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Back in World War II, the U.S. military worked with a statistical research group at Columbia University to ascertain the optimal ways to improve armor protection on warplanes, since many, especially bombers, were being shot down. It would be impossible to put armor over the entire plane, because that would be too heavy, so they needed to find the priority target zones and protect them.

Columbia undertook an analysis of aircraft that returned from missions to see where the planes were taking the most bullet hits to determine where they should add armor. They gathered a large data set and aggregated a cluster diagram of the bullet holes. They recommended adding armor to the places with the highest concentration of hits. Seems like the right approach, right?

Well, among the Columbia group there was an astute statistician named Abraham Wald, who happened to be a Jewish Hungarian who'd managed to escape the Nazis. Examining the plan and seeing it as flawed, Wald convinced a whole bunch of military brass that they were looking at the problem wrong.

Wald asserted that by concentrating on the bullet holes of surviving planes, the analysis was neglecting to consider the bullet holes of the planes that didn't survive. In other words, Wald argued, the best place to put the armor was instead in the places where there weren't any bullet holes, because, presumably, that's where planes were getting hit and not coming home because of it. The planes that came back with the bullet holes, after all, were the ones that survived.

Once you see it, it seems so obvious. But at first glance, it's not obvious at all. That's because of selection bias, which is just one of many human heuristics, or cognitive biases that affect our ability to understand the world in a comprehensive way. In selection bias (in this case specifically referred to as "survivorship bias"), we mistakingly draw conclusions based on an incomplete picture. We use data sets that omit something very important indeed: the elements that don't "survive" to make it into the final round of analysis.

It's worth considering where this might affect our lives.

Consider our perceptions of ourselves relative to others. There's all kinds of ways it might play a role in generating feelings of envy. Think about the skewed impressions we get of people's lives from what they choose to put on social media. If we find ourselves feeling envious of other people's seemingly beautiful lives, we shouldn't forget that this curated imagery is only what has been selected. There's a whole lot of ugly stuff, failure, and messiness that doesn't make it into people's posts. By contrast, we're keenly aware of our messiness. That only sharpens the potential for envy, right?

Same for our skewed impressions of people who make it to the top of various hierarchies. Our initial thought might be to assume they've been lucky or just attribute their success to some kind of privilege. We might even consider them suspect for their success. We see only their remarkable resume, competitive salary, or esteemed social recognition. We aren't seeing the the ugly failures that they most assuredly suffered along the way.

Consider our impression of institutions that claim remarkable successes and track records. They might be leaving out a few things. For example, if a university claims a 99% acceptance rate into competitive medical schools among its alumni, that looks very impressive. But what if half the students who enroll there regularly drop out instead of becoming alumni? Those are the planes that didn't make it back.

This is very important to keep in mind when you're reading sensational journalism, or even not-so-sensational scientific studies that cite data sets. If a broad and compelling survey reports x result among a population, for example, bear in mind that only the people who were willing to take the survey can be included in that data set. Once understood, the innate tendency toward selection bias can be a very useful (and very sneaky) tool for those with, say, an ideological or political agenda. It's an easy thing for savvy people to exploit, unfortunately.

Point being, when we're aiming to derive meaning from numbers, ratios, or the appearance of things, it's very important to consider the data points that aren't included in any given analysis. This could be intentional, meant to deceive or skew things. But most often, it's just our own or others' selection bias at work.

As much as we might think we're smarter than that, it's actually pretty natural to omit what isn't visible. Those military analysts weren't unintelligent. They just weren't accounting for what they couldn't see. Most of us would probably draw their conclusions, not Wald's. Seeing past selection bias takes work. We have to be intentional about considering what else is going on besides the numbers or images or impressions that are immediately evident.

#heuristics #cognitive #bias #cognitive_bias #selection_bias #selection #discernment #envy #self_worth #social_media #media

Somewhere almost a quarter century ago, I read a handful of Leo Tolstoy’s stories as an undergraduate, and then again a few years later in grad school. But it’s been a long time, and like so much good literature, these stories have something new to say as I read them again in a different stage of life. I had the joy of discussing one of his short stories with my students recently. At age forty-two, in a room full of students just on the precipice of adulthood, this one sparked a lot of thought for me. (And they seemed pretty into it too, which is a good sign for a teacher.)

Tolstoy's 1886 work “How Much Land Does a Man Need” is a brilliant allegory with a great deal to teach us about keeping our ambitions in check. My senior class has recently been exploring the theme of “the golden mean;” that is, essentially, the wisdom and importance of moderation. This has been against the backdrop of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, with forays into Thoreau, Emerson, Muir, and ancient myths like the flight and fall of Icarus. Young Icarus, son of the famed engineer Daedalus, ignored his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun, melting the wax wings Daedalus had crafted to escape imprisonment in the labyrinth of King Minos of Crete. The height of Icarus's ambitions, quite literally, led to his downfall.

Tolstoy’s story tells of Pahom, a peasant farmer in (presumably 19th century) Russia who aspires to greater freedom and an escape from the servile tedium of his poverty. Inspired by the dream of land ownership, he embarks on a series of risky—but arguably courageous, or at the very least bold—moves that help him achieve this dream. Having succeeded in the acquisition of some land, he is content for a while, but only for a while.

Just when a reader might assume the story is shaping up to be a rather predictable cautionary tale about the vice of ambition-turned-to-greed, Tolstoy throws a curveball and takes it in a unique direction. Without spoiling the story, I can say that Pahom comes face to face with a challenge we can all relate to: knowing when to stop when the going is good. It’s not a novel maxim; however, Tolstoy’s creative take on Pahom’s predicament is really sharp.

