Solid advice for a jobs agenda

Josh Barro at Business Insider with some smart advice:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-democrats-can-beat-trump-jobs-2016-12

Insight

Last night, we were watching "Fresh Off the Boat". The character of Jessica is famously frugal. She explains her technique to her husband about her philosophy on Christmas presents. Every year, she waits until the day after Christmas to buy that year's hot toy to give to her kids the following Christmas. That way, the kids are happy because they get the toy they like while she is happy because she buys it at a price she likes.

My wife chuckled to herself and said, "I guess I am Chinese!"

😄

Things that you remember are what make up your life

Nice concept in this article about how our brains manipulate our perception of time.

NY Mag: How Your Brain Controls the Speed of Time

The article explains that your brain doesn't actually speed up in moments of danger. This is how it does it:

What this tells us is that our brains don’t speed up when we’re in danger. Instead, the rush of fear hormones causes the brain to retain richer memories of what’s happening. This is related to the “flashbulb effect” that enables us to remember every color, sound, and smell of an emotionally powerful event. This is obviously useful from an evolutionary perspective: If you survive a life-or-death encounter, it could prove useful someday to remember exactly how you did it.

I really liked the way the author closes the article:

There’s an important big-picture upshot to all of this. If you want to live a long time, you should stick to a hard-and-fast regimen of regular exercise and healthy food. Your sleep schedule should run like a Swiss railroad. But if you want your life to seem like it’s lasting a long time, pack it with surprises. Experience intense emotions in unfamiliar environments. Connect with strangers and eat weird things. Scream, laugh, cry. These are the things you remember — and the things you remember are what make up your life.

Best time to buy

The best times of the year to buy specific categories:

From this article:
Lifehacker: Best time to buy

Time vs. money

This article from Lifehacker has an interesting perspective. The author lists a number of activities that should be saving money that she gave up because they cost her too much time.

I think the important point in the article is that you have to figure out what works best for you. Perhaps the thrill of saving outweighs the cost of the time spent achieving that goal. You've got to decide for yourself if it makes sense.

http://twocents.lifehacker.com/the-money-saving-habits-i-gave-up-because-they-waste-my-1785668394

Networking tips: how to start an email

This article gives three different ways to start emails with networking prospects.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3066116/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/the-only-three-networking-emails-you-need-to-know-how-to-w

Artificial Intelligence is More Artificial Than Intelligent

In Wired, this article discusses the current state of AI:
https://www.wired.com/2016/12/artificial-intelligence-artificial-intelligent/

It discusses how Deep Mind can master the game of Go and Watson can win at Jeopardy!, but they would be helpless if they were asked to play Monopoly.

We've had discussions with the Watson people. They are attempting to broaden the use of their technology. I believe that it is very strong at processing large amounts of data and searching for specific answers to known problems. Where I believe that the technology falls short is in providing insight into the questions that haven't been asked yet.

We'll see how AI continues to develop. Thankfully, we are still a long way from complete domination by our computer overlords!

Alphabet DeepMind and NHS

Concrete example of the use of Big Data in creating a new prediction model.

Google will be using NHS data to warn doctors of potential kidney issues.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13726280/deepmind-nhs-data-streams-app-new-deal

Triumph of the curious

This article in the Ringer analyzes the path Theo Epstein took to guide the Cubs to their first World Series victory in 108 years. He led a revolution of the "curious" over the incurious. His easy challenge to the status quo helped solidify the value of intelligently applied advanced analytics in baseball.

Data can be powerful, but it also needs to be harnessed carefully.

Here is a link to the article:

https://theringer.com/2016-world-series-chicago-cubs-theo-epstein-analytics-war-9f1248c44eb7#.fw8ba92p0

10 Ways to improve your Google searches

From this article:
Brightside: 10 Ways to Search Google

1.  Either This or That:  Use the word "or" to help you search both at once and select the one that you want.
2.  Search using Synonyms:  Use the ~ to help search for additional related terms.
3.  Search within websites:  Add the url for the specific site to the search term.
4.  Wildcards:  Use the *. Allows for any combination including the relevant term.
5.  When lots of words are missing:  Use "AROUND + (n)" to help. Example: I wandered AROUND(4) cloud will turn up results like "I wandered around lonely as a cloud"
6.  Use a time frame:  Add specific dates to the search to help focus the results.
7.  Searching for a title or url:  Use the term "intitle:" or "inurl:" Example:  "intitle:husky"
8.  Finding similar websites:  Use the term "related:" Example:  "related:nike.com"
9.  Whole phrases:  Add quotation marks around a quote to get the exact quote in order in results.
10.  Unimportant search words:  Use the minus sign to eliminate the word.  Example:  "Interesting books -buy" for books that are interesting but that you don't want to buy.

The cost of free shipping

I am more and more convinced that the unseen impact of logistics can make a tremendous difference in healthcare.

