ten see that earnest resolve and adapt to it.

This makes knowing who you are and what you really want paramount.  If you’re unsure, you’ll just end up issuing a constant stream of threats to your parents, which isn’t healthy for anybody.  But if you really know what you want, you are fully prepared to live the consequences with or without your parent’s support, and you can calmly and clearly let them know, they are very likely to end up supporting you.

You don’t need to disown them.  But let them know their threat to disown you will not stop you.  And don’t bluff.  Don’t pretend to have resolve just because you hope it will win them over.  Be fully prepared and committed to follow your chosen course of action even if they don’t come around.  Paradoxically, it’s only then that they are likely to eventually come around.

They’re not as stubborn as they may seem when it comes down to it.  They want you to be happy, and if it’s clear that you will only be happy pursuing things your own way – and you’re aware of the risk and willing to take it – they’ll stop trying to resist you.

There is no amount of parental approval that’s worth your dignity, freedom, and power as an individual.

For some specific applications, see here.

Getting Started on Entrepreneurship While You’re Young

In “The Future of School” I share my biggest regret:

“I wish I had more confidence, and earlier, about going my own way.”

It took me a long time to realize that all the things I thought and did differently weren’t things I should try to shut down, hide, or change.  They were my greatest strengths.

When you’re 14, 16, or 18, all the world seems to be screaming at you to look like the average of some aggregate.  Well-meaning teachers, parents, coaches, relatives, and friends want to know how you stack up on a series of “normal” indicators of status and ability.  They want you to know the stuff everyone else your age knows, and do the stuff everyone else your age does.

But the reality is that it’s the “Crazy Ones” who change the world.  It’s those who gain the courage and confidence to not suppress their unique take; their hacks and workarounds; their weird approaches and unconventional interests and solutions.  These are the makings of an entrepreneur.

And let’s be clear: entrepreneurship is the greatest single skill needed for the present and future marketplace.  Machines and software are taking off like never before, and they can follow rules and obey orders and perform rote tasks better than humans.  This is not cause for concern, but a huge opportunity.  It frees up humans to do what only humans can: creatively problem solve, innovate, experiment, and adapt.

But it does mean that the vast majority of what’s taught in traditional education settings is of little and decreasing value.  Knowledge of facts is nearly obsolete.  We have Google.  Memorization is silly when we have unlimited digital storage.  Following the crowd kills the best instincts and opportunities for value creation.  We need to re-ignite the entrepreneurial spark that everyone is born with.

That’s why we’ve built a 60-day entrepreneurship eCourse for teens.  It all begins with a mindset.  The mindset I wish I would have found sooner.  The mindset that says your best assets are your most unique attributes.  It’s about turning your creativity into a discipline.  It’s about becoming a self-directed, perpetual learner.  It’s about experimentation, trial and error, and approaching life like a game.

This course is hard.  You could easily scan it and gain a few bits of wisdom.  But that’s not what it’s built for.  It’s built for an intensive 60 days.  It’s built to make you a little uncomfortable as you learn to explore your own strengths, weaknesses, and passions, build a basic website, and share your ideas and lessons learned along the way.  If you go through it – really go through it and complete every part – you will absolutely walk away a different person, closer to your goals and the life you want to live.

If you complete the whole thing we’ll be impressed.  In fact, we’re giving you a free coaching session with course creator and Praxis Education Director T.K. Coleman if you do.  You think you can do it?

You don’t need to have that big business idea to begin on the entrepreneurial journey.  It starts by becoming the type of person who is ready and able to seize the moment when that big idea comes.  It starts now.

Are you ready?

Praxis Teen Entrepreneurship Course

Why My Wife and I (and Our Three Kids) are Spending Six Weeks in Ecuador

Sticking with an important theme in my life the better question might be, “Why not?”

Still, given our stage in life, our kids ages, and our work and financial situation, it does raise some eyebrows when we tell people of our Ecuadorian excursion planned for early 2016.  There are several reasons we chose to do this, not least of which is the fact that there are far, far more reasons we can come up with not to do this.

That’s the thing.  The reasons not to will only ever pile up.  Screw that.  Perfect timing is a myth.  If we waited for the right time we never would have gotten married, had kids, adopted, taken new jobs, moved, moved again, started a business, unschooled, and all the other things we cherish most about our life.

The Idea

It began a little less than a year ago.  I was flying home from a business trip and listening to an episode of the Tim Ferriss Podcast.  It was an excerpt from a book called Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.  I knew in my gut I wanted to get out into the broader world with my family.  Not out of nowhere.  The podcast was just a nudge.  My own experience had me jonesing for international adventure for me and my kids already.