Based on Tolstoy’s story, our conversation turned into a study in economics, which is about more than money, for sure. Specifically, we looked at the perilous temptation that confronts us when we discover that the rate of return on investment, financial or otherwise, can increase exponentially. For Pahom’s part, this realization plays out in real time (again, in a context that I won’t spoil). Essentially (and I'm inventing a parallel example to avoid a spoiler here) that an investment of four units yields a return of only one unit, and investing eight units yields only four. Hardly worth the effort involved.

But then he realizes something about the economics of his undertaking: the more he puts in, the more rapidly the returns will grow. So, for example, while a hypothetical investment of twelve yields only nine, beyond that there's soon a tipping point of profitability. An input of sixteen will pay out sixteen. But twenty will yield twenty-five. If he can only push himself to invest thirty-two, the yield would be sixty-four – a great rate of return. And oh, therein begins the true temptation: if he can push himself through suffering and sacrifice to invest as much as forty units, the return will be one hundred: that’s one hell of a return. And it keeps getting sweeter from there. Or does it?

I won’t spoil Tolstoy’s story—you should enjoy it for yourself. But I can say that it was a remarkable thing to confront in a room full of high-achieving young people. We’d all like to think we would know when to stop. When to stop tempting fate and accept the satisfaction of a hard-fought achievement. But therein lies the brilliance of Tolstoy’s story: if we are inherently ambitious, we don’t know how we’ll respond to a toxic level of ambition until we confront it. And once we’re there, it might be nearly impossible to turn back. If we are as reckless and delirious with achievement as young Icarus, we might just plunge to our own destruction.

On the other hand, if we develop habits of discernment, it's possible we'll know when enough is enough.

#Tolstoy #ambition #moderation #Icarus #economics #The_Golden_Mean #wisdom #investment #discernment #reflection #choices #Icarus

This story was originally published in Ten Stories (2014).

IF YOU WEREN’T looking for it, you wouldn’t notice the ring in his pocket. The circular outline is barely visible through the rough fabric of his jeans. He feels it pressed tightly against his thigh, with a distinct, acute pinpoint where the diamond protrudes. It came in a tiny silk-lined box, which he’s kept hidden in his backpack for almost ten days, tucked out of sight across three thousand miles of interstates and county highways. Supposedly, they’re driving across the country to see her brother. Taking the long way out. Seeing the land. Now’s the time to do it, his father had told him. It’s a beautiful country. Take her and go while you’re in your twenties, before you two get married and start having kids. Will had laughed and rolled his eyes. Kids! Let’s focus on one thing at a time, here, Dad. But Dad was right. And now, for Will, this trip is something more than a cross-country ramble. It’s the final chapter in his odyssey of decision. A decision that he knows he’s already made but still needs to act on. He’s unlocked the door and turned the handle. But this is a door which, once opened, is very hard to close. Have to be sure. No more doubts. And now he’s speeding along the open highway, racing westward as if to outrun the stubborn, lingering self-doubt that’s kept him from doing it this long.

Well, he should have outrun anything by now, he figures. After all, he drives fast. He’s a cop.

He wanted to do it at some opportune time in some beautiful place. Oh, there have been plenty of beautiful places. Their circuitous route has taken them across amber waves of grain and through purple mountains’ majesty, across the plains and south along the Rockies. Today, he’d told himself this morning, his jaw set and eyes narrowed with determination as he looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He’d taken the ring out of the box and put it in his pocket as they’d shouldered their backpacks to go hiking in the desert. He’d ask her today, maybe standing on top of one of those sandstone pillars. Red rocks, blue sky, bright sun. Clarity and definition. But he’d hesitated up there on the sandstone pillar in the bright morning, just as he’d hesitated all week. He’d held her hand and kissed her, and together they’d looked out at the vastness before them and felt the sun on their skin. But the ring stayed in his pocket.

Now, hours later, the radio plays softly as if in another room, muffled by the sound of the engine and the fluid rush of air through the open windows. He’s seen photographs of the West his whole life, but he’s never been out here. It’s bigger up close, and he’s taken by the panorama before him. The sky is pale indigo, still retaining a delicate shade of steel gray as stars become faintly visible, luminescent silver specks scattered haphazardly overhead. The sun, a dense wafer of brick-red flame, rests hesitantly on the shoulder of a sandstone mesa far ahead. As if reluctant to surrender to the night, it hangs on for one last, fleeting moment, bestowing a parting pastel kiss on the desert. The asphalt, cooling now and shimmering as it bleeds the heat of day, stretches ahead. A vast landscape of rock and cactus extends for miles, flat and featureless except for the rocky mesas and sandstone giants eroded by centuries. The narrow towers and broad, slanting plateaus burn with a rusty hue in the fading twilight.

The back of the Jeep is strewn with stuff: stuff for traveling and stuff to eat, a big cooler full of the powder-mix diet drink that Colleen insisted on taking with them. There’s a cardboard box full of her neatly folded “city clothes,” (labeled so in her precise, narrow script), which sits safely above the chaos of their week and a half on the road together. Their backpacks, smudged with the clay and dirt of a three-day hike in Wyoming, lie in a crumpled pile toward the hatchback. He could have proposed on that mountain pass, or on the shore of that glacial lake with snowcapped peaks clawing at the sky behind him. There have been so many postcard-perfect spots.

