Category Archives: Business

You Waste a lot of Time at Work

… or at least so says this infographic from Atlassian. I wanted to embed the infographic here, but the infographic is not presented in a way that makes it easy to share (other than giving you the URL, which I’ve already done). So, I’ll just go over some of the key statistics from the inforgraphic. Though, I highly recommend checking out the infographic because the information presented in that fashion might make it more memorable.

They name three main culprits of wasting time at work: email, pointless meetings, and constant interruptions. I think these are probably all things that most people would agree on. Let’s look at some of the costs associated with these “culprits.”

Email

Annual Productivity Costs per Employee:

Spam: $1250

Unnecessary emails: $1800

Poorly written communications: $2100 to $4100

Meetings

U.S. Business lose $37 billion in salary because of the cost of unnecessary meetings

Interruptions

Interruptions a day for the average employee: 56

Minutes spent working before the average employee switches tasks: 3

Hours spent recovering from distractions per day: 2

~~

If all of this is true, it kind of makes it hard to ignore the costs associated with these three major time-wasters. Of course, Atlassian’s motive isn’t entirely pure. At the bottom of the infographic, they’d like you to sign-up to learn how their business solution (Confluence)* can help your team work more efficiently.

The information provided in the infographic is certainly compelling, isn’t it? The point about email seems particularly poignant, especially the note about poorly written communication. It seems that a team leader would want to host a workshop or hire some help to ensure that the team is communicating at its optimal capacity.

Seeing this infographic also makes me want to revisit Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Work Week. There are lots of important productivity tools in there for making your team more efficient. More than that, be sure to check out Ferriss’ blog, where he continues to talk about ways to improve efficiency (in many different aspects of life: he’s just finishing up a book on cooking and he’s also published a book on dieting/working out).

*Note: Please don’t consider this an endorsement of Atlassian or Confluence. I hadn’t heard of the company (or the product) until I came across this infographic and I have no experience using Confluence.

“Who didn’t make it out? The optimists” — Lessons from the Stockdale Paradox

I mentioned that I had borrowed a number of books to read for what I thought was going to be a road trip from DC to Newfoundland. Things didn’t turn out the way that I thought they would, but I still had these books that I was interested to read. One of those books: .

Good to Great was written by Jim Collins, with the help of his research team, a little over a decade ago. After reading through it, it’s amazing how many of his findings still seem to apply in today’s business world. In fact, now that I’ve finished reading Good to Great, I’m excited to read a book he published this past year: . One of the stories that I read in the book I found quite profound. I’ve found some , but I also want to give you the opportunity to read the passage and discover it in the same way that I have. So, I’ve included the relevant text (from page 83-85):

The Stockdale Paradox
The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over 20 times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda. At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself, so that he could not be put on videotape as an example of a “well-treated prisoner.” He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture (no one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a step-wise system—after x minutes, you can say certain things—that gave the men milestones to survive toward). He instituted an elaborate internal communications system to reduce the sense of isolation that their captors tried to create, which used a five-by-five matrix of tap codes for alpha characters. (Tap-tap equals the letter a, tap-pause-tap-tap equals the letter b, tap-tap-pause-tap equals the letter f, and so forth, for 25 letters, c doubling for k.) At one point, during an imposed silence, the prisoners mopped and swept the central yard using the code, swish-swashing out “We love you” to Stockdale, on the third anniversary of his being shot down. After his release, Stockdale became the first three-star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
You can understand, then, my anticipation at the prospect of spending part of an afternoon with Stockdale. One of my students had written his paper on Stockdale, who happened to be a senior research fellow studying the Stoic philosophers at the Hoover Institution right across the street from my office, and Stockdale invited the two of us for lunch. In preparation, I read In Love and War, the book Stockdale and his wife had written in alternating chapters, chronicling their experiences during those eight years.
As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak—the uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors, and so forth. And then, it dawned on me: “Here I am sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’m getting depressed reading this, and I know the end of the story! I know that he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on this same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?”
“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said, when I asked him. “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

* * *

I didn’t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.”
“The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier.
“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: “We’re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!”

Amazing, huh?

I don’t think I’ll soon forget the story of Admiral Stockdale. I hope you were able to glean some insights from this story as I have. And, in case you want to listen to the audio of Jim Collins talking about this story, you can find that .

