Andy Boyer

Category: Human Behavior

  • Baseball and Presence

    An old lecture from Father Hobbs:

    “Baseball is a metaphor for how to practice restraint.You can’t out-hustle the pitcher. You can’t rush the at-bat. You have to wait for the game to come to you. And in that waiting, everything gets quieter.”

    Entrepreneurship, marketing, the tech world – they all teach us how to sprint, to go chase the game. But baseball taught me to stop swinging at bad pitches.

    Now I use that same mindset to handle distractions, deadlines, and overthinking.

    Stay in the box. Watch the ball. Swing when it matters.

  • A Modified Pomodoro Hack for Procrastination

    I hate stressing about the easy things I haven’t done because I “don’t have the time.” I know that’s nonsense. I have the 10-20 minutes it will take. I need to momentum and confidence that I can get in and out in those 20 minutes, and not go to bed 2 hours later instead. So I’ve been trying this.

    I took the standard Pomodoro technique which is 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off.

    My version for the short sprint:

    • 20-minute timer, but I’m usually done faster,.
    • Something random from Spotify Music I’ve never heard before (no lyrics).
    • One task. One browser tab, no email, no pretending.

    At the end, I don’t just take a break. I’ll do one physical movement. Walk in the yard, do a few pushups, stretch, whatever. It breaks the trance and resets the brain. Plus, my mind is focused now that one middling thing is done.

  • It’s Cold and Rainy. And I Need Something to Do

    It’s that time of year when we’re all going stir crazy. But this year, I have a little baby who needs constant attention, so any moments I can break free of the house need to be spent wisely. My good friend ChatGPT recommended some ideas to me. What do you think?

    1. Explore the Kubota Garden

    Tucked away in South Seattle, Kubota Garden is a hidden gem that fuses traditional Japanese landscaping with Pacific Northwest beauty. The rain enhances the colors of the trees and the ponds, creating a tranquil, almost mystical experience. Walk along the serene paths, cross arched bridges, and enjoy the sound of the rain on the leaves. Bring an umbrella and good boots, and you’ll have the park practically to yourself.

    2. DIY Workshop at Ballard Reuse

    If you’re into building or upcycling, Ballard Reuse is your spot. This architectural salvage shop is full of reclaimed materials, from vintage wood to old hardware. They host DIY workshops on creating furniture or decor from salvage items. Even if there’s no class that day, you can spend hours exploring the treasures and getting inspiration for a rainy-day project.

    3. Catch a Cult Classic at the Grand Illusion Cinema

    Skip the blockbusters and head to the Grand Illusion Cinema in the U-District. This small, independent theater shows obscure films, cult classics, and indie flicks that you won’t find anywhere else in the city. The theater itself is an experience—an intimate, old-school space that feels like stepping back in time.

    4. Pioneer Square’s Underground Tour

    Seattle’s famous underground is something most tourists don’t know about until they visit, but locals often forget about it too. The rain makes it an ideal time to dive into the city’s hidden history. Explore the old streets buried below modern Seattle, hear stories about the city’s past, and walk through spaces that are both eerie and fascinating.

    5. Make Your Own Terrarium at Glasswing Greenhouse

    If you’re looking for a creative way to bring the outdoors inside, check out Glasswing Greenhouse in Capitol Hill. They offer workshops where you can create your own terrarium or plant arrangement. Whether you’re a gardening pro or have never kept a plant alive, it’s a fun, hands-on way to engage with nature while staying dry.

    6. Shop for Quirky Finds at Archie McPhee

    For a truly one-of-a-kind shopping experience, visit Archie McPhee in Wallingford. Known as the home of bizarre and unusual items, it’s the perfect rainy-day escape. From rubber chickens to quirky costumes, you’re bound to find something fun (or at least laugh-worthy) here. It’s also a great spot to pick up a weird gift for that friend who has everything.

    7. Volunteer at the Bike Kitchen

    For those who love tinkering, check out the Bike Kitchen in the U-District. It’s a community bike repair space where you can learn how to fix bikes, build your own, or help others with repairs. Whether you’re an expert or a total newbie, it’s a great way to spend a rainy day while doing something hands-on and helpful.

    8. DIY Pottery at Emerald City Fired Arts

    Unleash your inner artist at Emerald City Fired Arts. You can choose from a range of pottery pieces to paint, and they’ll glaze and fire them for you. It’s a calming and creative way to spend the day, plus you get to bring home your handmade art.

