Two Years On

Does anyone know how to create line spaces and paragraphs with this new version of blogspot? Sorry I haven’t worked that out yet. It is a month short of two years since I chose retirement, just before my fiftieth birthday. In case anyone else out there is pondering such a move, here is how it has worked for me so far. It is hard to separate out retirement from the other big changes in my life that happened more or less at the same time. My daughter left home, I separated, I lived alone for a time, and now I have a new family. These events changed me a lot. But so did retiring, and I think I can at least try to separate out the different factors. First, I can dispel the lingering fears I had before taking the decision. I have never been bored. I still have as many unfulfilled dreams as ever. And I do not miss the routine of work, or the intelligent company of work colleagues. When people left Shell, this was always their most common gripe, that they miss the intelligence of daily discussion. Well, not me. Why have I not suffered these things? I can only guess that I get enjoyment from my own company, and can take pleasure from some simple things that take time, like walking, reading, even sleeping. I have also had no trouble finding a variety of things to fill my day, many involving good company. I have actually worked, for money. When I tell people this, their most common reaction is that it is good for me. I don’t know about that. So far, I have really enjoyed my work, especially as it has only been for a few days per month. I don’t think I need it as much as people seem to think I do. Somehow there would be other activities to replace it. Perhaps what people are saying when they say it is good for me is that if they were in the same situation they think they would need some work for some reason. I did not really have a plan for retirement. I wrote down a few goals, and actually I have gone some way to achieving many of them. Of course I had hobbies, some ideas, and some dreams. But I think one of the keys to making this work has been to be ready to embrace what life brings along. I have ended up doing some things I never would have guessed, perhaps because my attitudes and preferences have evolved, and perhaps because such things would have never crossed my radar before. I fully expect these pleasant surprises to keep on coming. One nice side effect of these diversions is that I see no risk of completing my dream list anytime soon. There are still as many vague ideas out there as there were two years ago. That leaves a nice sense of being able to look forward to the future. I don’t know if I do things slower than before. My sense is that I am about as efficient as I ever was. True, I can spin out a task, make something last a couple of days when it could be done in one, but that was always the case – work tasks were the same, expanding to fill all the time available to complete them. What is certainly true is that I am usually less tired. I looked around me at choir practice the other night and looked at faces. Almost all looked tired, some very tired indeed. I think that used to be me as well. Now, we all want to make the most of our fleeting existence on the planet, but I am not sure if being really tired is a good goal. Surely, it is harder to appreciate experiences when we are tired? People still think I look older than my years, but I sense not as much as before, and the pitied look offered to a tired soul is something I rarely experience nowadays. Actually, I can hardly imagine how I coped before. I did most of the things I do now, plus many additional hours every week of this other thing called work. It is no wonder I was often tired, and didn’t do things as well or gain as much from experiences. Perhaps the biggest change has been in my mood and my behaviour to others. I can still be brusque, aggressive and thoughtless. But I sense that it happens less often now. Maybe my other transitions in life have contributed, but I think retirement has too. My brain is no longer running at hundred miles per hour and on its unpleasant autopilot. I can listen, reflect, and react better than before, see things from the perspective of another. I have a key piece of evidence, which is that relapses in behaviour tend to happen while I am in Romania working or soon after I get home. I think many factors are at work here. Partly it is the high speed multi-tasking that leads to hasty interactions. Partly it is the office culture of competition and selfishness invading my private space. Whatever it is, I don’t like it. And perhaps what I now observe occasionally is how I used to be most of the time? Might that be you too? It is no wonder so many of us use devices to keep us in balance. Meditation, physical things like massage, breathing exercises can all help. So can religion – I am convinced that while I was working the one hour per week sitting in Church reflecting was an important way to dampen aggression. I still use these devices, even though I suppose I need them less now. But whereas before they maybe took my personality from dangerous to somehow controlled, now I can often find deeper levels of serenity. Essentially, retirement has created more space for close relationships. With everyone, I can now take more time, including reflection time. With my family, this is even more true. But most of all the space created gives time for my relationship with myself (and with God, if you like). This time and space is a true gift. Yet looking at it this way may give a clue as to why retirement does not work for everybody, indeed why we tend to clutter our lives so much. This extra time is only a gift if we are comfortable in those relationships. If we are not comfortable, if there is lack of reconciliation or unresolved tension, the extra time will only shine a harsh light on the problem. True, the time gives opportunity to seek and find reconciliation, but this can be a painful process, especially if we are in denial and not ready to face it. So this may be the best advice I can give, if you are contemplating retirement or some other simplification of your life. Do it, time and space is a gift. But be ready for what that time and space will reveal. If possible, find true reconciliation in your closest relationships before making the change, or at least be ready for some pain. The closest relationship is with yourself. In your cluttered life, you may not even notice the tensions inside yourself and with others – that is even why the clutter is there. It is a shame that such a cathartic process is not something we tend to prepare for. It is only now, two years on, that I start to see how necessary it was for me, and I got through it more by accident than anything else. And who am I to say that I am through it now? So, dare to tidy away the clutter and let in the sunshine. If you wait until you are forced to, that will only get in the way of allowing the sunshine to help you. Just like this last weekend in Northern Europe, the first effect of a dose of sunshine after a long winter might be some painful burning. But, once that is out of the way, sunshine on the skin and the soul has a great and lasting healing effect.