This article from Fast Company talks about the economics of "free" shipping. While organizations may not charge the customer for delivery, there is no such thing as free shipping. In fact, the rising costs of delivery are forcing many organizations to take a very hard look at their policies. I wouldn't be surprised if there are new incentives to pick items up in a store or otherwise offset the convenience of door-to-door delivery.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3061686/free-shipping-is-a-lie

Most of what you learned about investing is probably wrong

Interesting article:

http://www.fortunefinancialadvisors.com/blog/most-of-what-you-probably-think-about-investing-is-wrong

Sample of the findings:

Buying stocks trading at 52-week lows is not smarter than buying stocks trading at 52-week highs:

Similar to investors not wanting to buy equities when market indices are at all-time highs, many investors are extremely reluctant to buy stocks that are trading at or around 52-week highs.  The thinking, of course, is the same:  if one buys at the yearly high, he or she is simply setting him- or herself up for disappointment.  However, as the brilliant research team at Alpha Architect points out, this ignores two crucial factors:  momentum, which in the simplest terms means that stocks that are rising tend to keep rising, and stocks that are down tend to keep going down; and the bias of technical (i.e. price action) over fundamental concerns (e.g. the valuation of the company).  The Alpha Architect folks sum up the issue thusly:

It goes on to point out that higher risk doesn't necessarily result in higher reward.

The Apple approach to innovation

Vox has an article talking about the release yesterday of the Touch Bar for Apple MacBook Pro laptops. It's a significant advance. They explain why it succeeded for Apple despite the fact that this particular innovation had been tried before by other manufacturers but failed.

Apple controls its products tightly. This approach allows it to approach innovation very differently:

In contrast, Apple controls the entire “stack” for its products. It manufactures the hardware, writes a lot of the software, and even makes some of its own chips. This makes it hard to achieve a large market share, since it’s difficult for one company to serve a lot of different kinds of customers. But the example of the Touch Bar shows that the Apple approach still has some distinct advantages.

It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Apple successfully pulling off an ambitious innovation like the Touch Bar because it requires simultaneous investments on both the hardware and software sides of the business.

Apple’s ability to make dramatic changes to its platforms has been an important source of strength for the company. And it’s a big reason that two of Apple’s chief competitors — Google and Microsoft — have increasingly aped Apple’s business model in recent years.

Here is more on why Apple can lead far more successfully than its competitors despite having much less market share:

A feature like Touch Bar or Adaptive Keyboard is only going to succeed if it becomes a platform-wide standard. And on a decentralized platform like Windows, that creates a chicken-and-egg problem: Applications developers are only going to put in the effort to support it if it’s available on a lot of laptops. But laptop makers are only going to offer it if there’s a lot of application support.

This is a particularly severe problem in the Windows PC world precisely because the PC market is so competitive. The hardware for the Touch Bar is apparently expensive — Apple is charging $300 extra for the cheapest MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar compared with the entry-level MacBook Pro without it.

So if a PC maker added a Touch Bar to its laptops, it would be taking a big risk of getting undercut by competitors that skipped the Touch Bar and charged significantly less. This is probably one reason Lenovo’s adaptive keyboard was so much less impressive than the Touch Bar — the Chinese company couldn’t spend a lot on the feature and risk being priced out of the market.

Apple can guarantee that a significant percentage of their products will contain the new innovation. This allows the software makers to design products with the confidence that there will be a ready market for their work once the new innovation is finally released.

This model has been so successful for Apple that Microsoft and Google are now openly copying it. They have both ventured into producing their own hardware (Surface, Chromebooks, and the Pixel). All of this will likely lead to even more innovation in the years to come.

Here is a link to the original article:  http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/27/13441068/touch-bar-apple-google

A personal theory of relativity

In many ways, we have a way of adapting our internal frame of reference. Instead of conforming to some objective reality, we often will try to place ourselves into the reference and determine how something might seem to us.

Considering my own personal experience, I think that this is true. When we've gone on walks, I might consider two miles to be a relative stroll while my son (who strides at half my pace) may consider it an endless march!

This article from Science of Us discusses how baseball players differ in the ways that they personally perceive a pitch. To a good hitter, the ball can seem much larger than to someone who struggles to put the ball in play. The ball itself doesn't change--it's only our perception of it that does!

For a 2005 paper, research psychologists Jessica Witt and Dennis Proffitt set up a table beside a softball game in Charlottesville, Virginia, the home of their school, the University of Virginia. For a free sports drink, ballplayers — 47 in all — were asked to partake in a brief psychology experiment. They were shown a poster with eight black circles on it, ranging from 9 centimeters to 11.8 centimeters in diameter. They were then asked to pick which circle corresponded the best with the actual size of a softball, which measures 10 centimeters. After selecting their circle, they reported their stats: at bats, hits, walks, and the like. The result: The better they hit, the bigger circle they selected. “If you’re hitting well the ball looks bigger, and if the ball looks bigger, you’re going to hit better,” Proffitt tells Science of Us. “What that suggests is that there is a reciprocal relationship between the perceived size and how well you’re going to do, and how well you do is going to be reflected in how big you perceive the object.”

I learned a new concept:  affordance.

