Adjust Your Perspective: Know Who The Enemy Is

"The enemy is out there," I said, pointing out the window to the world beyond. "The enemy is all other competing companies in your industry that are vying for your customers. The enemy is not in here, inside the walls of this corporation. The departments within and the subsidiary companies that all fall under the same leadership structure -- you are all on the same team. You have to overcome the 'us versus them' mentality and work together, mutually supporting one another."

"...It's about the bigger, strategic mission

From Chapter 5: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Tactics for Reducing Stress and Solving Sticky Problems - A Grab Bag for Hard Times

• add more time or money: they say time is money. can you add one or the other to reduce pressure?
• visualize unknowns in detail to bring them into existence. don't worry if it feels arbitrary.
• adjust your long-term perspective: what are the chances that anything about this situation will matter to you at the end of your life?
• adjust your identity: the current situation and its outcome will not say anything important to you to the people that matter.
• focus on contribution rather than achievement: did you make a change for the better? good. was it enough? who can say.
• eliminate and prioritize: it may be that you have to aim to do less, but better.
• get help and work it out together: are you effective in using your team members and partner teams as assets toward the larger strategic vision?
• disentanglement/simplification: assess whether you are treating multiple problems/factors as single, unified, factors. Things that are complex when taken together may be much simpler when you understand that they are separate but related concepts.
• focus your decision making on action selection and then execute. if no action is available, switch tasks to something where there is action available and revisit the current subject later.
• talk. this is another form of giving form to the unknown. you were given this task by someone. ask this person questions until you understand the whats and the whys. ask people you trust about the things that concern you. you will convert unknowns into obstacles, which can be avoided or mitigated or incorporated into the solution.
• don't follow too closely and you won't have to rely on your reflexes and attention. this is an expansion on time and money. on the highway you can choose your following distance. follow too closely and you end up having to react quickly to the driver ahead. a poverty mindset often keeps us from giving large following distance. know that no matter how many cars lane change into the space ahead of you, you will get where you are going.

Parents: Be Aware... You May Be Keeping Up With The Jones's Kids

How much money are we willing to spend on our kids? How much time? How much effort? And how much sacrifice?

Raising your kids, and providing for them the best start you can is a sacred cow. Just try to question it out loud and you'd better be prepared for some judgment to be hurled your way.

Today's topic came up for me while reading the morning's blog posts in my RSS reader, which is an outdated way to subscribe to blogs.

RSS is antequated but democratic. Most important of all it is free of the crappy click-bait and post-modern one-liner meditation GIFs that abound on social media. Incidentally, it's the exact same medium I use for my podcast subscriptions, but podcast apps hide the RSS-ness of it all.

Keeping Up with The Jones's Kids

Back to the topic at hand... In an article (1) on the Mr. Money Moustache blog, I caught some insights that ring true. A section of it rails against the notion of a fancy education in which the author observes "a very common bias in US society":

...that spending an absolute sh**load of money on your children is a necessary and advantageous thing to do. You could sum up our generous but financially suicidal belief system in this quote from his story:

“I never wanted to keep up with the Joneses. But, like many Americans, I wanted my children to keep up with the Joneses’ children, because I knew how easily my girls could be marginalized in a society where nearly all the rewards go to a small, well-educated elite. (All right, I wanted them to be winners.)”

Parental FOMO

The article isn't primarily on this topic but it was the most interesting part. It sparked two very interesting insights for me:

1. parents have to fight a bias toward unlimited and undisciplined spending on a fancy education for their kids to try to get them into "an educational elite".
2. parents experience FOMO (fear of missing out) for their kids which drives them into a keeping up with the Jonses' kids behavior.

We're told nowadays to "check our privilege". (I hate this one, actually but it has been able to find cultural purchase for some very valid reasons). Jocko Willink and Leif Babin have an entire chapter in their book (3) about "checking your ego". These are things that blind you. They are sources of bias. That's why you need to find a way to escape their gravity.

We might have to add to this: "Check your FOMO". Parental or otherwise.

FOMO is subtle fear. It is sneaky and persistent. It keeps coming back around. And you will need conditioning to resist it.

"Discipline Equals Freedom"

I've been pondering these words a lot since I've been really enjoying the Jocko podcast (2). How can discipline mean freedom? Freedom from what?

Discipline frees you from being driven by emotion and limited by your biases.

Discipline means practicing checking ALL of your biases. (You don't want to work out this morning? Good! You're going to get after it anyway because we are doing this.)

