The Uncommon Communicator
The Uncommon communicator is the individual that has the enlightenment, to recognize in any situation, whether or not communication has occurred. This uncommon communicator takes ownership of the conversation and possess the skills to navigate and facilitate the conversation to mutual understanding. Taking on the experts as well as the Sophist of old to help bring clarity to the lost art of true communications.
The Uncommon Communicator
E117 - Throwback Stoicism and Communication with Felipe Engineer-Manriquez
Ever wonder how ancient philosophy can transform modern-day communication and performance in the construction industry? Well, prepare to be enlightened as we journey into the realm of stoicism and its impacts on communication, with insights from the seasoned construction pro, Felipe Manriquez. We kick off the episode by discussing the wisdom of renowned Stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, and their profound influence on cognitive behavior theory. Felipe shares how these teachings have helped him take control of his reactions, adapt to situations and maintain a resilient mindset in the demanding field of construction.
Our conversation doesn’t stop there, we explore how emotional control, energy, growth, and change intertwine in the challenging construction industry terrain. We dig deep into the importance of health, well-being, and cultivating a growth mindset, all crucial elements for succeeding in this sector. Felipe and I also shed light on the barriers that can inhibit progress and the power of stoicism in overcoming them. We highlight the Stoic Rule number four, a life-changing principle that makes you the sole custodian of your happiness.
As we wrap up our engaging chat, our focus shifts to the resistance to change commonly witnessed in the construction industry and valuing people as individuals rather than mere cogs in the wheel. We reiterate the teachings of stoicism that encourage us to embrace the present and live each day to the fullest. We discuss the concept of "UC moment" or the uncommon communicator moment and how it intersects with stoicism. Regardless of your career field, this episode offers valuable insights to improve your communication skills and understanding of stoicisms' role in modern thought and practice.
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I'm so happy to replace the engineer's with me from the EBFC show for the second time. Welcome.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much for having me on the show, James. Super appreciate it. Happy to wake up on a cold Sunday to make this happen. This was a show in the works. So many times we we punked it and came back, but uh I think we're we're even in a better spot now with the topic than we were when we first tried to schedule this. And it's a good reminder, everybody listening to the podcast: like, if you can't adapt, what are you doing? Like, let's just adapt and be flexible.
SPEAKER_01:And and better outcomes can come from that adaptation. Because I agree, I'm in a better spot for this uh preparation. It's snowing outside today for us, too. So it is a nice cold Sunday morning to reflect and talk about how stoicism affects our communication. This whole idea really came across when we were in our last interview, and you I brought up a stoic quote, which I love those quotes, and you said, Hey, we should talk about that. And that that really has stuck with me for the last it's been months, where I thought we've got to touch on this because the topic itself is timely, which is as you dive into stoicism, there's so much that's tied to cognitive behavior theory or training and and that type of cognitive uh works that are going on that go back, you know, thousands of years to the same philosophy that people are applying. And I think we can apply it to construction. Now, you have a particular brand of stoicism that really connects with you. What is that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, the kind that I like is obviously the journal for Marcus Aurelius that was never supposed to be published, is my my prime reader source. And then I I do watch a lot of YouTube, I do go to a lot of university of YouTube, and and I tend to lean towards anything that's attributed to Epictetus, who is like, in my opinion, one of the you know, poster child for what stoicism is. And even the writings that we have from him, he never wrote down. Uh whereas Marcus Aurelius, we have the journal written by his hand that his uh servant was supposed to destroy upon his death, and his servant's like, this is too juicy, too good, I'm not letting this go. And then it became published later. But with Epictetus, it was students of his taking notes trying to learn from the master. And uh Epictetus was a slave that eventually freed himself, so he lived, had lived as a slave, and uh he even talked about when now he was when in during his time as a slave, he even had his leg broken, like he had one of his knees kneecap busted by the slave master, and how he turned that that incident to his benefit and did not let the the master have control over him, even though he's having his leg broken. I just thought, wow, I I probably complained too much. Uh, as as recounted by one of his students, and just uh his determination to stay in the pocket, so to speak, to stay in control of his mind and to stay in control of how he was reacting, really resonated with me. And I had recently to throw another book in there. Uh Victor Frankel wrote a book called Man's Search of Meaning. And in that book, Victor puts in and he was a concentration camp survivor from World War II. He talked about in the space between stimulus and response, which could be like nanoseconds or small seconds, we retain the full control of how we're going to react, even if it's only for seconds. And that just resonated with me. And to me, that's like the same thing that Epictetus was talking about thousands of years earlier. And so that type of idea, just weaving through history, coming out in different people, people discovering in different ways. I thought, how can I better practice this myself? And so it's been given, it's been really liberating. So, like we work in construction, James, and and I've been superintendent, uh manager, a cost engineer. Uh, I've act as I've acted as a paralegal for a decade on uh on litigation. I mean, I've done so many things. I've helped people in accounting, you know, back of house, front of house, and now I work in uh project delivery services for the bull company, that just gets me onto many projects all over the country, uh working on things from like high collaboration, integrated project delivery down to like you know, a hard-bid job school project where you're you're spending bond money and you've got tight deadlines for the school. So like this the full gambit and in all of that, this mindset of being able to control how react to the environment has been like just game-changing for me. And it's and I can't even I it's gonna be hard to put into words, but I'll do my I'll do my best to use the I believe in you. Yeah, but uh like I remember being younger in construction and like something would happen. Like I was on the job, case in point, let me give an example of like when I did not have the control of what happened. So I'm I'm on a project, it's a guaranteed maximum price job with fat with allowances and contingency to pay for every sin possible. So it's and it's it's gonna be fine, it's gonna finish on time. But we're we're getting to the end, we're in the final, and you were talking about punchless before