Market For Friends

A good friend helps you move. A great friend helps you move a body.

I disagree with this, I think a great friend doesn't make you an accessory to murder.

I've been reading Predictably Irrational, and it has made me think about the decisions I've made in my life. He talks about the differences between people's willingness to do something based on market norms, vs. social norms.

SO WE LIVE in two worlds : one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. Once this type of mistake has been committed, recovering a social relationship is difficult... if you've ever offered a potential romantic partner the chance to cut to the chase, split the cost of the courting process, and simply go to bed, the odds are that you will have wrecked the romance forever.
Ariely, Dan (2013-04-04). The Irrational Bundle (Kindle Locations 1242-1247). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. 

In the book, he gives the example of a lawyer who may be perfectly fine doing pro-bono work (social norm), but say you were to offer them $30 to help you with something, they'll probably refuse as they don't think it's worth their time (market norm). Many people are  perfectly happy to help their friends out for free, because that's just what you do as friends.

It got me thinking, at what point do market norms come into play with regards to social interactions? I can think of a bunch of people off the top of my head who I will happily drive to the airport at 3 A.M. for free, but I feel like a part of that is due to the length of our friendship, and how likely I believe they will reciprocate. I can also think about a much larger group of people who I would refuse to drive to the airport at 3 A.M. for free, and once again, this is mostly due to how likely I believe they will do the same for me. However, I will gladly send them my chocolate chip cookie recipe, or tell them which restaurant that photo I posted on Facebook came from. Surely this is a market norm? I am basing how far I am willing to go for them on how likely I believe they will go for me. Maybe I'm completely cynical, and nobody else looks at their friendships this way, but I get the feeling that I am not alone in this view.

There are other factors. One of the biggest ones for me is past actions - I feel like I owe something to people who have done something nice for me in the past. The problem is, how do you deal with memory inflation/deflation? For instance, I remember being really upset one night, and I was just sitting by the train tracks. I felt so alone, like there was nobody who would want to help me. I don't know why, but I found myself dialing MrMan1's number, and I didn't want to tell him what was wrong, I just wanted him to talk to me. I think he ended up talking for about half an hour straight, and it made me feel much better. At the time, I felt a bit like I owed him my life, but now, I can't recall exactly how I was feeling - was I really going to jump onto the train tracks? I don't really know what my "debt" to MrMan1 is at.

On the flip side, there was a time when someone was saying some pretty bad things about me, and only one person defended me. When that person asks a favour of me, I usually think about that time, but it has been years since that has happened. Has my "debt" been paid back yet?

Maybe working at a bank has influenced me, but I have some friends who I feel are very far in "debt" to me. From my point of view, I have put in a lot more effort into the friendship, and I'm starting to wonder what I really get out of it. This is tied into my next post - also inspired by this book. The cost of keeping your options open. There is time that I put into friendships that I feel could be better spent on enhancing existing friendships, or making new ones.

To be continued....

Weighting for the Next Big Thing

Last month, after nearly 3 years, I finally hit my goal weight. Well, it was 55.1kg, which is close enough to 55 for me to say that it's a success. I started off really deluded about the entire thing, to the point where I thought I could lose 6kg in 2 months, but after 3 years, I think I have a more realistic view towards weight loss. To be honest, it was really disappointing. I wasn't expecting an invitation to the Quahog Beautiful People Club, or anything like that, but I just thought something would be different. Everything seems the same, and other than increased fitness, I haven't really noticed any amazing lifestyle changes that people always talk about when they manage to lose a lot of kilos. Maybe that's just a testament to the amazing friends that I have. Or maybe it's a sign that I should eat more KFC as it doesn't matter!

1. Friendship

They say that you can't make friends with salad, but during this entire thing, I found the opposite is true. There were so many people who wanted to give me nutritional advice, and I've actually become a lot closer to people at work by discussing how to improve a salad, or make healthy food taste good. I still don't have a good understanding of nutrition, which is why I'm on the Copy Daniels Diet (where I just eat what the two Daniels on my team eat), but at least I can now make a better judgement on what's good or bad to eat. I no longer think chips are a staple part of every meal!

2. Motivation

I've always thought if I were going to associate myself with an element (of the traditional spiritual kind), I'd pick water. I'm happy just to go along with the flow, and if something doesn't work out, then I'll just go a different route instead. It takes a lot of built up force for me to get angry at something and push out against it. I think it's a good trait to have when it comes to making friends, but a horrible trait to have when it comes to heading towards a vague and far away goal. I always felt like achieving it would happen eventually, it was only a matter of time.

That's probably why I didn't really get anywhere in the first year or so. I'd never tried it before, so I didn't really have a good idea of what a reasonable measurement was - except that I knew losing a heap of weight in a short period of time was bad. I fell off the wagon quite often, with the thought that I could just catch up later. I think my biggest problem was that I had no reason to do this other than the fact that I wanted to be skinnier. I was in a happy relationship (and still am), I didn't have a job that relied on my appearance, I didn't play any team sports. This was something that I was doing for myself, and I've never learned to drive myself with that motivation before. I did well at school because I didn't want to disappoint my parents. I practice gaming because I don't want to disappoint my teammates. I read Java stuff outside of work because I don't want to disappoint my co-workers. I'd never had to avoid disappointing myself because I can always convince myself that I'm OK, and that everything in my life is going fine.

The first big consistent drop (i.e. one where I didn't just put it back on after a few weeks), 69kg -> 64kg was after I joined the gym. That's where I met Peter, who helped design a fitness program for me. What made me keep at it was that I didn't want to disappoint him. I know, I know, I still haven't learned how to use myself as a motivational tool, but I do know that about myself, and my way around it is to find someone who I can use as a stand-in for my parents. Peter never said anything bad about me and my lack of fitness. Even as I was detailing my diet, I saw a brief look of horror on his face, but he never made me feel bad about my habits - just encouraged me to make better ones.