This should be easy out here, he thinks. Out here on the big frontier, it seems the very land is infused with pioneer spirit. The clear, unpolluted air is alive with some tangible sense of newness. It’s in the crisp scent of timber and the melody of cool water flowing over ancient, solid rock. Out here, he’s far from the Massachusetts State Police substation, the cacophony of lines three through nine metering out the chaotic pace of daily life. He’s far from the Lieutenant and the Captain and their secretary, Janine, who sits at her immense desk like an Amazon warrior, Goddess of the Narcotics Intelligence Database, in a red power-dress, tracking inter-agency memos and switching phone lines with cool, mechanical efficiency. He’s far from the constant weight of the gun holster around his torso, the piece digging into his side as he sits hunched over a cluttered desk, rolling his eyes, his ears ringing from the incessant, ignorant babble on the other end of the line. One hand is filing through a Rolodex; the other motions frantically to Janine that he needs a goddamn pen as she flashes him an intense look of utter disdain.

But now he is driving west with Colleen, and the pencil line of Arizona 77 stretches far ahead on a vast plain of twilight desert. The air feels cool and warm at the same time somehow, like lukewarm tap water, and smells vaguely of mesquite and asphalt. Colleen sleeps in the passenger seat to his right. A few stray hairs quiver in the breeze. Her pale blue blouse—the color of the big southwestern sky on a summer afternoon—is wrinkled from hiking in the sun, and her collar is upturned crazily by the seatbelt across her chest. A purple windbreaker, crumpled against the armrest, makes a pillow. Her mouth is open just that little bit like it always is when she sleeps. Under her closed lids, those amber eyes are resting now, perhaps dilated and gently shifting with the rhythm of a peaceful dream.

Highway markers disappear in the rearview mirror as the sun gives up, and the desert night descends. The Dipper appears, low in the sky for this time of year, it seems. He remembers that Friday night in Colleen’s college dorm outside of Boston two years ago, her last year in college and his first on the force. He lay on the floor with her head on his chest, listening to Coldplay and staring out the window at the Dipper. He awoke at eight the next morning and she was gone already, out running, pushing the cause, making it happen, making the grade, mile after mile. He remembers standing under her showerhead, his forehead resting against the mint-green tile wall with his eyes closed, knowing in that morning-after sort of way that maybe he’d never really catch her, hard as he tried. She’d always somehow be a step ahead. But he didn’t care. He smiled anyway, got dressed, and met her for coffee and bagels at the café on the corner.

Now they are just fifty miles from the little town outside Tucson where her twin brother Sean lives. He’s a brand new Customs Inspector and was assigned here earlier this year, and they haven’t had a chance to see him since he moved from Boston in April. It’s been a full day’s drive from their last stop in Santa Fe. Breakfast in a little diner with an old woman who made them corn tortillas by hand, and then an hour after lunch hiking in the Petrified Forests, something to get off the road for a while. Colleen took his picture next to an antique gas-pump at ALL STAR LARRY’S TEXACO AND FRESH-CUT FRIES, grinning with that little smirk she makes when she knows he feels foolish. She insisted that he wear the souvenir T-shirt, red with white printing encircling a large Texaco star on the back: ALL STAR LARRY’S – SANTA FE, N.M. She had laughed, and like always, the musical notes reminded him of the wind chimes his grandmother keeps hanging outside her back door. He’s still wearing the ridiculous T-shirt, and it sticks to his back after the hours in the Jeep.

He taps the brake pedal, slowing down momentarily as a desert fox scampers across the road. Its narrow eyes glow for an instant before it disappears into the roadside brush. The jolt causes her to stir, and she shifts her weight, leaning across the armrest now, her head coming to rest on his shoulder as she mumbles something in her half-sleep. Her hair retains the faintest hint of the lilac shampoo from the motel in Santa Fe, mixed with the healthy, energetic smell of skin that’s been in the sun, tanned and toned to an exuberant bronze. He absently touches her cheek with his fingers, brushing hair out of her eyes. Her skin is smooth like the wax of a new candle against the roughness of his hands. His are tanned and callused from sanding and staining her tiny back deck. She’d sat for hours, reading some forgettable romance novel, sipping lemonade and watching him from behind ridiculous yellow sunglasses. She’d worn a loose white blouse that looked so good against her tanned skin. She’d laughed at him, her love-slave, laboring for hours under the hot New England sun, the humidity making him sweat and swear, but the anger quickly faded to laughter whenever he saw the sunglasses. She still hasn’t forgiven him for spraying her with the garden hose. It was worth it, even though he had to re-finish the deck because the stain hadn’t dried.

He smiles now, wondering if the trucker that just passed by with a rumbling whoosh in the other direction has anyone to lean on his shoulder on this dark highway in the desert. Anyone to make him feel warm and luminescent even though the breeze is getting cooler as the heat rises into the canopy of black overhead. The truck’s taillights glow red, receding to tiny specks in the mirror as the night again becomes silent. But then, it’s not silence, is it? The engine rumbles on and the tires tread their way along the miles. But the sound is a drone, a monotone that blends with the night and becomes a sort of silence on its own.

Just a few miles to go.

*

Then there’s a late dinner at her brother’s place, a few drinks among the three of them, and some stories. Colleen fades fast and goes to bed reluctantly. She pleads with him to come with her but she’s happy that Will and her brother are bonding, maybe even having a “guy talk,” as she likes to call them.

After she goes inside, he has a few more beers with Sean and trades thoughts about the future, comparing notes about Sean’s life in Customs and his with the State Police. They chat about sports and women and politics and share some laughs about funny moments on the job. They talk about Colleen, and Sean tells Will about the time when Colleen knocked three of his teeth out with a Louisville Slugger. They were in second grade, fighting about who was going to pitch first in a neighborhood game of ball. And the story of when Sean had beaten up the boy that ditched Colleen outside his car after the junior prom because she wouldn’t do the things he wanted. He’d had every intention of using the same Louisville Slugger that night, but Colleen had wrestled it from his drunken grip. Probably good, he tells Will, or he wouldn’t be working for the government today.