Tying Up Loose Ends — Again

Earlier this year, I did a where I talked about a number of ideas in one post. This served a couple of interconnected purposes: 1) it emptied my “posts to write” list, and 2) it allowed me to flood that list with some new ideas. (I said the purposes were interconnected.) My list has again started to grow a little bit, so I thought I would do another one of those to flush out the list. There are a couple of ideas that I won’t include in this post because I do want to write a “fuller” post on them, so look for some posts in the next few days about “balance,” “The Stockdale Paradox,” and the idea that “every game (in a season) counts equally.”

The Enneagram — Through my exposure to transpersonal psychology, I was introduced to the . I don’t know this for a fact, but my suspicion is that the Enneagram is highly underutilized relative to its helpfulness in understand one’s self and others.

Life’s all about making decisions — One of my interests is “decision-making.” Books, literature, research: I’m fascinated by how humans make decisions. On that note, one of the things I’ve learned is that life is — really — all about making decisions. More importantly though, it’s important to put yourself in situations that allow you to make good choices. Let me say that again: “It’s important to put yourself in situations that allow you to make good choices.”

Measuring outcomes in the non-profit sector — I’ve talked before about my time with , but I also had a class in this summer. The thing that struck me the most about the non-profit sector is the lack of ways to measure outcomes. That is not to say that there aren’t ways to measure outcomes in the non-profit sector, but when compared to the for-profit sector, it seems that, for whatever reason, there aren’t as many established and agreed upon ways to measure outcomes.

Reframing your life — Many people, myself included, sometimes get caught up in choosing things they want to do (career-wise). An important realization on that front: it’s not what you want to do for the “rest of your life,” but simply, what you want to do “for right now.” Meaning, it’s okay to change your mind later and move into a different position, field, or industry.

Psychological reasons why good people do bad things — I came across this a few days ago that recounts a number of reasons why good people do bad things. I think it’s really important to understand the underlying psychological concepts that contribute to these errors in “decision-making.”

Drops from the Fire Hose – The Mason MBA Student Association

It’s only been about a week since my last post here at Genuine Thriving, but it seems like a lot longer. I think that’s partly because I have been blogging, but just not for Genuine Thriving. Lately, I’ve been trying to drum up interest/traffic for a student organization I’m part of: The Mason MBA Student Association.

One of my key roles with this organization is running the website. As part of running the website, I thought it would be a good idea to have a daily post of some of the business news/information from around the web. I’ve called this series, “Drops from the Fire Hose.” Why? Well, there is a plethora of business information written everyday, countless books that are published each year, and a number of ways to consume new business information. These daily posts are meant to curate some of the articles/information that Mason MBA students may find useful.

Why am I telling you all about this? Well, for one, I thought some of you might find this useful, too. I usually post a few articles along with a few excerpts of those articles. If you like some of the “business” posts I’ve written here, you’d probably like some of the business articles that I include in the daily “drops.”

I have a list of 6 or 7 things I want to write about and I’m hoping to get them all written by the end of the week. If not, I may have to do one of those posts where I wrote about a bunch of ideas in one post.

Adding General Managers to the Organization Could Improve Ethical Decision-Making

I’ve mentioned that I’m working at for the summer. As I don’t currently live in , I take the to get to work. As I don’t yet have an iPhone or an iPad (with which to read something on), I’ve kept my subscription to . As I was reading , I got to an article from called, “”

At first, I was a bit skeptical, but as I read on, it may me think of the post I recently wrote about . Here’s an excerpt from the Schumpeter [emphasis added]:

But is it wise to be so obsessed with speed? High-speed trading can lead to market meltdowns, as almost happened on May 6th 2010, unless automatic breaks are installed. And is taking one’s time so bad? Regulators are always warning people not to buy things in the heat of the moment. Procrastinators have a built-in cooling-off period. Businesses are forever saying that they need more creativity. Dithering can help. Ernest Hemingway told a fan who asked him how to write a novel that the first thing to do was to clean the fridge. Steven Johnson, a writer on innovation, argues that some of the best new products are “slow hunches”. Nestlé’s idea of selling coffee in small pods went nowhere for three decades; now it is worth billions.

These thoughts have been inspired by two (slowly savoured) works of management theory: an obscure article in the Academy of Management Journal by Brian Gunia of Johns Hopkins University; and a popular new book, “Wait: The Art and Science of Delay”, by Frank Partnoy of University of San Diego. Mr Gunia and his three co-authors demonstrated, in a series of experiments, that slowing down makes us more ethical. When confronted with a clear choice between right and wrong, people are five times more likely to do the right thing if they have time to think about it than if they are forced to make a snap decision. Organisations with a “fast pulse” (such as banks) are more likely to suffer from ethical problems than those that move more slowly. (The current LIBOR scandal engulfing Barclays in Britain supports this idea.) The authors suggest that companies should make greater use of “cooling-off periods” or introduce several levels of approval for important decisions.

