Ben Casnocha: The Blog

Predicative Index Behavioral Assessment

There are many different personality and behavior assessment tools. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and DISC assessment are two of the most popular. Managers use them to understand their employees better. Individuals use them to understand themselves better. The idea is you learn about personality traits and tendencies so that you can be smarter about matching those tendencies with situations which play to your strengths. In other words, these assessments tend to treat revealed tendencies as innate and therefore permanent.

One reason I've held off taking such a test is that I am intuitively skeptical of how effective any survey or test can be at accurately capturing the nuances of a person. Also, I've seen these tests be overinterrepted by managers. For example, manager adminsters a test to subordinate, the test suggests subordinate avoids exerting authority and is introverted, manager concludes he's not fit to be a leader, and the subordiate defers to the test and shelves any leadership aspiration. These broader concerns aside, I do think that if one treats personality test results with appropriate distance, they can be a useful check on intuitions and a good starting point for a conversation.

Yesterday I took the Predicative Index test. Frederic Lucas-Conwell studied all the various tests for his PhD and now administers and consults around the Predictive Index, which he believes is the best. He was kind enough to do my test for free. It is remarkably short -- it only takes about 10 minutes to complete, as you check off adjectives that describe how you believe others expect you to act and then adjectives that you think really describe who you are. After entering my results into a computer, Frederic displayed the following three charts. They're meaningless unless you know how to interpret this particular test.

 

Below the fold is the automated written report that accompanies my results (ie, "Ben" is plugged in a blank space for a pre-written report for my type). I think it underplays my introverted streak and underplays my interest in details and precision. Otherwise it emphasizes pretty typical entrepreneur traits. Note it focuses solely on professional and management issues, no "personal" situations or attitudes.

A Morning of Self-Consciousness...

Here's a quick diary-esque blog post. Experimenting with the style.

When I wake up at 10:15 AM, as I did today, the first thing that pops into my head is whether or not I am a "morning person" and whether, by waking up late, I had missed out on hours that might have been enhanced by a more naturally alert cognitive state.

The fact that this is my initial thought leads me to wonder what it means that productivity-maximizing drives the day's first neuron-firing on a blue beautiful day. Why can't I just wake up, breathe, eat breakfast, and be passive? Which then leads me to wonder why I must take every thought to the meta level (ie, question the validity of the thought after thinking the thought) and whether one day it will be possible possible to somehow squash the little voice in my head that does play-by-play commentary on each thought as it develops. Like right now the voice is asking whether the prior couple sentences and this entire mini-exercise in raw stream-of-consciousness blogging are just amateurishly self-indulgent. Whether people might laugh at the perhaps implied assertion that the little voice who does play-by-play is unique or noteworthy. Might find it sweetly naive that I seem to see this internal peanut gallery commentator as on or off whereas wiser ones know the trick is controlling the volume and timing of self-consciousness? Fine, so how do you control the volume and timing? How do you really control what and when thoughts enter and leave your mind? (If only the mind could be partitioned into compartments like the Titanic was...) One more level up: on the premise that informs the last few sentences: the importance of what "others" think about you / me / our ideas. Don't we all struggle to achieve the optimal point on the I'm-independent-screw-what-others-think versus I-am-a-slave-to-your-opinion spectrum? I laugh at those who claim to be wholly intrinsically motivated and who claim to lie unmoved in the face of external judgments / perceptions.

So it's 10:15 AM and I have not yet figured out whether I'm a morning person. A gap in self-knowledge. A calamity of epic proportions! The diminishing returns of hyper self-awareness. Neuroticism? OCD-ish? The pleasures and perils of playing host to an in-the-head performance whose actors will perform, audience or not. (I.e., Boredom = impossible, regardless of external environment.)

I take a shower because I need to and because that's where "living in the moment" seems to come pretty easily. Why else do so many good ideas pop to mind when standing under hot water?

And in the shower I am naked and alone.

2008 Personal Executive Summary

Executive summary of my 2008, a bit late. Off the top of my head and somewhat random. Representative photos below of my brother and me swimming in the Amazon and of me signing books in San Antonio.