They’re on the front porch. There’s no screen, and the bug-light buzzes steadily in the far corner, casting a yellowish glow over the whitewashed deck. The two of them sit on the steps, elbows resting on their knees and dangling the bottles of beer between their legs. The way guys sit. Will toys with the label on his bottle. Sean is taller, but more boyish, with short buzzed hair. It’s the same dirty blond as Colleen’s. After a long silence, Will decides it’s time to tell him his intentions. Probably about time, but it won’t come as any surprise. He’s been with Colleen for three years now steady, gone to the family stuff, gotten drunk with Sean before, even cried with him at their dad’s funeral. So Will turns and looks him in the eyes—eyes very much like hers—and tells him that he wants to marry his sister. That he has the ring in his pocket and it’s been there all day. Will tells him this, or maybe he asks him this, searching for the vaguest sign of disapproval, feeling in his gut that since her father died, Sean was the one he had to ask. Of course there is no disapproval. Only a smile, a nod, and a hug.

And now he realizes that this is why he’d hesitated all along. Of course he needed this approval, this affirmation of his rightness for her. Not from some antiquated notion of propriety or chivalry—no, she’d certainly scoff at that. This was about himself. About knowing he was good enough for her. He needed someone else—not just anyone, but her brother, the person closest to her—to say it to him. To make it true. To erase the doubt.

Upstairs, the white sheets are mother-of-pearl in the moonlight. Colleen is awake enough to know he’s there. He gets undressed, and he can’t help but chuckle again at the stupid red t-shirt crumpled on the floor. When she hears him, she sits up with a pillow in her lap. Her palms cup her face as she rests her chin in her hands. She smiles at him and whispers hello, whatcha-doin, how was your talk with Sean? He lies next to her, staring at a crack in the ceiling, his hands folded behind his neck, clutching the ring back there where she can’t see it. She traces a hand lightly on his chest. He tries to think of something eloquent to say but ends up just turning to face her, resting on his elbow and cupping her hands with his as he places the ring in her palm.

This time there isn’t any doubt, and it becomes clearer then than it ever was before that this is right. That he is right; they are right. She smiles, holding him close to her.

*

The wedding is the following spring at their church in Boston. The sun is radiant, and they take pictures in the park. Her skin remains tan even after the New England winter, and her dress sparkles. They dance after dinner, and Sean offers the toast, telling pleasant lies about them. He calls Will his brother. The honeymoon is in Barbados, and they stay on the coast. They ride horses on the beach. At one point they make love in the sand dunes at sunrise, and he tastes the salt of the ocean when he kisses her.

*

July. Will is back at his office. He holds the phone with his shoulder, head cocked to listen to the Lieutenant, both hands busy paging through a seizure manifest from last night’s drug bust outside of Worchester. Suddenly Janine comes striding in and looms over his desk, both arms straight and her wedding ring (my god, who would marry her, he wonders) tapping rhythmically on his desk. She is staring down at him, her eyebrows raised and her breasts straining against her black low-cut. Yes, she has a new look lately, gleaned from the pages of Vogue in the midst of her latest menopausal crisis. Will hangs up with the boss and meets her unblinking gaze, raising his own eyebrows to say, yes? You have a phone call, she says. Family. Personal. Something important. It’s your wife. Line four. She does an about face, leaving the room at double time, her heels clacking and the air crackling with the static energy of her latest perfume, aptly named INTENSITY FOR HER.

Colleen’s voice on the line is hollow. There was an incident in Nogales and Sean has been airlifted to the ICU in Phoenix. Bullet-wound to the thoracic spine, with internal fragmentary lacerations. Or something like that.

Janine manages to give Will a sympathetic look when he leaves the office, keys to an unmarked cruiser in hand and his face pale. He speeds home and picks up Colleen at the apartment. Her mother is waiting with her; they’ve packed already. He uses the dash lights to bust through airport traffic. The engine screams as he does ninety to catch the next flight. Colleen rides leaning forward, her palms cupping her face and her shoulders tensed. He parks in short-term without taking a ticket, flashing his badge to the parking attendant and fixing him with a silencing glare.

*

The funeral is hot. Bagpipes seem strange in Phoenix. Will is part of the honor guard, carrying the casket. He cries when they play Amazing Grace. He doesn’t usually cry at funerals. But this time a picture of Sean, with his arm around Colleen’s shoulders, stares out at him from a table by the altar, along with the young man’s service badge and the Arizona state flag.

Afterward, at the reception, Colleen sits with her hands folded across her chest, holding a glass of water and staring absently at a spot on the carpet. Her mom is nearby with some other officers in Sean’s unit. Will stands in the corner on the phone with Boston, telling Janine that yes, he does in fact need two more days, the cruiser is at the airport, and that the Captain will just have to deal with it. For once, her voice is soft as she tells him not to worry about it. Humanity in the face of turmoil, he thinks.

Later that night Will is on the porch with Colleen at Sean’s place, where they’d sat just under a year ago and talked. It’s a cool evening, and she leans on his shoulder and shivers. The bug light flips on automatically, but the buzzing is quieter than he remembers it. Maybe Sean had replaced the bulb.

She gazes out at the desert for a long time. I’ve been thinking, she says. Let’s have a baby. If it’s a boy we could name him Sean. Her voice is quiet, but full of expectation, and Will nods. She leads him upstairs and they undress. Afterward he holds her closely until midnight when she falls asleep. He lies unmoving next to her, watching a square of moonlight move slowly across the wall for what seems like hours.

