"Hers was an easy birthday."

The above quote is from a NYT Modern Love column about the columnist's mother. Horses were her passion, and so "Hers was an easy birthday." Life is much easier for those shopping for you when you have a passion. It's a sweet column about his mom's love for her horses, his father's supportive role through doing chores, and the time and energy that goes into keeping horses. When some horses are stolen from the farm, his mom launches into a multi-pronged media and print effort to recover them; she even posts on www.netposse.com. The horses are recovered!

I love Modern Love columns because they're not always about romantic love. The focus of this column was initially the mom's passion for horses, but taking one step back, it's also about the son's admiration for his mom's devotion. And the story is of course told through the lens of a child's love for his mother. It also reminded me of my friend's fiance. When thanking guests for their attendance at their engagement party, he remarked how easy it was to love my friend. That's always stuck with me.

The author of the column is Brandon Lawniczak, he's a lawyer in Chicago.

Cristóbal Smartypants

I'm always impressed when someone is able to distill instinctively common-sense concepts into a concise response. My attempts often lead to something unwieldy ending in 'you know what I mean?'

Below excerpt is from today's NYT Business section, an interview with Cristóbal Conde, president and CEO of SunGard. Conde's BS is in physics and astronomy, and he's mentioned that he often interviews potential employees with engineering backgrounds. I like science-y people, and his concrete take on management dispels the myth that science backgrounds lack people skills and social insight.

"If you start micromanaging people, then the very best ones leave.

If the very best people leave, then the people you’ve got left actually require more micromanagement. Eventually, they get chased away, and then you’ve got to invest in a whole apparatus of micromanagement. Pretty soon, you’re running a police state. So micromanagement doesn’t scale because it spirals down, and you end up with below-average employees in terms of motivation and ability.

Instead, the trick is to get truly world-class people working directly for you so you don’t have to spend a lot of time managing them. I think there’s very little value I can add to my direct reports. So I try to spend time with people two and three levels below because I think I can add value to them."

Grit and Life Satisfaction

From What Makes a Great Teacher? by Amanda Ripley, in this month's issue of "The Atlantic":

"What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record. In the interview process, Teach for America now asks applicants to talk about overcoming challenges in their lives—and ranks their perseverance based on their answers. Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her colleagues have actually quantified the value of perseverance. In a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)

But another trait seemed to matter even more. Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction”—reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues. These teachers “may be more adept at engaging their pupils, and their zest and enthusiasm may spread to their students,” the study suggested."