The Curvedness of Humans

I don’t like the word “curvedness” very much even though it is correct. I wanted the word to be “curvyness” which I think is much more poetic and curvy in its own right. No matter, a rose by any other name and all that. The principle still applies and that is what I want to comment upon. Humans are curvy and I don’t only mean in the rather nice way that it is true for the female of the species. I mean also in terms of things social and psychological.

I am told that Thomas Jefferson was an advocate of moderation. From what the popular history says that makes him very unlike his associate Benjamin Franklin. I guess it takes all kinds to make a country. Anyway moderation is sort of also what I want to discuss.

I suppose that everyone would agree that too much of a good thing is not good for humans. For example, there have been at least two deaths in the western United States in recent years from deliberately drinking too large a quantity of water. Go figure. It sort of proves the point, though. Water is normally a good thing. In the right amounts, it quenches thirst and supports general health, but in too large a single dose, it can kill you. The same can be said of many things that we would consider good. Too much food, too much oxygen, too much sex, too much money, too easy a life, too many close friends of the opposite sex, etc. And if we think about it too little of these things can also do harm to you – the Catholic priesthood notwithstanding.

Why point out these painfully obvious truths? Well, because there are so many people that still seem to think that there is a linear relationship between how much of some things we have and the quality of human life or human performance. More confidence means more success. More power means more control. More money means more worthwhile person. More metrics means better management. More….well you get the point. The reality is that there is a “sweet spot” that humans must strive for when it comes to how much of something makes us the best we can be. That sweet spot is somewhere between none and way too much and it is different for different people.

I had a boss once that was perhaps the most brilliant administrative mind that I have ever seen in action. He warned me once when we were discussing a promotion for one of the people in our organization that we had to be careful how much money we associated with the promotion. Despite the fact that the manager’s performance had been truly exemplary, it was not wise to over-reward because we would run the risk of damaging a good person. At the time it seemed strange to hear such a thing. I, of course, thought how much more performance we might expect from this talented person if he had no monetary worries. Boy was I wrong. That did not stop me from asking for an explanation of such “bizarre” logic.

My boss answered my by telling stories of people whose lives had been sent into complete disarray by suddenly having too much money. As I dimly recall the stories the term drunken sailor comes to mind. Beyond pathological consumption, came other problems such as launching a gambling compulsion or damaging drug use. In the end I came to understand that he was actually looking out for both our interests as the representatives of the employer and the interests of the person whose life we had the power to impact. From then on in life I have been sensitive to the fact that the curve of optimal human experience looks like this:

So, if you hit the spot with just the right amount of desire or expectation and hit the spot with the right amount of getting or having our lives and all things human are as good as they can get. Now, the curve may not always be a perfect normal distribution but I prefer to think of it that way for purposes of illustration. At any rate, the point is that our purpose in life ought not to be just getting more of everything but hitting that sweet spot in all things. The result would be more content people in a more content society.

Alright, I know what you are thinking and I hope that we can address the unanswered question in a future posting. That question is something like, “How do you know where the sweet spot is?” There are probably many answers to the question and we will explore a number of them as we talk about managing ourselves and our organizations.