How to not get into fights
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Today, I got into a fight with my wife. Well, not so much a fight, because I knew that I was wrong, and I immediately apologized for it. We're weird. We almost never have actual fights, which when we see them, generally start like this:
At least, when we see our friends and family fight, it starts over something totally insignificant like that. When we're feeling angry, we're pretty direct about it – we say, "This made me angry." Sometimes, that sentence is said in a shouty way, like it was today, when my wife discovered that I'd left my snowboard boots, which had been caked in mud, in the back of my car for maybe 2 months without washing them.
I also tried to hide the fact that I hadn't washed my boots by hiding them in the garage over the weekend, except I didn't hide them well and she found them within, like, a second of going in.
Then she came into the house and asked if I was kidding her.
I made another mistake there, in that I totally ignored her and pretended I was on a call in my office. This is maybe her least favorite thing in the world. I was just trying to delay the inevitable.
So she came up here, and promptly yelled at me for destroying stuff. I took it and apologized, because let's face it – I was wrong. Really, really wrong.
After that, we were fine. We both understood what happened, and we don't carry that type of stuff around. It works both ways – if I'm angry about something, I'll tell her, too. There's no reason to sit there and stew on things all day. All that does is ruin your day, and maybe make everyone around you miserable as well.
One of the great things I've learned in business is from Charlie Munger, who has said something like, "Tell me where I'm going to die so I never go there." The idea is that, if you see someone else making a mistake, you've now learned something not to do. Our only multi-day fights have been about things like dog euthanasia (I don't remember the disagreement) and the OJ Simpson verdict (which was NOT a guilty vs. not guilty fight, but that's as much as I want to dive into it). We learned pretty quickly that fighting didn't get us anywhere. We'd both had previous relationships that seemed like nothing but fights for years, and we wanted to avoid that. We experimented, and eventually figured out that the key to not fighting is just telling the other person the truth without ever going for their jugular. Just, you know, being nice. Honest, but nice.
Other neato stuff
Ever wondered why some people get smeared all over the internet, and then how they repair their reputation? Yeah, me, neither. But, apparently, the New York Times did, and they found out it can cost upwards of $20k to get your name off of shady sites that put you up there as a cheater in the first place.
We all know those people who work 100 hours a week as a badge of honor (although they never seem to get all that much done to me). This article from Raad sums up my view on it perfectly. Yes, the title is, "Hard Work is Bullshit."
Finally, there was this tweetstorm about being productive. Because tweetstorming is productive, as is reading them.
That's it for today!
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