---

Enjoy this story? Check out the full collection, Ten Stories.

Teenage guys want connection. They crave emotional intimacy. They want to be understood. They have plenty of questions. But so many lack the emotional fluency to articulate what's going on inside, and that presents challenges to those of us who parent, teach, coach, or mentor them through these turbulent years. The sheer tonnage of what goes unsaid in the course of a guy's adolescent years is, I figure, roughly equal to the mass of a neutron star.

After more than twenty years of teaching, coaching, and mentoring at all-male high schools, I've learned some things about what works and what doesn't when trying to talk to these fascinating kids about anything deep–when addressing matters of the heart, or navigating the big challenges of the age. My own three kids are not yet teenagers, so I have exactly zero experience parenting teens. That said, I've worked with thousands of guys over two decades, so I've picked up a thing or two that might helpful to fellow parents.

Here are ten tips worth considering. First, let me acknowledge that these are generalizations, and therefore not universal; however, in general, something becomes a generalization because it's generally true. Also, while I'm making these assertions about guys based on my professional experience, that doesn't mean some of what I'm saying isn't also relevant to girls. I just can't claim the experiential knowledge in the same way.

Okay. Here we go. If you want to develop meaningful connections with the adolescent guys you parent, coach, teach, or mentor...

Our culture has done a pretty darn good job portraying teen guys in a negative light. Our social media landscape and its clickbait dynamics falsely normalize what are actually sensational super-outliers. We have a skewed picture of listless, apathetic video-game addicts at best and violent, hyper-sexual, toxic predators at worst. This ignores the overwhelming majority of young men who are neither intrinsically lazy nor sociopathic.

So, before you even enter into conversation, remember that the person before you is an individual, and more likely than not, basically a good kid. It is possible to get burned here? Of course. Might a kid harbor nasty intentions quite the opposite of good will? Sure. But consider the alternative–the presumption of ill-will is not going to get you too far.

There's more to teen guys than libido, sports, and video games. My favorite metaphor for the interior life of boys and men is the Grand Canyon. It's deep, complex in its striation and form, and it runs below the surface of the surrounding land. From a distance, it's just a giant tear in the desert, but get in close and you discover the variety (and beauty) of the terrain. At the deepest parts run powerful waters–sometimes calm and sometimes raging–constantly re-shaping the canyon.

So try to enter conversation aware of that complexity–knowing that much of it is far below ground level, out of sight. Sometimes things are pretty simple: a kid just needs more sleep, more exercise, or a better diet. Sometimes a guy just needs to be part of something, like a team. Maybe a relationship is simply toxic. But usually, there's more to the story than meets the eye. Make that your default presumption, rather than assuming it's just a simple issue. You might be wrong, but at least you'll be compensating for society's tendency to assume men and boys aren't emotionally complex.

An old maxim goes, "as goes the mind, so goes the body." There's wisdom in that, but it works both ways. On the first day of school, I always tell the guys in my classes that while studying and effort are important, the true keys to success in school are sleep, diet, and exercise. In today's era of smartphone addiction, the negative impact of inadequate sleep on growing teenagers can't be overstated, and we know the cascading detrimental effects of sleep deprivation are far reaching.

Periodically ascertain whether the kid is eating well, and eating enough. The caloric needs during this age of growth are mind-blowing. A lot of boys move through their days running on empty carbs and sugary garbage, often dehydrated. A lot of boys are pretty athletic by nature, but a lot of them aren't. If you're working with a kid who isn't, encourage him to get into an exercise routine. It'll affect his mood, his fitness, and his self-image.

On this last note, don't underestimate the body image pressure under which young guys find themselves these days. Just as popular media has normalized unrealistic body expectations for women for as long as anyone can remember, it has now moved on to boys and men. Constant images of chiseled abs and impossibly cut physiques are prompting a remarkable uptick in male body image issues and corresponding problematic behaviors. The ubiquity of online porn is not helping young guys in this regard, either, for what should be obvious reasons. When you're working with teenage guys, it's helpful to bear in mind the pressure they feel to measure up to expectations, including unrealistic physical ones. It takes a toll on many.

There's a substantial body of research that has determined neurobiological differences between male and female brains, like this study from Stanford, or this very succinct explanation in Psychology Today. Of course, there are also loud voices that oppose this notion, but they seem driven far more by ideological agendas than by medical science. This debate aside, of course, if you've been on planet Earth for any length of time, perhaps you've noticed that men and women tend to be pretty different.

I learned, at a conference offered by the Gurian Institute, that one implication of these differences is that considerably fewer parts of the male brain are firing during verbal conversation when contrasted with the female brain; however, the male brain fires quite differently when simultaneously engaged in both conversation and a gross motor-sensory movement task, such as throwing a ball.

While I don't have the expertise to understand the neuroscience, I do know that conversations with teen guys are almost always better when movement is involved, rather than, say, facing each other across a desk.* Try talking while throwing a ball back and forth, walking, hiking, working on something, or even just driving. I've also found that in most cases, occasional eye contact is better than constant eye contact. That's easier if you're digging a hole together, sitting side by side in a car, paddling a canoe, or walking side-by-side.

*As a side note, I invite you to consider the implications of this upon how we typically run our schools, and then consider the well-documented academic performance gap between boys and girls at every level of education, from kindergarten to university. It's really something to think about.

A little bit of vulnerability goes a long way. If you offer a young guy a little insight into your own life and struggles in the form of a personal story, he will usually reciprocate. By offering a relevant anecdote from your own experience, you do two things: First, you offer him something to relate to; second, you show that you're invested enough to trust him with the story. It would be great if trust weren't so transactional, but the reality is that it has to be earned.