the recording started. This was just reminded me. So we're getting into the punchless phase, and one of the executives from the company comes to the trailer to give us a pep talk. Right? So again, if you if you know what's going on in the job, it's gonna be on time. It's got it's gonna finish with higher than uh entry margin, so more profit than expected. So everything's good. So you're thinking this pep talk is probably gonna be like, hey, good job. No, it's just the opposite. The pep talk was I put I'm putting my knee on your throat on each one of the people on the project. We were a general contractor on this project. The executive acted and spoke in such a way that I would say is parallel to having his knee on our throats and putting pressure on us to an extreme level and and and use phrases like don't F this up, threatening, menacing type of phrases to quote unquote motivate people to finish strong because we had like at the time, I think we were in the final 90 days to cross the finish line. And they didn't want people to relax because either like I don't know what they knew, like did we know the job was going well or not? I don't think I actually I don't think most of the staff knew that the job was going well. I was involved in change orders, so I had a lot more intimate knowledge of where we were with that. And I remember like I was like I was thinking like everything's fine, but this guy talking to us like this made me feel shitty, and I felt bad, and I took that bad feeling home, and then over the course, all the way to the end, like I never shook off, could not wash it off, couldn't get it off. And I was and I was thinking because I was allowing myself to be uh perceived by others and not perceiving myself what I knew to be true, I was giving away what my friend calls abdicating responsibility for actual real honest to goodness feedback. I felt bad, and it had consequences across my family because someone was trying to motivate me for their own, you know, whatever, their own ego. Like they hadn't done anything on this job from what I could see in three years. They show up at the end, they and then they they did take all the credit for the success of the project because they quote unquote put this magic team together. Yeah, and then it was uh it was later, same team, we're gonna were getting an award for the project internally, and uh in a just an easy conversation, somebody asked, like, what was my involvement on that job? And I mentioned how I joined to help with change orders, and and I and I used the word I like I help with this, I help with that, and then we were able to work with the owner and you know get to a spot where they had higher higher reliability and what their costs were. And then one of the people from the team turned around, they were sitting in the row in front of me, like eavesdropping, like a good you know, non-communicating contributor would be, and they're just like, stop saying I. I'm like, I'm answering. I said, I'm answering the question. Like they asked me what did I do? They didn't say what did your team do. So I was answering in the my contribution to this. And I remember like feeling shittier about that. I felt bad about that interaction, and I'm thinking, like, am I wrong to think and then I had to like do all this analysis later and thinking about this, and then also thinking, like, you know, that person probably hasn't spent three seconds thinking about what they said, they just heard me what from their perception taking credit for something. I was answering a question, like, I don't know what they heard on the if they heard the person talking to me about the first question that they that they asked, kicked off the whole thing. So, same project, multiple examples, where I'm not in control, I'm not taking the situation to my advantage, and the result for me was increased suffering. Like, I felt that I had to talk, my poor wife had to listen to me talk about this way too long. Because if anyone knows, like my wife has to hear everything that happens to me every day. Like, this is just our this is our relationship. So, you know, she's very special, she's an awesome listener, but it was like it's not fair, it's like nonsense, it's nonsense. So that's the that's the before I discovered stoicism type of thinking, just to give some contrast. And then afterwards, when I say now that I can hear I can literally hear anything from anyone, and then I will decide how I'm gonna react, if it's gonna bother me or not. And it's not to say that like if if I was back in that situation again, James, that I wouldn't feel bad, but I would not feel bad for more than 60 seconds. It's gonna be really quick. I'm gonna feel what it is, I'm gonna understand where it's coming from, where the feeling is, and then I'm gonna decide what am I doing with this information.
SPEAKER_01:And then that's the real key there, too, is you will feel it, you are gonna hear it, and that's part of the problem, is it is it does create that reaction in everybody, but it's what you do with it. And I have a similar experience as well, too. I I wish I knew these things when I was in my 20s, it would have changed my whole life because it took me years and years of pain of going through what you just talked about, is is an old school where like we're always behind. Like every job, I finally said that at one point. I'm like, every job we have cannot be out of money. Like then we need to be bidding this differently. But that was their method of management is to hurry up and get it done to try to make more money with that feeling bad the whole time, instead of saying, Yeah, you're doing great, which I had several jobs at the end. It's like, oh yeah, we did great. Like, how did I not know that for four months of doing this job that we were doing great? And they're like, and then of course there's no thank you because they did all the managing that did it, and so that it's it's that mindset, and that really goes to uh I've have a couple of stoic rules. I don't know who wrote them. Uh, every there's so many different types of rules in different orders, you know. So it's not like you can't go to the book of Stoic and find here's rule number one, but here's rule number one uh that I found on the internet, and it's accept what you can and can't control, which fits right into what you're talking about, is you have to accept the things that you can't control and understand those. And it's a quote from Epictetus that says this there's only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. And I think those mindsets are important for us in construction because there are so many things that are outside of our control, and trying to be outside of that and let them affect you. When I and this has been recent for me, when you realize and take that mindset that I'm not gonna let this affect me, then it it was all in my control. I had a guy this last week, he really gave me some bad news, and he's like, Oh, sorry to use. I I he goes, I I'll I'll just be honest with you, kind of told their situation they're having issues with their PO system. And he goes, I am just sorry to ruin your day, blah, blah, blah. I'm not gonna get this stuff, you know, until next week past this date that I needed them to get it. And I said, You're not ruining my day. He's like, What do you mean? I'm like, your circumstances don't ruin my day. I'm not driven by your bad news. I can plan on your bad news now, but your bad news is not gonna ruin my day. And I wouldn't have said that 20 years ago. That would have been, what do you mean? So, yeah, it is a complete different mindset.
