Where your interests lie.

What is it that really motivates you? Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that really gets your attention? What are you passionate about? What one thing in your life could you absolutely not give up?

If you're like me, you aren't sure either. You're sitting there, reading this, with sort of a blank look on your face. I suspect the truth of the matter is that very few of us really know the answer to the question.

Further, we tend to resent those around us who do know the answer.

We have all different names for those people don't we? Most of them end in "holic" Somebody who is really passionate about whatever it is that they do for a living, is a workaholic. You get the idea. The oddball part about the fact is that most of the time, when you are some sort of a holic, you put that particular prefix ahead of everything else in your life. Why? Because it is the thing in your life that makes everything ok, gives you personal value, builds your ego, etc.

But at the core of the behavior is motivation.

I believe that there are only a few personality types. All of our motivators bend to our ego, but do so in different fashions. My makeshift list of motivators is as follows. If my list is good, you should be able to pretty much categorize most of the people you know, with the exception that I also suspect most people share two of these categories in one fashion or another, as if they are a combination of the two types. The stuff I'm about to run through is my best recollection, or maybe interpretation, of some things that we went through at a seminar i attended a while back, just that you don't think that it is my own original idea completely. I have extrapolated it some however.

1. There are people who are motivated by being in control. These folks find the greatest satisfaction in being the expert, the boss, the answer man, and so on. The ones in this group will never admit fault. They will generally be pretty authoritarian, in other words, they tell you how it should be done, not ask you. Their best days are when they get to be "in charge" of all of their surroundings. These people are usually very financially savvy, but don't like eBay auctions, because the final price is not something they can negotiate, only something they can say yes or no to. They are very self-actualized, and believe that their way is right no matter what.

2. There are some folks who are set off by pleasing others. These guys get their kicks by helping people, or by praise from others. These are the people who own things not because they like them but because others do. These people tend to be peer driven. They do whatever they can to earn the admiration of others. The best day for this person is when the boss told them they did a nice job, the lady at the bank liked their car, and the old guy at the store said thank you for opening the door for him.

3. Some of the people I have met are motivated by comfort. This group is maybe the coolest one in my humble opinion. This is the guy you know who will find the number one easiest, least time consuming, lowest energy way to accomplish something possible. These people don't want to do anything more than they have to. They might even look lazy. They never seem to work very hard, yet they seem to get more done than the rest does. They don't want to put themselves out there in the public eye, because the idea of other people judging them is not comfortable. They will tend to be quiet and reserved. You will never know what they are thinking, because they don't want your feedback.

4. Still yet, there are the perfectionists. These people are never satisfied. They will exhaust you with details. Their motivation is supplied by the idea that anything can be improved. They can do a better job with the Christmas lights, the dinner, the music choice, on and on and on and on. These guys have the best day when they have spent it practicing whatever craft to the point that they don't believe it can be done to any higher standard, and then finding a way to do so.

5. One more group of folks out their I would call the defined. These people are the ones who love to have set rules and ways of doing things. They will seem almost obsessive compulsive. If the dollar bills in the till are supposed to point to the west, don't point them to the east or else. If the steps in some process go a b c d e f , don't try to get the d in front of the b. This is the way it is done and there are no exceptions. There will be a place for everything, and everything will be in its place.

6. Finally, I believe that there is a group out there that I would call the encyclopedias. This is the guy who knows every brewers game score and stat for the last 34 years. Or can tell you which fishing lure will work in what depth of water, according to the pH and the length of the small-mouth bass you are trying to catch. or the guy who knows both. These folks get off on specific details about everything that they encounter. History teachers, for example, who can tell you all those goofy tidbits about some battle. Or maybe they can tell you the year, artist and albums sold for any song in the jukebox. Possibly an engineer who can sort out the tensile strength of an I-beam based on its material makeup and dimensions. These folks study, and memorize, and recite. It might be one small genre, or many. These folks will dot every i and cross every t every time, and be able to tell you every detail. Accountant-types are great encyclopedias.

But back to the holic's. Take a look around you, pick out a few people. find out what their vices are. Then look at these motivators and see if you understand them better. It really gets to be fun.

My boss ( we'll call him "the man" here) is a work"aholic" I don't think that he spends a lot of waking hours thinking about much other than the company that he runs. To put things in perspective, he should not be too concerned for the company itself from a financially stable perspective, either for his own finances or the business. ( he is a multi-millionaire at this point I am sure) He isn't a workaholic because the place cant run without him or because he needs the money.

The Man is a workaholic because it is what motivates him. He is in my estimation, a Control-Pleaser. He loves to be in charge of every situation. He loves to be right. He loves to know what to do. He loves to "get the job done" control.