Obviously, you have to be careful with this one. It's important to maintain appropriate boundaries, and not every topic is appropriate in every context. You can't walk back the things you share, so the key is discretion. Keeping details out of the conversation is probably the best approach. Consider sharing only what the kid needs to know to make what you're sharing honest, relevant, and effective. The key is to show (and share) your humanity. It's entirely possible to do that while also keeping the focus where it belongs–on him, not on you.

Teenage guys are funny. Laugh with them. Understand that humor is an important vehicle for emotional expression between and among guys. Paradoxically, light-hearted insults can actually be meaningful gestures of affection and even affirmation. Crazy as it may seem, issuing in goofy jokes and underhanded remarks is a sign of trust among guys, just as wrestling and rough-housing is an affirmation of, and sign of respect for, each other's strength.

There are forces in our culture conspiring to make us fear humor under the threat of arrest by the PC police. To hear some of the crazier corporate training programs focused on workplace culture, you'd think it's wrong even to smile. This is not good for relationships in general, and especially not with teenagers. If you're an adult with any wisdom at all, you can–and should–help keep humor appropriate and in bounds, for sure. Model what's appropriate. But it's important to laugh together. If you spend any time in a functional high school, you'll hear laughter everywhere, for example. And no, it's not all because of offensive or inappropriate jokes. It's because people find joy in each other and express it in contextually-appropriate humor. This might seem like minefield territory, but it really isn't that hard to get right.

I learned early in my teaching career that asking a room full of teenage boys to talk about how they "feel" about what a character has done in a novel is likely to fall flat. On the other hand, finding a different approach can change everything. If instead of asking what guys feel, you ask them what they'd do if they were in the novel's situation, you're likely going to get a much more meaningful conversation going.

It isn't that the feelings aren't there–you just have to excavate them with some machinery of movement and action. Images and symbols can work well, too. I've often challenged kids to develop appropriate symbols or crests, for example, for the characters in the novels we read. This kind of artistic expression excavates intellectual and emotional gold.

If you're in a one-on-one conversation about a kid's problematic relationship with a friend, for example, it's probably better to hone in on talking about what's happening, first–the feelings will emerge from there. Of course, there are some definite connections here to #4 above.

Carol Hooven, a well known Harvard evolutionary biologist, is among the most recent expert voices articulating the immense and consequential power of testosterone. Given the surge in this most powerful human hormone in adolescent males–at levels ten to twenty times that in females–it is impossible to ignore in any intelligent consideration of teenage male behavior. Anyone raising or working with teenage boys should take the time to read up on and understand just how remarkably important a factor this is. To neglect doing so would be akin to remaining ignorant as to how much female pubertal development affects female adolescence.

While testosterone often gets a bad rap for its biological association with aggression and sex drive, the newest research indicates that it plays a far more consequential role in everyday male life than previously understood–perhaps especially during adolescence, when it is at peak production. According to experts like Hooven, testosterone is an intrinsic part of male development, not only in terms of what we traditionally associate it with (physical transformation and sexual drive), but also in terms of neural function and associated behavioral patterns.

Teenage guys tend to respond to a call to action, especially if it involves helping someone out. Say what you will about cliches or stereotypes about "traditional masculinity," but in my experience there is an innate desire among most boys and young men to engage their energies in useful projects, particularly those of a charitable or philanthropic nature.

I've found that guys like to build things–and this isn't limited to the obvious examples like treehouses or models. Guys like to build ideas, organizations, structures, and systems. A side benefit of this is that shared endeavors like this can help guys bond–and that's a mightily important thing, especially for the ones who lack those deep and meaningful friendships so vital to health development. Enlisting a kid in a shared project can be a very effective way to connect.

Related to this is the value of meaningful responsibilities and burdens. If you task a guy or a group of guys with a job that matters–and you make clear the possibility of failure, and that the potential failure really does hinge on their efforts–they will respond. Meaningful responsibilities make them stronger.

Teen guys have a highly-tuned, built-in b.s. detector. They want to be challenged. It helps them get stronger. When they need to be challenged, push back on them to an appropriate degree. They won't break. Though there are obviously exceptions, by and large they aren't fragile, and well-intentioned adults treating them like they are fragile are not doing them any favors.

Conversely, they can tell when they're being lavished with unearned praise–or even just patronized–and they don't like it. Quality over quantity. Spare them any patronizing compliments that carry even a faint whiff of hollowness or contrivance, and stick to authentic praise for things that really matter, so they know you really mean it.

An important note here: Don't limit your praise just to accomplishments, by the way. Kids need to be encouraged with affirmations not so much of what they've accomplished (accomplishments convey their own rewards), but more so of who they are. It's a really healthy thing to affirm good qualities that you've seen in a young guy. He might not show it, but if you are forthright in your delivery, and you keep it on point, an affirmation like this can strike a deep chord and he'll take it to heart.

Teenage guys have a dearth of cultural encouragement. Our culture skews toward highlighting what's wrong with them when they screw up–but tends to ignore the goodness of who they are, for the most part, every day. People who can take a balanced approach to them can help them understand why they matter, and hold them to account while encouraging them along the way.

Working with teenagers is no easy task. It's my hope that some of these perspectives–even just one or two of them–can help you as they've helped me in my work with this fascinating but challenging demographic.

#adolescence #teenagers #masculinity #emotion #teaching #education #parenting #authentic_masculinity #healthy_masculinity #mentoring #coaching #Gurian #Haidt #Hooven #testosterone #sleep_deprivation

Social media has its uses. For example, you’re probably reading this because it found its way to you via an online network. Staying in touch with distant friends is easier than it would be without it. But I’m pretty sure that when it comes to kids, the usefulness and benefits are overshadowed by the liabilities.