While we walk around with the common-sense assumption that everybody sees the same objective reality, Proffitt says that nobody sees the same reality. The geometry your brain takes in isn’t the “disembodied” geometry of yardsticks, meters, and inches, which mean a lot in the abstractions of engineering or physics or math, but the “embodied” geometry of your physical form: The most accurate measurement, to an individual, is the most personal. That a basketball hoop is ten feet high means something very different to you if you’re five feet or seven feet tall. While hoops and goals and roads have objective qualities, what we see and perceive is profoundly shaped by the subjective — by your ability to interact with them. The research backs this up: Golfers who are putting well see holes as bigger; football placekickers who score more field goals see the uprights as wider and the crossbar lower; successful dart throwers recall targets being larger. 
....
In psychology, this dynamic between an object and the things you can do with an object is called an “affordance,” coined by Cornell University psychologist and James J. Gibson, who is something of a Martin Luther–type figure in the study of visual perception. To Gibson, an affordance is the way an object and a subject fit together. “We call it a seat in general, or a stool, bench, chair, and so on, in particular,” Gibson wrote in The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. It can be natural like a ledge or rock or artificial, like a couch or a bleacher. “The color and texture of the surface are irrelevant,” he continues. “Knee-high for a child is not the same as knee-high for an adult, so the affordance is relative to the size of the individual. But if a surface is horizontal, flat, extended, rigid, and knee-high relative to a perceiver, it can in fact be sat upon.” Regardless of what the object is, if it fits a sittable set of qualities, then you can take a seat. It affords that to you.

The article goes on to talk about how the best players are actually using pattern recognition to determine which pitches are the best to swing at.

I like the idea that the world conforms to our personal experience of it. I think that must be true because I find it difficult to imagine that we could all perceive things in exactly the same manner.

Here is a link to the full article:  The Science of How Baseball Players Hit Fastballs

Intriguing little details

This video from Business Insider explains why iPhones are always set to 9:41 AM in ads.

The original iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs at 9:42 AM. The iPhones originally started with that time. Then the iPad was announced at 9:41. Ever since, most Apple products have 9:41 as the time.

The one exception is the Apple Watch. It is set to 10:09 AM. Most watch manufacturers set the time at 10:10 so the hands on the watch don't obscure the brand name. Apple set their watch a minute earlier to be "ahead of the curve".

Business Insider: Why the time is always 9:41 for Apple products

Describing the pain

I am trying to come up with new ways to describe the challenge many of our customers face in trying to scan our products. They complain that there are up to ten different variations of barcodes for the identical SKU.

The best analogy I can draw is when you are trying to rush through the self-checkout line at the grocery store. It seems that there is always one line where the person in front of you is at a complete stop because they can't scan one of their items. They have to wait and call over the lone service person who is trying to keep track of multiple aisles at once. That is what it can be like for our customers!

Data analysis helps improve airline safety

Very strong article from the Wall Street Journal showing how airlines are using big data to analyze patterns and reduce injuries and errors.

High water mark

There are some very smart people who just seem to have all the wrong instincts.

Throughout the presidential campaign season, Ted Cruz has consistently come up just a little short of his goals. He seems to have calculated through most of the solution and then left out the last few critical steps. I believe he's done it again.

At the most recent RNC convention, he was given a prime speaking slot and used it to encourage his fellow Republicans to "vote their conscience". It seemed like a brave move at the time. He could very well justify it based on the vicious personal attacks he had endured from Donald Trump during the long and contentious primary season. He also pointedly refused to endorse the nominee. Again, this seemed like a brave position that was all the more conspicuous by the absence of his peers.

In recent days, he has waffled and wavered. Finally, last Friday, he endorsed his bitter rival.

Some people have the talent for making all the wrong choices. I believe he is one of them.

I predict that we will look back on this as the high water mark for the Trump campaign.

I am also desperately hoping to be proven right!

Awesome photo by Alexandre Hec

It's magic

Step by step instructions on a card trick:

http://www.vulture.com/2016/09/step-by-step-card-trick.html

Rain as a metaphor

In the movies, rain is often used to indicate a somber mood. I think it fits. Dreary locales drenched in precipitation just have a depressing feel.

Sometimes that can be sadly appropriate.

Machines make mistakes, too

In this article in Slate on advances in medicine, there is a fascinating discussion on machine learning.

Machine learning is making real progress on a variety of fronts:

Enter machine learning, that big shiny promise to solve all of our complicated problems. The field holds a lot of potential when it comes to handling questions where there are many possible right answers. Scientists often take inspiration from nature—evolution, ant swarms, even our own brains—to teach machines the rules for making predictions and producing outcomes without explicitly giving them step-by-step programming. Given the right inputs and guidelines, machines can be as good or even better than we are at recognizing and acting on patterns and can do so even faster and on a larger scale than humans alone are capable of pulling off.
In earlier days, scanners could only recognize letters of specific fonts. Today, after feeding computers tens of thousands of examples of handwritten digits to detect and extrapolate patterns from, ATMs are now reading handwriting on checks. In nanotechnology, the research is similar: Just like many slightly different shapes can mean the same letter, many slightly different molecules can mean the same effect. Setting up a computer to learn how different nanoparticles might interact with the complex human body can assist with what were previously impossibly complex computations to predict billions of possible outcomes.

That said, there are some times when we confuse amazing initial results with lasting progress:

One hundred percent accuracy sounds like a great accomplishment. But machine learning experts get skeptical when they see performance that high. The problem is that machine-learning algorithms sometimes do well on the training set but then fail when applied to the new inputs of their first test. Or, even worse, they do well on the first tests for the wrong reasons.

One famous example of this happened a few years ago when Google Flu Trendsmade waves for accurately “nowcasting” how many people had the flu. The initiative based its estimates on the patterns its algorithms had found in how search trends lined up with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on flu prevalence during a particular window of time. Although its real-time flu forecasts seemed to square with the numbers of CDC-tracked cases released with a two-week delay, its potentially life-saving predictive success didn’t last long. In fact, in subsequent years it failed rather dramatically.

