The QLog

A Reason to Consume Smart: The Island of Garbage

Productivity, in part, is about the efficient use of time, energy, and resources. However, as a society, many believe that any solution which is 'faster and cheaper' for a single person is the best one. I would argue that true productivity for an individual, firm, or the planet as a whole needs to embrace a systems approach which accounts for long-term impacts and is more 'global' to integrate the various parts. Otherwise, the real costs are not considered.

Due to the nature of ocean currents and the waste disposal habits of modern Homo sapiens, a very large island of plastic garbage exists within the Pacific. In fact, this floating heap of trash is visible from space. Here it is within Google Maps. Clearly, systems thinking with a time horizon extending far into the future is currently lacking for our world.

I am not advocating that everyone should stop using plastic; however, I would suggest that smart consumerism includes making responsible choices. Vote with your dollars when plastic is concerned (e.g. small bottles, shopping bags, single-item wrappers, and many other packages). There is currently too much waste. Of course, if the costs of oil continue to rise (especially if we have really crossed Hubble's Peak), then Adam Smith's invisible hand might solve this problem with market forces as firms will seek other remedies.

To learn more about this island of trash, I've embedded this clip from an web documentary called Garbage Island (note: this was produced by VBS, an online broadcast network, not PBS...and therefore, it does contain some adult language).

50/5 Challenge

I have encouraged friends, family, and clients (and some strangers) to consider crafting the following:

A. A Life List of 101 Goals that includes goals for 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, (and maybe 50) year time horizons.

B. A Purpose Statement to explain the reason one has for waking up everyday (a good starting point is to consider what you would like people to say about you...both now and 100 years after you have died).

However, a few people have told me that they have have a hard time with both of these activities. Here is an exercise that can help.

Today, you are given both "the good news" and "the bad news".

1. While having breakfast with your accountant, you discover that your net worth has suddenly increased, due to all your efforts, to $50 million dollars!

2. However, after lunch, during a routine doctor visit, you discover that you only have 5 years to live. These will be healthy years until the very last day; however, there is no cure or treatment.

This is the 50/5 Challenge. Map out how you would spend your time for the next five years. Go into detail. Do not just say "travel the world". Where would you go? Why? With who? What would you do there? What else?

If you have a problem with goal setting, this may help you gain some insight into what you really would like to try, see, experience, be, or have before you really do enter into your last five years of your life.   

100 Goals in 1000 Days

Yesterday, I started a new blog to track one hundred goals I plan to complete over the next 2.75 years. Please visit 100goalsin1000days.com to learn more about this new meme. Although this neoblog has a minimalist look currently, as it matures, the style will certainly change and I have plans to add both audio and video entries. 

My new 100 Goals in 1000 Days blog will NOT replace Qlog as it has a very different purpose. Instead, I will be maintaining both digital journals simultaneously.

What Have You Forgotten?

On March 19th, the world lost writer and visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke. You can see the farewell video that he recorded for his 90th birthday where he outlines his world-changing "three wishes" for humanity I hope they all are granted in the near future.   

Although Clarke is best well known for his science fiction novels such as Childhood’s End (which has been in print for 50-plus years and has generated over $25 million in revenue) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (plus the 1969 movie of the same name that he co-created with director Stanley Kubrick), he also wrote a technical paper that outlined the feasibility of a true global communication system in 1945 via satellites in geosynchronous orbit, a brilliant insight, some years before Sputnik. Twenty years later, Clarke wrote an interesting essay entitled "How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time" about this idea as he did not patent the the concept (yet, he points out, the patent itself would have expired by the time it would become economically viable anyhow).

I decided to re-read his classic novel Rendezvous with Rama and while I was immersed within his fictional universe, I discovered a great question, a motto of one of the characters, Karl Mercer: What Have You Forgotten?

Consider your current goals, projects, and tasks. What is missing? What is hiding? What have you overlooked? Is there an assumption you need to re-think, a variable you need to re-calculate? In other words, what have you forgotten?

Practice Makes Perfect, Part One

Psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) offered the "Law of Exercise" which stated that "the more times a response is made in a given situation, the stronger it becomes. As a behaviorist, he suggested that stimulus-response associations are strengthened through repetition. This was an early idea about learning, based on animal studies.

In other words, he claimed that Practice Makes Perfect.

Question: is it really that simple?

Happy Leap Day

Since 2008 has 366 days, I suggest using this "extra" day to review your annual goals, revise some of your action plans, and outline any necessary course corrections for the next 10 months. This will help insure that 2008 is great.

Fifty Year Plan

If you have completed your five year plan, I encourage to craft a 50-Year Plan! Expand your time horizon for half a century and plan out all you would like to be, do, have, learn, see, and experience.

What if you are already 80 years old? Then consider what legacies you would like to leave behind and how could you help\influence\impact your family, friends, community, or the world-at-large in fifty years from beyond the grave.

Of course, this plan is subject to change as the world changes; nevertheless, course corrections are easiest when you are already have your bearings and are heading in a single direction.

A rough outline can be completed within a few hours. A superior Fifty Year Plan will take several weeks to assemble as it will involve personal brainstorming, quite reflection, critical thinking, and strategic planning.

Five Year Plan

"We greatly overestimate what we can accomplish in one year.  But we greatly underestimate what we can accomplish in five years.”  - Peter Drucker

Successful people usually have a time horizon that spans several years. So, if you do not have a 5-year plan, I highly suggest you take an evening an map out the next few years, consider everything you would like to do, have, be, and experience. Some things are just not possible to complete within 365 days. Increase your goals list to span long-term targets that may take a few winters to accomplish.

Know-What

"There is one quality more important than "know-how" and we cannot accuse the United States of any undue amount of it.  This is "know-what" by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be." - Norbert Wiener (the founder of the interdisciplinary field of Cybernetics), The Human Use of Human Beings, 1954

What Are You Learning in 2008?

What one subject do you want to learn in 2008? An additional skill? A second language? A new hobby? Or do you want to become a subject matter expert in specific field or niche?

Both formal and personal studies are important for self-growth. Successful output is linked to wise mental inputs. Make sure that you have decided to learn something novel and worthwhile this year.