 Hey everybody, I hope you enjoyed your beer and or candy So before I get too far into things I want to thank my company and Visium because Frankly until they actually prodded me to do this talk. I really wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull it off And they actively encouraged me and so I probably wouldn't be here today if they hadn't really convinced me I could possibly pull it off So I don't know if you're you like your applications to be secure, but you know if you do then we can help with that So you should talk to me later so I've been thinking a whole lot about choices lately and There are times in our lives where we we encounter a fork in the path Where we we stop to take stock of where we are Decide where we want to be and then we pick a direction that we think is going to help us get there now Sometimes the choice is really easy because you know the choice seems trivial or obvious For instance, I have a standing policy that the answer to would you like to have a cookie is always yes But sometimes it's trickier The choice is obviously important But we may not even feel as though we it's really ours to make and you know just last week I went in for a regular cancer screening that I've been doing for every several months for the past past two years now and For those don't already know from Twitter I had testicular cancer and I I suppose I could choose not to do these these screenings But it doesn't really feel like a real choice that I have You know that being said don't feel bad for me because I had a lot of fun with my cancer first off, you know testicular cancer is highly survivable and secondly You get to make all kinds of horrible jokes and nobody can say anything to you because it's like Hey, you know I have cancer Um, you know my wife is a saint for putting up with me during that time. She really She really is And you know and for at least the first few days the puns were nuts they really were You know after that they were just not of course so Anyway a few months ago Terrence tweeted this at me and I had a choice to make And you know months before this is there's some backstory here because months before at rails con I talked to Terrence and Davey about an idea that I had had for a talk and you know Terrence knew what I would be presenting on if I Submitted but the problem was that it was going to be a lot more work than any talk I'd ever given and I wouldn't have a whole lot of time to prepare because I had other obligations that I had to Take care of during this next few months and you know Terrence Is a good salesperson he convinced me that since I could back out I should go ahead and submit he's sneaky like that So what was the idea? Well When I was a kid, I loved these choose-your-own-adventure books The thing that I really loved the most about them was that you know Not only didn't I know how they the ending was going to turn out But I got to have a say in how we got there and you know for for an eight-year-old This was a huge sense of control and so the idea that I had was for a choose-your-own-adventure talk Now I've never seen anyone try giving a talk like this Of course that could very likely be because it's a horrible idea But I've decided that if there's any place that I can potentially get away with trying something a little bit risky and out There it's a keep ruby weird, right? So what I'd like you to do now. Oh, yeah keep ruby weird So what I'd like you to do next is Bearing in mind that the Wi-Fi may not play nicely you may want to use your phone I This is how it's gonna work go to choices. Ernie.io and our browser whether it be your phone Look it so far current versions of Safari Chrome Firefox iOS Android Even Windows phone and Internet Explorer if you're a freak Those those should all work And then you know the nice thing about writing an app that's gonna be used by developers is you don't have to support IE 8 So that's nice. So I'm watching. Oh, we got 53 people 54 good. Oh, man. Holy crap. Okay, so far so good Nothing broke yet Okay, I'm just waiting for folks to get connected. So let's see if we can make this work Pick an animal we have in contention cats dogs squirrel monkeys and Venezuelan poodle moths And we give you a moment to vote poodle moth is really getting no love at all All right, so it looks like dogs are gonna win. So we're gonna go with dogs All right, so you get a big picture of a dog and you get one extra bonus picture of a dog for making that choice okay, so Remember these things, you know when I I walk right past them now, but when I was a kid these things loomed in front of me like Genies in so many lamps right I had a if I had a quarter or you know if I could bomb a quarter for my parents I would stand in front of these machines and I would just agonize over over which choking hazard I was gonna purchase And The sticky hands were a constant favorite of mine I think they're one of the all-time best vending machine toys in my opinion Sticky hands getting some love so you've seen these things before right the gel wrist rest so Many years ago. I had one that looked pretty much exactly like this and it had started to fall apart so when I pulled off the cover I made the most amazing discovery you folks and It turns out It turns out that these things are basically made of the same thing as sticky hands are made of so It's just super stretchy and this one is they don't make them like they used to but you know It can it can we used to have fun like flinging this thing at people and like flinging it the wall it would walk down and you know we could pick that you we could pick things up with it and It just made a massive amount said the same same stuff. It's really sticky actually so anyway One day we made the decision we named ours Roderick I don't know why we named it that we just we gave it a name is named Roderick and everybody in the office had fun with him And so we made the decision to see just how far Roderick could stretch and so I grabbed one end and my friend Jeff grabbed the other and You know he just started walking now He got really far too now because I'm about to drop some science on you. I Am very thankful for my gift. So give me just a moment That's not gonna end. Well, okay, see if I can do this one armed because you can't really deliver science without a coat I really don't think all right so in physics There are two kinds of energy primarily One is potential energy This is the kind of energy that you build up whenever