Brad C

After having done a certain flavour of south american ground fighting for long enough, I've developed friendships with several Brazilians. They are, as per the stereotype, consistently late. However the best defence of this I have heard was “I don't worry about being late because it helps me be there when I'm there.” And gosh darnit, that reframed it for me and now I don't really worry too much about the green and yellow contingent being 15 minutes behind. In many ways I really feel that this mentality would be useful in more professional spheres.

I recently participated in a multi-day planning session, complete with a facilitator, with members of our organization's leadership. The point of the whole exercise was unclear going in, and it certainly didn't get any more clear on the way out. What stood out to me, more than anything, was that consistently around 2/3 of the room was on their laptop and not paying attention. To be clear, they weren't on YouTube or something but were mostly answering emails. I get it, we're all busy, they have many fires to put out, but that doesn't keep them being there but not being there from annoying the hell out of me.

As a heuristic I try really hard to live by a mantra that if your actions don't mirror your priorities then you are lying about your priorities. I was at that planning session because I was told that this planning exercise was important. Because it was important I made sure I gave it my full attention and was mentally present. The consensus in the room seemed to be that no one knew why we were there or why we did it, and I can't help but wonder if that would still have been the consensus had the facilitator told everyone on day 1 “No laptops in this room. If you are here you are doing this and only this.” Realistically this would have led to walk-outs and cancellations, but I think that really highlights that this process wasn't truly important.

“But the Eisenhower matrix!” I can hear my sole reader yelling. “It was important but it wasn't urgent!” To which I say that planning, by definition, should never be urgent. If you can only work on what is both important and urgent then you are in survival mode, and often would be well served by asking whether everything actually is on fire. If everything is on fire, then put out the fires. Reschedule the session. Just be there while you're there, no matter how late that may be.

No one wanted to be there. No one thought it was important. No one was really committed to seeing the end product followed. Heck, I don't think anyone would have even read the end product. You could slip in a picture of a gorilla high jumping over an ice cream truck on page 7, not a single soul would ever notice. Between the cost of the facilitator and the pro-rated salary expenses of the attendees, the session cost was comfortably past six figures. I, personally, was obviously paid to be there but in my naivety I thought that implied that I was supposed to be present while I was there. So like a broken record hitting the same track over and over, I again ask;

What was the point of this?

Great quotes are wonderful things. They can take a multitude of thoughts, conflicts, and feelings and boil them down to a single statement. Your own feelings can be shaped, summarized, and then presented far more eloquently than you could ever hope to do on your own. There are two quotes that have been doing this for me lately;

“To crave the result but not the process is to guarantee disappointment.” Ryan Holiday

“The purpose of a system is what it does.” Stafford Beer

I find it fascinating that these two reached what I view as the same conclusion coming from wildly different backgrounds. Ryan Holiday has become everyone's favourite stoic, preaching what I would consider to be an authentic message about how a stoic perspective can be used to cultivate a more rewarding life. This is in stark contrast to how oh so many douchebags co-opted stoicism to preach “If I was sad I just wouldn't be sad, stay hard.” Stafford Beer was a British management consultant, and one of the godfathers of systems thinking as a field of business philosophy. He was also a super weird dude, but that's show business baby.

The intersection of these two is in the idea that there is a fairly direct relationship between where you are and how you got there. What you want should be a direct reflection of what you do, and what you have reflects what you have done. If you work for an organization that values the contributions of women, but it keeps a serial harasser on staff, the organization doesn't value women. If you want to someday be an artist, but you don't draw, you don't want to be an artist. If you want to set a good example for your kids, but you don't do the things you preach to them, being a good example isn't important to you. Given that my first tattoo is a Paulo Coelho quote that reads “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion” you can see how this super lands with me.

For those that know me personally, I try to be pretty open about having struggled with depression for most of my life. This led to many a strategy to deal with it, intentional and unintentional, which has included things like therapy, CBT, binge drinking, forming my identity around various activities, all the classic things for men who don't want admit that they are not okay. Medication this year was an absolute game changer, and has meaningfully impacted my mood. Because of this I now spend some time examining the sources of my discontent and trying to disentangle what it is exactly that I find displeasing.

