On Halftime: Moving From Success to Significance

by Nick Charney

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If you've read any of my recent and fleeting posts here, you will know that professionally I'm doing quite well. Everything is humming along better than it ever has. What you are less likely to know is that personally, I've hit a bit of a rough patch. Nothing too close to home, my immediate family is great, everyone is happy and healthy. However just beyond my immediate family circle lies my difficult relationship with my father, and a host of surreal circumstances and recent experiences that most find hard to believe.

I'll withhold the exact details but it was in the middle of these extraordinary experiences that I met Claude -- a chocolatier -- in an airport bar, waylaid after a work trip to Whitehorse and Banff, and after completing a difficult and unplanned stop in Saskatoon. Claude sat down next to me and made a joke about wanting to order breakfast for dinner and I encouraged him to go for it. Next thing you know we got to talking about life, parenting, family, and what brought each of us to Saskatoon. Whether or not he knew it at the time our conversation was precisely what I needed in that moment and the selfless tenderness he showed me when I needed it most was almost overwhelming.

Its one of those conversation that simply sticks with you.

Over the course of our conversation he recommended a book written by Bob Buford entitled Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance I made a mental note of the title, gave Claude a business card, paid for his breakfast as a gesture of good faith, and thanked him deeply for his kindness.

At its core the book is about the midpoint in your career (i.e. halftime) and the transition people make from the first half of their career where they focus on finding success to the second half where they focus on finding significance. Now, while the book is dated and decidedly Christian (and I am neither), it does however provide a useful frame of reference and focus attention on what I would consider a natural pivot point for most career professionals.

Upon reading and reflecting on the book, I would assert that I am very much coming into my own halftime, and discovering the nature of the substance thatI want the second half of my career to be about. Its more of a process of discovery rather than a cleanly delineated break. The book uses the metaphor of overlapping waves, which I think is apt. Buford reduces the search for second half substance to a seemingly simple question: 'what's in your box?'. What's that all encompassing thing that will guide all of your activities in the second half of your career / life. For Buford it was religion and he dedicated the second half of his life to his.

I'm leaning towards, 'For Queen, Country, and a smashing good time' but I'm still in discovery mode. That said, I'm learning a lot about myself through the process. For example, I've learned that while there was merit in building an experience base by 'following the work' there also comes a time where much more can be gained by transitioning to a more actively managed my career trajectory, that one can credibly ask for specific opportunities, and that there is an inalienable value to bringing not only enthusiasm and a different way of thinking to a given problem, but also the body of knowledge and experience (gained by 'following the work') that makes them invaluable.

I'm learning that what motivates me is evolving and changing, but also that I still enjoy sitting down, thinking through a problem set, and taking the time to write those thoughts down and share them with others.

Simple Thoughts On Policy Complexity

by Nick Charney

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Yes, the world is complex.

Pursuing a given public policy objective (i.e. an outcome) brings that complexity into view; and bringing that view into focus, by gathering information and weighing evidence and opinion, means drawing boundaries around the issue(s) in imperfect ways.

This imprecision has real world consequences. Draw the boundaries too wide and it can produce paralysis by analysis, draw them too narrow and you can end up with governance by gut feeling. Neither of which are ideal, and both can have profoundly negative consequences.

Complexity is really about spillover from one policy domain to another. Determining a logical order or hierarchy isn't always possible because none of the issues can be isolated from those that are adjacent. This complexity is further complicated by the fact that spillover is both omni-present and omni-directional and in a constant state of flux.

This leads me to conclude that the crux of the challenge facing policy makers is calibration; it's about knowing who and what to include and, where where to draw the lines, understanding the inherent consequences and trade-offs, and being willing to accept them.

When trying to solve for especially pernicious problems this becomes exponentially harder because the conventional wisdom is that their solutions lie in the innovation of the adjacent possible (i.e. somewhere in the messy spillover). The same conventional wisdom argues that you ought to spend 95% of your time defining the problem and 5% solving it. That means not only are you actively pursuing work in the messier parts of the problem set you are also spending the bulk of you time calibrating and re-calibrating within it as the landscape continues to shift around you.

I guess its not so so simple after all.

Actively cultivating a patient appreciation for the richness of experience

by Nick Charney

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As I mentioned previously, my interests have shifted (See: On Professional Maturation). In sum, I have been thinking about life differently than I have in the past. If I had to describe the feeling, I would say it was something akin to a patient appreciation for the richness of experience.

I can’t pinpoint the source of the feeling but it’s starting to permeate through every facet of my life. The best way to describe it is to borrow an explanation from Angela Duckworth, who wrote a book entitled Grit about perseverance, which I currently reading. I did however catch her on Freakonomics Podcast over the summer, and her explanation – the one I want to pull from – struck me.

She spoke about the need for novelty in one’s life; how it is natural to seek out new experiences but acting on that need too often can have negative consequences. Pursuing novel work for example, through a series of lateral moves comes at the cost of depth in a particular field and produces generalists.

The trick, according to Duckworth is being able to satisfy your need for novelty by pursuing the nuance in your field. The best way to do this is to look at everything in your known universe and break it down into its smallest component parts, pick one, and focus on maximizing your understanding, appreciation, or performance of or within that particular subset. This approach simultaneously satisfies your need for novelty but also increases your mastery of your given domain.

I find Duckworth’s logic compelling and I think it applies more broadly. Not only to my work but also in my personal interactions with others and in how I use the internet. I’ve committed mentally to working in my current field for the foreseeable future, I’m pursuing more meaningful relationships with others, and I’m far less interested in what's popular online. In so doing, what I’m finding is that not only do I have a patient appreciation for the richness of experience, but that I enjoy actively cultivating it.