SPEAKER_00:James, on that, on that note, like, so when people give me quote unquote bad news or they tell me something that they think should ruin me or make me feel like shit, uh, it's amazing when you don't react the way that that social culture, especially culture, Western United States cultures, dictates you should act. And it creates such like uh like just to use another metaphor, it's like you can see the mental hamster literally fall off the wheel and collapse on the side, you know, the little wheel, like the brain just goes like a record scratch, and it uh it really throws people off. They don't know how to react to you. And I I think because so many people are they're used to like doing that stuff and like really stinging people like a scorpion with like negativity, uh, when they don't get the effect that they want from the venom of this of the sting, like it it hurts, it hurts them, it causes them pain. And I'm just I'm always like, I feel bad for you. Like I feel bad for you trying to hurt me, and it's not it's not hurting you. Like I you have my sympathy. I was like, and I'll sometimes I'll even be a jerk and say, in another universe, I give a shit about what you said, not in this one.
SPEAKER_01:That's something for me too. I think I my personality-wise has been a lot like that in the past where I I'm not overly emotional about probably more emotional now than I ever was for the last 50 years, but in because I think I'm understanding myself a little bit better than I did. But a lot of it was stuff in those feelings away. And there's times where I just didn't overreact. But and then I really learned that overreacting never gets you the results that you want. So remaining calm, and now I can mentally, I have a backup to say why I can remain calm. But looking back at it, there's a couple of times where I had a superintendent where I had that I had to overact a little bit of upset because he would get mad at me for not reacting, like I didn't care. I'm like, there's nobody that cares more about this job than me. So then I had to start portraying that to him because that's that old school mentality. I had to show him that I was upset, then he got defensive. It's just it's a weird psychology of that old school thought of again, same guy who we're always behind. Every job we bid it doesn't have any money in it, and we need to work harder and faster on every single one. But that I had to act with him, and I won't do it anymore. It's like, look, you're you're getting the all that I have all the time, and you're just not going to get that reaction from me.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's worth noting too to the listeners, like if you've just only learned about stoicism in this podcast, or you've googled it once or twice, or you've seen the the Spock stoicism memes on the internet where people who practice stoicism are often portrayed as being unemotional. That's uh that's a surface level scratch, and you've only you've only looked at page one of the Google results. If you go deeper into page two and actually start to learn this stuff, nowhere do the Stoics say you're not gonna be emotional. And uh it's quite the opposite. Like it's you get to feel everything, but you you guide, you're more aware of like James is saying, like, he's even more aware of like what he feels, and and you get to decide what you're gonna do with that. So I think that's a that's a nice nuance that I don't know why page one search results for stoicism don't ever go deeper. I think people just don't want to learn, so it's hidden somewhere. I don't know if it's two pages back or five pages in, but I've I've studied this for a long time, and somewhere on this bookshelf I've got meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which is his book. And when I I was reading through that because, you know, again, YouTube, I had something from Brian Holliday showed up in my feed, and Brian Holliday puts out a newsletter, a podcast, interviews, like he is just broadcasting stoic ideas 365 days a year with products and books, and and he had some major tragedy, uh business tragedy in his life. And I mean he's even had he talked about in one of his podcasts, like where he lives now, someone broke into his house and like stole everything. But the one thing they didn't steal were any of his books. And he was so relieved that none of his books were stolen, because that's where all his he's got all these great books on stoicism and some of these leaders, and there are many different stoics. Like, I'm gonna just lazily just mention Marcus and Epictetus because there's some of the big heavy hitters, and then there's um there's the other person that shipwrecked, and I'm forgetting his name, maybe you remember James, that started the whole thing at the Stoa to begin with in ancient Greece. It was a it was a merchant trader that gets shipwrecked and a Greek port, and then he goes into a shop and he becomes aware that there's people talking on this plaza or this like area that they call in Greek the Stoa. And it's just like an open, like edge of a building. It's like the porch. It literally translates into the porch. And so he's he's like he's just lost everything. He's lost all his money, all his worldly possessions. He's pretty much homeless. He goes out to this porch and just starts talking about his philosophy and like what's happened, and people start listening, and then boom, now he becomes the leader of uh this new philosophy in Greece called Stoicism. That at the time, I don't know that it had that name right away, but it later gets that name because they're always at the porch, the stoa, which is just like talking from the porch.
SPEAKER_01:And it was a different mindset from the rhetoric that was, and that's something that Marcus Aurelius talks about as well, too, is you know, that debate of him as the leader, you know, as the emperor. A lot of the emperors take that rhetoric side, which is more for entertaining, more for getting people excited, whereas the stoicism is principles, which I think fit directly into I mean, 2,000 years later, they fit into everything that we do, especially construction. I think it ties into it, but it fits into any job that anybody is performing to be able to come in with that mindset.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and one of my favorite, I know you've got uh you've got these uh these these principles written down from the internet. So what's number two?