It turned out that the algorithm was simply recognizing terms that people search a lot in winter, like “high school basketball.” It was just a coincidence that the number of people searching about basketball and the number of people getting the flu matched up so well the first year, and unsurprising it didn’t work in the long term. A human would never make that mistake.

It’s not to say that big data can’t be valuable, and advances in machine learning will absolutely lead to huge breakthroughs for nanomedicine. But it is reason to not turn the algorithms loose and let them do all the thinking, especially when the stakes are as high as letting new creations loose in our amazingly complex, fine-tuned human bodies. As the lower-stakes Google Flu Trends failure taught us, machines will need a lot more data before we can trust them to make predictions and, in some cases, a human hand to help transform the variables the machine starts with into more useful ones.

Here it’s useful to think of the example of the spam filter, one of machine learning’s greatest successes. When programmers just threw the text of a spam email into a prediction function, it only learned how to stop messages with wording very similar to the training examples. Tell the function to take into account a wider range of variables, such as the number of dollar signs, or percentage of all-caps words, and they got a much higher success rate.

The article goes on to point out that nature is quirky and irregular. I think that is true. We'll have to be patient as we search for the best ways to use machine learning in the future.

It's going to be harder to stay anonymous

Machine learning is now making it possible to recognize standard techniques to obscure details like pixelation.

PIXELATION HAS LONG been a familiar fig leaf to cover our visual media’s most private parts. Blurred chunks of text or obscured faces and license plates show up on the news, in redacted documents, and online. The technique is nothing fancy, but it has worked well enough, because people can’t see or read through the distortion. The problem, however, is that humans aren’t the only image recognition masters around anymore. As computer vision becomes increasingly robust, it’s starting to see things we can’t.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Cornell Tech say that they’ve trained a piece of software that can undermine the privacy benefits of standard content-masking techniques like blurring and pixelation by learning to read or see what’s meant to be hidden in images—anything from a blurred house number to a pixelated human face in the background of a photo. And they didn’t even need to painstakingly develop extensive new image uncloaking methodologies to do it. Instead, the team found that mainstream machine learning methods—the process of“training” a computer with a set of example data rather than programming it—lend themselves readily to this type of attack.

This new technique doesn't even have to be fully accurate to be concerning!

Even if the group’s machine learning method couldn’t always penetrate the effects of redaction on an image, it still represents a serious blow to pixelation and blurring as a privacy tool, says Lawrence Saul, a machine learning researcher at University of California, San Diego. “For the purposes of defeating privacy, you don’t really need to show that 99.9 percent of the time you can reconstruct” an image or string of text, says Saul. “If 40 or 50 percent of the time you can guess the face or figure out what the text is then that’s enough to render that privacy method as something that should be obsolete.”

Here is the full link:  https://www.wired.com/2016/09/machine-learning-can-identify-pixelated-faces-researchers-show/

Scary comic from xkcd

This comic describes the pace of global warming and how much it diverges from the norm.

xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline

Something to try with the boys

There are ways to speed up the process of becoming an expert.

Barking up the wrong tree: How to be an expert

The Power of Touch

Great post from "Barking Up the Wrong Tree" on the Power of Touch:

Bakadesuyo: The Power of Touch

Swift Playgrounds

I see that there is now a new coding app for kids.

OB has expressed his interest in learning how to code. This app will use the Swift programming language. It is the main language currently used by Apple for its own apps. I'd be interested to see what he comes up with.

MIT ILP

I recently attended the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) Digital Health Conference in Cambridge. It was a really amazing conference. There were presentations by so many brilliant minds. You could literally feel your brain aching as it struggled to keep up with all of the topics.

Here is an example of what we discussed (just on the first day!):

I found one slide in particular summed up my personal opinion on much of what we discussed. While there are many things that these technologies can do, it will be more important for us to focus that activity on improving a specific process to achieve a desirable outcome!

I also learned that I should be thankful I don't have to commute in to Boston every day. Even though it isn't nearly as crowded as NYC, it's still too reminiscent of an ant farm!

The MIT Media Lab also has a wonderful view of the Charles and the city of Boston from the sixth floor deck.

I anxiously await the next version of this meeting!

World's largest game of catch

On Sunday, September 4, 2016, we went to the Pawtucket Red Sox game. While the PawSox won the game, it was a relatively dull 1-0 game. The only run scored on a failed pickoff attempt in the first inning that went to centerfield and allowed the runner to race home from 2nd base! Justin Haley starred for the PawSox. He struck out seven and only walked one. He carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning, but lost it when a ball hit his leg and rolled behind the mound too far for him to throw out the runner at first.

After the game, we attempted to set a world record for the world's largest game of catch. The previous record had been 1,058 set in Cincinnati. We ended up with 1,133 people!

Over the Monster article
ABC news link Providence

Here are some photos and quick video from the event:

Something to try someday?

JetBlue is trying to bring a business class experience at half the cost of its competition.