I fine this rather on-point with what I was saying in the . By having more layers of approval (by way of the general managers), there would, undoubtedly, be more time factored into the process. As a result, this *may* result in less of the instances of poor decision-making that what we’ve seen recently with companies like Barclay’s and JP Morgan.

Could “General Managers” Have Stopped JP Morgan’s Loss?

Jamie Dimon (CEO of ) has been in the news for the last couple of weeks and I’m sure he’d much rather not have been (at least not in the news for the reasons he and his firm are in the news). The :

JPMorgan Chase says losses from a massive trading blunder in the bank’s London have reached $5.8 billion and could go as high as $7 billion.

That’s a . I think that this occurrence (and probably the kerfuffle with ) is tied to something I read in the Harvard Business Review last week. It was an article by in that talked about the :

At one time general managers were at the center of the action. Two decades ago, organizations were designed around stand-alone business units, so all managers had to understand finance, technology, manufacturing, sales, marketing, strategy, human resources, and more. . . However starting in the 1980’s, many companies evolved to “functional” structures to cut costs and reduce duplication. The transition consolidated those support functions which were common among the BU’s [business units]. GE, for example, went from hundreds of discrete BU’s to a dozen large businesses with each one having strong, centralized finance, HR, engineering, marketing, and manufacturing units. . . In fact, for many chief executives I’ve recently worked with, the first real GM job that they had was CEO!

While I can see how this trend has helped to save companies lots of money, I find it a tad worrisome. I’ve about having an eye towards the bigger picture and I wonder if by consolidating these business units that this eye towards the bigger picture has been shielded. That is, not having a general manager there to act as “oversight” may have made it easier to shirk long-term goals and focus on short-term profits.

Tying this back into the JP Morgan Chase loss: I wonder if the firm had a number of general managers (at more levels than the ) would this have happened? Would a general manager responsible for the trader in question have allowed this kind of trade to happen? The same question could be asked about Barclay’s and LIBOR. Would a general manager have created an environment where it was okay to behave so unethically? It’s nearly impossible to answer these questions either way. Nonetheless, it is worth considering the trend of the organizational structure of firms. Is it really in the best interest of the firm to eliminate all general managers? Are the short-term gains worth sacrificing the long-term sustainability?

Wealth Distribution in America: It’s Not What Americans Think or Want

There were some interesting enlightening findings published last year from two well-respected researchers (Norton and Ariely) on the topic of wealth distribution. I remember seeing it last year when it came out and it being rather startling. I came across it again a couple of weeks ago and had it bookmarked to see if I could glean any other insights from it. I stumbled across the bookmark this morning and thought I’d post it here, in case any of you had any thoughts you wanted to offer on the research findings.

Specifically, I’m referring to a chart that came from the article the two researchers published and was reproduced by Mother Jones (political magazine). Here’s the chart from Mother Jones (note: the chart from the published journal article is the same in content):

Average Income by Family, distributed by income group.

A bit startling, huh? I find it fascinating that Americans want the top 20% to have ~32% and that they actually have almost triple that much!

Some important things to think about from the authors [emphasis added]:

Given the consensus among disparate groups on the gap between an ideal distribution of wealth and the actual level of wealth inequality, why are more Americans, especially those with low income, not advocating for greater redistribution of wealth? First, our results demonstrate that Americans appear to drastically underestimate the current level of wealth inequality, suggesting they may simply be unaware of the gap. Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States, beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth. Third, despite the fact that conservatives and liberals in our sample agree that the current level of inequality is far from ideal, public disagreements about the causes of that inequality may drown out this consensus. Finally, and more broadly, Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes toward economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap.

The ironic piece to this entire discussion is that conservatives and liberals agree that the level of inequality is ideal. However, as with just about everything in politics these days, these two ideologically different groups of people disagree about the best way to resolve it.

Shouldn’t “Work” be About Production not Hours Completed?

I have to ride an elevator to the 20th floor for my . There’s also no restaurant on the floor and I don’t usually bring my lunch, so I find myself riding up and down the elevator quite a bit during the week. There was one interesting conversation I overheard this past week riding in the elevator.

On the way down, the elevator stopped a few floors after I got on and two gentlemen walked on. The elevator began descending again and I one of the guys said that he finished his “code” (work product) an hour early. (The hour early referring to how much time before, presumably, he was allowed to go home.) After a short pause, the same guy then said that he should have waiting an hour and then submitted his code. There was then a long pause and the other guy called the first guy an idiot.