SPEAKER_01:So uh and a couple of these we're gonna kick skip because they do cover death, but jumping into number two, it's accept fate, which is it might be similar and to line to what you were talking about as far as accepting what you have for the good, but it's another um it's one area of your life that causes a lot of people, a lot of suffering is the inability to accept the unraveling of events around them, despite these events being completely outside the individual's control. And then Epitetus again said, do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to, rather wish that what happens happen the way it happens, then you will be happy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that's uh that's beautiful. I've also watched and listened to uh audio recording uh of the Tao Dijing, as as people thought was written down by Lao Tzu. And then this this is another philosophical text that comes out of ancient China, and uh there's a great metaphor that Lao Tzu uses to bring that idea to life. He says, like, there's this great river. He's like, there's really no river, so don't listening to this. This is a metaphor to try to explain this thing. He's like, but imagine there's this great river and we're all floating in it. He's like, some people will splash a lot and try to control where they go in the river, uh, and then some people just don't do anything and just go wherever the river takes them. And then some people make subtle movements and control and go down the river, but they don't fight going down the river. He's like, some people will fight going down the river, which is like akin to what you're saying and your fate. Like things are set up, initial conditions are set. It's like this whole concept of predestination, your destiny is set, your fate. This is an idea that people have disagreed on forever. As long as there have been people talking about fate, there's been disagreements on can it all be fated, because it can lead to nihilism, and then people just getting disenchanted and disconnected from society because they feel like there's zero control. And this whole parable of the river and this talking, it's about you can co-create with your fate. So even though that there's and it kind of to me, it leans into that there is a fate because hey, you're in this river. Like, are there people outside of the river? Like, I don't know, like in the metaphor, he doesn't say that the people on the bank watching the people in the river, like that wasn't covered. So I'm just imagining like something has to contain this river of flow, but I think it's to be more of an energy type of thought. And then you know, I study electrical engineering. I can tell you, like, we learn in school through my studies that uh everything is energy. So, like you could just use Einstein's basic equation, E equals Mc squared. You can put all matter, any all things that we perceive that there's this there's a band, an energy band, sound is part of it, light's part of it, physical things, heat, everything that we can perceive and cannot perceive. We have to use equipment and tools for some of the perceptions. It's but it's all energy, it's all vibration. And I don't want to get all like woo-woo on people, but this idea that that things are gonna happen and you can't control it, that's fact. Like I didn't, as far as I could tell, I didn't pick where I was born, I didn't pick what kind of parents I was gonna have, and then I didn't pick how my parents would react in certain situations, and I didn't even pick like how I gonna feel this morning. Like last night I had a fever, and I asked my wife, like before I went to bed, I was like, Hey, should I go on James's show? And she's like, Oh yeah, you can podcast no matter what. So here I am, right? So I don't have a fever now, I'm not hallucinating, but I couldn't tell, like, you know, where where am I gonna be in this like sickness curve of this head cold that I have or whatever it is. But that idea that fighting your fate, I like the from the Tao de Jane. There's there's a little bit, and it could just be because I'm a control freak, you know, to some degree. People, and that's not my not my phrasing, other people have said that about me. Uh, I could as I because I'm just real I like and discern what I like. And like you were talking about the philosophers earlier that time, some of the big philosophers on the stage at the time the stoicism's coming up are influences from Plato, Aristotle. And I've heard a lot of people criticize Plato. When you start reading philosophy, you'll you'll realize that people just don't automatically like it. Like in Western civilization, I would say, especially in the United States, like there's a lot of influence from Plato that people don't even see, don't even recognize. So, one one of the things that Plato did was he discovered these uh Platonic elements or these like basic shapes, but it's this idea of discerning things and dissecting things and analyzing. And so in Western culture, it's always uh let's kill it, take it apart to see how it works, let's break it down. And you hear it in our language, like how we talk, like, hey, let's what's this problem? Let's break it down. It's always like break it down, cut it, kill it. Like it's words like that to discern, and that comes from Plato. And Eastern philosophy, it's about uh understanding how things work together systematically. It's like let's observe this thing without interfering with it, and let's unify what's happening. It's a different approach, it's a not a dissect, it's a look at it in the systems perspective, how it fits together, how it works, study how it's moving, natural you know, patterns. And we're in the West, it's like kill it, cut it, break it down, bust it apart. And and the answer is like you actually need both. Like you need both things, it's not one or the other.
SPEAKER_01:That you know that river story that you were talking about, that one was kind of eye-opening hearing it described that way because it was recently that I've heard that description where you really have to, you're on this river, don't fight it. And and if you go with the flow, then you're gonna have where's it flowing, right? And then you have a little bit of guidance in there, but if you fight against it, then you're defeating yourself. You know, it's like swimming upstream. And there's just it was kind of a little bit of enlightenment. And I will, you know, I do want to talk more about this vibrations, uh, electrical flow, because I didn't tie that together when you'd mentioned that earlier about your electrical engineering degree and how everything is energy, how everything is flow. So that's interesting. I didn't think we got too hippie there, but you know, where our whole thing is the you know, we bring enlightenment to the topic of communication. I've had a lot of, I would say, not necessarily negative feedback, but pushback on the idea of enlightenment because people think it's kind of hippie. What do you mean enlightenment? They get this different picture of that word when in reality it is something completely different, which is what we bring, which that so I want to bring up a point in your book. I'll put it right here, uh, that is a moment of enlightenment, which I thought was really uh an interesting take. And it's when you had been working 100 hours a week and you were telling the story where uh you know you I think you were first introduced to, you know, just read a book on lean. And this guy said this, you or you said, I don't have time to read a book. You know, I'm working 100 hours a week. Then he replied, no problem, keep doing the same thing and think about it. Think about it if you are being effective at work or being present at home. And then you said this wake-up call, and that's a moment of enlightenment. I mean, that it took that turn, those words, for you to make that change and realize that you were really trying to swim upstream to try to fix the problem when in reality, you know, it was right presented in front of me. So tell me about that moment of enlightenment that you had in that wake-up call to uh kind of a mind, really a big mind shift for you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the guy that uh you know, shout out to Mike, because Mike is the guy that asked me that question. We were in a in a hotel ballroom, you know, having this big conference, and like I said in the book, I'm drinking, I've probably already, by the time that we had that conversation, I'd already drunk 12 cups of coffee because I could barely stay awake. And so um it's because I'm just working too hard. And and in preparation, this is how crazy we were, James, in preparation for being off-site two days for this mandatory conference. Like we all had to work extra hard so that we wouldn't be behind. Because like we were we must have had the same type of uh leadership because our leadership was like