This framework from Beer/Holiday has been useful in this.

So many frustrations are as simple as I have something I want to have or achieve, but I either can't or don't do the things to get there. OR someone tells me they have something they want but they don't do the actions to get there. In so many ways it is an overly simplistic, overly optimistic view of the world (just go do more jiujitsu Brad! It's that easy!) but not everything needs to be a silver bullet. Sometimes it really is as simple as “I need to stop saying or believing I want something if I don't want to do the work to have it.” There's no sense being upset that I won't be running a 3:3X marathon this year, when I don't want to make the trades necessary to spend time clocking the miles needed to make that happen.

In many ways Q1 of this year was a total write-off fitness wise. Thanks to the wonderful hobby of grappling I spent a few weeks doing nothing while recovering from an eye injury and later an ankle injury. Throw in getting sick, a sick toddler, a sick wife, a vacation, and the next thing you know it is halfway through May and I've lost 6 weeks and never really got going. What I've been getting into, and what has been sticking, has been Mentzer-style HIT lifting. A couple warm up sets, then one set to absolute failure for every exercise scheduled for the day. And when I say failure, I mean that you need to put in such a high level of effort that it is almost a religious experience. You need to push to the point that you can't even conceive of attempting another rep.

There's a horde of people online who would read that and yell “Hell yeah brother, Mentzer knew what was up! You're in for the best gains of your life!” Another horde will read that and scream “You're leaving gains on the table! Research shows 2 RIR is just as effective! Only one set only delivers 50% of possible muscle stimulus!” And to both sides, I say you're missing the forest for the trees.

Why am I using HIT when there's tons of Ex-Phys research suggesting it is suboptimal?

• It is fun.
• It is really time efficient. Even when I dick around in the gym I'm done in 40 minutes max.
• I tend to sandbag my lifts. Saying “lift 70% of your max” isn't super useful when I'm bad at grinding reps to really establish my max. Telling me “Go to 2 RIR” isn't useful when I'm bad at estimating how far I am from failure.
• The logbook aspect gives me immediate targets to try to hit. Beating last time by 1 rep is a very clear, very close target.
• I can recover from it. I have a toddler at home, so 6 hours of sleep in a night is a good night. I'm running 4-6 times a week trying out the Norwegian Singles method. Above that I'm also doing jiujitsu 2 – 4 times a week (usually 2 unfortunately.) Combined with 40 looming ever closer, my recovery capacity is best described as “constrained.”
• I know from experience that as my lifting volume creeps up I feel increasingly worse. A few years ago when I did the nsuns CAP3 program, I was lifting 6 days a week and maxing at least one lift every day. I got real strong and noticeably buff really quickly. Unfortunately I also ached constantly, all the time, especially my knees. So to not feel like ass, lower volumes seem to be my friend.
• It is working.

So why do I say both sides are missing the point?

Globally optimal is not synonymous with optimal for me.

I am really confident that I could lift more and get stronger/bigger faster. BUT to do so would require finding more recovery capacity (unlikely) or taking more time away from other things that bring me joy. To lift more may also make me feel worse. So if I am getting bigger and stronger (albeit slowly) AND it fits with my life, and experience tells me that trying to do more will not fit with my life as nicely, why would I ever do anything different? To paraphrase Jim Wendler, why would I race to a red light?

(And, also, in defence of HIT it isn't as low-volume as detractors tend to say. I'm following one of the programs from Marjan Stojkoski's HIT book. Full body 3x a week, with warm-ups counted, is a far cry from “just one set.”)

I'm sure in 2027 I will try something different, but for right now what is “locally optimal” doesn't look very similar to what is “research optimal.” So for now I'm going to keep hitting just a handful of extremely hard sets a week.

I'm back baby.

I wrote one post, then vanished. For a long time I had envisioned this as a way to show off my level of professional brilliance, but then after a while I realized that I don't think that highly of myself. The notion of ever calling myself a “thought leader” made me puke a little bit in my mouth, y'know?