While I didn’t exactly care for the unnecessary demeaning term, there is most definitely something to be gleaned from this situation.

Even with the all of the that has been done allocating time at work, the numerous of companies implementing it, and the various published on the subject, there are still companies that operate under the impression that giving an employee autonomy, mastery, and purpose is a non-optimal solution.

On account of this example, I wonder how many similar companies/organizations there are out there that don’t operate under these principles. More importantly, I wonder what the state of the business world (and by extension, the rest of it) would look like if a great majority of companies gave their employees autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Twitter: Who I’m Following, Part 8

It’s been quite awhile since I last did a post in my series of “”Who I’’m Following”” on Twitter. In fact, it’s been 6 months! That’s almost half as long as I’ve been participating on Twitter. In looking at the some of these old posts (see below) of who I’m following, I seemed to have unfollowed a number of folks. I wish I had kept a list of the people I’ve unfollowed, so I could offer reasons as to why I decided to unfollow some folks. Briefly, I can say that sometimes the reason is because the person isn’t very active on Twitter. Other times, it’s because I became frustrated with the amount of negativity (sometimes in the form of the person retweeting “trolls” or people being unnecessarily negative in the form of ad hominem attacks). I most certainly won’t be able to get to all the new people I’m following on Twitter (it’s approximately doubled!), so look for a few of these posts in the coming weeks (or months).

If you missed any of the earlier posts in this series, here they are:







Part 7

Here we go!

Big Think@bigthink: Big Think aims to, “help you move above and beyond random information, toward real knowledge, offering big ideas from fields outside your own that you can apply toward the questions and challenges in your own life.”

Wired@wired: Wired is the digital home of Wired Magazine and it acts as a daily technology site.

Austan Goolsbee@Austan_Goolsbee: Goolsbee is a Professor of economics and Economics at the Booth School of Business (University of Chicago). He is also the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Richard H Thaler@R_Thaler: Thaler is a Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the Booth School of Business (University of Chicago) and the co-author of Nudge.

Maria Popova@brainpicker: “Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are.”

Ashoka Changemakers@changemakers: “The latest in innovation, social entrepreneurship, and how you can make a difference. Why? Everyone Can Be a Changemaker.”

Ashoka@Ashoka: “Ashoka is an international citizen-sector organization that is leading the way to an Everyone a Changemaker World.”

Rick Mercer@rickmercer: Mercer is a Canadian comedian and political satirist. He’s an alumnus of This Hour Has 22 Minutes and is currently the host of the Rick Mercer Report.

Josh Barro@jbarro: “I write on fiscal and economic policy issues at all levels of government. Areas of particular interest for me include tax policy, entitlements and public employee compensation.”

Matt Yglesias@mattyglesias: “Matthew Yglesias is Slate‘s business and economics correspondent. Before joining the magazine he worked for ThinkProgress, the Atlantic, TPM Media, and the American Prospect.”

Lifehacker@lifehacker: “Lifehacker curates tips, tricks, and technology for living better in the digital age.”

Timothy P Carney@TPCarney: “Timothy P. Carney is the Washington Examiner‘s senior political columnist.” Carney is also a prominent conservative voice.

Joseph Weisenthal@TheStalwart:  Joe Weisenthal is the Deputy Editor Of Business Insider. “He previously was a writer and analyst for Techdirt.com, and before that worked as an analyst for money management firm Prentiss Smith & Co.”

Bob Rae@bobraeMP: Bob Rae is the current (interim) Leader of the Liberal Party (of Canada). He was previously the leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party.

Mediaite@mediaite: “The site for news, info and smart opinions about print, online and broadcast media.”

Susan Rice@AmbassadorRice: Susan Rice is the US Ambassador to the United Nations. According to Wikipedia, she is not related to Condoleezza Rice.

Josh Rogin@joshrogin: “Josh Rogin reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.”

Andrew Exum@abumuqawama: “Andrew Exum is a Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security,” and “Abu Muqawama is a blog that focuses on small wars and insurgencies in addition to regional issues in the Middle East.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter@SlaughterAM: “Princeton Professor. Director of Policy Planning, U.S. State Dept 2009-2011. Foreign policy curator.”

Library of Congress@librarycongress: “We are the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in our collections.”

Bill Nye@TheScienceGuy: “‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ is an American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, mechanical engineer, and scientist.”

Bill Cosby@BillCosby: “Bill Cosby is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist.”