But at the same time, He is also motivated by taking care of his employees ( i suspect that in his mind he provides a living for all of our families by employing us, but we'll get to that thought of earning a living some other time) He is motivated by meeting his customers, seeing the happy looks on their faces at a purchase. I think his favorite thing to do is pass out the profit sharing checks each year, because he feels as though he has made his dedicated people's lives a little better, and rightly so.

So he is a control-pleaser.

The thing, the point of interest if you will, is that each person who makes this classification will undoubtedly find value in the motivators that most reflect themselves, and at the same time will try not to classify themselves with "those people" who do not match up to their own interests.

For instance, I believe that I am a Pleaser-Encyclopedia. I love to do favors for people. I love to help folks in need, I get a lot of satisfaction from spending time with my family, and being daddy to my kids. This is the pleaser side. But I also want to know everything about everything. I have yet to find a craft that I don't want to master. I have not found a book that I don't feel like reading. I watch everything I can find to learn from, spanning the history channel to nitro circus. I not only want to know how to build the motorcycle from scratch, but how to wheelie it as well. encyclopedia.

In my self-evaluation, I don't want to be a control. And I definitely don't want to be a defined. When I look at those two definitions, I see things that grate on me. I see things that although I may admire, I find no interest in emulating whatsoever. I don't want to be one of those particular "holics."

So in closing, Try and sort yourself into this, what kind of holic are you? What gets you out of bed in the morning, what are you passionate about? You might be surprised how hard it is to define.

Learning more every day....
Greg

Friends

I spent today with my friends.

I am fortunate to have as many friends as i do. There are very few people who can say that they could rally eight or ten people who would show up at a moments notice to help out if they had to.

I am one of the fortunate few.

But here is why. Regardless of the fact that I have wayyyyyyyyy too many things going on in my own life, in my own garage, and in my own home to have any spare time; I spent the better part of today, and last week saturday, and the sunday before that, elbow deep in someone else's project.

Today it was "Foose's" firebird.

Foose in my best friend, or one of them, i'm lucky to have to define that. He is a body man by trade, and I think, would like to run hot rod shop rather than a body shop. In any case, today I changed the springs in his project car. He wanted it lower.

I learned a little about fooses life today.

Bear in mind. Foose makes his living working on cars for other people. He cant afford to do it for free, and he does have a family to support. So he works like 60 hours a week to keep things running.

But today, a couple guys he knows brought in a race car. Racing in our area is not a high budget operation.. If you want to race, you basically go get a junkyard car, make it run, and weld in a roll cage. But it has to look nice. This is the part where foose gets involved.

Since he is a local businessman, I would imagine that foose gets a lot of sponsorship requests. I have no idea how many he actually takes up, but I don't think its a whole big bunch. I think you probably have to be a pretty good guy to get him to sponsor a race car. Because in our part of the world we take things in trade.

If foose sponsors your race car, guess who's going to paint it. good guess.

If you've ever painted a car, even a low buck race car, You're starting to get the drift of where i'm going with this tonight. It's a ROYAL pain in the ass. Especially a race car. Nothing is prepped properly, nothing is sanded well enough, and foose is a perfectionist.

SO, in between working on my own project on his car today, I watched him do his damnedest to make this old rusty, dented, and not prepped well enough car look good.

I was amazed how well it turned out. Which speaks volumes for foose.

The nuts and bolts of tonight's thought is thus. Good friends, and good people, are hard to come by... If you find one, make sure that you do all you can to take care of them any way possible. They will do the same for you.

Till next time,
Greg

Motivation and social status.

What drives us to own the things that we do? The clothes that we wear? The house that we live in? The car we drive?

I met somebody today, a customer; I suspect that he owns one of my trucks based solely on the comments that he receives for owning it. This is not an original idea. At some point, all of us have encountered this sort of mentality. We have all purchased something, large or small, merely to impress somebody. It is part of being a social being.

Things, your "stuff" if you will, are generally acquired for a purpose. Sometimes its for the utility of the thing, sometimes for some level of pleasure that it grants.

Utility is a fairly easy one to define. The thing has a purpose. A screwdriver is for turning screws. A fork is for eating. A lawn mower is for, yup, you guessed it. This is the essence of utility.

Pleasure is a whole different thing altogether. It is the idea which greys the line between a thing being a utility need and a pleasure center. I would much rather mow the lawn with a riding mower, or go fishing in a power boat than row. I would much rather drive a nice sport utility with leather and a cd player than a rusted out car. There is a certain amount of pleasure in each of those things.

But to the point that I started out to make; It seems as though one of the greatest pleasure sources that any of our stuff provides is the implied social status that we gain by owning that stuff. It is, I think, one of the largest motivators that our society values. How do I stack up against my neighbor, my friend, even people that I dont know?

I'm by no means passing judgement on this thought process. I do it as much as anybody.

