It’s the last month of my last class in grad school (for a grade, anyway). And of course we’re ending with one last group project.

Nobody wants to do this; knowing we have to, nobody wants to spend more time on it than absolutely necessary.

There are two things we could do at this stage: the easy one would be to procrastinate and complain now, and then cobble something together at the deadline and heave it over the transom.

The other would be to thrash now: define the project, define success, and define responsibilities, then execute sans further debate or delay.

We’re trying that way: two days to speak our minds and make sure we’re clear — and then we’re cutting off debate and holding people accountable for what we decided to do and the parts they took responsibility for.

Once we’ve agreed that we must and will cross the finish line, like it or not, there’s really no sense in doing anything other than sprinting toward it, is there?

No, you can’t paint the Mona Lisa or write Huck Finn on demand.

But you can create on demand. You just sit down and do it — and, the more frequently you do it, the easier it becomes to simply produce something.

When you’re in that space, that’s just what you do. No distractions. No hiding.

Of course, the law of averages says at least half of the results will be below average.

But the law of large numbers says that the more you do this, the better you’ll get.

Create every day, and your average will go up.

I’m a big fan of Derek Sivers’s “‘Hell yeah!’ or ‘No'” rule.

But, even if that gets rid of some so-so commitments, what to do when you’re still “Hell yeah!” about too much stuff?

As Michael Bungay Stanier might say, the trick is to say “Yes” just a little more slowly.

Ask one more followup or clarification question than normal. Ask for a little while to think about it (if it’s too urgent for that, is it really a good opportunity, or just somebody else’s emergency?).

See what happens.

Just because you’re the only tentacle of the bureaucracy that can handle this particular process doesn’t mean you have permission to act like a monopolist.

If you’ve got other people’s livelihoods in your hands, act like it.

Absence of competition is not license for chaos.

If you’re tired of the usual kind of conversation, try changing the question or the venue.

Some favorite examples of the other kind of question include “How are you here?” (vs. “What do you do?”), “What’s on your mind?”, and “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

It’s hard to go from one of those questions to meaningless “debate” about the broken state of the world.

Alternatively, you can change people’s state by changing their place. Classrooms, offices, and the proverbial water cooler aren’t redolent of personal storytelling. And most people at the water cooler didn’t go there looking to hear or share anything deeply personal.

Try inviting people over for dinner instead. You might be amazed at what they’ll do with not too much further prompting.

There’s been a remarkable rise in visible tribalism and localism in the past decade or so.

Heart stickers, “Home” stickers, area codes, airport call letters, and all kinds of subcultures have all gone (locally) mainstream.

And, of course, now that we’re connected to everyone on the internet, we’re rapidly using that connection to find and align with the people like us.

In many ways, this is a good and joyful thing. Taking pride in our places and finding our people (without flying all the way to Australia on spec) is a fun and often fulfilling part of modern life.

But, like anything, it can be taken too far: we can forget that the world is full of lots of people not like us, or that we are also inevitably sometimes on the same team as people we don’t like, or who aren’t from here.

Globalism — pretending everything was basically the same everywhere — didn’t work. Hyper-tribalism isn’t going to be a good replacement if we try to reorganize ourselves with no respect for existing national borders.

The next move needs to be a 21st-century recovery or reinterpretation of E pluribus unum: California, Iowa, Texas, and Massachusetts really are different places (and each has sub-regions and subcultures of its own), but we need to find ways to really celebrate that without acting as if the others aren’t also us, too.

It’s fun to be in the tribe. But we’re also all in it together.

There are the rules.

And then there are the rules about the rules.

The rules tell us what’s in bounds and what’s out; or whether the line is fair or foul.

The rules about the rules allow the whole system to work. They’re more powerful — and frequently less noticed — than the rules by which we play.

One of the best rules about the rules is, “You can’t say you can’t play.”

Everyone’s free to discuss and to disagree. Opinions and ideas can be expressed.

But no one is free to say that someone else — or her ideas — don’t have standing simply on the basis of who that person is.

She’s entitled to be wrong, and she doesn’t have permission to compel you to see things her way.

But you don’t have permission to rule her out of the game.

Them’s the rules.

There’s a lot of discussion and debate about privilege these days. And, to the extent that it helps make room for people who were already speaking to finally be heard, or helps people too accustomed to the sound of their own voices to listen and learn a little more, that’s probably a good thing.

What’s really not helpful, though, is when we veer into privilege-shaming and shutting people down (or out).

It’s undeniable that some people have head starts in life. Arguing about that isn’t interesting, and if it keeps people from putting their privilege to good use, it’s counter-productive.

What might be more helpful is to start a conversation about what sorts of responsibilities inhere in privilege and how to live them out.

For starters, there’s a responsibility to use privilege (and power) in pro-social ways.

But, beyond that, we should be talking about using privilege with permission. If “social responsibility” is something people with privilege do to those who don’t in order to salve their own consciences or impress their clients or friends, that’s not really so responsible, is it?

Let’s stop acting as if “changing the world” is a birthright and start asking how we can use our head starts to make things better.

As Orwell and others have so astutely noted, we think in words — and the language and metaphors we use therefore shape our worldview.

Now that “the market is our only language,” even in sectors traditionally dedicated to the unquantifiable public good like government and academia, we’re applying inappropriately simple ideas to increasingly complex problems.

Not all quantification is bad, of course. But more data doesn’t mean more knowledge, nor necessarily better decisions. And just try to wrap your mind around what it might mean to “leverage” or “impact” a “space.”

Business, and especially business-speak, tends to demand simplicity and certainty.

To whatever extent it’s in business, government is in the business of dealing with real people — and therefore with complexity and uncertainty.

Government might well be simplified. But when powerful people oversimplify the problems of governance — caveat emptor.

On Saturday, Ecuador held national elections for a new “citizens’ council” plus mayoral elections in Quito and other cities.

In Quito, a radio shock jock won the mayor’s race with a runoff-proof plurality of just more than 20 percent of the vote.

You can guess this guy’s politics — predictably, there’s already a meme showing him with a distinctive blond combover, way too many stars around his name, and a phonetic rendition of “Make Quito Great Again.”

Buffoonery isn’t unconstitutional, but it sure is contagious. And now that it’s been “presidented” in the most high-profile office in the world, we’re going to be living with copycats for a very long time.