I traveled to Quito and the Ecuadorean Amazon jungle, Zurich, Prague, all over Costa Rica, Alaska, and rural Tennessee. Re-visited and spent time in Washington D.C, New York, and Colorado. Gave a dozen paid speeches in various U.S. locales. Read 60 books. Signed hundreds of copies of my own book. Wrote a hundred thousand words on my blog. Completed two semesters of college. Turned 20. Won an essay contest. Made new friends. Tried to become closer still to old friends. Cried a few times. Laughed a lot. Dined with famous people but enjoyed the no-name dinners more. Got somewhat messily dumped by a girl I had dated for 13 months and was fond of. Lost 5-10 pounds. Lost money in the stock market. Started playing basketball again. Voted Bob Barr and No on 8 in the election. Ziplined through a forest canopy. Fished for halibut off a boat. Hiked around an active volcano. Met one-on-one with David Foster Wallace and then mourned his death. Thousands of minutes on treadmill and thousands of push-ups. Took in a few sunsets. Played 30 games of chess and too few games of ping-pong. Recorded a few commentaries for NPR. Philosophized. Watched too many Seinfeld episodes. Ate peanut-butter Clif bars. Worked on my tan. Plotted world domination.

 

Thanksgiving Time: Thanks Dad and Mom

In this post I'm going to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time: express gratitude to my parents and articulate some of the things I've learned from them during my brief existence. Why now? First, Thanksgiving will be soon upon us and expressing thanks is the name of the game. Second, when Tim Russert tragically died a few months ago, there were plenty of touching articles about his relationship with his father (documented in his book Big Russ and Me) and on that day I vowed to write this post. Third, over the years my mentor Brad Feld has written movingly about his father and mother and inspired me to do the same. What follows are informal comments which seems appropriate given that the learning is not over!

Dad

Dad has taught me the value of hard work. So many people talk about hard work. Yet actions speak louder than words. There's no better way to internalize the hard work habit than to witness it first-hand as a kid every day growing up. In building a successful career and life for himself, Dad embodies the value of focused perseverance.

In addition to work ethic, Dad's writing and speaking skills have taken him far, and he's shared those gifts with me. Dad taught me how to write. In the early days of my fledgling business career, I showed him literally dozens of drafts of business plans, memos, brochures. On each page, he deployed his red pen to suggest ways to make the writing more economical and precise. Dad prized clarity above all, and so from age 12 on I have been pushed to articulate my thinking in as straightforward a manner as possible.

I've also learned from Dad what it means to be serious about something. You can't be "serious" about everything, so choose wisely which things deserve your focus and then hold yourself to high standards when pursuing them.

Dad's taught me intelligence matters but effectively communicating the fruits of your intelligence matters more, that dreams and imagination are nice but one must be grounded in the messy realities of life, that most any scenario can be analyzed by evaluating options, costs, and benefits, and that, through it all, you must never surrender your sense of humor. Seinfeld, after all, was the one TV show that we were encouraged to watch growing up.

(Dad and me in San Diego, December 2005.)

Mom

Mom was the central figure in my childhood. As a kid I went to museums and parks and the library with her. Throughout the adventures she imparted valuable life skills. She taught me how to shake someone's hand and look a person in the eye. She taught me how to sit at a dinner table and be courteous. The little things.

When I began expressing business interests, Mom didn't push me back to "normal" activities, but neither did she irrationally cheerlead like many moms I see. She was happy if I was happy, a sentiment that's easy to talk about but extremely hard to believe, let alone convey, as a parent.

Mom has taught me about frugality, about doing more with less, about how to use coupons at the supermarket and find wearable clothes at Goodwill.

An intellectual through and through, Mom has showed me the pleasures of unleashed natural curiosity. She reads more than anyone I know and brings to bear an outstanding command of history, art, and literature. As a student, she lived overseas and through her example I took an interest in traveling, now one of my greatest passions. Together we delight in the mysteries of other cultures.

The life of the mind aside, above all, Mom has taught me that heart is more important than brain and that who you are matters more than what you know or do. She's taught me that a rich interior life can sustain a person through stretches of solitude. And that a strong family is the best way to feel a little less alone in the world.

Dad, Mom: I love you. Thanks for being there for me every step of the way for my first 20 years on this planet.

 (Mom and me in the Japanese alps, June 2006.)