Discipline frees YOUR MIND so that you can step back to assess a situation and make decisions from the better part of your nature.

References

1. Article: The Cheap Ticket Into the Elite Class - Mr Money Moustache
2. Jocko Podcast
3. Book: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

I'm A Lazy Reader, Don't Send Me Away

Never to do: Do not start blog articles with links of required reading to set context. Links in a blog article are provided for people who want to dig a bit deeper but should be totally optional reading.

To See People In Their Glory, Entrust Them with Important Tasks

If you are frustrated that people around you are irresponsible, you should try giving them responsibility for something important. Give it to them with the trust that they will see it through and full freedom to solve the problem. See what happens.

Maybe they will surprise you with an approach you hadn't considered. Be sure to leave room for yourself to be persuaded if their way will achieve the goal. It's important not to be prescriptive about specific solutions.

Assess any solution in terms of characteristics and requirements. Is it reliable? Is it succint? Is it easy or hard to deploy? Can we tell if everything is configured correctly?

By talking about requirements and characteristics, we can avoid prescribing specific solutions. This gives the person leading a task more creative control.

You're probably thinking that it's a good idea to define what these are before handing a task out. I agree.

One possible outcome is that the person will prove that they are not to be trusted with responsibility. I don't actually think this is very likely if they really have creative control. I find that when I actually take the time to talk to people, that they seem much more thoughtful than I would have guessed. I suppose that's a good reason to talk to people more often.

There are things that look like irresponsibility on the outside that are other things when you look under the hood. Maybe they are busy and have bitten off more than they can handle for a time. Maybe you have clarity on something because you have developed a way of thinking about it but you haven't shared this with anyone else. Be open to what you hear and don't always demand to understand why.

To see people in their glory, entrust people with things that are important. There will be things that are so important that you feel tempted to do it yourself rather than entrusting them to someone else. But if you ask another person to take up a task and help the other person to see that it is important, you may observe a level of engagement from them that you haven't seen in the past. It's possible that the people who seem irresponsible and apathetic are the ones who care the most but don't feel like they have something worth caring about to do.

Don't judge them for not having found the right place to apply themselves. Maybe that's your role on the team: to expose opportunities for people to lead.

This is an experiment. Think of it as a long term one.

The easiest way to feel impoverished and bored with life is to think that you have everything and everyone figured out. It doesn't take much to dispel yourself of this notion. You just need to let yourself start seeing again.

See people as they are and see them for their potentials too. And let them surprise you as they surprise themselves. You may find that the extent to which people have themselves figured out is less than you had guessed. And if you see that, it will be easier to think of the game you are playing as more similar to Golf than Tennis. It isn't one-on-one with a winner and a loser.

It's each person trying to do meaningful work just a bit better each time we do it. It's just us learning and growing and practicing... always.

Choose Ownership When The World Feels Grim

What happens when we own the bad things that happen rather than trying to understand who is to blame and who is right and wrong? When we own them, sometimes it will hurt. But when we own them, we also ask what is within our sphere of influence that we can change in order to reduce the chance of a bad thing happening.

We reach out to people to get ideas. We search within ourselves. And we start to experiment with different ways of getting things done that may be less fragile than what we do today.

Any situation where we accept blame and take responsibility is an opportunity and a privilege. These are THE BEST opportunities because we know one version of something that is possible and has happened, and it wasn't good.

We can devote our energy to improving our processes and systems against a real scenario. This is how progress is made. Making a difference in the world is nothing more than investing your emotional energy to think and act to make some thing, person, or system better.

What happens to our emotional experience and self esteem when we take ownership?

Ownership is facing the messy world and taking it on to impose order over one small bit of it. The act of taking ownership means transitioning from the states of apathy, victimhood, and blame toward thought and action. You will never be more fully yourself than when thinking and acting.

Ownership means that this time, whether it works or not, we are doing this. We are not helpless. We've got this. (How do these words make you feel?)

Take ownership enough times and you may come to realize something that has been true all along: We don't need to run to go get help. We are the help. We just have to show up.

With enough practice under our belt, we show up consistently. We show up sooner. We tactically deploy our emotional detachment so that we don't act blindly. This lets us take a step back and take in the broader view and make sure we are aren't missing some crucial data.

But we never detach 100%. We show up because we care.

Choose to Care and Choose Ownership

Choose ownership and lean into it and I promise you, the situation will feel less grim. When faced with darkness all around, you have chosen to be the light. And the morale boost your teammates get may help them to fight harder and run faster as well. And it will probably turn out that they are a light for you, to help you to keep your morale going.