Between ages 12-20 I spent at least a few weeks, sometimes a few months, every summer in another country.  Mexico, Peru, Kenya, Honduras.  These were the most important and formative experiences of my youth.  I loved it.  It was really hard sometimes.  I learned so much and gained so much perspective.  Perhaps I’ll write more another time about what these trips did for me, but one of the things was to teach me forward orientation.  The first few times it was crushing to make deep connections to dear friends across the world then leave, never to see them again (and pre-Facebook, never to talk to them in most cases).  It made me learn to live in the moment and not hold on too tightly to past experiences.

My wife and I have always wanted to travel with our kids and let them experience the world outside the suburbs.  Not because we think it’s somehow morally superior or because we want to be international do-gooders.  Just because it’s really fun, and the best kind of challenge.  We both know how hard it was for us to move from the small-town Midwest just a few states away, and how good it was.  It’s too easy to assume your current geography is the best fit for you simply because you’ve never ventured out.  We want our kids to feel like the world is small and not be afraid of exploring all of their options.  We don’t want the exit option to feel so daunting to them.

The Decision

I got back from that trip and told my wife to listen to the podcast episode.  She did.  She knew right away what I was going to suggest and she wholeheartedly agreed.  Let’s spend some time abroad with the kids.  Not a vacation.  Not as visitors touring the sites.  Just normal, day to day life in a different place.  We knew this required more than a few weeks and a location that wasn’t just for popular attractions.  Don’t get me wrong, I love popular touristy stuff and we aren’t the type to go searching for the “too cool for the travel guide” spots when we travel.  But this wasn’t about travel.  It was about living.

I wanted two months, she wanted one, we settled on six weeks.  It seemed long enough to make us both uncomfortable and wonder if we’d get bored and restless and homesick.  We couldn’t just distract ourselves with novelty for six weeks.  We’d have to establish a daily routine.  Perfect.

The Timing

It seems weird to try to spend time abroad at this point in our lives.  Our kids are 4, 6, and 10.  That’s still pretty young.  We are not in a place to put money into anything besides day-to-day expenses.  I launched my company, Praxis, just two years ago and every ounce of material and mental resources go into building it.  We moved here to the Charleston, SC area just four years ago and we love it.  It’s beautiful, we’re not bored, and we’re beginning to make very deep and rewarding social bonds.  My wife and I are young, so it’s not like the clock is running out on us.

But we don’t want perfection.  We don’t want some experience that’s been planned and built up for years or decades.  We don’t want to overthink it.  We don’t want it to be that big of a deal.  We just want to try living somewhere else for a bit.  That’s it.  When will we be in a better situation?  Realistically, never.  There will always be something more pressing to spend our energy on.

Besides, there are several ways in which we’re in a perfect position to do this.  I own my own business and all of my colleagues work remotely.  Besides travel season, all I need is WiFi.  I live and breathe Praxis, but where I live and breathe it from is of little relevance most of the time.  We unschool our kids.  We have no schedule or obligations.  One of the reasons we chose to unschool was so that we could do stuff just like this.  How many kids get to do that?  Our kid aren’t wasting away in cinder block cells all day, so why should we follow the same routine as those that are?

We know it will be really, really hard.  Especially for me in the most intense phase of growing a business and trying to revolutionize the world.  But everything we do at Praxis is about living life on your terms.  If we preach it, we can live it too.

The Details

We had several constraints and preferences, but a lot of play room.  I travel a lot to conferences and events to speak and promote my company and the ideas behind it.  We couldn’t go in late spring/early summer, or in the fall.  Speaking season.  We also needed this to be really, really affordable.  As in, all-in, this six weeks in Ecuador needs to cost the same or less as if we had stayed home for the same six weeks.  We also needed reliable, solid WiFi.  (One of the first things we did was have our AirBnB host run a test and verify the speed, which is the same as what Comcast gives me in SC.)

We weren’t ready to fly more than 4-5 hours with kids as young as four, so South  and Central America were the target.  We searched around on AirBnB for a few days and found a place that looked crazy cool.  A bamboo beach house like something out of Swiss Family Robinson.  It was gorgeous, large enough, and well-rated.  No A/C and open, so mosquito nets, but otherwise not primitive.  Good price, good WiFi.  Why not?