A Weekend in the Smoky Mountains

As part of my ongoing commitment to "bulk positive randomness" and my focus on meeting more people under 30 who are at a similar professional point as me, I participated in a retreat in Tennessee last weekend with about 15 other entrepreneurs, consultants, writers, and grad students.

Everyone was under age 30 (most under 25) and we spent three nights living in a huge house (11+ bedrooms, two kitchens, two living rooms) nestled next to the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee.

Besides a couple organized conversations and two yoga sessions (including a 30 min Laughter Yoga session which was fascinating and fun and I recommend everyone do it at least once), the weekend was totally unstructured. The itinerary was: wake up, sit around and talk to others, continue talking, eat, talk some more, eat again, talk some more, go to bed, repeat.

I was reminded that where you are can affect the quality of what you talk about. Since many of us traveled from California to a very redneck part of the South, it made us more committed to getting the most out of the experience. It also was just culturally interesting and memorable. We smoked a pig for 11 hours and ate with with real BBQ sauce. We went out for lunch one day at a place that served almost entirely meat and fried things. The accent was strong. The religious imagery ubiquitous. These new and different sights and smells colored the conversation in an interesting way, I think.

Right after arriving at the house, I was talking to a young guy about water issues and he did three things that immediately soared through my "litmus tests" for determining whether I'll like someone. First, he took notes as we talked, jotting down book references and ideas. Second, he revealed he had a blog (usually suggests intellectual curiosity). Third, he referenced the TED Talks which is not an indicator in and of itself but suggests he probably consumes the same kind of online intellectual content as me (like Bloggingheads or BookForum or blogs in general).

I am cautious about attending events or conferences. Most conferences are a waste of time or money. There's too much variance in the quality of the attendees, the speakers are hit-or-miss, the networking opportunities are rushed, and the actual learning (for me) could be better obtained on my own. But, like the St. Gallen Symposium or two other off-the-record events I participate in, when there's a strong filter on attendees and when there's an emphasis on conversation instead of dreadful "expert" panels or keynote speakers, the group dynamic among like minds can be uniquely stimulating.

With Humor, It's All About Timing

My brothers and I have long had reputations as masters at coining new "lines" which catch on within our respective social circles. A couple months ago, I set up a wiki for us to track memorable lines and their origin.

I've always been fascinated by why certain lines catch on and others do not. The winners seem to be brief (no more than a sentence), versatile (can be used in a range of situations), and involve a good dose of sarcasm / pseudo-arrogance. Most of all, though, it's when and how you deploy the line. Like anything, good humorists / line creators are the product of their input, and for us, the TV show Seinfeld and the situational brilliance of its lines have been a huge inspiration.

Today, I had a proud moment. Some friends and I were celebrating a 21st birthday at the very tasty, very hip, and overall very excellent Brazilian restaurant Fogo de Chao in Beverly Hills. It has the best salad bar ever and 16 different types of meats served to you by roaming waiters who carve meat onto your plate as you desire. Meanwhile, roasted bananas and cheesebread and other assorted goodies are bottomless side-dishes. The whole restaurant is all-you-can-eat.

As my friend Dave and I were raiding the salad bar, Dave -- in response to me loading my plate with full size mozzarella balls and artichoke -- says to me, "Ben, be careful and save room for the meat later on." To which I respond, without missing a beat, "Hey Dave - you do your job, I'll do mine. Deal?" It was pitch perfect sarcasm. The source for this line came from a college basketball coach who said these words in response to the statistician who tried to offer coaching advice.

After a laugh, Dave utters another serious comment, asking me, "Do you know if the bread here goes with this tomato?" I respond, drawing deep into the Casnocha Line repertoire, "Dave, you know, I don't have all the answers. I have a lot of them, but I don't have all of them."

As in most things in life and business, timing is everything.

It was the start of a great dinner which capped off a memorable day. Earlier, we were in the UCLA student section at Pauley Pavilion to see #2 UCLA come back against Cal and win by one-point with a crazy Kevin Love double-pump three-pointer and behind-the-backboard Josh Shipp throw-away lay-up. A few hours later, I found myself lying on the top of a roof in Westwood tanning in 73 degree L.A. weather.

Happy birthday Dave.

***

Here's a blog I read on humor. Here are notes from a Silicon Valley Junto discussion on how to be funny in the professional world. Humor in serious, business situations is much harder than in Saturday night dinners -- but even more powerful.

