Businessman Poet

Been neglecting to chronicle the mundane lately. I feel as though I've been busy preparing to prepare to accomplish my new year's resolutions.

And now that the lunar new year has passed, I'm officially late with the preparations unless there's some other calendar beside gregorian or lunar that I can hang my procrastination on.

The other day I came across a harvard business publishing blog post about the one question every interviewer should ask: What do you do in your spare time?

According to the author, a person's obsessions or spare time pursuits are one of the greatest indicator's of a person's capacity to succeed.

He used Captain Sullenberger's spare-time resume as an example:

On January 15th, 2009, Captain C.B. Sullenberger made an emergency landing of his 50-ton passenger aircraft, softly gliding it onto the Hudson River in New York City, saving the lives of all 155 people on board. Miraculous? Or predictable?

In Captain Sullenberger's case, the first clue that he would become Captain Sullenberger the hero is that, in his teens, when most of his friends were getting their driver's licenses, he got his pilot's license. What did he do for fun? He flew glider planes. Which is basically what he did when he landed in the Hudson River with no engines. Extracurricular activities? He was an Accident Investigator for the Air Line Pilots Association and worked with federal aviation officials to improve training and methods for evacuating aircraft in emergencies.

As a boy, he built model aircraft carriers with tiny planes on them, careful to paint every last piece. Perhaps that attention to detail explains why he walked through the cabin twice, making sure no one was left behind before he escaped the sinking plane himself.

I like the idea of pilots being obsessed with everything to do with flying. This sentiment extends to every other profession in which a professional is responsible for the lives of many people.

But I'm an advocate of two-tiered levels of obsession for every other person--obsession buffered by well-roundedness. Single-minded focus and specialization are for insects.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- Robert A. Heinlein