    9. Indoor Mini Golf at Flatstick Pub

    If you want to combine indoor fun, a little friendly competition, and local beer, Flatstick Pub in South Lake Union or Pioneer Square is the place to be. They offer mini golf and other games in a laid-back pub atmosphere, perfect for rainy-day entertainment with friends.

    How did ChatGPT do? Like any of them?

  • Hopes Vs Goals

    I’ve been listening to a few more podcasts lately, and reading a few more thoughtful articles about how our mindsets may have changed since February 2020, and how they will change again as we re-enter “the new back to normal.”

    Two words that I’m seeing a lot are, “hoping” and “goal-setting.”

    Of course, “hoping” is when I do the same thing over and over and consider the idea that something better may happen. I can do the same routine at the gym and hope this week I lose weight. Or I can perform the same tasks at work and hope that I get a raise and promotion. Until recently, I hadn’t really considered how much simply maintaining my status quo makes me rely on hope.

    Goal-setting, however, is a powerful thought exercise. If my goal is to lose 20 pounds, I need mini-goals to get there. A goal on how and when I eat, how and how much I exercise, if I walk to the grocery store instead of drive, etc… All these achievable little goals bubble up into a macro-goal that is attained as a result.

    Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with hope when it circumstances that you have no control over. I hoped a vaccine would be discovered, that I’d be able to attend Sounders games again, and most recently, that I wouldn’t be attacked by a swarm of 1,000,000 cicadas. These hopes came true, and I am grateful.

    But I’m not going to simply hope for those pounds to fall off. That’s going to have to happen by hitting some goals.

  • Can Legalized Sports Gambling Save Baseball

    On one hand, you could say baseball is thriving.  Revenues are over Gross revenues are $10 billion, National TV ratings are up, and many teams have lucrative local or regional TV deals that help pay the bills and then some. Plus, every time an NBA or NFL team gets sold for a new record, each team sees its valuation go up as well.

    But then there’s that pesky issue of attendance and fan interest. From Forbes, “The 2017 regular season saw a total of 72,670,423 in paid attendance across the league. This was the first time since 2010 that attendance dipped below the 73 million mark, which was surprising.”

    People will argue why attendance is down, but most ideas fall around a central theme. The games are too long for today’s environment, often too boring, and the reliance on stats and analysis to make the smartest decisions possible takes the fun and unpredictability out of the game. Heck, even former players think the game is boring now. Jim Kaat says they should only play seven innings.

    I made a comment earlier this week that I thought baseball was at its “Kodak Moment.” By that I meant, there was a time in the 1990’s when Kodak was making heaps of cash with a near monopoly on film and film development. Digital cameras kind of existed, but Kodak didn’t want to believe that people would prefer digital over film, so they just to keep looking at their stacks of cash, half-heartedly built some bad digital cameras, and ignored the direction the market was going. It’s easy to forget that in the mid-90’s, Eastman Kodak was a $90 stock. Today it’s barely above $5.00.

    Compare that to Major League Baseball today. Heaps of cash, a storied history and a plethora of purists who want to make sure the game never changes. And the new entrants to their market are eSports and a growth in soccer, where people can get in and out of a match in a guaranteed 105 minutes. The market is shifting, and 10 years from now, you might be able to make an argument that the 2017 World Series may have been baseball’s apex.

    But a savior has arrived, and its name is Legalized Gambling.

    Today betting on a baseball game is dumb. Choose odds on a game or a point spread and hope for the best. It’s unpredictable at best, a monkey throwing darts at worst. Plus, why watch the game? All you need to do is check the score in the morning.

    But the 2020 version of Legalized Sports Betting is intriguing. Be in the park or on your couch. Open your mobile phone app. Bet a tiny micro amount on each inning or each at bat. 2.5 to 1 he gets a hit. 2 to 1 they score a run. 10 to 1 there’s a home run in the inning. 1 to 1 there’s a strikeout. You could make 50-100 bets at $.25 to $2.00 per bet and the game would be awesome every pitch. And realistically, you’re probably only going to win or lose $10 to $20 per game unless you are exceedingly good or bad. A small price to pay for three hours of entertainment.