Today's rant; I hate optimization.

“Hate” is a strong word. It is also accurate. I really, truly, deep in my soul hate the concept of optimization. Hearing the word “optimal” in almost any setting makes me have a visceral reaction, and my mood darkens for hours to follow.

I wasn't always this way. For a long time I was definitely someone who thought “why take long road when short road faster” and then that turned into a belief that if I just optimized things enough I could do and have everything. Then it didn't work, and the immediate follow-up was a belief that I just didn't understand the topic enough. If I was just smarter, if I was just more well-read, if I was just better I could be more optimal and THEN the magical future state would be achieved. Turns out basically nothing works that way.

There are SO MANY great quotes written about this exact phenomenon. “The man who loves walking will walk farther than the man who walks quickly” and the like are incredibly poetic ways of expressing this sentiment. Being a meathead deep inside, I often to default to Jim Wendler's take: “Stop racing to red lights.” Driving 80km/h in a 50 zone only gets you to the next red light faster, you still end up waiting for the green before you can go again. Just drive 50, dingus. Not to get all Musashi on this, but once you see this once you start to see it everywhere. What's the secret jiujitsu move that will let me beat the pros? What's the secret workout that will give me huge arms and sick abs? If it only took 2 clicks instead of 4 to access the data then everyone would use it and we'd be so much better off!

Quite frankly, I don't think I've ever seen anyone who cares about optimizing that has actually optimized their way to anything of worth.

The person for whom 4 clicks is too many clicks doesn't care about what they're viewing. They want it to be too inconvenient to access, because they don't care about using it. The person for whom the workout isn't delivering gainzzz fast enough doesn't want to workout. You need to at least like the process as much as you care about the outcome.

I observe this in my professional sphere all the time, people for whom the idea of being “data-informed” is a status symbol. They can't tell you what they want to be data-informed about, what would be useful to know, how to interpret it, how they use it, etc. They just know they're supposed to be “data-informed” because that is the mark of being a good and serious professional. (Find those actionable insights! Show off how smart you were to look at a spreadsheet for an answer!)

The most liberating thing I've done for myself in the last few years was rejecting optimization. I live a sub-optimal life in a sub-optimal world! And that's fine! I'm only growing 0.5lbs of muscle a month instead of the maximum 1.25lbs? Who cares!? I'm happier, I get more time with my young child, and in 5 years time I will get to the same place. Your data request took 3 days instead of 1? The work is probably better!

“But what if it's an emergency”

My brother in christ I am a data analyst. No one dies at my job. There are no emergencies.

“But there are deadlines!”

Deadlines are not emergencies. If you care about something you probably work on it before the deadline, if you don't care you leave it to the deadline. And guess what, your lack of planning doesn't mean shit to me.

The craziest thing about this is y'know who actually improves stuff in a meaningful way? The people who actually gave a damn. The people who think “4 clicks ten times a day seems like a lot. If I could get that down to 2 clicks I would save myself some time...” Those people make things better in ways that matter, because they can directly see how to improve shit.

The guy that really likes running will throw down a sweet marathon time because he loves the process of getting there. The guy that wants to put “BQ Marathon” on his insta handle probably won't get there no matter how many optimized VO2max programs he does if he doesn't like running. One is a person who likes running, one is a person who wants the shiny bobble at the end of a run.

Death to optimization.

All glory to caring about what you do.

Another random aside from the world of academia; A somewhat common criticism I read is politely “universities are dying because they can't respond to the needs of the labour market” and more directly “universities don't create programs fast enough.” I think that criticism is valid, but poorly considered. It is poorly considered because it places too much emphasis on the launching side and doesn't think about the other side, the shutting down side. The assumption is “Well if the program isn't a success (whatever that means) then you just shut it down.”

For a moment lets ignore development time.

You launch a four year program, and through a miracle every student that will graduate does so in four years.

Cohort 1 is admitted in Y1. Cohort 2 is admitted in Y2. Cohort 3 in Y3 . . .

After 4 years you realize the program is bunk, so you shut down. But the students you admitted need to be given a chance to finish.

