On any given day, you will see people worship their god(s) – but none quite so obvious as today – Christmas day. I’ve read that the easiest way to find out what god or idol a person cherishes the most is to look at what, when lost or at risk, causes them to turn to prayer. Is it their own life, like a foxhole Christians, their family, their job, or is it something else? A second, and perhaps more externally obvious method, might be to look at how they spend December 25th. Regardless of which god(s) a person worships – and all people worship some god – today is a day that seems to highlight it. Perhaps it is the freedom that comes with a national holiday. A day in which most people may decide how to spend it. Christians will worship Christ. Those that are familiar, will commune before a familiar
I have begun looking at life in terms of chapters – each separate from the others, full of its own unique advantages and opportunities. This view is freeing in a number of ways. With positive things, it encourages me to savor the best parts of this chapter. It is not guaranteed that future chapters will be the same. I am so glad I surfed as much as I did when I was young, single and living two blocks from a legendary beach. I took advantage of what was possible then but hasn’t been possible to the same degree since then. With negative things, it assures me that they will not persist forever. I can suffer through many things if I know there is an end and there will ultimately be a benefit for getting through the hardship. When I bike to work in Seattle on days in the 30’s, I remind myself that this
In 2012 I challenged myself to surf Mavericks and consume less. That was v1.0 of my yearly focus. Since then the process, one I call my ‘yearly focus’ has become more specific and better documented. Here are details on my newest iteration of creating a yearly focus. V 1.0 – 1.3 Since I haven’t succinctly documented the iterations anywhere, here is a quick run through of what I’ve done so far. I mentioned v1.0 above was having goals, that started in 2012 with a few Facebook posts. In 2013 I realized I needed to write down & report on my yearly challenges to create accountability for myself. That was v1.1. I broke it up into a challenge, goal & theme. I have been blogging about that under the category ‘Yearly Focus’ regularly since then. In 2014 I played around with the items a bit to hone the process. That was v1.2.
There are those people that care most about solving a problem that is important to them and there are those that care most about making a profit. Whichever one you are, if you are to go far, eventually you will find need of the other. You will learn to speak in their language. Those that seek profits will put words to a big problem they can solve: to help people, to provide jobs, to create beautiful products that people love, to connect the world or to create equality. Those that seek to solve a problem will find ways to demonstrate the potential of a profit to investors; market potential, owning the data, upsell potential or the leverage of first mover advantage. Those lines will blur in time. You might lose track of whether the profits you make justify the energy you put into solving your important problem or whether solving that problem is how you
Despite never being much of a sports fan as a child, as a young adult I became a huge fan of the NFL, particularly of The Atlanta Falcons. Doing so later in life, and as someone with an over-analytical tendency, has resulted in my viewing the experience as an experiment of sorts. One in which I observe and reflect on patterns even as I participate in them. One of the strangest aspects and one I am deeply affected by is that of team loyalty. Loyalty Snobery Sports has within it, the strangest of snobberies – one that centers around team loyalty. Watch some time as a team rises from the ranks towards a championship and their fans seem to multiply. You will see new hats and jerseys on the street and every day there will be new converts. But many of them will be chastised as fair weather fans. Their fandom
Adding efficiency is one of the key ways an economy grows. It is the difference between healthy growth and a zero sum game. Here are some of the ways that efficiency is introduced and how well various types of entities are able to implement that efficiency. Specialization & Division of Labor Simply put, have the people that are best at something do that thing, and other people do what they are best at. Imagine a company that employs 100 craftspeople – 50 of them can produce either 1 table or four chairs per hour – the other fifty have slightly different skills and can either produce 2 tables or three chairs per hour. If everyone spends half of their day working on each, the company will end up with 600 tables & 1,400 chairs per day. If the company lets those that are best at making tables, focus on that task and those
This year I set out to think about the topic of health – what it meant and how to achieve/maintain it. It should come to no surprise to anyone that knows me or reads this blog that my first goal was to figure out how to measure it. How to turn an abstract concept into a concrete number. Here are my thoughts. The Old Way I used to think of my health on a given day as a percentage. 100% was full health – defined by my normal self when I had no ailments. If I got sick or injured I would think of myself as operating at some lesser degree – almost like how you would measure the output of a factory. 100% means all machines are working at their expected capacity – if anything goes wrong then you measure the difference as a percentage. I have frequently used terms like
I started writing this post two years ago. The controversy of the topic spurred me to let it steep. Here are my thoughts on a topic that for some reason is far more controversial than it should be. Vaccines I’m a huge fan of the vaccination process. Actually, to be clear, that really makes me a huge fan of the rapid adaptation of the human immune system – but I’m glad we’ve figured out how to hack it. That hack, whether discovered thousands of years ago in China or Turkey, or in 1796 in England, is the ability to help the immune system develop resistance to diseases without the host body actually having to suffer the full disease. Pretty cool stuff. Not only is it cool, but it has saved millions of lives. I’m really glad I was given a number of vaccines as a child. My wife and I have
I’ve had a number of collections over the years: baseball cards, action figures, Beanie Babies. Call me a child of the 80’s – everything was a collectors item back then. The one I’m most known for, however, is a Pez collection that was nearing 500 pieces in its prime. As an aspiring minimalist, I have been coming to terms with that collection over the past few years. It isn’t going to be able to be a big part of my life anymore. But at the same time, it isn’t easy to get rid of something I’ve invested time and energy into for over 20 years. Here are some tips I picked up on how to get rid of a collection in the least jarring way. Some I’ve learned from past collections that were easier to part with, and some I’m learning now. If you have come to the place where you are
Being the aspiring minimalists we are, my wife and I brought our first child home to our small apartment that had very few baby toys in it – everything fit in/on a toy box that sat on our bay window seat. Over the three years that followed, despite our best intentions, our house has accumulated many more toys. Though they are individually great – the trouble with toys, as is the trouble with most things, is that their value does not scale linearly. More toys does not equal more fun or more learning. There are diminishing returns. Eventually even negative returns where more toys results only in more mess, stress and frustration. A knee-jerk reaction might be to get rid of most everything – to go full minimalist. While that reaction will provide some benefits, we feel it would be throwing the baby out with the bath water. We are attempting to get the best of both worlds via a