you're all behind, like you're always behind, like everything's behind, everything's you know, like late, and it's just not true. It's not true when you get to look into it. So I'm tired, I'm stressed, and when he says that to me, like the first part, I was dismissing him, like he wasn't even done with his sentence, and I was already like dismissing like I ain't reading nothing. Like, I don't I'm not reading anything, but then when he said, you know, we mentioned my personal life in an instant, I saw my wife's face in an instant, and my wife is like a very no BS, shoot, shoot straight, be super honest, uh, incredible human being. And I looked, you know, mentally, and this happened in seconds, and I knew like, oh man, I'm bullshitting myself. Like, it's not as good as it could be. I've done nothing to improve you know our relationship. Like, it's just like we're just static, right? It's just like it's kind of like the way it was when we started working, and it's still the same. And by the time I get home, I don't have energy to like be a good husband, be super present. Like, I'm diarrheiding in the mouth every day like the challenges that I faced, and she's sharing her challenges. So it's not like uh I'm not lecturing her every night about you know what's going on by no means, but I'm also not a good listener at that time. And and so I thought, man, if this guy knows how to run work, his people are happy. Like his people were on stage with him when he was presenting this topic, and it was four people of different ages that were four happy faces, and this is a two two days of presentations from jobs about you know, this is general contractor, and uh nobody outside of his team had looked happy, like not one. And so that's why I was even talking to him because I was like, there's something, there's something here, and I've got to like find out you know what's going on here. And so when I had that moment of clarity, I thought, okay, this is an this is an opportunity. I'm either I'm either gonna do something with this or I'm gonna just probably probably end up going worse because it can't things can't, and even when you try to, this is a misconception a lot of people have. When you try to maintain exactly what you have, things actually get worse. So you can't uh maintaining the status quo is a myth. That that's another path to suffering and uh and losses. So you have to actually uh improve, and people you can test this for yourself. If you think I'm BSing you, like either either keeping things the same, things are getting worse, or you're improving, it's way more fun to be actively improving. And it could just be the way I'm wired or how I'm wired myself. But making that change, and it wasn't like the next day I was better, right? Because I'd already had a habit decade plus. By this point in my career, James, I was probably 15 years in, 10 years into construction, and I only knew the one way, which is the work harder till you have nothing left. Like to burn everything out of your gas tank type of way. And uh I used to get sick multiple times a year, which is ironic because I'm sick right now. But I used to get sick like every other month. I'd have you know something, I'd have a cold, a flu. Like if something was going around, I was getting it. And now here we are, you know, COVID pandemic, we're coming out of that. Uh knock on wood, never had COVID. I traveled all over the world, and I've this year I've been sick three times in an entire year, and that's with world travel. And I think that's like for me, it's a big difference. Like other people might be listening and they never get sick, right? In 12 months. But for me, who used to get sick every other month, go from like six times a year to less than three, and I almost made it into January. Like, it's just I was so close to it, only was going to be two times. That's still such a massive improvement for me. So, with perspective, like this is way better. The time that I wrote that book, I was probably sick before that conference, like the week before, and still go to work. Like we'd used to go to everybody used to just before COVID, everybody just can't remember. Like, we used to just go to work sick and just cough all over each other.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Well, we couldn't afford to. Like, I was the sole income for my family, and I would go to work sicker than I should. I'm sure I got everybody else sick, but that's just what you did. When you're the sole income, you went to work, and then things changed. Of course, for me, it became a salary as well as being able to physically take time off. That was like that was a different mind shift for me as well to say, what, you're gonna pay me to stay home? I mean, that's uh so I didn't take any of those time off. Just like you were saying, I experienced a lot of sickness as a kid. Uh seemed like I had every single cold that you possibly could get. And in a lot of ways, I I felt like it was my work. You know, we did a lot of drilling with silica, you know, hammer drilling, you know, dust and stuff like that that would give me the sniffles and head colds and things. But was it just that or was it the stress of everything that tied in there? And then recently I've taken on this growth mindset. And a lot of times I think we have we do a little bit of it, and then when we read about it, we we just crank it up because I think in some ways I was a learner, I wanted to grow. That's what got me in my career. But really, taking them the idea of a growth mindset, which is just what you were talking about, is that's what makes you happy, is being able to continually grow. And I'm gonna jump right back in your book again, too, because you there you made a statement which really ties. This is where I think stoicism uh helps us better understand how we can change our industry. But when you talked about uh, you know, all those mantras that we used to have to fight under, this is the way that we've always done it. I hate those words. Uh the other ones, do it my way or there's the door. If it ain't, I like how you put eight in there too, because that's that's how you say it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. We are not reinventing the wheel here, just do your job. I've heard that one. Uh put your head down and work hard, heard that one. We are paid to do not to think. Heard that one. Keep yourself busy. We reward hard work. I physically have been the guy who's walked around with a tape measure because if you have a tape measure extended about a foot and a half and you walk around a job site, nobody questions you that you're working. But I would work all hard all day long and not be getting anywhere because that's what was rewarded. Uh, and we have traditions for good reasons. You know, this is again how we've always have done it. And those are things that you mentioned within, you know, within your book where you're talking about these phrases of leading into the idea of scrum and change. So I think change is the thing that also ties to this mindset of growth because they tie together. And those those are some of the worst words that I've ever heard, which is that's not how we've always done it. And I and now I feel confident enough to question that. Well, is there not a better way? You know, there has to be other ways to approach that. And I think that comes down to this stoic rule number four. Uh, we're gonna skip five. We can talk about it if you want, but it's accept death. And there is a little bit of that which I've had to kind of work through recently. I recently uh lost my dog, which is putting an animal down is the worst thing a human could ever do. And that's it was the first time that we had done it. So it's kind of re-invigorated me as I process through that. And and really reading some of these quotes has helped. But and we can talk about that one if you want. But uh stoic rule number four from the internet accept that your happiness is your responsibility, and that whole concept goes back to that, hey, I'm sorry that I ruined your day. I'm like, you don't have the ability to ruin my day, but accepting that your happiness is your responsibility, again, this guy's filled with the Epitetus uh quotes. But if you want something good, get it from yourself. Within our power, our own opinions, aims, desires, dislikes, in some, our own thoughts and actions, we when we take that responsibility for ourselves, that is instead of that blame game. And you know, I I've uh recently spoke with Jesse uh Hernandez uh in our podcast, and he talked a lot about you know his journey through through addiction and getting out of addiction. And one of the biggest things that they do there is that to stop blaming other people and accepting that. Have you worked through like people, especially in this mindset of that's not how we've always done it, uh, to also kind of base that as their driver for their happiness?