Trying too hard

A nice piece in Intelligent Life (May-June) concludes that sometimes thinking is a bad idea. Ian Leslie suggests that our tendency to choke, or fail at critical times, is because we are trying too hard and lose our spontaneous performance as a result. I agree. The examples quoted are mainly sporting ones. Novak Djokovic in 2011 went through a period when he could not stop winning. And what was noticeable was that he seemed to play his best points under the highest pressure. Under severe pressure, most of us become stiff, cautious, and underperform. Look at almost any golf tournament. Birdies fly in for the first 63 holes, but the winner is the one who makes fewest errors over the last nine. I am no sportsman, but I suffer from this myself. In singing, it is weird that I sing the highest note of any piece consistently badly. I am not alone in this. It hardly matters if the note is really high or not. An F is no problem if the piece has G's and A's, but if the F is the summit, it starts to cause problems. The best way to avoid this is to somehow confuse my brain. Techniques for this include focusing on something other than singing, like walking around. If the top note passes without me actually registering it, I sing it OK. When I used to play bridge, I remember sometimes having the thought that I might win a particular tournament, usually about 80% of the way through if things were going well. This thought was always somehow almost fatal, and my performance declined instantly. The only way to win was never to let winning enter my head. Sports people recognise this phenomenon. One consequence is the rise of psychology in top sports. Professionals have their technical coaches, but if anything nowadays they value their psychological coaches more. These miracle workers are the ones that help their clients fail to notice that they are about to tackle their top F, so the moment passes just like all the other moments in the event with a regular, good, performance. One way to try to understand why this choking happens might come from a model I learned at work. The model is the origin of the famous rumsfeld speech about known unknowns, so ridiculed at the time. I learned it first in a sales context (trying to win clients) but its applications are wide. The model is a classic 4-box, with competence on one axis, and consciousness on the other. In any skill or challenge, we start in the unconsciously incompetent box. We are useless, but we don't really know it. Many of us think we can sing well, but it is not necessarily true. It is state of blissful ignorance, unless you have an exhibitionist streak or a poker habit. The theory goes that to develop, you have to first move into the consciously incompetent box. Only when you know you are flawed in something can you motivate yourself to change things. In sales, you have to make your client feel uncomfortable with their present supplier before you have a chance to convert them. Makes sense. From consciously incompetent, you are ready to learn. You get training, listen to others, work hard, practice. If you have talent and application, you slowly become consciously competent. You know that if you open your mouth wide (and many other things)on high notes, they will sound less forced. Slowly, you train yourself to do it. But this is not the end of the journey. Most skills are multi-dimensional, and the human mind can only focus on two or three of these dimensions at once. In a skill with say twenty facets, we have to master at least nineteen to the extent that usually they are performed without active thinking about it. This is unconscious competence. Nineteen factors are safe, you focus on the twentieth, and the result is good. Even better if twenty are safe. That way the result is so natural that performance can transcend regular boundaries, you can almost take yourself out of yourself and discover hidden facets 21, 22, and 23. Somehow, you can move from the technical to the inspired. Thinking about the choking experience and this model together leads me to my theory about why choking happens. As we approach the finish line, we want to make sure we get there. Somehow, we remember the factors from our training, and focus on some of them to make sure we don't go wrong. As soon as we do this, we move BACK to the conscious competence box, and become mere journeymen again. And we choke. I do it every time I sing a song. Even the very best sportsmen do it to a small extent every time they stand over a match point, a penalty kick or a winning putt. The winners are those who do it less. And Djokovic in 2011 seemed to be an example of defying human nature, and not doing it at all. Now let us extend the logic beyond technical skills like sports or arts. I think it might apply to almost everything that we do. How does a baby learn to walk? The same model applies. How do we prepare for exams? How do we drive cars? Handle a negotiation? The same model applies. Then there are human relationships. How do we become better bosses? Parents and children? Life partners? Lovers? Flirters? And what about our own psyche? How do we understand who we are, our wellness and feeling good inside ourselves? Ourselves and our Gods? Life and death? I had not previously given a lot of thought to the latter categories. But I suspect the model applies even more strongly simply because the necessary skills are so ill-defined. In each case, many (most?) of us blunder through life unconsciously incompetent. We might make it to consciously incompetent, and make some effort to become consciously competent. Even then, uncounscious competence is rare, and vanishes as soon as there is any pressure, when the skill really matters. So the lessons to us as individuals are clear. First, we should look about for the vast areas of our lives where we are unconsciously incompetent, and start on the road around the four boxes. This is all about humility. Then, once we have done our training - hard work, but mentally the easy bit - we must try to avoid choking. This is all about not thinking too hard. How many first dates have we ruined by trying too hard? How many family rows have only festered when we tried too hard to solve them? How many depressions are made worse by thinking too hard about them? Todays prayer. Oh God help us to be humble enough to see our many failings, diligent enough to address them, and serene enough to be at our best under pressure. Amen.