When your actions are a positive impact on morale, you know you are making a difference. This is the meaningful work you've been looking for. You have become the sort of impact you have always wanted for everyone around you. Soak it up!

Be Yourself Fully! Unless...

"You can't always be yourself fully around people because sometimes you're an A-hole.". - Me, in conversation.

Do This: Order Siri to Launch Apps to Avoid Distraction

How often has this happened? You need to do something quick and important on your phone: Add something to a list... look something up.

And when you open your phone, you find a social media stream or an Inbox or something else that completely takes you "off mission".

Finally, after much smacking of the like-button, you must struggle heroically to remember what that tiny little task was that made you reach for your phone in the first place.

Smartphones are good devices because they are portable computers with full access to the internet. But they are also in the business of redirecting your attention to the unimportant. Once you know the nature of the game, you can start adjusting your strategy.

Do This: Order Siri or Okay-Google to launch apps so that at least we start in the right app.

This avoids the problem of having had something open when you last locked your device. And bonus... if you find that you are embarrased by how often you say out loud, "Launch (Facebook|Twitter)," you might find that the social pressure of your friends making fun of you is enough to make you put yourself in social-media rehab.

How's that for socially-engineered accountability?

An Article About Interview Dysfunction, The Myth of The Next Job, and Choosing Yourself

Interview Dysfunction

This morning I read interesting article about dysfunction in software developer interview practices via Pointer.io. I haven't actually been asked to do silly whiteboarding during interviews. But I have a friend who has definitely has had some bad experiences with this.

I have had experiences that have made me suspicious of any "famous" (household name) company. Though I am open to being surprised.

The article laments the lack of clear reasons for rejection. But the act of rejecting someone is one of those prototypical situations where being honest is difficult and rare. People struggle with honesty in rejection because it often conflicts directly with the confines of their self-conception. (I often refer to this as "identity issues").

If you can expect bad data even if you are given a reason for rejection, best to ignore it. Better to work on no data than bad data.

The Myth of the Next Job

If you've been working for a place for nearly a decade, a job change may be the right thing for you. But if not, it is worth taking a step back and considering whether a lateral move to a similar job at another outfit is actually going to fix anything for you.

It's not likely that the next job is the answer... whatever the question. It may not be the meaningful work you seek. It may not be your perfect opportunity for growth. And these may be available to you right now in ways that you are not seeing because you already have a story that these are not available where you are.

Choosing Yourself

Or it may be that the things you seek are not available in a job. It may be that instead of waiting to be chosen to do something, you have to choose yourself and just start doing it, no matter whether you get paid or not, because it's worth doing. And choosing yourself is a scary thing. But it may be the only way to get from here to meaningful work.

These are ideas cribbed directly from Seth Godin. If you want to light a fire under yourself check out his talk on Thinking Backwards.

References

Link: F* You, I Quit — Hiring Is Broken

Keep Your Gaming Mindset While You Work

There is a lot that occurs in online gaming that carries over to the way we go about leading our teams and developing strategy to achieve key goals.

This morning I read an article, Halo can make you a Better Teammate at Work
Or: A Maturity Model for Halo Teams , in which Teague Hopkins describes a ladder of evolution for the maturity of online gaming teams. The lowest levels consist of the random group in which individual players are likely to be more focused on individual stats. The higher rungs move toward the focused group which has practiced and each member can anticipate moves, and reposition to support coordinated action, and can make concise calls and report on the situation using operational language.

The analogy isn't exact to most work environments, which feel a lot more like an open-ended game than Halo. Halo provides clear objectives and time-limits which are well understood by the time yiu have played a fee rounds. Whereas in the work environment, objectives and timeframes have to be decided and updated periodically based on an assessment of what is urgent and important.

The inexactness of the analogy represents an opportunity to talk about ways a team or a business can approach breaking down their long goals into clear objectives with time-limits. Being able to envision the goal will bring the target closer to the mind of the team members pursuing the goal, which makes it more likely that the team will be able to achieve its objective.

Never to do: Shaming Friends for Voting or Not Voting

Below is a reply to a friend on the Bookface to a post in which she called upon people who choose not to vote in the primaries of the major parties to make themselves known so that they can be publicly ridiculed and barred from "complaining" ever about the state of politics.

Basically, this is the use of shame in order to influence.