you pull back on a slingshot or you know Hypothetically speaking when you stretch a gel wrist rest across the room And then there is kinetic energy right this is energy in motion So when you release the gel wrist rest or the slingshot, there's also in science a little thing called gravity You may have heard of it now at about this time Jeff decided to let go of his end of Roderick I remind you now of where I was holding my end of Roderick Potential energy quickly became kinetic energy and gravity doing what gravity does you might imagine what happened next On the bright side, I have half the surface area for that particular attack vector these days My point with this is that choices have consequences You know, otherwise, what's the point right? If we're gonna make choices that have no consequences then why make them at all so it's a lot It's almost as inescapable as gravity So if our choices are bound to have consequences it makes sense that we would want to have some control and over them Optimize them. So what will we use to try to do that? I am shocked that this thing is not broken yet. This makes me very happy. Oh, it's like neck-and-neck. This is great Okay, it looks like instincts. No, it looks like stop it Alrighty, it's All right, 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. It's instincts. Oh, and it switched to brains right when I clicked it. Oh My gosh, okay, fine. It's brains you folks Okay Okay, so we're gonna use our brains and there's only one problem with that our brains are huge liars really big liars complete liars and in fact a Cognitive psychologist named Peter Wason Conducted a well-known experiment where he presented people with the following sequence of numbers two four six He told everybody that this sequence of numbers followed some sort of a rule and participants were allowed to guess as Many sequences of numbers as they would like and ask whether or not they conform to the rule Now they then had to try to infer the rule that Wason was using Now because we don't have time to get everybody to guess sequences and numbers I'm gonna ask you to pick a sequence that doesn't follow the rule. Okay Wow You're doing very well. Okay, so The the thing is what I just asked you to do is called indirect testing of a hypothesis and it's a lot At something that we often don't do I prompted you to do it just now And so it makes things a little easier But normally we form a hypothesis and then we think of the results we'd expect them to be and that's exactly what happened in Wason's study, you know Participants would find a sequence that satisfied the rule that they had in mind For instance a lot of them would say even numbers or numbers incrementing by two and they would consider continue to test the exact same Hypothesis with every sequence they supplied even once they were told that that was not the rule They'd say stuff. They would get really complex. They would like pi pi plus two pi plus four You know and and for the record the answer was six four two and his rule was just increasing numbers It was much simpler than anybody was thinking Another thing that our brains tend to do you're probably already familiar with the the phrase a little knowledge is a dangerous thing Psychologists call this the Dunning Kruger effect and put simply it means that those who know the least think they know the most because they don't know what they don't know and The interesting thing I think is that it is obvious when you think about it that obviously we can't see our own blind spots That's why they're blind spots, but Side note by the way. I love the title of this article that Dunning wrote. We are all confident idiots That's that's a fantastic That's a fantastic name for an article so Our brains also love a good story and in fact We love them so much that our brains are constantly making up stories that we tell ourselves And we call that the narrative fallacy and it's basically when we assign importance to events even even when there's no Sense to them at all. We just weave a narrative that makes sense That's why it's called the narrative fallacy and you know just because a story is convincing to us doesn't make it right It doesn't make it true. You know it could be true But that's not the same thing as it actually being true Um another thing that our brains do during during World War two We created a branch of government called the applied mathematics panel to do war math the the military called in the statistical research group which was actually part of the applied mathematics panel to help with a Serious problem as it turns out you had about a 50-50 chance of making it back alive if you were flying a bomber during this time And the military knew that what it really needed to do was add more armor to the bombers But it obviously couldn't cover the entire bomber with armor because if it did the thing wouldn't take off They wanted to keep them in the air. That's that's a good principle for for airplanes is that they go into the air so They had records of where the planes that had returned from enemy territory had actually taken the most damage And so over and over again They saw bullet holes accumulating along the wings around the tail gunner and down the center of the body And so they went to the statistical research group and they asked them Please use your war math to help us decide where to put the armor And so as it turns out and you folks are doing very well on this by the way You're really impressive very impressive crowd and I'm not just saying that because I want you to like me So as it turns out We have something called survivorship bias and what what we were actually what everybody else was doing is they were looking at the Plains that came back and deciding well the most bullet holes are in these places This is where we need the armor, but they were neglecting to realize that these planes made it back The ones they have to worry about are the ones that didn't make it back Which probably have holes other places and so the holes showed where the planes could be shot and still survive the flight home But the armor needed to be elsewhere. So none of those places needed armor, but we're not really any better You know we we have heroes. We look to rare success stories in our industry And you know we we strive to emulate their success and you know all the while We miss out we miss out on opportunities to learn from failures both theirs and our own You know even if we were to ask our