    Baseball needs to get behind this. Having people actively involved on a batter by batter basis is akin to Fantasy Football players watching the 4th quarter of a 34-7 blowout to see if their receiver can pick up 60 cheap yards in garbage time. It would be great for the game, and engage a whole new set of fans who need instantaneous entertainment on their mobile devices. This generation of fans wouldn’t even need to watch the whole game – they could log in for an hour, play 20-30 bets, and then move on with their day.

    Baseball need to embrace this.  Don’t listen to the people who want to make fancier film. Go where the market wants to go.

     

     

  • The Quadrant of Happiness To-Do List Matrix

    It’s a new year. New resolutions. New plans. New ways to get everything done.

    I’ve tried every to-do list, prioritization plan, productivity model, and 4-hour workweek on the planet. And whiel some work better than others, I’m still searching for the perfect method. To do lists are a personalized phenomenon – what works best for a Sagittarius will never work for a Taurus.

    So I’m sharing my new model – a self-designed, structured but flexible layout for optimizing your time and energy. I call it the Quadrants of Happiness. If you share any of my tendencies, feel free to use it.

    Overall theory: To-do lists are designed to make you do the things you don’t really want to do and make you feel bad about the things you do want to do. So, naturally they can’t work. So i said to myself, why not build a model where you are rewarded, not penalized for doing things you like to do, in the same way you are rewarded for doing the things you need to do?

    Summary: In my Quadrants of Happiness model, we’re going to break our giant list into 4 overlapping quadrants.

    • In the Northwest quadrant, we have the things that make us money. This is our FINANCE Quadrant. This includes but is not limited to work related tasks, getting your taxes handled, reading about bitcoin, selling y9ur bitcoin, client pitches, updating your LinkedIn profile, etc…
    • In the Northeast, we have the things that provide us personal improvement and connections with other people. This is the GROWTH quadrant. This could be contacting old friends, reading a book, taking a class, going to a networking event, drawing a picture, writing a blog post. Anything that improves your mind, body or spirit.
    • Back over in the Southwest, we have the things that we need to do but seem like meaningless tasks. This is our RESPONSIBILITY quadrant. These things are as menial as folding your clothes, to taking the time to research and hire someone to look at your heating system. They aren’t fun, but NOT doing them causes more stress than just getting them out of the way.
    • Down in the Southeast, we have the area that is the most fun. This is the RELAXATION Quadrant. Now, in a normal list, it’s hard to justify watching 30 minutes of your favorite Netflix show when there are still 32 unchecked boxes. But a healthy and relaxed mind can help you get everything else done faster, and with a better attitude.

    Daily Activity: Most normal people have about 16-18 hours of waking hours to accomplish everything in these quadrants. An ideal balance would be to break these quadrants into equal sections of time. Unfortunately, for most people, the FINANCE quadrant is the most time consuming.

    Thus, once your tasks are listed in the quadrants, my model is to break all your tasks into 3 categories, “MUST IMMEDIATELY DO,” “MUST DO,” “WANT TO DO.” No matter how many tasks you have, you can only assign the 2 most important tasks in each quadrant to the “MUST IMMEDIATELY DO” section of each.

    After that, you split the remaining tasks in half. One half to the “MUST DO” and one half to the “WANT TO DO” in each quadrant.

    Now start your day and accomplish the MUST IMMEDIATELY DO’s for each quadrant. If something in your top two falls out of a normal time line, then scheduling it and committing to it counts. For example, if going to the gym is part of your MUST IMMEDIATELY DO’s but you can’t go until 7:00pm, you can schedule it. But if you don’t go, then you better start bringing your gym clothes to work and find someplace to go at lunch.

    Once the MUST IMMEDIATELY DO’s are done, surf your way at your own whim and fancy through the MUST DO’s. You won’t get them all done, but it will make for easier list creation the next day, and you can promote the WANT TO DO’s if need be.

    The Result: If this works for you as it works for me, you’ll do all the things you really need, and you won’t feel anxious about writing thank you notes to your relatives instead of looking at Google Analytics and evaluating the nuances of a $100/day AdWords campaign.

    I’ll add some visuals to this, but on the top of my quadrant today in “RELAXATION” I said I needed to do some creative writing. I forgot to add that I needed to generate images as well. Maybe tomorrow…

  • Ask a Performance Psychologist

    A few months ago, I mentioned that my sister, Dr. Elizabeth Boyer, had launched Northwest Performance Psychology.

