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When I saw that David Epstein (who’s writing I love) was writing about Frances Hesselbein again, I sort of rolled my eyes. She is at the center of his book Range (which I love — probably the book that impacted me most in the past 5 years).

But his remembrance of her is too good not to share. My favorite nuggets:

• Her life philosophy as: “doing what’s needed at the time.”

• She repeatedly declines offers to move up through the ranks of the Girl Scouts, ultimately becoming the CEO and turning the organization around; reading between the lines, it seems like in some ways declining advancement gives her more space to maneuver as she isn’t invested in protecting her reputation.

• The ending quote: “Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.”

I was struck by this excerpt from the most recent edition of Range Widely by David Epstein. Here he is interviewing Brad Stulberg, author of the book The Practice of Groundedness:

DE: Ah. Fair enough. Seems like good advice. And on the advice note, you’ve actually reminded me of an unrelated piece of advice you espoused that I took to heart: to get involved with some real live Homo sapiens in my community. I acted on that one by joining the board of a phenomenal early childhood education center focused on poor families in my area. I’ve definitely found it challenging; it has led me to do some event logistics — not my strong suit. But I’ve also found it uniquely rewarding, often even more so than volunteering I’ve done with much more prominent national nonprofits. Please explain.

BS: I’m so glad you said this! Here’s the deal: at the risk of sounding woo-woo (though decades of psychology research and clinical practice support this) we are looking for love in all the wrong places. When we are intimately involved with other human beings in the real world, working on meaningful projects, having meaningful conversations, and striving toward meaningful goals, we don’t feel the need to go on the internet to look for status, validation, and love there.

I’ve been reading Bowling Alone which in many ways anticipates these themes. As a society, we have retreated from in person, coordinated action, towards activities that can be done individually and in aggregate, we’ve gotten less happy.

I wonder if we should be thinking about in person participation the same way we think about exercise — something that’s required for us to have healthy and fulfilling lives?

I appreciated this observation from Austin Vernon’s post on the potential for Geothermal energy: When it comes to low information environments, just trying stuff is powerful. Only the simplest models are worth using.

He gives this example from fracking and low quality sand:

Models that predict frac (sic) job performance have consistently lost to some engineer saying forget it and upping how much sand and water gets pumped downhole. Besides failing to predict the success of slickwater, models didn't account for the success of low-quality sand. Until recently, the industry used only the most spherical sand at great expense. Theoretically, spherical sand should drastically improve permeability over wonky sand. Sourcing this sand from places like Wisconsin became a problem once oil companies started using trains worth of sand in a single well. Eventually, companies sourced local, low-quality sand at a much lower cost and rarely saw performance decreases. They bought more sand on the same budget and made better wells. Each formation eventually reaches a limit where further intensification doesn't help. The industry always finds that point empirically.

This reminds me of a theme from one of my favorite books, Range: when planning a career, there’s not a great way to know in advance what is going to fit for you, so experiment — have hobbies, change jobs, take on projects.