Welcome to February!
A few quick updates:
The Ratlinks short story KEYMAN is now in partnership with Yeffy Besos and team, meaning you can find it exclusively on Kindle Vella. A new chapter should be published shortly.
How is your path to mastery? Stay with it! Remember on average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact.
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD
If you haven’t seen the Home Alone franchise in a few years, the movies are worth a rewatch. Trust me. I have watched part of some almost daily with my obsessed four-year-old son.
Did you know John Candy was only paid $414 for his cameo or that Succession’s Keiran Culkin, Macaulay Culkin’s little brother plays Kevin’s little brother Fuller, who isn’t allowed Pepsi after 8 pm?
Home Alone 2 like most sequels is not as good as the original, but it sure has its moments. Kevin again gets separated from his family and ends up in NYC solo. He then proceeds to live his best life, heading to The Plaza Hotel where guests of “ding dang dong” stay. Kevin obviously runs into future President Donald Trump in the lobby because as Newton’s 4th law states: there is always a Trump tie-in.
Kevin is escorted to his own suite on the Hoover floor, named for the president, not the vacuum guy, by none other than Duece Bigalow Male Gigalo and proceeds to order $925 worth of room service, mostly ice cream sundaes. I like to stop the film there and reflect on my glory days as a young man lost in New York City. Of course you can keep the tape going and watch as Kevin runs into the Wet Bandits, who have broken out of jail and rebranded as the Sticky Bandits.
There are actually six Home Alone movies if you count the most recent straight to Disney+ release HOME SWEET HOME ALONE, that isn’t half bad for numero seis in a franchise. Written by SNL’s Mikey Day, starring Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney as the burglars with Pete Holmes playing an unhinged uncle. It also features some delightful meta Home Alone jokes with Kevin’s older brother Buzz, now a cop investigating a kid left home alone.
No matter how many times I watch any of these films I am always led back to the same question:
WHO IS YOUR DADDY AND WHAT DOES HE DO?
What do you do? Seriously. What do you really do?
Do you have one of the most popular jobs in America?
Physical Therapist
Engineering
Nurse Practitioner
Public School Teacher
Pediatric Physician
Do you have one of the most common jobs?
Cashier
Food preparation worker
Janitor
Bartender / Server
Retail sales associate
Do you have one of the most in-demand careers?
Home health aide
Physical therapy aide
Nursing assistant
Construction worker
Truck driver
Web developer
Operations research analyst
Financial advisor
Does what you do define you? It doesn’t have to and it might be better if it doesn’t
Does what you do fulfill you? If not why do you do it?
Do you have your dream job? Do you do what you wanted to do when you grew up?
If you don’t like your job, why are you doing it? Would you throw in the towel and quit?
An old man is hit by a car. As he lies in the road, dazed and bleeding, a woman rushes over, takes off her jacket, folds it, and puts it under his head.
“Are you comfortable?” she asks.
“Meh. I make a living.”
WHERE HAVE ALL THE COWBOYS GONE?
In January 2022 the unemployment rate dropped to a pandemic low of 3.9% and wages rose. Yet, America's employers added just 199,000 jobs — the lowest monthly increase since December 2020 and only about half the total that economists had envisioned.
A big reason why hiring has slowed is simply that businesses still can’t find as many workers as they need. The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job was little changed at 5.7 million in December. That means there were 1.5 available jobs for each unemployed person, the most on record dating back two decades.1
COVID?
Is COVID-19 responsible for all the vacancies?
Not really.
America has lost almost 900,000 people to COVID. An oustandingly large and sad figure. Sometimes large numbers can be hard to grasp so for perspective 900,000 people is more people than live in America’s 15th largest city - Indianapolis, Indiana which has a population of 887,642 people per the 2020 census.
The COVID-19 virus is far more lethal for older Americans than for working-age Americans. If we use a very conservative estimate assuming all of the COVID-19 victims were under 75 years of age and active members of the workforce then COVID-19 deaths would have accounted for 15% of the 5.7 million people who are no longer in the workforce. In actuality, the number of working-age people no longer in the workforce due to COVID-19 is closer to 6%.
CRYPTO?
How many workers have called in rich?
A lot of diamond-handed investors are sitting on some large paper gains but it’s highly unlikely there are enough workers who became profitable meme stock traders to truly tilt the labor force.
THE GREAT RESIGNATION
It appears the answer is simple: millions of people are just quitting their jobs.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of November 2021, the number of quits increased 370,000 over the month to 4.5 million, the highest level ever recorded since these data were first produced in December 2000.2
It may surprise you to learn that wanting to earn more money was not the main driver of the record turnover.
Toxic culture is the biggest factor pushing employees out the door during the Great Resignation, according to an analysis published in the MIT Sloan Management Review. Culture is 10 times more important than compensation.
Pressure has been building in developed countries for decades. Incomes have stagnated, job security has become precarious, and the costs of housing and education have soared, leaving fewer young people able to build a financially stable life.
The pandemic appears to have brought these concerns to a head. Two-thirds of millennials who left their jobs in 2021 cited mental health reasons, according to a Mind Share Partners survey, and the proportion for Gen Z was even higher, at 81%.
Tellingly, some industries are seeing higher rates of quitting than others – leisure and hospitality, retail, and healthcare being among the most affected. These are generally low-paying industries where there are now more job openings than workers – a gap has been widening. Why not quit your $9 an hour job at the diner if the restaurant next door is paying $10?
WORKING HARD OR HARDLY WORKING?
How does one increase productivity effectively?
Define your end goal
How do you want to be known? Few, if any, will ever ask you this question. But it’s the only question that matters. Because that is the only thing in life that you can shape.
Live your best work-life
Regardless of how you begin your career, it is important to realize that your life will not necessarily move in a straight line. You have to recognize that the world is an unpredictable place. Sometimes even gifted people such as yourselves will get knocked back on their heels. It is inevitable that you will confront many difficulties and hardships during your life. When you face setbacks, you have to dig down and move yourself forward. The resilience you exhibit in the face of adversity—rather than the adversity itself—will be what defines you as a person.3
Push in the same direction
Grit at work is not about putting your head down and bulldozing through successive walls of resistance. Smart grit involves not only persevering but also taking into account the perspective of people you’re trying to influence and devising tactics that will win them over.4
Willing and able
Show up to every meeting 100 percent prepared.
Craft an opinion and deliver it with conviction (and data).
Stay open to others’ ideas, not just your own.
Let the best argument win, even if it isn’t yours (and often it isn’t).
Feel free to stand up and shout, but never make the argument personal.
Always listen—really listen—to minority views.
Never pursue consensus for its own sake.
Do less, then obsess
The power of elimination usually affects performance more than any other practice. Use Warren Buffet’s two-list strategy for help.
Write down 25 goals
Circle the top 5 goals
Anything not circled gets moved to an Avoid-At-All-Cost list.
Eliminate ruthlessly. Force yourself to focus. Complete a task or kill it.
The most dangerous distractions are the ones you love, but that don't love you back.5
If you love what you do you never work a day in your life
Morton Hansen’s Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better
James Clear on Buffett’s Focus