Josh Allred's Blog

In sports such as hockey, basketball, and football, the tendency is to think about moving forward. When you get better, side-to-side opens new doors. Elite athletes, however, know how to change pace and step back to go forward.

It’s counterintuitive to think this way. But it’s useful when navigating the field/court.

The culture has trained us to move forward constantly. Sometimes stepping back allows us to step forward. Because it is drilled into us to always move forward, it can feel like we are being left behind. This isn’t true. In fact, it’s just a lie we are telling ourselves when we feel uncomfortable with slowing down.

It seems that the more we have, the more we fear losing, which makes sense why the wealthiest 1% might find ways to hide their money from the government or bend the rules of ethics to get more. Not only does our narrative drive our decisions, but our fear too.

Grief is love with no path to go. We don’t know where to put the love anymore. Making it difficult to cope with the moment.

Being unprepared for the test because you didn’t study is an easy fix.

Feeling unprepared after preparing is performance anxiety.

Usually, it’s because there are no redos.

Climbing has a term for this, “the onsight.” It’s your first go, with no beta, and you have to climb it without falling, which isn’t bad if the climbing is below your grade. But as you progress to climb at your hardest, the onsight gets very difficult.

The point is, preparing for an onsight is a different skill versus getting to try again and again. And we don’t often practice to perform the first go, which in the end is a different skill set.

Life resembles way more like an onsight.

“I hope the bureaucracy of this organization changes things around here.”

Said no one. No one seems to like it, yet we surround ourselves with it. Why? I think (and I don’t think it’s the only reason) is that rules and processes insulate us to justify our jobs. So that when change comes, we don’t get fired. The interesting thing about the work we do is how much we can’t admit that our job is what David Graeber would call “bull shit.” If we really were honest with ourselves, how many productive hours per week do you actually do? The answer is probably more than zero but certainly less than 40. Even the open heart surgeon has to fill out paperwork that they find useless to feed the machine of bureaucracy.

Change doesn’t happen with systems. Systems enable behavior. They can enhance it. But in the end, its action. More accurately, the courage to take action that changes the way things are done.

Strings, however, keep us coming back. Precisely when we don’t want to. And that can be a good or bad thing. Depending on how you look at it.

Feelings can have so much energy, be so strong that they can make us feel isolated. And when we talk to other humans, we realize they feel those feelings too. It helps to acknowledge, “Other people feel this too” to open a path of understanding.

Lock-in isn’t just a problem with how we organize people. After all, we could sell computers with a more efficient way to manage the keys, but we just don’t for several reasons. Costs are the biggest for Apple and Microsoft. But it’s the emotional toll that users don’t want to learn a new way. It’s easier to follow “the standard” that has been set. But, over time, that cost rises. Not in inefficiency. But in locking ourselves into a path. The path becomes a trench. The trench becomes a hole that feels too big to escape. Of course, I’m not talking about keyboards. When we think about education, politics, economics, and the climate crisis, how powerful is the lock-in? It truly says something about humans when friction to change is present and how much time/energy/resources we have to spare.

“Every passing moment is a chance to turn it all around.”

It has stuck with me for nearly 20 years. And it is still true today as it was then.

Every piece of data suggests that kids learn through play. And yet, despite knowing all the evidence and facing an obesity crisis (as well as a mental health crisis), we continually attack physical education and time on the playground. It’s not that we don’t value these things; it’s that they are perceived as unproductive. Systems evolve over years, decades, and even centuries. Once the track we walk is set, it is hard to change. Bureaucracy builds to protect the status quo, not to change it.