SPEAKER_00:And so that list that you read off from my book, like people I said in the book like this came from you know my experiences, and by the time I wrote the book, 20 plus years in construction, but I've heard all of those phrases on one job, and then I've heard them on multiple jobs, and they still they still creep up all the time. Like it's uh it's not it's not over, right? There's still so many people indoctrinated in that line, that way of thinking, and that absolutely what you just talked about on that rule is a major factor in creating change. Because all the people that say that stuff to you, you can find examples where it's not true in their own how they manage and lead. So you can easily like break it apart, but at the same time, it's not that's not valuable because they're trying to they're trying to get you to do something when they use phrase when you hear phrases like that. So if you're on a construction project now, design as well and you hear that phrase, that's somebody trying to control you. So just be aware of what you're hearing, and then someone is trying to control them. That's the part that you often won't see. Like they're feeling pressure from somewhere else, and uh, and you're probably at the bottom of the food chain where you're actually you're actually the value producer, you're the you're the important person making the thing or the ideas or transforming something that the owner is finds value in. So like you're the most important person, but they don't treat you like you are. That's all part of the game. So if you could just recognize that the person above you is actually probably doing the best they can with their limited abilities, as as most of us are. Like, I'm the same way, like I've got limited abilities, I'm not superhuman. But I recognize that then it just takes a lot of that energy out of it, and uh it it can you're not deflecting, but you're understanding where it's coming from, and and you can internalize that, and it takes practice. Like what you said, it sounds so easy, and like anyone that's struggled with addiction, they know that blaming other people is just like super easy, and we all know somebody who is a quote unquote negative person, and if you think back to your last conversations with them, they probably blame somebody for their lack of happiness, unhappiness, fear, all these other things, any human emotion, they put it outside, and uh I've uh you know being a father is to help me get better on this thinking. I've even asked my son, like, because I studied stoicism, like as have you, James, and you start to realize every emotion you feel comes from somewhere inside, and uh it's a spectrum. So like you can have you know, happiness can turn to joy, can turn to you know, whatever, to go higher levels, euphoria, and then you can go down the other way where it can I always forget what the opposite of happiness is because it's I don't think it's like well known. We've got to go back to the internet for that one, but all those things spring forward from inside of you, and that's what I was saying earlier. Like when people come at you and and you have an emotional reaction, if you uh take a second, and it literally can be a second, feel where where is it in you? Is it like is it deep in? Did it hit you from the side? You know, is it like did you feel something and then thought of some other situation, and then your your brain's like trying to play the record of what you're supposed to do and react? You can interrupt that record playing if you just say, like, oh wait, then this is you know, this person's like really talking down at me and trying to get me to do something. What do they really want? And then that's when I'll come back to the person and say, I'll just ask them, like, hey, this is what I'm doing. Should I be doing something different? Uh, what do you really need? What's the minimum thing I can give you? Now you can start to negotiate with the person instead of just like working harder unnecessarily. And uh, for all aspiring project managers listening to the show, all deadlines are fake. So just you know, let's just say it right now for the record. All deadlines are fake, all schedules are full of lies. And uh people, you know, go ahead and come at me in the comments. I'm I can dance with you all day long. I know lots of project schedulers we've had this debate with, and we've either come at a draw or they've lost. But I have not uh not been wrong about this. Like these things are all we have ideas about when things should happen, and with different perspectives, you have a different sense of when's the right time. But there's no one single time. There are better times and worse times and ideal times, but there's not one right answer. And I know like you got to build something, like that doesn't work, but like the the truth of the matter is like when we're building things, it's just being clear on what it is we're building makes more difference than trying to target a date.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the clarity and I think the communication of that clarity is something that I am very much interests me in the scrum idea. What I like is we are doing, like you mentioned, Play-Doh is kind of weaved through how we make some of our problem solving. I think there's a lot of stuff that's weaved in that we're we're maybe dabbling in but not being really successful at because we think we're communicating clearly with our 75-page schedule because it's all there. It's all in there, people. We know exactly when we're trimming out room 232. We know exactly when we're gonna do it 11 months ahead of time, right? But we know exactly when we're gonna trim that out. But it's the idea of communicating that stuff uh through an effective plan, which is I think one thing that Scrum brings that you you know you're a big advocate for, big uh you know, teacher in this industry for that. Now, on that, I just kind of want to dabble a little bit more on that whole happiness idea because that one for me that one I had to internalize a little bit to realize that you know my happiness is my responsibility. And to be able to know that that comes from within, then I feel like I have more control at that point. And then it's about not giving control to other people, you know. I think that's one of the keys of that one. But what I want to end on is stoic rule number five, which is talking about exactly where we've been heading, which is accept that life is change. And I think if you accept life as change and then also twist that to be life is growth as well, to continue to grow. And this is really one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Virales, because it really it's an illustration as well, too. And this is what he says frightened of change, but what can exist without it? What's closer to nature's heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Certainly an old story, right? I'd I turn on the hot water, but that the whole idea is he's warming his bath. Uh, eat food without transforming it. And I spend a lot of time thinking about how you know you eat food, it turns into this, right? And how this responds depends on the eat the food that I eat. Can any vital process take place without something being changed? It goes to your thought of energy. Uh, can't you see it's just the same with you and just as vital to nature? So change is 100% inevitable, but why are we so my question to you is why are we so resistant to change, especially tying it to the construction?