The deliverables had changed twice and in significant ways. The client kept us from doing work the first two months until the first change occurred and then we had to throw out all the work we did in the next three months when the second change occurred. Then the client had us wait. Another change was coming.

The contract was coming to a close and it was time to talk about renewing.

I didn’t see the point. I don’t want to just take your money. I want to help you ship something. I want to help you be successful. I want you to be happy with our progress.

The client just wanted to renew and keep things the way they were. The client was perfectly happy with the way things had gone.

I pushed back.

Well, on second thought they really had wanted to ship something.

I pushed a little more.

Well, actually, things can’t go on the way they’ve been going.

Good.

I had a suggestion. I looked at what had held us up and realized there was another strategy that just might work.

The client was skeptical. They were more comfortable with leaving things the way they were. You know, the way that hadn’t worked. The way that, once they thought about it, they weren’t happy at all with. But it was a process they were comfortable with. Much better to stick with something that definitely isn’t working than to risk something that might not work.

The issue was sunk costs. We’ve both spent time and money working in this particular way. We all like working with each other. Shouldn’t we keep things the way they are.

No.

You shouldn’t change for change’s sake. Also, and this is the harder one, sometimes you just haven’t stayed the course long enough. You sometimes need to keep doing what you are doing to reap the benefits. But other times, if you keep doing what you’re doing you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.

It can be very hard to distinguish these last two situations but that’s where the opportunities are.

Over the weekend she was part of a team that competed in a Science Olympiad. She also had her final exam for her first semester.

The difference is striking. She studied hard for her science exam and did well but she’s talked non-stop about the competition. As she and her teammates rode the bus home they talked about what they needed to work on for next time. They identified areas of weakness and identified teachers and other resources to help address them.

I’m sure there are many differences between the two situations but one of them is the relationship between the students and the teachers. In the competition, the students and the teachers are on the same side. They are working together to master material that will be tested by some third party.

I struggled with this (and think I mostly succeeded) as a math teacher. The students know that this person teaching them is also the person creating the test and grading the test – how could that teacher possibly be on their side?

And yet I was. I defined "their side" as meaning that I was committed to them learning and falling in love with the material. If I could do that, then a decent grade was almost always assured.

I once worked in a restaurant where the owner explained to me that one of the secrets to his restaurant’s success was low staff turn over. In real terms, it cost him money. So even though he worked to train, evaluate, and manage the employees — he was on their side.

What about in your work? What does it mean for managers to be on the same side as the people they manage? How would your work and your customers benefit? Whose side are you on?

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

It’s one of those examples that makes us relax a bit. We look at her and realize that we have plenty of time to accomplish things. We look at her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren and time stretches out.

But Friday there was a reminder that you don’t. Friday, in a church just a few miles from yesterday’s funeral there was a funeral for a fifteen year old child. She died suddenly at school earlier in the week.

The pairing of the two was jarring. It was a reminder not to wait. That we don’t have endless time to get going.

The 92 year old woman didn’t wait. She was active and involved from the start. The stories that were told included her learning English as a second language in kindergarten and becoming the family’s translator at school meetings for her siblings.

She was one of those women who was active all of her life. She was a woman who was truly ahead of her time–a working mother when mother’s didn’t work. A woman businessman out-bidding male competitors when women weren’t in business.

Two funerals with two different kinds of sadness. Two funerals together with one message.

Don’t wait.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

Now and then Glass has to remind us of the rest of the iceberg so we don’t look at the three or four that make it to the air as all of the activity that needs funding. Wow, why does he need such a big staff – they only do a few stories a week?

I still think it’s the stuff we throw out that makes what we do better. I’m writing an application for kicks these days. Yesterday I took most of the work I’d done the day before and replaced it with a dozen lines of code. The app runs better and the code is cleaner. If I were getting paid by the line I would have been nuts to make the changes I made. Fortunately, I’m not getting paid at all.

This morning Brian Marick tweeted a quote by Vaclav Havel on hope which I shortened like this. "Hope is [...] the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

And so This American Life produces great stories that end up not making it to the air because greater stories did. It doesn’t turn out so great for those stories that don’t make it but it turns out great for the show and us listeners.

If we just do the things we know are going to work out, well, that’s not very interesting and is certain to hurt us in the long run.

Sure, we can’t build a business on hope alone, but a business without hope isn’t worth building.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

The weather feels like a metaphor for the day. The snow has been slow and steady for three days accompanied by a light wind. Just enough to keep the surface white and to erase the footprints of people and animals that passed earlier. There is no well trod path of what’s gone before only an empty lawn waiting for new footprints or whatever.

Quick, before meetings mar the day, the year, the decade—lay in the snow beside me and flap your arms and legs to make a snow angel.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

You have limited resources—what are you going to devote them to this year? What successes are important to you in 2010. It’s easy to just continue what you’re doing but you probably have a bunch of open projects that you’re just "kind of" doing.

