Unlearning The Alcatraz Rule
“YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I RESPECT YOUR INTELLECT, PAT,” I began, cautiously, “but that’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard you say.”
Sometimes you have to be brutally candid with people you care for.
“It’s like you’re following The Alcatraz Rule when, in reality, you’re in line at The Golden Corral Buffet.”
Pat, a vice president at a billion dollar heavy highway construction firm, tilted his head twenty degrees to the right. He had anticipated the references to prisons or the mass production of food.
He then regrouped.
“First, it’s not dumb at all. It’s about work ethic and discipline and grit,” he said. “Second, how or why you made Alcatraz or buffets part of this discussion is baffling to me.”
What triggered this combative exchange was Pat’s assault on the rationality of professional development. He had casually informed me that, while he has learned a great deal from prior episodes of The Construction Leadership Podcast (certainly including the one he was on...), he refused to listen to any more because “you make too many of them. I can’t keep up.”
You make too many of them.
I can't keep up.
He then compared his not listening to our podcast to not quitting books he no longer enjoyed. Pat began a third-person cross examination in his defense.
“Does this mean I miss out on some episodes I’d like to listen to? Yes,” Pat said with an odd sense of confidence. “Does this mean I read fewer books than I’d like to because I’m stuck on one I very much dislike? Yes.”
Now, this thinking doesn’t offend me as a hard-working podcast host (OK, maybe it does a little). This thinking offends me as a friend of someone smart who is behaving dumb.
This thinking is dumb because it's self-limiting and irrational.
It is also not uncommon.
After all, it wasn't long ago that I shared the same mindset.
It's the misapplication of The Alcatraz Rule.
The Alcatraz Rule
Jimmy Hall is a former educator and championship-winning coach (football in 2003 and 2004; baseball in 2005) at Lockport High School in Illinois. He is a member of the American Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame.
It was Coach Hall who taught me The Alcatraz Rule.
The Alcatraz Rule generally applied to food consumption in a team or family setting.
“Take all you want. Eat all you take.”
This is The Alcatraz Rule.
Inmates at the island prison dining hall faced harsh discipline, I was led to assume, when they failed to join The Clean Plate Club. (Regarding the consequences of breaking this rule or the legitimacy of its origin story, Coach Hall was not one to be questioned.)
When he invoked Alcatraz, I immediately removed at least a thousand calories from my plate.
Three decades after Coach Hall’s reminders, it appeared to me that Pat was inappropriately applying The Alcatraz Rule to his knowledge consumption.
My strong belief and vehement argument went like this:
Pat should apply the most gluttonous form of knowledge tasting to his professional development.
He should sample generously and then devour—or discard—without prejudice or guilt, like he was dining alone at the world’s largest Golden Corral Buffet (which happens to be in Branson, Missouri, to the surprise of no one.)
Hmmm, does that look remotely interesting?
Go for it!
There's more room on your plate.
Start a book and then find it annoys you?
Chuck it!
Move on.
Find your mind drifting five minutes into a podcast?
Skip it!
There’s plenty more where that came from.
The constraints pertaining to food consumption that make The Alcatraz Rule so useful (cubic inches of your gastrointestinal tract, heart disease, waste, general thoughtfulness of others) were utterly meaningless when applied to knowledge consumption.
There’s an infinite number of things Pat could learn in books or podcasts to help him reach his goals, but there remained a definitely finite amount of time to learn them.
Life is too short to suffer needlessly under some weird, intrinsic, and Puritanical dictum to clean your plate at every meal of knowledge.
It’s not about work ethic or discipline or grit.
Quitters never win, eh?
Sure they do!
Quitters win every time they quit doing stupid stuff.
Professional growth and learning should be exciting and fun and useful.
If not, you’re doing it wrong.
Forget Take all you want. Eat all you take.
You’re not in Alcatraz.
At least not anymore, you’re not.
Join me in line over here at The Golden Corral Buffet!
Take all want!
Sample as much as you can!
Devour what gives you insight and joy!
Discard the rest!
And needless to say, you should absolutely consider The Construction Leadership Podcast (sponsored by the fine folks at Capital One Trade Credit) as part of your knowledge diet. It's good for you.