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's programmed. And uh that's the short answer is it's programmed in. It's a whole paradox of, or not paradox, but it's a systemic way of of of having these habits on how things come together. What people think is how things come together. And I've had uh Sean Greystone on my podcast, and forget which season it was, they talked about some of the history of construction going back to the uh 1800s. And he said basically that the way we build today is identically the same as it was at post-Civil War. And nothing has changed. We have the same insurance companies, the same uh the same uh types of contract styles. Uh we have predominant contracting, you know, hard bid is still the predominant contracting method in the world. And that he's like the origins from what they can see that goes back to that time. I was in a a DBIA, Design Build Institute of America training course this week, and uh they were talking about the history of contracts, and and they're showing that what we're doing now with design build is only returning to a previous type of contracting style that existed before the 1800s. Before it and it's kind of funny because you know Sean was hitting this, and he's not DBIA, he just knows this he's a history nerd. And then BBI had this timeline, they showed like this concept of the master builder idea that goes back, and they've got some people that give credit to that, but it goes back to like this earlier time, like 1400s, 1500s, and this other you know, golden age time, and then they you fast forward to the industrial revolution, you get people really trying to optimize things and take the human creativity out to optimize, and uh one of the consequences of that is that it became dreadful. Like we saw because in the craftsman time before the people that know their history, like people were people were master craftspeople. I mean, you had like guilds and you had like organizations, and there was a ton of training, and it was like this career was part of your identity. And then in in industrial revolution, through optimization, and a lot of this is industrial engineering practices that go back to Frederick Winslow Taylor and and others, uh like uh Gantt who invent Henry Gantt who invented the critical path waterfall schedule or made it popular, was uh contemporary of Taylor, but they disagreed on things like but that doesn't get like it doesn't get playtime in the history book airwaves, right? People just remember what benefited them, and then and through that time it creates this whole system of treating people as less than amazing, just what we are, and and treating you like you're replaceable, and so that that idea that that anybody can do your job, or people with a title, it's a title that does the job, that is just false. And we know like even in how owners contract when they make decisions on teams, if it's not a hard bid, so all other contract styles except for rip the envelope and the lowest price wins, outside of that style, which is now only half of all construction procurement or less and and getting less, and all the other styles, people are selected based on people, not companies, people. It's the people. But even though that that's gotten better on the front end, you still get onto those projects, and that predominant old stuff is still with us from the 1800s, early 1900s, where we treat people like they can be replaced. Like if somebody falls down on your job, nobody even reacts, right? Maybe it's a safety incident, maybe it's not. Nobody stops to say, like, hey, are you okay? What's going on? Like, this that's not normal. But in the craftsman era, it was totally different. Like, people looked out for each other, it was a different type of environment. And production was allegedly less, but people make that argument that it was less, but there's no good data on that. We even have in the United States government who like has a a group in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and before them it was another part of the government, they've been tracking productivity since the 19 early 1900s, and productivity and construction has been as as a way that they track it, has been flat since 1955. And then the last five to six years we're actually lower productivity than we were in the 1950s, where all other industries, agriculture, retail, manufacturing, have had exponential gains in productivity. Now, some of that has been the use of technology, but it's ultimately processes. And in the in the way that we build and organize people, because there's still a ton of psychology for how we organize, motivate, and get people to do stuff, it's stayed flat. It's it's resisted to change. And I think that my this is just my opinion. I'm not uh an expert on this, but I think it's how we treat people. So like there's times when you can be very productive and be in a flow state, and things just happen easier. And it's also having the right people with expertise. An expert can do something in seconds that a novice cannot do in a year. And uh one of the things I learned about this in Scrum, like Jeff was teaching us in the early days, they had uh they were measuring uh software programmers, and they found that like in one company, there's this one company that did a case study of like 300 different individuals, and they found that like people that really knew and understood the programming were automatically like 50 times more effective than people that didn't know it that well, still programmers, right? So imagine like you're in this company and you've got some people that are 50 times more effective than others. Like, what do you do with that? How do you get the other people to become as effective? Can you get them to become as effective? And in construction, we see the same. Like that's why owners put so much emphasis on team experience, because we have this bias that thinks that the past experience is a predictor of forward success, and it's actually not. And and but you can't ascertain what makes someone expert or not. And like so, experience you have to try to ask questions to figure out what that experience is. So I think in our the everyday, like what we consider traditional and normal, it doesn't lend itself to figuring out what are people's actual capabilities, and then even in the lean space, like this is something that's so bad that manufacturing that they deemed it the eighth waste, non-utilized talent. And all that's telling you is that if you're a manager, like how many people on that work for you or adjacent to you do you even know what they're capable of doing? And if if you do know what they're capable of doing, are you letting them use those talents and skills on your project? There are, I mean, there's I'll give just one example. I knew a job, it was a 10-year job, and uh it was super successful by all accounts. It was an airport project, and I knew a guy, he's on that job for like six years, and uh I talked to him, like, what are you in charge of? He's like, All I do is process R5s, that's it. I was like, wow, I was like, I bet this guy can do more things than just like take stuff in, wordsmith it, and push it out, and then update drawings. Like, and he had a degree in engineering. It was like you have an engineer who's got like talent and understands the design, and he's supposed to be quote unquote managing construction, and this company has him just processing RFIs, what we would deem as an administrative task, and that's like a major red flag. Like, like, fast forward, he didn't continue to work at that company. Like, after after a while, he quit and went to go work somewhere else because you can't do that to people, you can't just force people to do that type of stuff for such a long time, like it just is not healthy for for them, and it's actually not good for the company. And in Scrum, we know this from the research, you've got to cross-train and let people scratch that I need to learn something itch. And that there's some parts of your job you're not gonna like, and there's some parts of your job that are like new, and there's some parts that you're really good at, and you want to be more holistic and let all of those things coexist at the same time in the system that it welcomes that. And so a lot of teams that use Scrum, like it's just such a different feeling. That I I've got stories of people taking pay cuts to work on Scrum teams because it's just so much better than the traditional, like, money is not everything. If you if you're if you're working in a group that actually values you, the person, you're gonna work your productivity, is gonna be way different than if you're just doing a paycheck job.