That said, I walked outside to the barn last night and looked around at my stuff. The question that I found myself asking was "Do I own this for pure utility?" Turns out, I have very little stuff that fall into that category. Most of my things are some mix of utility and pleasure.

The next thing that I tried to do was to categorize. This was harder. At what point does a thing become something that is completely owned for pleasure? I decided to categorize things based on proximity to either end of the scale. At one end of the scale is pure utility, the other end holds purely pleasure. Oddly enough, the nature of the pleasure derived from stuff has its own spectrum all together, making this a chart rather than a line.

SO I drew the graph. The vertical axis ran from self-actualized pleasure up to socially actualized. The horizontal axis ran from complete utility out to no utility. I made an x as i inventoried some of my stuff in the hopes of finding some sort of trend. Again, the exercise was to find out where my own mind stands with regard to my stuff.

Rating things along the utility/pleasure scale was relatively easy. the only question to answer was where the thing rated along the line. Is this thing more useful or more pleasurable?

Rating things on the other spectrum was more difficult. Once I decided that my lawn mower was mostly for utility purposes, it seemed that it was also purchased for my self. Except I found that I had to move it up the scale a bit from self-actualized, because I actually do enjoy the few times that someone I know comments that it is a nice mower.

And here's what I learned through this process.

Although I usually try to rationalize my purchases as being self-actualized, and utility based, it turns out that I do own more stuff than I thought that edges up the line towards being socially actualized. I never realized before this that an awful lot of my clothes are in my closet only because I need to look good for work (because it is important what people think of your attire)
I still tended towards the self/utility end of the spectrum, but it was surprising to me how often I found myself at the opposite end...

I discovered through this process that the utility/pleasure axis is easy to define. My tools are a great example. We own tools to do work. But some of the tools that I own also happen to involve a process that I really enjoy. This is the reason I spend so much time in the garage.

The self/others axis also works in this example. I dont think that I own many tools that I would really feel compelled to show off to somebody. If I purchase a better, or fancier tool, generally it is because it does a better job than some other alternative, and that I will have a better time using it. This axis also has its pitfalls however. For instance, I have a really nice welder. I knew when I bought the thing that people I know would recognize it as a high-end piece. I also have to admit that this recognition is part of the reason I didnt buy a cheaper one.

I think that this has been a valuable exercise.

At the end of the day, it would seem as though the folks who find themselves charted to the self end of the graph are more satisfied with the things that they have than those who rest on the social end of it. I know that one of my greatest stressors is the times that I dont feel as though I stack up to those around me, whether it is stuff or ability at something. But I also know that I dont often find myself making those comparisons.

It would seem to me that if a person has stuff only for the purpose of impressing, it would be difficult to cope unless you were constantly getting more stuff. Once someone has seen that new thing, you arent going to get the same pleasure again from it unless you go get another thing. The show car world is a wonderful example of this. Think of some of the displays that these guys have got to show off their cars... But again, the social actualization can be very very pleasurable. It builds the ego. That is very powerful. People will put themselves in the poor house to get it.

Agrarians do things the other way. Their ego is very self-actualized. I tend to find myself most happy when I've been able to accomplish some new goal. If I have repaired a car, installed a new garbage disposal, remodelled some part of the house, these are the times when I feel the most valuable. Normally it is not something that anybody else notices out loud. I dont normally feel any real sense of comparison from it. I simply feel good about what I was able to do. That feeling, or the pursuit of it, has led to many long nights and sore backs. All worth it in the end. This feeling can be achieved in many ways, everyone has their own, for some its mastery of some sport, a new low score in golf, or as mentioned before, completion of a show car.

The long and the short of it is that I really feel more of a knowledge of self from this exercise. It has left me with a better understanding of wants versus needs, as well as what it is that motivates me personally.

I suspect that we all have the ideal of thinking that we are motivated more by ourselves than by what others may think. I also suspect that we may be surprised to find out how often in our lives it is the other way around... Again, its what makes us social beings. I would think that some of those people who rate as our best friends are the same ones who purvey a legitimate interest in our lives. It drives the social actualized nature of our beings.

Tell somebody that they've impressed you. You'll make their day.
---lifelong learner

Making the transition.

It used to be that I found myself to be the student.
An awful lot of the time I still feel that way, but lately there have been some exceptions.

I have noticed in the last few weeks especially that the balance of situations in which I am a student versus a teacher has seemingly been swayed to the teacher side. This is something that I find unsettling.

As you may have figured out by now, I try to consistently learn; finding myself in a situation in which i seem to be teaching more than learning brings into question whether or not I am truly placing enough interest in the learning end of things.

Dont get me wrong. I believe that it is important to pass along the things that I know to whomever it is that may want to learn them. My concern is that I am not making enough of an attempt to learn, or that my interests have become stagnant.

