Monday Morning Mumbling 3.11.19
Good morning. I don’t know about you, but I spent more than a few minutes outdoors this lovely weekend, and now I am fully prepared for spring! If it snows again this month we are gonna have some issues here.
In case you are an avid reader of this blog but missed last week, the format is changing just slightly to make some of these posts a little easier to sort/recognize. This particular post, as with dozens of MMM posts before it, is based on the premise that one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day. Here’s the quote:
— Ernest Hemingway
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
Oh my gosh this is fantastic. Does this hit a chord with you? It does for me.
First, I love the phrasing. Even in our quote-happy sound bite society, you don’t see this sort of lofty language nearly enough. “True nobility is ….” Honestly he probably could have said true nobility is ordering pizza on Sunday night and I would have nodded along. I’m a lawyer who likes a flowery turn of phrase. A novelty, I know.
Second, he starts by giving you a frame of reference for this. How often do you struggle with determining what is “noble,” or just what is good work? According to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, we as a species are not great at self-reflection and self-evaluation. I know I experience this often – I think I just put out good work, or at least my best work. But how do I evaluate it in the spectrum of all legal work? Against peer law firms? Against all legal work ever produced? Against the collective works of the US Supreme Court?
If you’re anything like me, you spend some time doing both. There are days where you are your own harshest critic – it can never be good enough. You are not ever satisfied with the work.
Other days, it’s different. You have done all the work, everything you can do. You sit at your desk, or in your car, or at home, and you reflect on it, and you think – “I really accomplished something with this.” But life is not like third grade – you don’t hand in a good assignment and get back a paper with a 100% on it (with smiley faces inside the zeroes of course). You are just left to wonder if your own evaluation of the project was really accurate.
Still other times maybe you are looking for a little validation. I have done this – look at my work, and compare it to something I know to be inferior. I would never actually use the other matter as a barometer, but perhaps just on this day, I need the validation to say, “hey, I did it better than that guy.” The truth is it is meaningless, and probably self-defeating. But what is the true measure of value?
Here, then, is a great way to both anchor yourself, and to assess progress. This can give you that measuring stick, that mile marker you have been looking for, to say “hey, you’re going in the right direction.” I don’t have to evaluate this project against the entirety of legal wisdom, and I don’t have to cherry-pick an inferior work just to buttress my self-worth.
My question for myself this week will be: Am I doing this better than I would have done a month, or a year, or a decade ago? Whether it be work, or interactions with others, or contributing to the community – my nobility will be measured against my former self. Let’s hope I am building on past lessons, using my experiences, and improving. By ignoring too many comparisons to my fellow man, perhaps I can find true nobility.
Or at least write a cool quip like Papa.
Have a great week everybody.