No Kidding: Childfree By Choice an Unpopular Sentiment

Do I want to have children when I'm older? I waver from "No" to "Maybe." I have yet to meet anyone on my college campus -- or anyone close to my age -- who shares my ambivalence toward having children when older. You're not going to have kids? comes the gasp of a response, like I'm somehow letting down my race by pondering the possibility of opting out of the procreation process.

My theory is that many young folks can't imagine married life with no children. By imagine I mean a vivid image in one's head about how a no-child situation would actually look. Most of the adults you get to know as a kid are the adult friends of your parents. Because parents tend to hang out with other parents, your first-hand knowledge of adults consists almost entirely of other parents. In other words, kids and teens usually have minimal exposure to families without children.

In my own experiences in the business world, I have befriended several adult couples without children and seen close-up how happy they are. I have a clear image in my head of how this could work out; it feels like a real option.

Moreover, I have befriended couples who have kids and I've seen their careers or lives suffer. As youth we tend to hold romantic notions of parenting -- taking junior to his first baseball game! buying her her first dress! -- but children require enormous sacrifice, sacrifice not often paraded by parents and therefore invisible to many. When was the last time your dad told you about his hobbies left unpursued, travel guidebooks unopened, and everything else that went on pause after your birth? Never. Every parent says "It's worth it." Thanks to the ginormous investment of time and energy it takes to rear kids, our brains wouldn't let us think any other way. And what kind of parent would want to guilt trip his son or daughter?

Even if, as a kid, you're aware of the sacrifice in the abstract, it's much different to ponder it from afar at age 19 than to actually face the brutal reality at age 29 when you're thinking of having kids and yet just a couple years away from the promotion you've spent the last eight years striving for.

Finally, I have the good fortune of being free from any kind of religious or parental or societal influence pushing me toward procreation. I'm growing up in the 2000's, not 1950's where staying childless was considered "deviant or abnormal" according to the Chron article linked to below.

I don't mean to imply that I'm more "enlightened" than my age-similar peers. Most people have children. I'm in the minority now, and if nothing changes (though I may very well change), I will be in the minority later. I'm just speculating as to why I have yet to find another person in college who shares my view.

Related Link: Here's a Salon article on studies that show couples who choose not to have children are happier than those who do. Here's a SF Chronicle article on groups such as "No Kidding!" which help childless-by-choice couples connect.

UCLA and First Time at a Frat House

Sometimes it's surreal that I'm experiencing first-hand that which is the subject of so many movies, articles, songs, and jokes: college life.

Last night, my close friend Andrew and I went to visit some of our friends at UCLA. We had a great time.

It started with The Terminator. After an excellent sushi dinner in Westwood (a dinner in which the real men were identified by who cleaned out the most sushi -- hint: I finished off the other three plates), our friend David saw Arnold Schwarzenegger drive by in a black SUV. David waved, and Arnold waved back. I had to console Dave. He wanted a "west side" sign, but I told him to accept Arnold's gesture as awesome in its own right.

We then headed over to a sorority house of one of our high school friends. It was my first time in a frat or sorority house; Claremont has no such things. A pretty sweet set-up: 54 girls all living in one massive house, with private cooks, an admin, and plenty of hang-out space. We were only there for 15 minutes, but even in that short period of time the door-bell rang and a member of the same sorority from Michigan State asked if she could look around. It crystallized the networking benefit of being part of a national fraternity or sorority: it's a whole new group of people with whom you have a special connection, independent of the network from your university. (The negatives also exist, of course. I heard stories last night of some sororities forcing its pledges to strip naked and then circling the parts of each girl's body which are sub-par (e.g. a fleshy leg or something). Truly despicable.)

Next we hit up the UCLA basketball home-opener versus Portland State. UCLA is ranked #2 in the country. We had the pleasure of seeing Kevin Love, the #1 ranked high school player last year who committed to UCLA, play his first official collegiate game. Most experts say Love has long and fruitful NBA career ahead of him. My take? I want to see his outside game. At 6' 10" he seems small to be a center or power forward in the pros, but apparently he can drain 3's from the outside and has unbelievable touch down low.