Now, I suspect that shame is a tool in the toolbag to rely on when you are a parent and your child has crossed some kind of grave moral boundary. But it is not a tool to be used against people in a voluntary relationship with you based on liking you. Your credit only goes so far and the un-friend button is easier than you might think to use.

So... on the list of things never to do: Never use shame to influence your friends on matters that are not life-and-death. And no, the election is not life and death and the primary elections are even less so.

Below is the longest reply I have written on the Bookface in about a year's time. It took every ounce of patience I have to stay on topic. And now I have used it all up.

Friends: I will expect the best of you. I will allow for slip-ups, but with enough provocation I will unfriend you for consistently demonstrating that you can be a judgmental prick. Your credit is not unlimited. Choose wisely how you try to influence people.

I may have to take another Face-battical soon.

---

Franco's Reply

I am weighing carefully what you are saying.

Unless I misunderstand... You're saying that in order for our actions to matter (to influence the quality of candidates) we ought to vote in the primaries of parties to which we do not belong and do not identify.

Premise 1: Only the Democratic and Republican primaries matter.

Another premise I believe I see is that who wins the primary matters. If you only wanted us to influence the candidates, then voting for a candidate in an independent party might have as much effect. Hard to say. Regardess...

Premise 2: This not only about selecting the sort of candidates available in the major parties but who the winner is.

Based on these premises, voting in a primary is insufficient. We should also be financially supporting candidates we would like to see make it to primary day with as much support as possible.

I'm not going to ask you how much money you have donated to any political candidates. But it's a question you can consider for yourself if I am correct about the premises I have laid out above.

I am not willing to financially support any candidate. Period. I think this is true of just about everyone who has replied here.

And I think that it means that none of us have done 100% to act toward those premises. (Not that I even agree with them - I consider meddling in parties that I am not a part of a sort of tactical short-term nuclear option)

We all get to decide how important it is to us. And we decide what in the way of resources and effort we commit in accordance with our assessment. And I will thank you very much to accept me and and the rest of us the way we are for what we are, which is what I generally expect of you.

I will imagine that your strongly worded version was just a verbal tantrum of some sort based on your frustration with the quality of people available to elect. I wholeheartedly agree.

<3

Don't Focus on Doing It Right, Focus on Learning and Practice

If you're stuck worrying about being right all the time, If you need to be seen delivering a superb performance every single time, you can't practice, you can't experiment, and you can't learn.

Learning requires being open to frustration and failure.

I was playing Ukulele at the weekly Sunday gathering with my brothers and sisters and their kids and my niece, Emma, was asked by her dad to break out the guitar. I asked her to show me what she had learned at her guitar lesson this week.

She played the melody to Jingle Bells in C. I could make out the melody, but she was losing her rhythm to find her notes here and there. She would pause to look to see if she was fretting the wrong fret, or fretting the wrong string, or plucking the wrong string.

Victor Wooten, a genius on the bass guitar, is often quoted saying that one should never lose the groove to find a note. I believe this is true no matter what instrument you are playing. Put another way, if we play our bad notes boldly...

Bad notes are nearly indistinguishable from Jazz if you can keep the Groove!

I could see what she was struggling with so I suggested a few exercises for her to try to get used to the feel of the instrument under her fingers so that she wouldn't have to stop to look at the fingerboard and the soundhole.

• One exercise was picking without fretting.
• A second was to try not to pull the pick so far away from the string after picking.
• The last was keeping a finger over each of the first three frets.

My suggestions, which seemed pretty innocent to me, sent my poor little niece into a meltdown spiral. She kept missing notes and she would play a few notes, get frustrated, and cry. Nevermind that we adults know that you should expect to be slow, clumsy, and miss notes until you have practiced.

At some point in her crying, she expressed that she couldn't play the right notes. She was pretty frustrated couldn't hear me when I said it's okay to miss notes. I also told her it was okay to put away the guitar if she wanted. That no one was forcing her to practice right this moment.

She didn't stop, but I kind of wish she had. I'm pretty sure the only thing she got practice at was being a martyr. That's not going to serve her well.

I wonder if my suggestion of practice also made her feel like I wanted her to play the right notes too. Whether I directly contributed or not, I think she has gotten used to being judged on being right rather than practicing hard and being comitted and trusting that she will get better.

I'm pretty darn certain that even as adults, we flail sometimes in a similar way. Heck, as adults, we outsmart the system all the time by hiding.

One way to hide is to never try anything new. New is difficult. New is frustrating. New we can't be perfect at immediately. Sound familiar?