    As you may imagine, the two of us tend to have a lot of spirited discussions about the differences between the theories of performance psychology and how they apply in high-pressure workplaces such as technology companies.

    Well we’ve decided to expand the conversation. We’re going to start a little series where we look at topics relevant to high performing professionals, and have a little Q+A. I’ll ask most of the questions, but we also want to open it up to others.

    So if you have questions about peak performance, business coaching, competitive environments or anything about performance psychology, feel free to email me. We’ll weave the the questions and answers together in a coherent way.

    Looking forward to your questions.

  • What is Performance Psychology?

    Russel Wilson has one on staff. Most college and pro teams have several. But what does a Performance Psychologist actually do?

    Elizabeth Boyer, PhD, describes it this way:

    • Develop strategies to build consistency and satisfaction in sport and life
    • Identify solutions for challenges and concerns.
    • Get support to successfully navigate set backs, injuries, and transitions.

    You can learn more about this field by checking out her site, Northwest Performance Psychology.

     

  • “I Have Front Row Seats to Kobe’s Last Game And…”

    Well, I didn’t have seats to Kobe’s last game, in the front row, right next to the Lakers bench. But this woman in the photo below did. What would you do with such a prime location for such a milestone game? I’d probably do one or more of the following:

    • Watch intently
    • Take photos
    • Take video
    • During commercial breaks, post to a social channel or 12.

    Now let’s see what this lucky person was doing. By all means, blow up the photo for a better view.

    Kobe Bryant Last Game

    What could should be doing? What’s your guess?

    • Checking Facebook
    • Calling an Uber so she can get out before the crowd
    • Texting her friends
    • Checking stats

    Your thoughts?

  • Guest Post – The Referee’s Perspective: Sometimes We Know What We Are Doing

    Editor’s Note: Garrett Galbreath is a high school basketball official in Washington State and a Board Member for the Snohomish County Basketball Officials. Since I am someone who has ALWAYS treated sports officials with the greatest of respect, and NEVER engaged in any kinds of disagreement with one rearding the idiocy of their calls, laziness on the field, or out and out incompetence, I wanted to get an opinion from his side of the whistle. Why do some parents, coaches, and players insist on arguing with these highly trained and well-meaning people, simply for screwing up a call on the field? This is the 1st post in the series of, “The Referee’s Perspective.”

    As high school basketball official, I have heard just about every criticism a coach, player or parent can offer. Sometimes I register the good advice, “Watch the hook on the post!” …and consider it the next time I am in a position to observe post play.

    garrettgalbreath_officialBut most of the time, we are bombarded with simple and contradictory instructions for how the game should be officiated. One minute its, “Call the foul!” The next, “Let them play!” What’s an official to do?

    The answer is more nuanced than most people think. My general philosophy on officiating is broken into three mandates:
    1) Keep the players safe
    2) Enforce the rules
    3) Consider the game

    These (personal) rules are listed in order of importance, but numbers two and three blur a bit in many situations.

    Some Examples

    Parents Yelling 1Consider a typical 5th grade game. If we were to enforce all the rules in the NFHS rule book, the ball would never cross half-court because we would call travel violations on every possession. Nobody wants to sit through that. Instead, we have to balance where the rules must be enforced and when to let them slide for the sake of the kids trying to learn the game.

    As officials, we try to balance the rules vs the game by looking at advantage/dis-advantage. Did a player gain an advantage by violating a rule? No? Maybe it’s best to let it go so the game continues.

    Coaches Yelling 2We need to apply the same logic in a high school game. Although our tolerance for violations narrows a bit, we still have to consider the skill level of the players. Our 3A state champion team is probably going to have a different skill level than a rural 2B team with 6 varsity players. We have to figure out how to manage that gap in skill sets every single game.

    So to you parents pleading for a foul at one end of the court while imploring that we let them play at the other end… Most of us saw the same thing you saw. By the rule book, you might be correct. We could make you sit through an hour of inbound passes.

    Parents Yelling 2But remember, youth and high school sports are for the kids. In addition to being competitive events, they are teaching opportunities and a way for your kids to gain confidence. Our decisions might be different than yours, because we are working hard on blending a need to enforce the rules of the game while considering the quality of the experience.

    Please include any questions in the comments below and I’ll be happy to answer them.