As a veteran high school teacher, I have watched the internet transform adolescence over the past twenty years. Among the adult population, social media is a mixed bag at best. But for kids, including teens? Despite (perhaps) some limited benefits, on net it’s bad news. Here are eight reasons why.

1: It’s relentlessly addictive. It’s bottomless and exploits the dopamine feedback cycle. It creates a craving to click. If you use it, you know it. I’ve felt that draw on a visceral level in my forties. I can imagine the pull it must have on a teenager still developing a pre-frontal cortex.

2: It’s a time vortex. Because it’s so addictive, it’s easy to spend hours per day lost in the endless feeds and rabbit holes. Numerous studies reveal that it isn’t unusual at all for teenagers spend, cumulatively, several hours per day absorbed in social media—instead of with family, friends, or other pursuits.

3: It harms sleep. Anyone who works with kids knows how vital adequate sleep is, and also how many factors already interfere with it. Piling on with melatonin-suppressing screen exposure is compounding the sleep deficiency problem.

4: It erodes independent thinking. It is algorithmically designed to exploit cognitive heuristics, bolstering tribalism amidst echo chambers. As a teacher dedicated to inquiry and diversity of thought, the general tendency it engenders toward reductive ideologies scares me.

5: It amplifies uninformed opinions. Much—maybe most—of what kids are consuming is produced not by older, wiser adults, but by their peers or a few sophomoric influencers. Much of it is impulsive, emotionally charged, and lacks context. If you hadn’t heard, kids are pretty darn impressionable.

6: It’s a gateway to porn. This wreaks havoc on adolescent psychosexual development, creating process addiction while desensitizing kids to depraved stuff. Teenage guys with smartphones have little chance of avoiding a porn habit that warps sexuality. While teenage girls consume far less porn, they bear the burdens of a hypersexualized culture with twisted expectations.

7: It contributes to insecurity and anxiety. Plenty of research indicates that social media has detrimental effects on kids’ sense of self-worth. But you don’t need a PhD to know that a constant stream of curated imagery against which to compare oneself will compound a teen’s insecurities.

8: It jeopardizes future opportunities. Kids have lost the innocence of being able to make mistakes in private. Teenagers say and do impulsive things. Social media publishes and shares the ugly underbelly of adolescence. As kids navigate these tricky years, they do so with the added anxiety of knowing their worst moments might be digitally preserved in perpetuity. Screen shots are forever.

I was fortunate to be raised in a pre-internet era, and maybe you were too. My formative years were not shaped by an onslaught of ill-informed, ideologically-driven, subjective content sprung forth for all to see from the more impulsive moments of emotional fervor or careless impulse. I wasn’t exposed to a limitless supply of explicit content. I was never in danger of publishing a careless or impulsive thought or image for all the world to see and judge me by. When I did something stupid or risky, I wasn’t surrounded with cameras connected to live feeds available to the entire world.

Today’s kids are not so fortunate. We can’t shelter kids forever, but we can up to a point—and parents owe it to our kids to hold the line. When the time is right to allow them to venture into the online landscape, we have to help them understand it.

Inevitably, they'll ask us why we use it if they shouldn't. This is, frankly, as simple as making some straightforward analogies. There are many things limited by age, such as voting and driving, to name just a couple. We shouldn't be fear mongers or alarmists, but we should share the abundant data about the effects of social media with them. We can help them understand why social media won’t add much to their life, but will probably take at least something away. We should appeal to their intelligence and their desire to grow in healthy ways by arming them with knowledge and understanding. If we don’t, they’ll resent us for it later—and with good reason.

#social_media, #technology, #maturity, #teaching, #parenting, #addiction, #pornography, #heuristics

Sounds like the beginning of a country song. But I mean it for real. I have a patent foramen ovale (PFO), a small opening between two chambers of the heart that never closed the way it was supposed to after birth. About one in four people have this but most never know it. I found out about it, I suppose, in the typical way one finds out these things in his fifth decade.

I had to take myself to the ER a little over a month ago following a chest-pain scare. It was a wake-up call, but all turned out well. It was some combination of stress, dehydration, and vertigo. My cardiac picture is pretty good, maybe even a little better than typical for a guy my age with a congenital tendency for high cholesterol and hypertension. I still need to lose weight, but my arteries aren't clogged with plaque.

The interesting twist in this story is that the clinical followup revealed the PFO, which is directly connected to another stark reminder of mortality that happened twenty years ago. After a decade of scuba diving, with 500 dives under my belt and certification as a rescue diver and "divemaster" (an assistant instructor), I landed myself in a hyperbaric chamber for treatment of decompression sickness (DCS), more commonly known as "the bends."

During the few days I spent in the Cayman Islands, I did engage in a pretty aggressive diving schedule. It was a lot of diving--three dives per day, once four. I pushed the nitrogen-loading algorithm limits on my diving computer, but I didn't exceed them. I probably screwed up more by failing to avoid strenuous exercise--I went for long bike rides most days, which wasn't a good idea. More is known now about how heavy exertion compounds the likelihood of DCS.

In any case, I ended up airlifted to the main island, and I spent somewhere close to twenty-four hours across two sessions in a hyperbaric chamber undergoing oxygen therapy and hyperbaric treatment to flush the microscopic nitrogen bubbles out of my bloodstream. It was embarrassing, infuriating, humiliating, and more than anything else, humbling. Diving had been a huge part of my life up to that point, and that essentially put a hard stop on it. I was twenty-two.