To motivate myself to keep going, I started to focus on the improvements I was making. I could now for the train and not be completely out of breath. How I could carry more and more groceries home from the supermarket. I also imagined conversations with Peter whenever I went out to buy lunch. Would he disapprove of this? I wasn't eating incredibly healthy food, but I was eating KFC a lot less.

The next big drop, 64->60 was after I started doing yoga. I found that as work was becoming more and more difficult, it was becoming harder and harder to convince myself to go to the gym. GP's recommendation of the 4-hour-body said that the best method is 30 minutes of intense activity four times a week. I planned to go to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. What ended up happening was that I'd be too tired on Monday, so I'd move that to Tuesday. But then I'd also be too tired on Tuesday, so I'd move that to Thursday. I'd still be tired on Wednesday, so that got pushed to Sunday. And I was left having to go to the gym Thursday to Sunday, which was really optimistic of me, and I don't think I ever managed to do it.

Yoga classes made a difference because they had set times. I had to go Thursday and Saturday, otherwise I'd miss them completely. I found that made it a lot easier to stick to it, as I couldn't put it off. My gym days were still variable, but I knew I had to fit them around yoga, and I didn't want to do Thurs-Sun as I knew I needed a break, so I went earlier in the week. This might sound silly, but I also felt a lot more relaxed after starting yoga. The hour-long class was a great time to zone out and just let my brain process everything that happened in the week - nobody needed to talk to me, I didn't have anywhere else I needed to be.

At this point, I was in the ideal weight range, according to WiiFit, but only just. I figured I could stop at 60, but I wanted to be convincingly in the range, and WiiFit said my ideal weight was 56, so that was my new goal. It was much harder now though. I was fairly active at this point, and eating healthier, and I was worried that the only way to keep going would be to start doing the crazy stuff that you see on late-night TV.

I don't really know what I did to get from 60-57. The things that changed: I picked up pilates, I did some work-outs with Char, there was the Christmas break (maybe less work stress = more weight loss). From 57-55 though, I attribute entirely to the Copy Daniels Diet. It was really strange, I was 57 for a long time, and then one day I weighed myself and I was suddenly 55.1, after two weeks of copying what the two Daniels at work eat. Which is also strange in itself, as they're both trying to bulk up, so their meals are based around that. But the most important part of the Copy Daniels Diet was the fact that both of them would tell me off if I didn't eat something approved by them, and Grad Daniel is very harsh. Again, I just needed someone to avoid disappointing.

3. The Downside

Throughout the whole thing, I hit some pretty dark points. Sometimes I'd forget to eat lunch because I was too busy at work, and afterwards, I would congratulate myself for skipping a meal. It made me feel happy at the time, but in hindsight, I see that it's really bad behaviour.

I also started comparing myself to the people around me. On the train, walking on the street, at work, at the gym. To be honest, I'm really surprised that the obesity level in Australia is high, because I never see obese people anywhere! All I saw was people who were skinnier than me, and I kept feeling like even though I had hit a healthy weight range, it still wasn't good enough. My self-confidence took a huge dive, as did my feelings of self-worth. It's strange as I never noticed these people before - I was just another person in a sea of people, just like everyone else, except now I wasn't. All the differences had become incredibly obvious.

I've improved now. A couple of weeks ago, I went a little too extreme on the Copy Daniels Diet, and reduced my intake of sugar and carbs, as well as swapping from beef to chicken. It got to the point where I nearly fainted at work. I know the old me would have seen it as a good sign, that I was able to do it, but not faint. The new me sees it as a huge red flag, and I spent the past week eating foods full of carbs and fats. I'm back to 57kg now, but I don't feel like passing out - which is super important to me.

4. The Reactions

As I said earlier, I haven't noticed any changes. The Arnie twins told me to measure myself (waist, thighs, calves, biceps) to see whether there were any changes, and the numbers haven't changed very much. I do fit in some of my older clothes (including a shirt I bought when I was 14, which still fits me, showing that I haven't grown at all in the past 14 years! T_T), which were previously feeling a bit tight, but I don't think I've gone down a size.

I wouldn't say I lost a significant amount of weight, so I wasn't expecting people to be nicer to me - and most people are really nice to me anyway, so I wasn't really sure how being skinnier was going to change that. Nobody on my team said anything, but I figured they see me every day, so to them it was just a graduate change. Or they're being polite as it's rude to talk about other people's weight. However, a lot of the women in my old team were congratulating me. They kept asking me what my secret was, and when I told them it was diet and exercise, some of them got a bit annoyed as they thought I was holding out on them. I still haven't been invited to hang out with the "pretty girls", but I'm going to tell myself that it's because I have no interest in going out clubbing after work. 

Most importantly, I feel comfortable with how I am now. When people said I was fat in the past, I would think that they were mean, and work out what mean thing I could say to them in return. If someone said it now, I think I would try and have a more reasonable response. I'd tell them that I was trying to lose weight, and tell them about yoga, pilates and the gym (I also want to start aqua aerobics, hopefully next next Monday). I'd also thank them for their feedback. I don't want to sound all preachy, but here's what I learned from the whole experience.

1. Find people who will give you honest feedback.
2. If that feedback is something you don't like, don't reject it outright. But don't just accept it either. Analyse it.
• Is there something you can do about it? If not, why not?
• Do you want to do something about it?
3. Be patient, change takes time.

My new goal is 50kg, but it's not as important to me now as getting to 55 was. I'm not sure what my next big project is going to be, so I might be like water and flow along until I come across something.