The Act

Never the type to dwell too long on a matter, we booked it.  Was there something better?  Probably.  Would it be worth the agonizing and the time and energy to find it?  Probably not.

Once our non-refundable house was booked, the rest had to happen as a matter of course.  We’ve been alternating between excitement and terror since then, but that’s exactly what we want.  Just a little fear to overcome, mixed with the thrill of overcoming it.

We’ll set out just after the Super Bowl (what, you think I’m going to miss the NFL season?) and return around the Ides of March.  If all goes to plan it won’t be noticeable from the outside.  I’ll be working most of the day most days of the week as usual.  The kids will be doing what unschoolers do, which is precisely what drives their curiosity and interest, and we’ll be grocery shopping, going for walks, cooking, cleaning, reading, meeting with people, and enjoying the beach.

We’ll also be sweating, struggling to communicate in a village of Spanish speakers, adapting to new foods and smells and sights, and probably in many moments fighting homesickness.

This may be the first of many experiences living abroad.  It may be the last we ever do.  That’s why we’re doing it.  We need to know.  Will we love or hate it?  No amount of analysis can answer the question.  We’ll go find out for ourselves.

New Book Teaser: How to Name Your Kids?

Support the campaign for ‘Why Haven’t You Read This Book?’ and help bring it to publication…and claim an early copy.

Thanks to everyone who has backed this book project on KickStarter so far!

I want to share a section from the book today that I find particularly delightful.

Antony Davies is an economist, policy researcher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur.  But his contribution to this book is about none of those things.  It’s about being a dad.

Ant has six children and asks, “Why haven’t you had a bunch of kids?”

The chapter answers many practical questions about large families, from budget issues to travel and health.  Today I’m going to share a section about a dilemma I never really thought about.

When you have a lot of kids, how do you name them for the right mix of beauty and efficiency?

Enjoy…

What do you call them?

Names are a problem. We spent months selecting a name for our first child, Erika. We thought about how it sounded, what it meant, whether it had a long-enough shelf-life so it wouldn’t make her sound like some old lady just as she was hitting her college years. Ladies named Mavis, Opal, Inez, and Violet weren’t born 80-years-old. They just lost the shelf-life lottery. We were better at naming our second child, largely because I am a science-fiction freak and my hero, Isaac Asimov, had died just before our son was born. So Isaac it was. Our church friends thought it touching that we named him after the one of the biblical patriarchs. We didn’t have the heart to admit that we named him after a lecherous chemistry professor who wrote wicked sci-fi.

After the first two, naming becomes easy. You already have a list of potentials in your head from previous research. You also have recyclable first-picks that you couldn’t use because of gender issues. We knew that one of ours was going to be named Ivanka. Which one depended entirely on who showed up first with the appropriate plumbing. By the time you get to #4 the months of researching and trying out different names and spelling variations gives way to grabbing the first name that doesn’t rhyme with something crass so you can sign the paperwork and get out of the hospital. I figure that’s why hospital employees all wear name tags. It’s to give parents ideas. “OK, the baby gets the next name that comes down the hall. Wilbur.

Crap. Well, that’s the luck of the draw. Now sign those papers and let’s get out of here before they find something else to charge us for.” Of course, with names come nicknames. At first, you’re proud to tell people your baby’s name. “She’s Ivanka, after my wife’s mother. Actually, there’s been one Ivanka in each generation in my wife’s family going back five generations. Our little Ivanka is the sixth of that name.” But that doesn’t last. Where names are concerned, poetry takes a backseat to practicality. As soon as a kid acquires locomotion, she’s gone. She doesn’t need to be able to walk on two legs. Heck, she doesn’t even need to be able to crawl. As soon as your kid figures out that flailing arms and legs aren’t merely for expressing displeasure but can be harnessed for migration, she’s out of there. Nature has given young children the triple advantage of being quick, quiet, and small enough to fit into tiny spaces.