Here are some of the ways that they are doing that:

Before going any further, let’s explain why airplane food has had the same lousy reputation since the 1980s. One part is stinginess, understandable in an industry with tiny profit margins. Another is that most food comes from the same few industrial catering kitchens. Airlines often partner with fancy chefs to plan menus, but catering chefs do the day-to-day grunt work of churning out meals for a bunch of carriers.

Then there’s the combination of cabin pressure, altitude, and dry air that knocks out roughly 30 percent of a person’s sense of taste, Farmerie says. Salt can fill that gap, but a heavy pour can create the over-processed texture people associate with plane food.

....

The chef relies on vinegar and earthy root spices to cut through airplane-induced malaise without going too salty. That’s why he serves his ribeye with a balsamic-ginger reduction. The citrus tang of grapefruit and Thai chili makes for poached salmon that’s bright, “not just this big, salty explosion which makes you feel dehydrated and horrible,” he says.

JetBlue goes to great lengths to keep Mint customers satisfied :

The illusion of constant luxury, JetBlue’s Perry says, relies on timing. After test runs in mock Mint cabins, Perry and his team realized passengers were most antsy while waiting for someone to take their order. Now, flight attendants ask them what they want to eat right away, and hold the orders until meal time. At least one crew member floats between Mint and economy, helping wherever they’re needed. “It reminds me of an old jazz quote about how drummers are the ones you don’t notice,” says Perry. “It’s only when they make a mistake that you notice them.”

Mint is working well for JetBlue. Those routes are some of the most profitable at the airline. Profits are up 20 percent and they are actively looking to expand.

Here is the link to the full article:

Inside JetBlue's Quest to Make Plane Food Great

Another use for superglue

GM introduced a car that is 700 pounds lighter than the version it replaces. One of the secrets?
Superglue!

This is an interesting article that helps explain how innovation is critical to reaching stretch targets (like the massive expected increase in fuel economy over the coming years).

The Superglue Diet

Do Your Friends Actually Like You

Interesting article discussing the nature of friendship. I thought the idea about the limits of time constricting the overall number of deep friendships any one person could have to be quite true.

In my own experience, I think that there is a relatively select group of individuals who have made it to the most exclusive levels of friendship. I think that is entirely appropriate.

Here is an excerpt describing that phenomenon:

Because time is limited, so, too, is the number of friends you can have, according to the work of the British evolutionary psychologist Robin I.M. Dunbar. He describes layers of friendship, where the topmost layer consists of only one or two people, say a spouse and best friend with whom you are most intimate and interact daily. The next layer can accommodate at most four people for whom you have great affinity, affection and concern and who require weekly attention to maintain. Out from there, the tiers contain more casual friends with whom you invest less time and tend to have a less profound and more tenuous connection. Without consistent contact, they easily fall into the realm of acquaintance. You may be friendly with them but they aren’t friends.

“There is a limited amount of time and emotional capital we can distribute, so we only have five slots for the most intense type of relationship,” Mr. Dunbar said. “People may say they have more than five but you can be pretty sure they are not high-quality friendships.”

The article goes on to explain why meaningful friendship is important:

According to medical experts, playing it safe by engaging in shallow, unfulfilling or nonreciprocal relationships has physical repercussions. Not only do the resulting feelings of loneliness and isolation increase the risk of death as much as smoking, alcoholism and obesity; you may also lose tone, or function, in the so-called smart vagus nerve, which brain researchers think allows us to be in intimate, supportive and reciprocal relationships in the first place.
....
In the presence of a true friend, Dr. Banks said, the smart or modulating aspect of the vagus nerve is what makes us feel at ease rather than on guard as when we are with a stranger or someone judgmental. It’s what enables us to feel O.K. about exposing the soft underbelly of our psyche and helps us stay engaged and present in times of conflict. Lacking authentic friendships, the smart vagus nerve is not exercised. It loses tone and one’s anxiety remains high, making abiding, deep connections difficult.

Here is a link to the full article:  Do Your Friends Actually Like You?

See It, Own It, Use It

Stress can actually be helpful.

I still get nervous before any big presentation. It's similar to the jitters you feel before a performance. While it can be a bit uncomfortable in the moment--my heart starts racing and it can get so bad that I am literally shaking--I also feel that without some nerves you end up lacking energy and vitality.

This article from Science of Us discusses actual research comparing two groups of students. The group that was told that stress could be helpful actually performed better.

Science of Us: Why Olympic Athletes Shouldn't Try to Calm Down

Here's one excerpt:

What’s interesting, though, is that a burgeoning scientific literature suggests that, when it comes to high-pressure, high-stakes task, trying to stay calm probably isn’t the best approach. In fact, it’s more likely to trip you up than to help you. It’s better, this research argues, to embrace your anxiety, but to reframe how to look at it — to take it as a sign that your body is getting ready to help you perform at the highest level. Now, there is a kernel of truth to the idea that anxiety can be harmful: If you’re extremely anxious, you probably won’t perform at a high level. But experts who study the psychology of performance under stress now believe that the goal shouldn’t be to get rid of your anxiety altogether, but rather to get it to a moderate level, and to then use it to your advantage.

A key point:

What mindset intervention research seems to find, over and over and over, is that contrary to the popular idea that stress is always bad and harmful (in the worst cases, deadly even), there’s a vitally important middle step between experiencing stress and responding to it: how you expect to respond to it. Your mindset with regard to stress is a strikingly powerful predictor of what stress will do to you, in other words.