In Y4 Cohort 4 starts, which means that you still need to “offer the program” (i.e. all the classes) until Y8, so that those students have a chance to finish the program. So launching a 4 year program is at minimum an 8 year commitment under the most ideal, unrealistic circumstances. The reality is that almost every institution in north america talks in terms of 6 year grad rates, with the majority of students finishing bachelors programs in 5ish years. If we take that example again, in Y4 Cohort 4 starts, and if you give them a normal amount of time to finish you are “offering the program” until Y10.

Let's relax assumptions and get a bit closer to reality again. Almost all graduates will graduate within 6 years, but that isn't equivalent to all. Life happens, so a tiny handful of students have delays and will graduate a year or two later. If you add a buffer, 2 years of extra time to say “Hey I know you have some stuff going on but if you want this credential you need to finish” then suddenly you are up to Y12.

Now consider development time.

In Canada, for many very good reasons, there is pretty tight regulation around academic credentials. There are provincial accrediting bodies to ensure that academic programs meet fairly strict standards, including the qualification of instructors and requirements around curriculum, all in an attempt to ensure that students can trust their education and public dollars don't fund diploma mills. This is a huge part of why Canada's post-secondary sector is “flatter” compared to the USA. A consequence of this is that launching programs involves quite a bit of legwork to show that the program will be of sufficiently high quality. From the time someone first says “Maybe we should offer a degree in blah” to the time the curriculum is finalized, we are talking 2 or 3 years. This can be extended even further if there is a regulatory/licensing body in play.

THEN you need a full year for the recruitment/admissions cycle and process to run.

Let's say you have 2 years of development time, blazing fast for academia, and a single full year of recruitment cycle, let in your first cohort, and then as soon as your first graduates cross the floor you realize the program was a mistake and you moved to shut the program down. A 4 year program is now a 15 year commitment.

This is why I rolled my eyes in 2020 when I read people saying “Well why can't I take a major in crypto finance?” No university wants to commit resources to that major until 2035 unless you are confident it will be relevant even longer.

Where I live (Alberta) there is a lot of concern about whether institutions are serving the needs of Albertan learners. This has been true as long as I've worked in post-secondary, and it was true when I was briefly on the government-side a decade ago. Yet every single year, with every single new request, there isn't a standard definition of what is a “Alberta learner.”

Consider four different students;

1) A student born in Calgary, who went to high school in Calgary, then applied to the UofC, and subsequently went to the UofC.

2) A student born in Calgary, who graduated from high school in Calgary, and whose parents moved to Ontario in the summer after grade 12 despite their kid being accepted to the UofC.

3) A student born in Oshawa, who went to high school in Oshawa, and who moved to Calgary after grade 12 to live with a sibling for a few years before attending the UofC.

4) A 35 year old learner who graduated from high school in Fort McMurray, but hasn't set foot in the province for 15 before taking a course at Athabasca University, which leads to transferring to the UofC to do a degree.

Which one of these students is “from” Alberta?

Just the first student? All four?

For as much time is spent discussing whether institutions are meeting the needs of Alberta learners, there's basically 0 discussion about who is considered to be an “Alberta learner.” It gets weirder when you see institutions advertised as ways to boost regional economies and as a way to attract/retain people to live outside of major cities. Programs are expanded or contracted based on whether they are perceived to be benefiting the provincial economy, with no attention paid to whether students are coming from Okotoks or Fredericton. So are they supposed to help Alberta? Or Alberta learners? When do you become an Alberta learner? When do you stop being an Alberta learner?

I want to be clear, I don't think any of this is bad, I'm an annoyingly vocal advocate for the transformative power of post-secondary on personal, municipal, and even national levels. The country is better off when people leave their hometowns. Colleges, polytechnics, and universities are incredible investments even when you come at it strictly from a “dollars invested vs dollars returned” perspective. I just think it's weird that discussions about universities are always framed as-if they can only recruit within the provincial borders when we clearly know that isn't the case. This is example of how institutions are advertised as doing one thing, while being paid and operated to do another, and there isn't any discussion about why that is.