Sitting around a friend's apartment later in the night, as jokes were told, arguments hashed out, YouTube videos cited, and "new lines" coined, I thought of this paragraph from my old post on Tyler Cowen's talk in Zurich:

He said America empowers youth as influencers -- college students sit around and listen to music, start fads, build web sites, etc. They may not be "working" per se, but they are contributing enormously to American popular culture. Indeed, most of our popular culture is created by young people, and this is the culture that is exported abroad. If a country cares about the influence of its culture abroad, they should ask how much power is given to youth. He noted that Latin America and Asia have huge youth populations, making it prime for a lot of cultural influence in this next generation.

So true. You put a bunch of smart 18, 19, 20, and 21 year-olds in confined space and add alcohol, and you actually get a lot of crude creative output.

Thanks Dave, Teddy, Kevin, and Andrew for a fun night in LA.

Introverted Me

I can be highly social. I'd like to think I can work a cocktail party crowd pretty well. I love meeting people.

But I also have an introverted side which has been starved for oxygen in a college environment which places social interactions at the forefront. Alone time can be hard to come by...and I have a single!

During my gap year I had much time to myself. I lived in a condo in Boulder, CO for three months and ate many meals and enjoyed many weekends by myself. I traveled overseas for three months and sometimes went weeks without a full-length conversation with another native English speaker. I drove 5,000 miles in the month of April during my road trip / speaking tour, mainly by myself.

I like alone time because I like to think, and I can't think hard with others around. I don't think in real-time very well. I like alone time because I like to read and write. I write to be alone.

If I could, I'd put my life on pause and just hang out and read and write and drink bottled water. Unfortunately the chances of this happening are slim. Emails continue to fly in, professors expect me to show up at designated times, and the social scene at college is all-or-nothing.

Related Article: The Call of Solitude in Psychology Today, how solitude can increase intimacy.

Friendship is to People as Sunshine is to Flowers

The past month I've loved spending time with my high school friends who are back for the summer. I've known all of them for at least five years, some more. What's refreshing for me is that while they're supportive of my book and business efforts, that's not what really drives our relationship. Whereas in the business world "friends" can sometimes magically appear when you have a big success and disappear when you take some hits, in the "personal world" your perceived success and status don't play as much a role.

One of the things the past few months of speaking, book marketing, and interviews have taught me is that I value the interior life. In other words, I value a private life of non-professional relationships. I value personal, emotional connection (this can definitely exist in strictly professional relationships, but it's harder).

Three specific examples of recent social time stand out.

The first was a dinner I had at a sushi restaurant in Japantown with two friends who are at UCLA and Vassar. Originally the plan was to meet up for dinner at a cheap Chinese place which serves really tasty (read: greasy) food at low prices. I suspect they cook all the food in the morning and then re-heat it during the day. We punted on the quintessential student restaurant and instead went to Japantown and had a sit-down meal at a nice sushi place. It was fun to be in an ethnic neighborhood and do something out of the ordinary. Plus, the food was terrific.

The second was a night at a comedy club in Marin. I had never seen live comedy. It is a great experience that I recommend to anyone. Dana Carvey, one of the top 100 stand-up comedians of all time, showed up, and was hilarious. His dialogue between Bush Sr. and Bush Jr., in particular, shined ("Daddy, daddy, I'm going to spread democracy like peanut butter!" "Well, son, see, the problem is that peanut butter doesn't really spread all that well."). The junior comedian was equally hilarious, but he had to rely on racism, sexism, and personal insults against people in the audience to make his point. A sign of a rookie! Two of us went to In-n-Out Burger afterwards for a late-night snack -- it's hard to go wrong with a Double-Double and vanilla milkshake.

The third was this past weekend. I had an overnight party for 15 friends and we lounged about in the sun, listened to music, played ping-pong, chatted about the utterly banal as well as the intellectually challenging, and just generally fucked around.

I guess this is a long way of saying that I'm looking forward to college where there supposedly is a great deal of social infrastructure to facilitate all this.

Disconnecting For a Day

  View from Fishermen's Wharf

Last week my partner Dave told me after 20 minutes of chatting, "Ben, you need to take some time off." He was right. I needed to disconnect and re-charge.

I was off the grid Saturday evening and Sunday and I feel great. I spent a bunch of time in the sun, endless hours reading, and even managed a ping-pong game and an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.