Here is the three-step process:

1. See it. This entails simply recognizing that you are feeling anxious, and naming the source of your anxiety it a clear, explicit way. As the Crums put it, “[Y]ou might simply say to yourself: ‘I’m stressed about my son failing school.’ … Or ‘I’m stressed about my husband’s recent health diagnosis.’” For the sprinter, it could be something as simple as: “I’m nervous because this is a really important race.”

2. Own it. “The key to ‘owning’ your stress is to recognize that we tend to stress more, and more intensely, about things that matter to us,” write the Crums. You are stressed-out because the thing in question matters to you, or because it is somehow connected to something that does, by definition. This seems to have the effect of shifting people from pondering failure to reflecting on how a given source of stress matters to them, and what success might mean. For the sprinter, again, this is easy: “I’m stressed out because competing at the highest possible level is really important to me, I’ve been preparing for this race for years, and medaling in an Olympic event has always been a dream of mine.”

3. Use it. Time for some myth-busting about what stress is, and what it does to human bodies. “Contrary to what you might think,” write the Crums, “the body’s stress response was not designed to kill us. In fact, the evolutionary goal of the stress response was to help boost the body and mind into enhanced functioning, to help us grow and meet the demands we face.” Yes, in certain situations stress can be harmful, but again, as the aforementioned experiments showed: how you interpret it makes a huge difference. So now, when you’re feeling stressed, would be a good time to remember that stress brings all sorts of physiological benefits, that it releases hormones and increases the flow of blood and oxygen and does all sorts of other stuff that helps us prepare for the task ahead and perform better while it’s under way. The anxiety I’m feeling is going to help my body help me with this race, the sprinter might think to himself. It isn’t even anxiety, really — it’s excitement, anticipation at what my body can do when I train hard, which I have done, and when I push it to its limits, which I’m about to do.

None of this is particularly complicated, and it’s as useful for an office worker as it is for an Olympic sprinter. But even after you learn it, it’s easy to forget it given the chaos — and, yes, stress and anxiety — of everyday life. As with any habit, repetition matters: Make a point of reminding yourself, whenever possible, that anxiety doesn’t get to call the shots; you have the power to redefine it, to make it work for you, whether you’re getting into your stance for the race of your life or standing up to make an important presentation.

A measure of redemption

The exciting win on Sunday qualified Walpole for the semi-finals last night. Since he had done quite well in the last two games in his limited opportunities, Older Brother (OB) was now back in the lineup. He was scheduled to play centerfield for the whole game and bat third (!).

On the ride in to batting practice before the game, OB admitted to me that he was nervous. What if he made the big mistake that cost his team the game? I reminded him that he is a talented young man. He should focus on doing his best. While he may not always get the win or the hit, all you can do is your best. I told him that I believe you find what you are looking for. You should look for success and more often than not you will find it!

Due to scheduling conflicts, his younger brother had a math class that overlapped with the beginning of the game. I was able to pick him up and get him there to cheer his brother on while the bottom of the first was still in progress. We had missed OB's first at-bat, but he had walked. He was now standing on second and the bases were loaded with one run already in. Walpole would eventually score three in the inning and lead, 3-0 going into the second inning.

Our opponent, Whitman, had already changed their pitcher in the first inning shortly after we arrived. Meanwhile, our ace was on the mound and performing like an ace should. He set the side down in order in the second. We couldn't get anything going, either. The new Whitman pitcher was really tough and struck out three kids looking. In the third, there was a little trouble. A Whitman player hit a high fly to right center. OB moved over to get it, but slowed up because the right fielder was also charging. The ball would fall in for a hit. It rolled past the right fielder, but OB was in great position to back him up and then fired to second to hold the runner to a single. I checked after the game and he admitted he probably could have caught it, but didn't want to collide with his teammate (who was closer). It ended up without incident as the next batter was retired on a lazy fly to right.

In the bottom of the third, OB came up with one out. He hit a line drive to right for a single on the first pitch. I had asked him about his approach before the game, and he told me that he looks for a specific area of the plate on the first pitch. If it's there, he swings. If not, he'll take it (even if it goes for a strike). Whatever he's doing, it's working well for him. Unfortunately, the next two batters were unable to put the ball in play and we went down with a whimper.

In summer ball, you are not limited by pitch count. Instead, your pitcher can only pitch three innings (no matter how well they are doing). We turned to our #2 pitcher. This fireballer throws really hard. I'm estimating that his pitches are in the high 50's. It's significantly faster than most kids (who generally throw in the mid- to high 40's). When he's accurate, he mows down the opposition.

The downside to high velocity is that if the ball is struck well, it tends to go a long way. In this case, they got to him. The first batter launched a ball to left center that got all the way to the wall for a double. At that point, our #2 started aiming his pitches or trying to throw with a little something extra to blow it past the batters. That caused him to jerk the ball high. The balls were sailing at eye level or above. With his wildness, the ump also squeezed the plate. At 3-2, there was a pitch that (from our side angle) appeared to catch the corner of the plate but was called a ball. It seemed to be in the same location that two of our batters had struck out on in the previous inning, but it didn't make any difference now.