SPEAKER_01:And that's really what you just talked about, I think, is the key to satisfaction in construction in general. And I hadn't really tied it to the idea of of losing that ability of the accraftsman and the guilt and stuff like that. I'm I'm a millwright by trade, so I went through an apprenticeship. It had its, you know, its traditions and stuff like that that really brought, and I might have a family, I'm a family of mill rights. My grandpa was a millwright via the auto industry, my dad was a millwright, my three brothers. So it's a family business that I've left for the evil general construction, but but that's a that's a different story to talk about. But the idea is that there was that satisfaction at the end of the day of knowing what I accomplished, and and that's what got me into construction doing that. And in some ways, we've taken some of that satisfaction away, for one, and two, having people not do what you know that ignites them, you know, what really gives them that satisfaction because there's so many things that need to get done, and that person's the best guy for the job. And we don't often sometimes want to give too much opportunity to people. I'm not saying we, but I think we as an industry, because we want them on our job. That guy is so good at RFIs, why would I want to replace him? When in reality, he's an engineer. So it's really about tapping into what people want to do. But I I also caught the point that you said as well, which is some things have to be done. And that's, I think, a little bit lost and can be lost in this generation, is I think there's a lot of people pursuing stuff that they uh a life better than I had. You know, I work 2,600 hours a year for 11 years straight. That is an additional three months of working time because I took every bit of overtime that I possibly can take. And looking back at it, the kids don't think, hey, thanks, Dad. Thanks for doing that. And that's part of that that balance that I'm seeing this generation is really embracing, you know, they're taking vacations, they're they're spending their money now, they're they're enjoying portions of life, but there's also that point of not everything has to be uh the funnest thing. You have to get you have to find the fun in what you're doing, and that goes back to that whole thought of you know, you're responsible for your own happiness. And you have to find that happiness in the things that you may not necessarily have had to do because you or that you like to do, but you have to do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and even one of the another philosophy is Zen, uh, Zen teachers, uh masters will often put their students into these like very physical type of things. And there's a phrase that they often use, especially when they go to monasteries to learn this type of stuff, and the phrase they use is chop would carry water. And so chop wood carry water, like you know, for Marcus who had to heat his bath, it makes sense in that time, and now we just turn a faucet and our water heater kicks on. But so there's other mundane things. The point of that is that in the mundane, you could still find fun and uh enlightenment can happen even in the mundane, and it's all like mindset. So, like I have a a practice where I like to clean things up, and you know, this room outside the camera view is probably I probably need like a good hour to clean this up because I've had trips and I've just dumped stuff like on the floor, it's a total mess right here on my right leg. But in the camera shot, it looks awesome, right? But there are some yeah, there's some dirty spots uh here, and uh when I go to clean it up, I'm gonna feel really good about cleaning it up and tidying it up. And I'm like, oh, this is where that note went. I hadn't seen this in like a year. Where's this in? And like I've got even uh another microphone over there against the wall. Like, how many microphones do I really need? I think now I have four. And I got some small ones. I can have these little ones right here. I've got these little travel ones that I take with me. So I think I have six microphones total now. But uh it's too it's five too many.
SPEAKER_01:It sounds like it. Well, Felipe, this has been fantastic. I've I've looked forward to this discussion on stoicism. I think there's so much more that we could dive into and dig deeper in, but I think we touched on a lot of great subjects. What do you think is our UC moment? That's the uncommon communicator moment. Everybody's been listening now for an hour, but they're gonna maybe remember one thing. What is the one thing that you want everybody to walk away from from today?
SPEAKER_00:The one thing I want you to remember is the thing that James tried to skip because it's it's dark, and that is one day you will die. And you don't realize it, but that is uh there's ancient Greek philosophy that talks about what separates humans from the gods and why the gods were so jealous of people. What made the gods jealous was the fact that we did die and that we are aware of our death, and that makes us enjoy and live life in ways that they could not.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. Enjoy life now, and that's yeah, I did skip over that, and thanks for calling me out on that. Appreciate that. But that that that is a deep theme within stoicism to gain that happiness is if you know, and I believe the quote is you know, live your life or act like you have died today, and then live your life the rest of it like you died, which is that you know, most people live their life if they get like a cancer diagnosis and you've got six months to live, they go out and live it. Like, why don't you do that every day? And I think that's a great thing to catch from today's conversation. Well, thanks so much, Felipe. That's all we've got. Say goodbye.