When you want to sleep, they’re louder than a frat house on homecoming night. But when they’re getting into things they shouldn’t, they’re like incontinent ninjas. Sometimes the only way you can find them is by following the smell. So, with locomotion comes the need to summon the little tykes. And this is where practicality comes in. When you finally put that name to work, you’ll regret not having picked an industrial-strength name like Bob. You can keep saying “Bob” until the cows come home. “Bob, where are you?” “Bob, come here!” “Bob, don’t bite the cat!” But if you picked a poetic name, now is when you’ll regret it. Try repeating “Beatrix” or “Jacinda” ad infinitum. This is why God invented nicknames. The nickname is the name you should have given your kid but were too embarrassed to pick. It takes a while to whittle a flowery name down to something that can be used easily on a day-to-day basis. And you can tell how much trouble a kid gets into by how quickly the parents adopt an industrial-strength nickname. Over the course of about three days, our lovely Ivanka became “Vonky,” then “Schpanky,” then “Schpank,” then “Spank,” then “Hank.” Hank is an industrial-strength name. You can shout it all the livelong day, and the last use will be as potent as the first. It’s one of those names that lends itself to yelling. You can put some serious air pressure behind that opening consonant, and the hard “k” at the end cuts off the sound to an immediate and ominous silence.

“Hank” is the air horn of the naming world. “Beatrix” is the kazoo. But nicknames bring their own baggage. At even at one syllable apiece, with a lot of children, nicknames can quickly add up to a lot of words to remember. Our last two kids, Alexander and Benjamin, were born just a year apart. Since we both abhor the nickname Alex, we announced his nickname before we left the hospital. “He shall be known as Xander.” We also abhor “Ben,” but since “Jamin” sounded like a reggae stoner, #6 was straight-up “Benjamin.” As they tend to be inseparable, my wife has taken to calling Xander and Benjamin (as a conglomerate), “Xanjamin.” Kind of like Branjelina meets the Brady Bunch. “Xanjamin” exhibits a bit of creative flair, but at three syllables it’s not industrial-strength. Plus, if you want to summon just one of them, you have to go back to either “Xander” or “Benjamin,” which means that you now have three names to deal with instead of merely two. The efficient solution we evolved is to give each of them the same nickname: kid. Alexander is “kid.” And so is Benjamin. If we need to refer to one of them, we say, “the kid.” As in, “Tell the kid to take out the trash.”

And if the wrong one shows up, the other one is, by definition, “the other kid.” As in, “Kid, come here. No, the other kid.” Last in the telling, though not the lineup, is Simon. Simon is the middle child. You hear about middle-child syndrome, where the poor middle child is ignored because he’s not needy like the teenagers or cute like the babies. Middle children, the story goes, grow up to be meek and unsure of themselves. Middle children stay in the shadows of their more-outgoing siblings. Simon does not have middle-child syndrome. If there is an opposite of middle-child syndrome, that’s what Simon has. Picture George S. Patton as a teenager. On a battlefield. In a tank. That’s Simon. When told that their older brother would be staying at college over the summer, the other children were sad. Simon’s response was: “Excellent. That means we all move up in rank.” Simon brings our total to six and, since six is divisible by two and three, we have developed a shorthand way of describing subsets of the children. The elder two are “The Majors.” The middle two are “The Minors.” And the kids are “The Minis.” In order, they are girl-boy-boy-girl-boy-boy. That makes it natural to refer to the first three as “Round One” and the second three as “Round Two.” With six kids, one can construct 63 unique subsets.

Given that it would be quicker to identify them individually than to remember all 63 possible combinations, any further subsets aren’t worth more than a “Am I looking at you? I mean you!” The entire set is known as “The Babies,” a cute and cuddly name that, to their unending chagrin, we regularly use even though two are in college and one in graduate school.

Support the campaign for ‘Why Haven’t You Read This Book?’ and help bring it to publication…and claim an early copy.

One of the Reasons to Have Kids: They’re Weird

I’m a big believer that boredom is the greatest evil to be avoided in life.  Fortunately, kids make it hard to be bored if you step back and observe them for a moment.

Kids are weird.  I think they’re a lot weirder than the average human.  It’s best when they’re just doing thier thing unaware of the broader, more normal world.  I was struck with this again today when I finally stopped getting irritated that they pretty much tear up everything in the house and surrounding area and just watched them.

My son was playing Mario Maker and shouting, “This is Sparta!”  by himself in the living room.  I didn’t want to interrupt this important activity, so I stepped outside to see what the girls were up to.  They were selling things.  On the curb.  On a cold, sleepy Saturday morning in late October.

The older was sitting in a chair behind an overturned storage bin that had a display of assorted garbage from the garage and a few leaves and a giant pitcher of water.  The younger was sitting on the wet grass beside her with one arm through the neck hole on her T-shirt.  They were apparently waiting for customers.

No one knows why kids do such weird things.  It’s best not to ask but just take it in.  I won’t find it so interesting and fun later today when I’m trying to negotiate the cleanup.  But right now, I can’t help but marvel at the not-boring oddness of it all.