More, I gorged in the natural beauty of San Francisco. I walked along fisherman's wharf at sunset, something I've never done in all my 19 years here (it's one of those "tourists only" spots). Just incredible beauty. And on Sunday evening I walked to the top of Tank Hill and looked down at the city lights and hills -- the panoramic view stretching from the Golden Gate Bridge on the left through to the East Bay on the right. There were a handful of other people up there, all silent and wondering what we did to deserve such an experience.

This morning I woke up focused and refreshed and made a list of 28 things I needed to do. I have 5 left and it's only 6:45 PM. Maybe I should take every Sunday off.

Speech at Generation Tech

I'm delivering the morning keynote at SDForum's Generation Tech on May 23rd at 9:00 AM at HP in Palo Alto. Will also be signing books at lunch. Feel free to stop by and say hi!

A Blog Reader's Desire for More Emotion

  A Brainy Heart
  Originally uploaded by PsicoCafé.

I love ideas. I love reading about ideas, talking to people about ideas, and generally thinking hard about interesting issues.

I also love meeting blog readers in-person. It's a fascinating interaction to meet someone in-person who's been reading my blog -- they have all sorts of ideas about what I'll be like. Sometimes reality is consistent with expectations, sometimes not.

I recently met a reader with whom I'd had some electronic communication and a brief phone call. We'd also been reading each other's blog for a year or so. She came into our breakfast meeting with a single goal: No intellectual banter. She wanted to know the "real Ben". She wanted to know the emotional Ben. She wanted to pull back the curtain.

It reminded me of my June '06 post and long comment discussion titled, "Where are the references to the non-professional emotional events in my life?"

I'm not sure there's really a curtain to pull back, but I'll certainly try to blog more about "soft stuff". Any other feedback is welcome!

Physical Exhaustion

Tom Peters once said that if you're not totally drained after giving a speech -- if you don't feel like you need to collapse on a bed -- then you didn't give it enough energy.

My current exhaustion is a total physical experience. My legs are tired, arms tired, feet tired. This is different than just mild mental tiredness I feel after above-average intellectual exertion.

The past few days have been intense -- speak in Dallas, fly to Raleigh, speak Duke/UNC, fly to Philly, speak Temple/Wharton/Drexel, now to Jersey for a couple off days before New Orleans this weekend and Boston next week.

Fortunately I've been able to maintain a high level of energy for all my interactions. I'm meeting some amazing people (young and old) and am constantly re-charged by their enthusiasm and intelligence. And I'm ready to kick-butt over the next two weeks.

Suffice to say, my life at the moment is a blur of hotel rooms. But it's worth it.

Holding and Firing a Gun for the First Time

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Do one thing that scares you each day." On Sunday, I did something which scared me. I went to a shooting range, held a gun for the first time, and fired it about a dozen times.

People talk about being desensitized to violence thanks to the news media and TV shows like 24. Yeah, right. I've seen a lot of shooting and gore second-hand but it didn't prepare me for the shivers I felt when someone in the lane next to us took out some super duper gun ("Magnum" something) which shot out an an orange ball and made the whole building tremble. (It reminded me of wandering down the back alleys of Kunming, China, or any street in India -- I thought I was prepared for the poverty, but I wasn't.)

I went to the range with my friend Kai Chang, a gun enthusiast in the Bay Area who was visiting Colorado. Kai was exceedingly kind and generous in describing the mechanics of guns, the shooting subculture in America, safety procedures, and the like.

I aimed at a target about 15-20 feet away. The first time I fired the gun, my arm jerked back in a kind of unconscious shock. Didn't take long to normalize the reaction. After all, it's not a hard procedure -- load the gun with ammo, pull back some lever, then pull the trigger.

The two employees of the range were stereotypical: both were wearing "USA" shirts and hats and one made a snide, proactive remark about gun control. An American flag hung in the back. Why is it that these kind of people are also excessively patriotic?

When all was said and done, I was happy to learn about how to hold, load, and shoot a gun (who knows when I'll need that skill), but still miffed at how this "sport" is supposed to be a "recreation". Clearly, it is, and I totally respect someone's right to pursue it.

Thanks very much Kai for bringing me along and introducing me to this fascinating sub-culture of America! And for a great dinner and six hours of conversation!