I was advised to avoid diving or at least limit it to once per day. I was also advised to get checked for a PFO, because it makes one exponentially more likely to experience DCS. Being young and stubborn, I never did get checked. I did, however, mostly hang up the diving gear except for an occasional plunge. The sad part of this is that most of my family either stopped diving or greatly dialed it back, too. It had been a big part of all of our lives, with a lot of great memories.

So, when I learned last month that I do, in fact, have a PFO, I felt things. On one hand, when my cardiologist (who is also a diver) told me no more diving, ever, I was bothered. It was something I'd hoped to be able to experience with my wife and kids as they got older. But more than anything, I felt some vindication. For years, I'd rehashed my diving history and my profiles from that week, and assumed that I'd just pushed it a little too far, even though, on paper, I hadn't.

This is one more life event that has made it clear that we don't live forever. We're relatively fragile, imperfect machines, and there are limits. Some people have far more limitations, and their lives are painfully short. I am fortunate in this regard, for which I am grateful beyond measure. Nonetheless, I am even more grateful for the reminder of the preciousness of life. It's one of the reasons I try to embrace each day as a gift, full of possibility. Life is short.

#scuba #mortality #cardiac #lifeisshort

My agent, Sheryl Shade, found me--not the other way around. Our connection didn't emerge from my persistent series of carefully crafted query letters, sent out mostly in a steady trickle, though punctuated by occasional bursts of ten or twelve simultaneous tries over the course of more than twenty years. My agent found me in the same place where I found my writing voice: on the rugged coast of the North Sea in the beautiful university town of St. Andrews, Scotland.

Twenty-two years ago, when I was nineteen, I finished the first draft of a roughly-constructed first novel called The Second Brother. It was a heartfelt effort with an amateur result in keeping with the age of its author. Nonetheless, the core of the story was good, and I began what would become a two-decades-plus, four-books-long quest to secure a literary agent.

A little ways further along in that quest, I had the good fortune to spend an academic year living in Saint Andrews pursuing a Master's degree in writing and literature. Saint Andrews is best known globally as the birthplace of golf. I don't golf, but I do drink whiskey, and I enjoyed drinking it best in the pubs that line the cobbled alleys of this medieval town.

It was in Saint Andrews, in the company of a small cohort of fellow students and aspiring authors from at least four continents, that I first achieved the focus and discipline necessary to discover my authentic voice as a writer. That couldn't have happened earlier. I was too young and too inexperienced; moreover, I was just too damned busy teaching and living in a boarding school. But there, I did the hard work that led to my first "real" novel, Boarding Pass. A dozen years later, I took what I'd learned at St. Andrews and started my second novel, which would become Wilderness Therapy.

Every young author aspires to get an agent, and every young author quickly learns just how elusive a goal it is. Most learn this through the frustrations of continual failure to find one. A lucky few learn it even as they bask in their success. For me, like most people who end up fortunate enough to land an agent, it happened only after hundreds of queries. That's how many I'd sent out for Wilderness Therapy before I gave up the ghost and published it independently.

Ironically, it was during a virtual "Meet the Author" event hosted by St. Andrews that my agent found me. Shortly after viewing that event (you can watch it here), she reached out to me. The rest is history, and now I have an agent. It's serendipity at its best, and this son of St. Andrews should not have been surprised that the beautiful place that embraced him for a year had at least one more gift to bestow.

As for what's next, she's got a manuscript of mine for a new book, and she's shopping it around. This is a new stage of my writing journey, and I'm so grateful to have a companion, guide, advocate, and partner who knows the industry landscape as well as she does. My hope for mainstream publishing success is real, and that hope is built upon the gratitude I have to everyone who has read my stuff and believed in my work.

#Scotland #StAndrews #Agent #publishing #writing #author

There's a big difference between messy work and sloppy work. Tricky thing is, to an outside observer, they don't look that different.

Quality work, even when conducted carefully, is often messy, especially in the early stages. The exploratory phase requires moving stuff around. Trial-and-error. Errors are messy. You have to be okay with a mess, within reason, to figure out what works best. Some things have to be left to chance--but intentionally, not arbitrarily. Mid-process, it might seem like everything is in chaos, even when it isn't.

Sloppy work is careless. Sloppy work generates true chaos, because it leaves stuff to chance arbitrarily rather than with intentionality. Sloppy work happens when someone doesn't care enough to be intentional about the mess. It spills over a reasonable boundary. It's a truly chaotic mess that's been left to its own devices.

Another distinction: those in a messy but careful process know about the mess they're making. They can find things in the mess, because they know what made the mess. They have a mental map of it. If you ask someone in a sloppy process, they won't be able to tell you where things are--at least not consistently.

Yet another distinction is that the mess involved in quality work doesn't last that long. It gets cleaned up when the process is complete, or at least when the process reaches a certain iteration. Sloppy processes remain so, because, well, sloppiness is self-perpetuating.

Don't be afraid of competent people making a mess while they're doing quality work. You can tell them from the sloppy ones. If they're driven, encouraged, and energized amidst the mess, it's not sloppy. If they're despondent, distracted, or unmotivated, there's a good chance the mess they're making is a sloppy one.

And if you can't tell right away, just wait. It'll become clear soon enough.

I really enjoyed this recent interview with Jennifer L.W. Fink of Building Boys and Janet Allison of Boys Alive! for their "On Boys" podcast. Our conversation was focused on my novel, Wilderness Therapy, but covers a lot of terrain that I imagine will be of interest to anyone who has had (or has now) a connection to raising and working with boys or young men on either a personal or professional level. Here's a link if you'd like to give it a listen:

https://www.on-boys-podcast.com/wilderness-therapy-w-author-paul-cumbo/