The Education System Isn’t Broken, It Just Sucks

Some people say the education system is broken.  It’s not.  It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do.  The problem is that what it’s designed to do isn’t good, and it’s less valuable than ever.

I’m not one of those people who thinks it used to be a good system.  It’s not obsolete, it was wrong from the get-go.  It’s always produced undesirable outcomes.  I don’t think obedience, the ability to follow rules, falling in line with authority, uniformity of belief and process, and deferring to experts and standard explanations are desirable traits in individuals and societies.  I think they are dangers to be avoided.

To the extent that part of the result of this will-crushing process is some uniform skills that can be plugged into various business roles, there is some potential market value.  Though even these skills can be gained far better, faster, cheaper, and in more exciting and effective ways.

But today even those few things that people walk away with after 15,000+ hours in a classroom are of almost no value, and the trend is a further decline.

It is less valuable than ever to learn a skill.

It’s less valuable than every to learn to memorize, obey, hoop-jump, and test-take for bureaucratically approved authorities.

It is more valuable than ever to know how to think, how to learn, how to do what machines and software can’t.  Create.  Innovate.  Be entrepreneurial.

Once you realize that the education system isn’t broken you can stop trying to fix it.  It works really well based on its own principles of design.  You can’t make a hammer better at performing surgery.  You need to drop it and grab a scalpel, or invent a laser.

You’ve got to step outside of the education system altogether and build your own learning program tailored to your own goals.  It’s a challenge, but a lot easier than you might think.

Humans are naturally curious, stubborn, adaptive, knowledge-gathering, active, creative beings.  Those are all the things you need to begin, and you don’t really need to do anything to get them.  It’s harder to do what the current system does, which is snuff that out and create uniform widgets.  That’s why they need so many buildings, fences, supervisors, guards, and so much money.

All you need is an environment where natural human tendencies can flourish, bump up against the world, get feedback, and adjust.

Sometimes the system isn’t broken, it just sucks.  Get out.  Build your own thing.

What If My Kids End Up As Failures?

I write and podcast a lot about unschooling, entrepreneurship, liberty, living a free and self-directed life, etc.  Because of this it’s easy to feel pressure regarding my own kids.  What if they don’t turn out all right?  What if they become unhappy status-driven school-loving commies?  Wouldn’t that invalidate everything I talk about?

From a logical standpoint, no.  A person who secretly eats meat can have sound and compelling arguments for vegetarianism.  A person who could never play quarterback might be a great coach.  A bad mother might be a good thinker.

True, most people might ignore all ideas from someone whose life they don’t admire.  Post a good quote from a controversial famous person and you’re likely to have more people condemn the person than the quote.  Whether or not it’s fair, it will happen.

I’ve always been bothered by this way of evaluating ideas.  My arguments are either interesting and useful or they’re not, regardless of my unseemly personal tendencies like the occasional wearing of jorts.  I don’t feel much personal pressure to behave in any particular way in hopes that it makes my writing more appealing.  I can’t imagine doing so.  What a yoke to live under!  Yuck.

With kids it’s different.  Not in kind, but in degree.  The idea that what my kids do with their lives should be a determinant of whether what I write is good or bad strikes me as vastly more offensive.

If I’m a theist and my kids grow up atheists does that make me a failure?  Does it invalidate theism?  I may be a failure and theism may be invalid, but not because of what beliefs and behaviors my kids adopt.

If we were to say that me or my ideas could be considered bogus if my kids did not adopt them and mirror my life, what would we really be saying about children?  The implication is that a child is not an autonomous being capable of making choices and forming beliefs – good or bad.  The implication is that children are sponges who ought to and do, if properly trained, become whatever their parents wish them to be.  This is an idea I find disgusting.

Whatever environment we create for our kids they still have the freedom to choose the kind of life they want to live.  They have to go through their own process of discovery.  My hope is that, if we can maximize opportunities, minimize impediments, and avoid emotional damage, it will be easier for them to choose to live free and wonderful lives.  But here’s the kicker: free and wonderful must be defined by them, not me.

True, non-envious, non-manipulative love is when you desire other people to experience happiness on their own terms.  It’s pretty hard, but when you feel it it is delightful.  It’s like you get to live additional lives when you can truly take joy in other people taking joy.

Yes, I feel waves of panic from time to time when I consider how my own kids might choose to live their lives, both now and in the future.  But I fight it.  I take that pressure off myself as best I can.