Johanna writes that "When you commit to a project, it’s a real commitment, not a partial commitment." You commit your time, find the people to help, ensure that there’s funding and resources. If you don’t fully commit, she explains, you’ll revisit your projects again and again.

You need to understand what is required to commit to a project—this should be concrete. Maybe you want to learn a new language or improve some hobby like drawing, photography or playing an instrument. Decide how much time each day that will take— half hour, an hour—and ask if you realistically can commit that time. If it takes an hour a day of practice and you can only commit to a half hour a day or an hour three days a week then you aren’t able to commit fully and you won’t be successful.

It’s tough but you need to face up to those projects you can’t or won’t commit to. You have two remaining options.

Perhaps you should kill the project. Johanna advises that "The key to killing a project is to make sure all activity associated with the project stops." This may give you pause. You may look at all of the sunk costs and feel that you can’t kill the project. You can.

You may think you’re being clever by postponing a project. It’s kinder and gentler. You’re not. You’re just putting it on hold for now. Johanna makes it clear that "Postponing a project is another form of killing the project." You’ll be happier later if you do this in an active way rather than just putting the project on hold and never getting back to it. A project on ice is one of David Allen’s "open loops" and will be a quiet but continuous source of stress.

The third option is a bit of a hybrid. When you transform a project you are committing to this new version. You’ve killed off parts of the old project and redirected it but you are now fully committed to the success of this new project. You might change the team, change the goals, or change how you go about your daily work on the project but you still need full commitment.

Take some time this weekend to look at your major ongoing projects and decide to kill, commit, or transform each one.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

As an example, I love to cook. Each New Year’s Eve I choose a cookbook I’ve never cooked from and we invite some friends over for a meal I prepare from that cookbook. The husband and I have been friends for twenty-five years and the wife and I have known each other forever (there’s a picture of her at my second birthday party).

I want to have a relaxing evening and at the same time serve really good food. The trick to accomplishing this is easy. I am a very organized cook. I prep what I need before I head to the stove and I have a general idea of the order and the rhythm I’m going to need to prepare the meal. The second trick is even more important: I clean as I go. When I finish with a pan or a knife or a bowl, I wash it.

Just those two practices – preparation and continual tidying – make cooking easy and enjoyable.

This year’s resolution, therefore, is to try to apply those two practices to other activities in my life.

Instead of looking for new practices to embrace, take a minute as 2009 ends to identify things you do pretty well in one area of your life and ponder whether they are applicable in other areas.

Happy New Year.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

He divides people into these categories:

• A small group of people who are passionate about classical music.
• A slightly larger group of people who don’t mind classical music. They don’t turn it on but if it’s playing they are happy with it.
• The largest group of all is comprised of people who never listen to classical music.

He adds a fourth group that claim to be tone deaf and then dismisses the idea that this many people could actually be tone deaf.

He then talks the audience through the "story line" of a Chopin prelude and asks them to picture a specific thing while listening to him play the piece. Everyone gets it. You’ll get it.

But I don’t bring this up to enhance your life through classical music.

As you prepare for the new year, think of something you are passionate about that you wish other people would better understand or just appreciate. How can you tell its story and move them to a point that they get it?

I never much felt the passion for history until I read Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. Since then I pick up biographies and historical accounts for a fun read while I’m traveling. Vowell’s book convinced me.

Take twenty minutes to enjoy Benjamin Zander on music and passion and make a New Year’s resolution to create that shining look in the people around you when you describe your passion.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

In stats a Type I error happens when you reject the null hypothesis even though it was true. A Type II error happens in the other direction: you accept the null hypothesis even though it was false. As an aside,  figuring out the probability of a Type I error is easier than figuring out that of a Type II since we know which curve we are looking at.

In writing I find that the problem is the difference between what is in my head and what is on the page. In a Type I writing error I have said the same thing more than once. When I read the second instance of it, it looks familiar but I think that that's just because I've read this part before and not because I've read the contents of the part somewhere else. Although this is annoying to the reader, it is not particularly confusing.

A Type II error occurs when what is in my head doesn't make it to the page. I refer to something that I've covered before even though I haven't actually written it down–I've just thought about it. This is both annoying and confusing to the reader.

These and other problems I'm having with revising this book have to do with approaching my material with the fresh eyes of a reader who is new to it. That is my current struggle both as an author and as an editor. There are books I've edited where we've revised the material so many times and it has come so far that I'm looking at the content relative to where it started instead of in relation to where it needs to end up.

I'd love suggestions on how you "keep it fresh" in your daily work.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.

"Got to go," he wrote, "have to prep for the meetings."

This was most unlike him. He's usually prepared well in advance. He explained that he'd spent the day before helping a neighbor pack to move and then had gone to play golf.

I thought about that a bit.

I wrote, "I should take more time to exercise and to meet up with friends during the day."

He asked, "What's stopping you?"

"Nothing," I answered.

"That gets in my way a lot too," he replied.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.