If we want to stretch ourselves, we have to be willing to embrace our incompetence. We have to be willing to do it wrong. We cannot put a premium either on being right all the time or doing it right every time.

Please learn that thing you've always wanted to learn. And please don't hide by not trying things or not putting them out for the world to see.

Fix The Stories You Tell Yourself

The negative stories are infiltrating your emotions and undercutting your attitude. The stories are "going to work" on you over time.

If you have a story about how you are "the only one who gets it", don't be surprised if every problem or setback seems to support the story. Every setback will make you angry and frustrated and closer to giving up at how incompetent the team is and how far we are from "the goal".

Our brains are really good at picking a story and seeking out any kind of supporting evidence and filtering out the things that might challenge your story.

Just look at your own behavior on social media. Social media is our confirmation bias in a place that it thrives for lack of predators. And the analogy is complete: our confirmation bias, when uncontrolled, just consumes and poops all over the place, much like the Canada Goose.

How about a different story?

You are a busy and productive worker. So are your teammates. And while we are busy, our marvelous brains are shortcutting things for us to "remove the cruft". This is why we are fast.

Now... assume you have noticed that there might be a different way to do some XXX better. You could ask why we aren't doing it and why we always seem to choose inferior ways to do it. But that's your old story talking... which doesn't put you in good state to influence people to adopt a new way. The old story might even allow your emotions to overpower you.

Old stories can be replaced.

Here's an alternate: If you have recognized an opportunity to do some XXX differently, you can be a contribution to the team by bringing it up.

I don't know how it strikes you, but to me it changes the entire tone to one of opportunity and apprecation: This is how we get to make a difference with one another.

Here is my favorite story: We have this capacity to act as tiny little nudges for each other toward order from chaos... from ugly to beauty... from the worst within us to the best within us. And we are better together.

The Minimum Bar for Difficult Conversation

The minimum bar I keep for whether I am willing to have a difficult conversation with someone is that I have a willing partner that is interested in trying to:

• listen
• assume good intent
• understand a perspective other than his/her own
• recognize the attempt at these same things in my effort

Their delivery doesn't have to be perfect to be worthy of attempting conversation.

If a person can't demonstrate these things, it's not worth trying to talk it out. They're not ready. Move along.

It's possible their anger will subside over time: anger has a short half life. But it's also possible they are playing an identity-threatening story of injustice on a loop because they are taking themselves more than a bit too seriously. Be patient and don't feed the troll.

If you find you don't feel this person is worthy of patience, all the better. You are now free to stop trying to have any kind of talk. These situations tend to resolve themselves over time without your intervention.

Is it Incorrect to Say You Are Humbled by Honor?

In Episode 10 of Jocko Podcast, Jocko tells us how some people write to him to say that his podcast is the only podcast they listen to that their kids can listen to as well and he touches on an interesting distiction I want to take on.

Jocko says it's humbling to hear this and notes that some people have reached out to him on twitter to say that it's not the right word to use. But based on the rest of his description, I think it is.

Jocko says that it's an honor for him to think about people sitting down with their kids to listen to this audio program that he is producing. And he's not sure that he feels he deserves it but here's what he doesn't say out loud but what he does: He respects that honor, and he recognizes * a responsibility to live up to a sacred trust*.

If that's not humbling, I don't know what is.

---

I just signed up to become a monthly supporter of the Jocko Podcast. If you listen too and enjoy it and have the means to support it, I encourage you to do so as well.

Jocko: I appreciate your voice so very much.

Rendering Judgment Upon Your Peers

During the angriest stand-up meeting I have ever attended yesterday, Me and another teammate were criticized for not provided needed information. The tone of the criticism was in the nature of an attack.

Our verbal assailant said he asked for information from us and never got it. He had made an inquiry asking for versions and saying he didn't have context for what was in the latest releases of a couple of packages. We replied indicating he was to use the latest ones. They're packages of seed data... you just want the latest.

He said with far too much emphasis, "No Franco you don't understand the context." I thought I understood the context pretty well, I explained. We thought he needed to know what version numbers to use and replied to say which ones. But he wanted details on their contents and, so, wasn't satisfied with our answer and didn't reply to say so.

So who is to blame? Are we expected to be mind readers?

Apparently, so. To hear him speak, you would believe it was my responsibility to recognize his context. Those of you who believe leadership requires listening and empathy might note that requiring someone else to accept your context as the only primary and valid context qualifies as neither listening nor empathy.