I don’t feel obligated to have my kids be or think or do anything in particular in order to validate things I think and live.  They can choose whatever they want.  They’re on a journey to find truth just like I am.  Their journey can’t invalidate mine, nor mine theirs.

When Your Kids Call You Out

I walked into the kitchen this morning to grab a snack while working on my phone.  My five year old daughter called to me from the other room.

“Daddy, can you draw a face on this for me?”

I was in the middle of work, trying to get a quick bit of nutrients and return to my office.  I was distracted.  I didn’t feel like scrawling a face on a piece of packaging plastic with a mashed up pink marker.  I responded,

“I’m not good at drawing faces honey.”

I lied.

It is true that I’m not good at drawing faces, at least relative to an average person over the age of eight.  But my daughter already knows that.  She knows I’m not the best artist in the family.  She knows my son and my wife can both draw a better face than I can.  But she also knows I can do one better than her.  She asked knowing full well the extent and limits of my abilities.  So she called me out.

“Just do your best.  Just like I do my best.”

Ouch.

“Just do your best” is one of those phrases I use all the time as a parent, and it usually feels good.  It’s not condemning or harsh or full of phony, undeserved praise.  When your kid says, “But I’m not good at X!” parents can calmly say, “Just do your best!”  We wouldn’t want them to let fear of imperfection stop them, right?

In this case, I wasn’t getting called out for fear of failure.  I wasn’t avoiding face-drawing because I was afraid the face wouldn’t look good.  I’m way past that point.  I was getting called out for lying.  I was trying to pull a fast one on my daughter instead of just using direct, clear, honest communication.  Kids aren’t that easy to fool.

I really had two choices.  Draw the face or don’t draw the face.  Either one would have been morally and practically acceptable.  If I chose not to draw the face, the best thing would have been to give an honest reason.  “I’m sorry honey, I’m in the middle of some other things.  I’ll do it later if you still want me to.” or simply, “Hon I’m not going to draw a face right now.”

Those may sound harsh, at least compared to drawing the face.  But they’re less harsh than the lie I tried to get away with.  My daughter knows my lack of artistic skill is not the reason I didn’t want to draw a face in that moment.  So deflecting with that not only indicated I didn’t want to draw, but also that I didn’t respect her enough to just say so.

She got distracted drawing and went about her business, as I did mine.  I don’t think any major damage was done.  Still, not my finest moment in parenting.

It was a good reminder of how often and how easily we slip into dishonest forms of communication.  If it goes far enough, it can lead to self-deception, where we actually start to believe our false reasons for action or inaction.

If only I could bring my kids with me 24/7 to call me on my BS.

You Have to Pick Two

I wrote recently about how you can’t have a growing business, a robust social life, and a great family life all at once.  You only get to pick two.  The implication is that, though everyone wants all three, you get a maximum of two if you want to succeed.  I’m beginning to think the heuristic is not just a maximum, but a minimum as well.  You don’t just get to pick two, you have to pick two.

If you pour yourself fully in to any one of these at the expense of the others, you’re unlikely to find long term success and fulfillment.  If you’re a passionate, single-minded entrepreneur, you need to create space for some kind of social life or family/significant other.  You won’t be your best if you don’t.

Many people accept this notion but mistakenly assume all that’s needed is a balance of time spent on the activities.  As long as I carve out 30% of my time to not work I’ll be balanced because I’ll be with friends or family.  This is far from the truth.  You need time with an interest or hobby around which friends congregate, or family time, but you can’t expect it to happen simply because you set aside time to not work.  You have to be just as intentional with your non-work time as you are with time spent working.  You have to be definite and deliberate in the creation of a social or family life.

Again, it’s not about the number of hours spent on each.  Maybe you’re able to pour yourself into a job with only a four hour workweek.  Maybe you can have a meaningful social life with nothing more than one kite-boarding session a week.  The point is to ensure you have more than one thing on which to put your energy and attention.  One needs to serve as an outlet for things left unexpressed in the other.

I don’t believe it’s really about creating a stark divide or work/life balance either.  Depending on your personality and habits, you may need that in order to do your two things.  Or you may need a seamless synthesis.  I tend to have a much better family and work life when I have fuzzier lines between them.  I love working from home. I’m writing this at the breakfast table with noisy kids all around.  I like taking my kids with me on work trips when I can.  I enjoy responding to emails at all hours, and I feel less stressed and more in the moment with family when I don’t have to put work completely on hold.  You may be the opposite.  Neither is better or worse.  The important thing is to have something outside of work to devote yourself to.