heroes to candidly share Their failures their honest answers would be tainted by the same narrative fallacy We talked about just moments ago, you know They like we are just as likely to overemphasize reasons for their results And and to downplay the roles of things outside of their control And this is just a small selection of some of the ways that our brains can't be trusted and so When we put it that way it really We sound pretty hopeless, right So All kinds of factors conspire to influence our choices and our outcomes Wow, this this one's actually an easier one to call All right, let's just go with internal All right, I can get behind that. Uh, we clearly can't trust ourselves to always make the best choices So in my younger years, I went on a few hay rides You're familiar with these, yeah You know folks think it's a great idea to load a bunch of people into the back of a trailer filled with hay Now as somebody who's had a long time allergy sufferings I'm not really this this perplexes me as to why anybody thinks this is a good idea Still I went on a few and you know on the bright side There's always a bonfire And you get to have hot chocolate and marshmallows and hot dogs and stuff. So that's cool Um, so the hay rides over We're at the bonfire and I'm standing off to one side. I'm minding my own business And uh, to my surprise two very attractive young ladies came by to chat with me And this really confused me because I was nowhere near as handsome as the two young men in this purchase stock photo here um This was me Eat your hearts out so naturally Naturally, I panic I actually start trying to think, you know I think What would a cool person do and I'm this is literally what's going through my mind I'm thinking what would a cool person do and so the only thing I could really think of that I'd seen cool people do was You know, they they kind of lean against the wall and they prop their leg out like this. Yeah, I don't care You know, I'm totally chill. You know, there was a problem with this plan You know as it turns out there was a basement window that was directly behind me And so the spot I decided to prop my leg up on actually sent shards of glass Showering down on to uh into a basement kitchen where two elderly ladies were making hot chocolate for us um So that went very well So I want to talk about something a little different um relating to internal factors um I have I have regularly Assumed that the stuff that's obvious to me is obvious to everyone else And for a long time Yeah, this is great, right? Somebody actually felt the need to put a warning label on a bag of peanuts that says it contains peanuts um For a long time this this kept me from sharing code For and it definitely kept me from doing anything regarding speaking So for at least two years, I've been filling out those stupid Uh yearly review uh worksheets, you know the ones where where it's like what are your goals for the next year? And then later they'll review and see if you hit them and I had regularly put public speaking on those But I I hadn't really taken any steps to do it So on january 1st 2013, I made a resolution and I posted it on my site to keep me accountable I picked the entire internet uh as my accountability group because I suck at boundaries and So a few weeks later I had two conference speaking opportunities booked and it is two This is like a few weeks after I said that I was going to try it and my first ever speaking opportunity was in texas actually a big ruby Uh a few years ago, and I'm going to be forever grateful to the organizers of that conference for giving me a shot But that same year I got to go to to mosco and speak And I got to keynote ruby conf which I had privately set as a as a five-year goal I hadn't really told anybody And then this year just uh just a couple of months ago. I got to go to beautiful barcelona and speak And more importantly than any of these things that happened from that result um, I actually got to make so many friends during the past few years that Uh, they've enriched my life so much. I'm so thankful for everybody in this in this room that I can count as a friend I'm just so thankful for you all and I think that it's really interesting because All of this was just because I chose to shut down that little voice inside of me that was worried about what other people would think so I don't ever claim to be the smartest guy in the room And uh, it turned out that the hayride and the speaking thing actually had a few things in common after all They weren't completely different. Um, I didn't recognize this until a lot later But nearly every time I've opted to be inauthentic Because of what someone else might think I've missed out somehow And you know look I want to be very clear. I am not you. I this is not a prescription for What you should do But what i'm saying is that the patterns you might see in your life are going to be different But uh, I can promise you that if you spend some time You know, you're going to spend your entire life stuck with yourself like it or not So if you spend some time figuring out these kinds of patterns, it's going to be worthwhile So Which one are we? So we're agents Now when we say we're agents, we don't mean we're like Horatio Cain though. I think we can all agree that would be awesome Um, what I mean is agency We're talking about agency This is the power that you have to shape the world around you in ways that are large sometimes and sometimes small An agent is something you are and with that I would like to uh Point out that that's on your bingo car that you are an agent and uh Yeah Kragoh, I think is how you pronounce this I have Kragoh now I don't have time to collect my hug from Aaron. So unfortunately, I'm gonna have to put that on hold until later Um, so I believe that as a member of the human race You're an agent your choices are shaping the world around you And the interesting thing is that you know, we exert our agency whether we want to or not it just happens sometimes It's involuntary, but we're still shaping the world Now if we contrast that with a victim, I want to be very clear what I mean when I say victim We are not talking about people who have actually been victimized There are people that have actually been victimized and this is not what we mean We're talking about a victim mentality and this is a really important takeaway While an agent is something you are Victim mentality is something you learn And I'd like to think that if