I was told I was "wrong" in very blunt terms. He said the relevant context was that he is busy and doesn't have time to reply to everything. That the deployment was just one of many things he had to do today. He finished with admonishing tone to drive home the fact that I have been corrected: THAT is the context.

Okay... his context was that it was taking longer than he wanted. It wasn't that he needed data or clarification. And our context was wrong and didn't matter.

Incidentally, "wrong" was a word that was tossed around carelessly during this meeting.

The Story

And I think I see the narrative unfolding before me:

Here he is... martyr for the team. Giving up his entire day of productivity so that he can do a deploy, which he does not relish doing.

Not for his own sake but for the sake of the team.

This is something we should all be working to support. It feels like there isn't enough support. He resents having to ask for support at all.

Everything should all be solved and working already. There shouldn't be surprises.

So when he barks at us, during this meeting he is justified because it is for the sake of the team.

That's a story. It's one story. And there are other possible stories, but this is the one that he seems to have been acting upon. He can be a paragon of objective rationality, but on the basis of some story, here he was lashing out at his own team members.

Rendering Judgment

As it happens, I was writing up a feedback request for a promotion considering for him just before the meeting. After the meeting ended, I wiped out it's contents and merely noted that I decline to comment.

My assessment of him had shifted too much toward the negative far too suddenly for me to give an objective one. Even now I feel very unobjective. This situation has been really challenging for me to detach from.

I said nothing... I would have to laugh in my own face if I wrote down all of his virtues in this moment. And I would feel unjust if I only said negative things, which are the only things I can think about when I consider him.

If I take a step back, here's what I notice. His actions and attitude yesterday were toxic. They were not in the spirit of cooperation with our team. There were in the spirit of resentful and entitled sacrifice: taking one for the team. In the process he attacked nearly everyone. And this ranks very highly in terms of important data for rendering judgment on a person.

Our team doesn't need sacrifices. We don't need ego-driven entitlement. We need calm and collected evolution toward supportability that we can only achieve together.

So what am I to say when asked if this person has demonstrated the qualities to move him into a position of greater authority and more leadership? He has a lot of work to do to achieve detachment so that he can act from the better part of his nature even when the situation is frustrating and difficult. That part exists and is beautiful and I'm sad to see it set was set aside yesterday for the crap performance that I actually witnessed.

Ukulele Tab: I'll Never Fall In Love Again by Burt Bachrach: F Major

I transcribed chords for I'll Never Fall in Love Again by Burt Bachrach this weekend and transposed it to F, which is the most vocal-friendly key on the Uke for me. As it happens, the recording that Elvis Costello made for Austin Powers 2 is also in the key of F so I am now able to sing along with Elvis.

Amazon.com: I'll Never Fall In Love Again: Burt Bacharach & Elvis Costello: MP3 Downloads

Chords

To avoid explicit notation of time, I use a convention of 8 beats per line. The grouped sections are [4 beats] each.

Vamp: intro and after chorus

F         Bb       # this should be FMa7 and BbMa7 but triads will do

Verse and Chorus

F         Dm 
Bb        
Am7       D7       # can sub Am for Am7 if the fingering is hard
Bb       [Bb C7]
Bb7       F
[Bb C7]  [F Bb] 
-> [vamp]

Bridge

[Gm7 C7]  F 
[Gm7 C7]  F
 Am
 G        C7       # use [C7: Bb-E-G-C] instead of open C7

Lyrics

What do you get when you fall in love?
A guy with a pin to burst your bubble
That's what you get for all your trouble
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again

What do you get when you kiss a girl?
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, she'll never phone ya
I'll never fall in love again... Oh
I'll never fall in love again?

[bridge 1]
Don't tell me what it's all about
'cause I've been there and I'm glad I'm out
Out of those chains, those chains that bind you
That is why I'm here to remind you

What do you get when you give your heart?
You get it all broken up and battered
That's what you get, a heart that's shattered
I'll never fall in love again... Oh
I'll never fall in love again

[bridge 2: solo]
...
...
Out of those chains, those chains that bind you
That is why I'm here to remind you

What do you get when you fall in love?
You only get lies and pain and sorrow
So far at least until tomorrow
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again 

[outro]
I'll never fall in love again 

Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card

I have decided to read Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card in spite of the huge variance in reviews. I can see how it would be trying for people who are reading impatiently.

I'm glad I chose to read it after I finished reading the sample bit from Kindle. At 28%, about 5 chapters into the book, I find myself still enjoying Card's strange mix of cultural curiosity and his philosophy-as-battle-of-wits discussions between his thoughtful characters.