SO I have taken some time for self-examination. What have I learned lately? Turns out quite a bit, but the most interesting of it has to do with Bubba the dog.

Our dog is 9 years old now. She is 110lbs of Black Lab and Husky mixed bullheadedness. She is kind, gentle, sweet, and lovable. She's also one of the biggest damned dogs you'll ever see. I usually say that she is too smart to be that big.

On to the point. Bubba lives in our garage. She has a dog door that exits to a 5' by 20' wood decked kennel with a gate on one end and a lattice panel on the other. This arrangement has always worked very well for her. Until this winter.

At some point this winter, she decided to see if she could find a way out of the kennel. She did. Again, and again, and again... The old chain link gate from the kennel has been since recycled because i just couldnt patch it back together anymore. She hasnt managed to open the new one yet, but I'm sure that she will find a way. She is bullheaded remember.

Furthermore, she appears to have forgotten the rules in her old age. The limits of her yard, which she does know very well, are ignored most of the time when she is outside playing, as are rules about chewing things, etc.

Maybe im too soft, but I love my dog, and have let her slide on the rules, after all, if I was 63 in dog years, I wouldnt want some 33 year old punk telling me what to do.

So, Ive done something I swore Id never do. I installed underground fencing yesterday.

This is the part where I learned something. The fence works by giving her a series of beeps based on her proximity to the boundary, followed by a small shock if she gets to it.

I did not think this would work on my dog. It did. Almost instantly... But why? I dont really buy into the whole shes learning her yard thing, or even the shock fear thing.

I think that the beep ( she doesnt usually get the shock) to her is something akin to me asking her to return to her yard. Except she sneaks out when Im not looking. The collar is always looking. Absolutely amazing. In the last 24 hours since I installed this thing, She got zapped three times. The dog has not gone any closer than the first beep since.

Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. Bear in mind, she already knew her boundaries very well, so it seems as though she adapted to the collar quickly due to that fact. she doesnt have to guess where the line is, or even look for the flags that we put out to mark it. she just had to figure out how close she could get to it.

But heres the rub. As an employer, I find that people are the same way. My normal philosophy on management is that grown-ups are just oversize kindergartners.

A five year old takes about the same group of things as my dog to learn and practice the rules. People need to know the rules first. Then they need to be monitored consistently and evenly. They need to be gently reminded when they start to stretch the boundaries, and zapped when they get close. But, like any good dog, they also need to be rewarded at random when they are doing things properly... Too much or too consistent of a reward will spoil them.

I will guarantee that as you deal with your dog, children, or employees, if you follow the kindergarten theory, you will find yourself raising all of them to the highest level of performance possible.

Its a nice day, go take your dog for a walk.
Greg

My First Car

I recently had the opportunity to buy back the first car I ever owned. As Ive told people this news, it seems as though I always feel the need to clarify by adding "not one like it, but the exact car"

This fact is not very important to anybody but me, however it does bring to light a fascinating thought about sentimental value. The car itself is not very valuable, in any condition, much less the state that it is in at present. If it had not been "the exact one" that I had in high school, it would not have even been interesting to me.

But it is the exact car.

I was sitting in the drivers seat the other day when i really should have been working on the thing instead, and I cant really explain the flood of images that i was bombarded with.

For some of us, i think the lucky ones, it seems as though your first car really holds a special place in the pit of your stomach. For others I suppose that it more like turns your stomach. In my case, much of my life back then revolved in one way or another around that little car. It represented freedom to me, as well as pride, power, independence, growing up, the list goes on and on.

To have it back is really something that I find fantastic.

There are so many memories wrapped up in that 2200 lbs of sheetmetal that I couldnt possibly begin to share in one entry.

It was the car that I took on my first real date. It was the thing that drove me to work, and that motivated me to have a job. I learned a lot of mechanical skills fixing it. It seems as though that chunk of tin, and my prior experience with it, shaped a lot of who I am today, what I value, my interests, even some of my relationships.

During High School, I doubt that anybody besides myself or my Dad really thought it was a cool car. I'm certain that a lot of my friends actually preferred the more typical high school cars that they owned. It was sort of a grampa car. It had whitewall tires and wire spoke hubcaps. It seemed to be broken all of the time.

To me however, it was a classic car. It was in very nice shape. Being a two-door hardtop, I thought it looked sporty. To me it was about the coolest thing around me at the time.

And so I find myself spending my evenings turning a wrench again. Last night I was working a tscraping old undercoating off of the undercarriage for the third night in a row. Tonight I'll likely be doing something equally glamourous.

Although I dread in one sense the work that I will need to put into the car during this process, I am curious to see what memories come back with the first drive. I cant wait.