it's learned it can be unlearned There are plenty of situations where maybe even you really are victimized, but you can choose not to let the victim mentality take over I have been volunteering as a counselor for about seven years now And I've dealt with folks in some pretty desperate situations That I would not wish on anybody And some who are pretty far towards the other direction on the spectrum And in my experience, there's actually very little correlation between the people who are victims and the people who exhibit victim mentality I've gotten pretty good at guessing when this is going to become an issue though that we're going to have to deal with my counsel folks And you folks seem to be pretty good at it too All of these things can be indicators that there's a victim mentality involved But by and large people who feel powerless are going to usually resort to passive aggression They go to passive aggressive mode because because they have difficulty acknowledging their anger directly and because of the way they feel about themselves So I'd like to think though that there are situations even that we generally genuinely can't control You know things happen life happens But we should be looking for things that we can or even did control Even when you can't control the outcome You can control how you react to it and this is something that sounds really trite But it's something I have to constantly remind myself of because that might be the only control that we have in some situations The point I'm trying to make is that you're an agent and agents choose I'm going to make a guess that at least a few of you recognize these two images They're the symbols of the alliance and horde factions in blizzards mmo world of warcraft Years ago. I played world of warcraft like I played a lot of world of warcraft Oh For me This is a screenshot of a friend in me Posing with king magne bronze beard. He's the the dwarven king We were the only two dwarven grand marshals on the argent don server. If you know what any of that meant, we should talk later So I swear there was a point to this we'll come back to it later If we're agents we are literally always making choices We're making them Whether we're conscious or not and as rush told us even if we choose not to decide we still have made a choice So hang on. I have something I need to do All right, we'll see how this goes. Have fun with this. It's actually working. Oh man. This was the thing I thought was going to crash So The problem is we make so many choices without realizing it um In my world of warcraft story that I promise I would get back to Grand marshal was a was a a rank that you had to attain by playing a whole lot of pvp or player versus player activity um In pvp You had to at the the very last ranks as you were grinding for grand marshal You had to put probably at least eight hours a day into the game now. I had a regular day job I uh I still put my eight hours in to get grand marshal. I was operating on about three hours of sleep for uh select star from music I love you folks. Um So So distractions Anyway, okay So I'm like, okay, uh, I need to be grand marshal. I got really invested in this grand marshal thing I'm putting in eight hours a day on that. I'm putting in at least eight hours a day on my job I am trying to have some family life. I'm trying to you know, like take care of things like feeding myself, which I hear is important and so All of this I'm putting in all this effort that I'm putting in I'm getting no sleep And I go to a new job. I start my new job And I go into a meeting one day and I almost fall asleep in front of my brand new boss because I had put Eight hours in the night before and I was one day away from getting my grand marshal ship um likewise Likewise The There's a reason this is up for so long by the way and the point is um In this particular story, right? I didn't realize at the time But I was using I was using making a choice to to emphasize these accomplishments Because I wasn't feeling like I was making much accomplishment in the rest of my life Um at the time I was in a failing marriage Um, I was in a very unhappy situation in a dead-end job as far as work went I was um, probably borderline depressed at that point and I was putting in this time because at least I felt like I had some control I was making that choice at the time unconsciously. I hadn't reflected on it at that point I didn't understand what was going on, but that's what I needed Um, you know likewise we work all day sometimes and we run out of time And you know, we think we underestimated how much time we had but we didn't We chose to be distracted Guess what? We probably got up in the morning and we got online and we got on twitter and checked reddit and fired up irc And slack and all of these possible things and then we look at the end of the day And we realized well, there were all of these things that were so Incredibly distracting to us and we think they just happened, but we chose we opted in we turned on that fire hose Look, it's good to make good choices But it's even better to understand why you make them and it's even better than that to start noticing the choices that you didn't even realize you were making And you know look even good choices, uh, might not be the best ones. For instance, let's say, you know, we're talking hypothetically here Maybe you've got writer's block for a talk that you're working on and You want to take the time to build a fully functional chat application for a single slide Show on your screen Um, all right anybody have anything last to say because this is going away The helicopter will stand by us forever all right so You are fun okay so This uh, this by the way is yak beaver. I found him yesterday online um This is about this is about intentionality. We have to choose our choices. It sounds very meta, right? Be conscious about the choices that you're making Like I had no idea how this was going to turn out when I told terence. Yes As of three days ago I was building this very slide you're looking at right now and stressing out over, you know Whether I had chosen the right content to include And I didn't even know how it was going to turn out when I got up here on stage In front of you because there are a lot of slides in this talk that you never saw Because of the choices that we made along the way Did we choose wisely? Well, that's the thing the the real adventure is in not knowing how the story ends, isn't it? Thank you