In the lone regular season loss, we had also had trouble in the fourth inning. It was eerily similar. Our ace had only given up one run. With a 6-1 lead, we brought in another hard-throwing pitcher. Through bad fielding and walks, he proceeded to give back three runs in the fourth and then two more in the fifth. With runners on first and second, coach called on OB. He allowed a fly ball to right that the fielder settled under. It fell into his glove and then just popped out. That would load the bases. A chopper through the middle got booted by the shortstop and the go-ahead run came across. Another ball went to the same right fielder and he again dropped it. A ball dropped in just behind the mound and by the time the short stop got to it and threw to first, it was too late and more runs scored. We would trail 12-6 by the end of the inning.

In this game, our #2 tried to settle himself. He ended up walking the next batter. Coach pulled the infield in. Another walk scored a run to make it 3-1. You could see the pitcher desperately trying to regain control. He would walk another run in to make it 3-2. Coach went out to talk to him hoping against hope he could somehow find the plate. Again, it didn't matter. With his wildness, he was getting no help from the umpire on any close pitches and missing badly high. He would walk in the tying run and coach walked out to the mound to replace him.

Coach called on the first baseman to be the relief pitcher. This young man throws a little less hard than the #2, but still misses a lot of bats. His main issue is his control. In the previous game, he had gone through the first inning without issue, but ran into trouble with two outs in his second inning. His meltdown allowed two runs to tie and forced coach to bring in the ace in the last game. Still, he's a solid pitcher and we hoped he could get us out of this pickle.

The first batter hit a soft fly to left. It was caught for the first out of the inning. Still, it was deep enough to score the runner from third. The infield still remained in to try to throw home and prevent a run if there was a weakly hit ball. The next batter walked to reload the bases. The batter after that hit a soft flare just over the reach of the second baseman. While he didn't catch it, he was able to keep a glove on it and keep the runner at second from scoring. It was now 5-3. Our pitcher struck out the next batter. Coach moved the infield back and everyone was hoping to stop the bleeding here.

The pitcher started tossing two strikes. He then deliberately threw high hoping the batter would swing through, but he wouldn't bite. A ball in the dirt and it was 2-2. The next pitch was the same one that seemed to catch the corner. We thought we were out of the inning. No dice. It was called a ball. He wasn't close on the next pitch and another run came across. The next batter was almost the same. He ended up walking and it was now 7-3.

At that point, coach called in OB from center. He jogged in and seemed surprisingly calm. After the game, I talked to him and he told me that he felt with a four run deficit, he would just concentrate on throwing strikes and getting outs. Here was the end of the first at-bat.

He was able to get a weak grounder to short to get out of the inning.

 Walpole loaded the bases in the bottom of the fourth, but we just couldn't push any runs across. 

OB pitched well in the fifth. He struck out the first two batters and then got this result:

OB led off the fifth. He fouled off a pitch and then worked the count to 3-1. He took a ball in the dirt for his second walk of the game. We needed base runners. The next batter hit a slow roller to short. The shortstop fumbled with the ball and OB hustled down to second. He was able to slide in just ahead of the throw and now we had two runners on. A walk would load the bases. The next batter hit a flare just over third base. The third baseman and shortstop both ran over. With his back to home plate, I saw the shortstop reach out for the ball, which popped out of his glove. I was about to yell when I saw him reach out with his bare hand to snare it in mid-air. The runners had thought the ball was going to drop and now had to dash wildly back to the bag. They were able to double off the runner on second. Instead of two runs scoring, we now had runners on first and third with two outs.

A weak ground ball later, we now had nothing to show despite loading the bases in back-to-back innings.

OB was back out on the mound for the sixth. The first pitch to the next batter induced a high popup that drifted towards our dugout. The catcher, first baseman, and OB came running over. OB was able to make a diving catch right in front of the dugout for the first out. The next batter was able to hit a ball to center for a single. Right after that, there was a grounder to short that was bobbled, but the throw caught the runner in a close play at second. The play was so close that the Whitman coach actually walked out to confront the umpire. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and the game continued. On the very next pitch, our catcher tossed back to OB. The runner from first took off (hoping to catch us off guard). OB turned around and calmly threw to short to gun the runner down. We were out of the inning.

We now needed a big rally. The first batter ran the count to 3-1, but ended up striking out. That brought up the top of the order. OB was due up fourth in the inning, so we needed someone to get on. The leadoff batter got too far under a ball and popped up meekly. The next batter lifted a ball in the air to center and the game ended with OB in the on-deck circle.

It was a sad ending to the season. In the other semi-final, Westwood beat Milton. We had beaten both teams during the regular season, so we would have been a favorite if we could have advanced.

It feels a bit bittersweet. I was really thinking they could win it all. That said, OB could not have played better in his final game. I think he really won over some of the coaches with his hustle, heart, and heady play. I think it will carry over to fall ball and potentially next season.

OB was surprisingly serene on the ride home. He normally gets really upset when they lose. I think he realized (as I told him) that he could not have played any better than he did. He was remarkably upbeat--probably because he had personally done so well. He told me that he is looking forward to working on a few things to improve his game.

It may not have been a championship, but I think, in the end, it's so much more....

Not throwing away my shot

Playoff time for Little League summer ball. During the regular season, the emphasis is on allowing everyone to play. There are 12 players on OB's team and everyone gets to bat even though only nine can play in the field at any one time. Free substitutions are allowed. Once the playoffs begin, that changes. At that point, only the nine players playing are allowed to bat with a tenth "extra" batter. Three kids are usually switched out in the fourth inning to allow them to play the last three innings.

Given OB's performance, I naturally expected that he would be one of the six kids who got to play the whole game. He is certainly one of the best fielders on the team and his bat has been one of the most consistent on the team. The team ended up 9-1 in the regular season, so the first game would be against one of the worst qualifying playoff teams (only 16 made it out of about 40). 

Just before the game, OB walked up to me as I was sitting in the stands next to the dugout. He was obviously upset. He said he felt like he shouldn't even have come. Not only was he one of the three kids sitting in the dugout to start the game (shades of spring ball), but he also was not the tenth batter. I was puzzled by the decision, but what could I say? Coach had been fair all season long. It seemed odd that he would have suddenly benched OB. In my mind, I felt like this was a replay of the time in the Sandwich tournament when he flipped the order to allow the lesser kids a chance to play.

The game turned into a runaway. By the time OB got into the game, it was already 6-0. He only got one chance to bat. He was mad and he ripped a double to left down the left field line and ended up scoring. The game ended by mercy rule in the fifth inning 10-0.

After the game, I congratulated OB for keeping his head in the game and not sulking despite spending most of the game on the bench. I reasoned that things would change as soon as the next game.

Just prior to the game, we had an agonizing decision to make. Last year, OB had gone to Camp Yawgoog. This Boy Scout camp was a lot of fun for him, but he ended up missing the semi-final game. Sadly, the team lost there so there was nothing to come back to. This year, he would have to miss the last three playoff games (assuming they won) if he left on time like he was supposed to. The key sticking point is that OB only enjoyed the camp so much because he went with his friends. Assuming it would be possible to switch weeks, he would be going in as a complete stranger. He was not liking that strategy. It took him a few hours to process before he finally decided that he would do it. We switched his camp to the following week without an issue, but further games would require wins.

Today, that game came. To my surprise, he was again sitting. Again, he was not in the order. This time, I could barely contain my disappointment. One time could be explained. Two in a row? What had he done? After all of our maneuvering, how crushing would it be to lose here in the quarterfinals and sit home (instead of at camp with his friends).

I know that his bat had slumped towards the end of the year. He spent the last week of the season at day camp. Spending all day in the sun probably sapped his energy and he seemed a bit lethargic. Still, one would think that you shouldn't move from second or third in the order to the bench overnight!

Again, OB took it well. While he was upset, he's been doing a much better job of containing his emotions.

The game was a tense affair. As the higher seed, we got to bat last as the home team. In the bottom of the first, one of our kids hit a home run over the centerfield fence to give us a 2-0 lead. We gave back one in the second as the Nationals countered with their own home run to left. In the third, we had runners on first and second when the batter laced a hit to right field. While a run would score, an excellent throw cut down a runner at third and helped staunch the rally. We would end after four innings up 3-1.

OB got to bat in the bottom of the fourth. While he was anxious to do something, he ended up hitting a shot off the end of the bat which was easily caught by the third baseman. 

In the top of the fifth, we ran into a bit of trouble. A walk and a double scored a run for the Nationals. With two out, coach popped out of the dugout and replaced the pitcher with our ace. He proceeded to allow a flare to right that fell just over the top of two boys and scored the tying run. He got out of the inning and now the score was tied at 3.

The Americans would go down in order in the bottom of the fifth. Our ace had pitched the first three innings on Saturday and he was noticeably tired. Normally, he has impeccable control. Today, he labored to find the strike zone. The first batter dumped a single into right. In the next at bat, he had two passed balls which moved the runner to second and third. He threw another changeup in the dirt which skipped past the catcher. The runner dashed home to try to score the go-ahead run but was cut down at the plate. Our ace then walked the boy at the plate. The next batter hit a shot to left center that fell for a double. The Nationals played aggressively and sent the runner from first home in an attempt to score that elusive go-ahead run. OB was playing center and rushed over to the ball. He threw a strike to the shortstop who relayed home in time to get the runner at the plate. Our ace then struck out the batter at the plate to end the top of the sixth.

I caught OB in the dugout area and congratulated him on his fine play. I reminded him that he was a good hitter and that he would do his best. I gave him a fist bump through the chain link fence and then walked out to right field to watch everything unfold.

The Americans had a crafty leadoff batter. He worked a walk. The next batter sacrificed him to second. After that, a groundout to short allowed the runner to get to third. OB was next in the order. 

Here is my view from right field.

I meant to try to get video and I hit the wrong button. Before I could switch, the first pitch was thrown and OB launched it out to deep left center. Just about the time he reached the first base bag, it hit the ground and he watched as the winning run crossed the plate!

Maybe it's for the best. OB told me later that he will play this moment on repeat for a long time. I am so, so proud of him. He kept his head in the game and allowed himself to let his natural ability shine through in a critical moment for his team. There is a much larger lesson in this. So much of our life relies on our memories. I'm really glad this one went his way.

After the game, we stuck around to watch some of the older kids play. OB said that he had one regret. He got the winning hit off one of his good friends who was the pitcher on the mound at the time. I told him that baseball was like that. Some days, you can do your best and end up on the losing side. He said he still felt a little bad.

I am glad that OB has that kind of empathy. I'm also glad that he didn't throw away his shot!