Jeffrey Levy, EPA@levyj413: “Jeffrey Levy is the EPA Director of Web Communications, Co-Chair of the Federal Web Managers Council, and Gov’t 2.0er.”

Ed Husain@Ed_Husain: “Ed Husain is a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of ‘The Islamist.'”

Daniel Drezner@dandrezner: “Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.”

John Green@realjohngreen: I just wrote a post about John Green’s Crash Course in World History. Check it out!

Amazing Photography@AmazingPics: This Twitter feed regularly posts some of the best photographs. You’ll want to see these.

kelly oxford@kellyoxford: Kelly Oxford’s current Twitter Bio: “Writer. Designed to make you feel like everything is going well. I am your Perestroika.”

Joe Randazzo@Randazzoj: “Joe Randazzo is currently the editor of the satirical newspaper, The Onion.” As you might think, his tweets are often sarcastic (and funny).

Ken Jennings@KenJennings: Of Jeopardy! fame. He’s written a bunch of books, including Maphead. His tweets are often intended to be funny.

Seth Meyers@sethmeyers21: “Seth Meyers currently serves as the head writer for Saturday Night Live and hosts its news parody program segment Weekend Update.”

Anjeanette Carter@anjeanette: I found Anjeanette’s twitter feed as a result of this article. “The aspiring actress isn’t afraid to let the sarcasm fly – and sometimes that’s just the sort of thing you need to pop up on your screen.”

Andy Carvin@acarvin: “Senior strategist at NPR. Online community organizer since 1994. Former director of the Digital Divide Network. Writer. Photographer. Dad.”

AJELive@AJELive: “Breaking news alerts and updates from Al Jazeera English, a 24-hour news and current affairs channel.” By now, you should all know that I’m a big fan of different perspectives (here or here).

Brian Stelter@brianstetler: A really good person to follow if you enjoy things in “meta.” Stetler reports on TV & Media for the New York Times.

johnmaeda@johmaeda: “President, Rhode Island School of Design, RISD, College, Museum, USA, 1877, Laws of Simplicity, MIT, Design, Art, Business, Technology, Life.”

OMG Facts @OMGFacts: As you might expect, this Twitter feed specializes in tweets that are facts that might “knock your socks off.”

BuzzFeed@BuzzFeed: “BuzzFeed is a website that combines a technology platform for detecting viral content with an editorial selection process to provide a snapshot of “the viral web in realtime.”

Tim O'Reilly@timoreilly: “Founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media. Watching the alpha geeks, sharing their stories, helping the future unfold.”

Jay Rosen @jayrosen_nyu: “I teach journalism at NYU, direct the Studio 20 program there, critique the press and study new media. I don’t do lifecasting but mindcasting on Twitter.”

daveweigel@daveweigel: Dave Weigel is a political reporter for Slate. While his main focus is politics, his tweets are often laced with humor.

Mark Knoller@markknoller: Mark Knoller is a CBS News White House Correspondent. Similar to Stetler, he sometimes comments on what other networks are reporting.

~

I’m well past my self-imposed 1000 word limit, but I wanted to begin to squeeze a bunch more feeds into one post (because I have a lot to make up in this series). As always, I welcome your suggestions in the comments or tweet me!

Tying up Loose Ends: Or, a Mishmash of Ideas in one Post

It’s been awhile since I wrote a post () and even longer since I wrote consecutive posts ( and ). Obviously, I’d like to have written more, but that’s just not how things have worked out. Regardless, I thought it might be a good idea to write a “post of posts” of sorts. That is, I’ve had a list of “ideas to write about” for over a year. Some of the things on the list are recent (thought of in the last few months) and some have been there for at least 9 months. As a way to inject some fresh energy into that list, I thought I’d write a post where I spent some time talking about a number of things on the list — rather than writing a post about just one of those ideas. Hope you enjoy!

It’s Kind of a Funny Story () – I saw this movie awhile back and thought it was rather good. The premise is that a teenager checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward. Some very serious issues are addressed and I think they were done so in an appropriate manner.

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never () – This whole list won’t be of movies, but I thought I’d group the two. I saw the “Justin Bieber Movie” sometime this past summer. I didn’t really know too much about Justin Bieber, just that he was pretty famous with the younger age groups. While this movie wasn’t necessarily an unbiased biography, it definitely did showcase how much hard work Justin invested in himself. Hard work (by itself) will not get you where you want to go all the time (for example: ), but it will go a long way to getting you where you want to be.

What if the car (automobile) were invented today? – I wonder if the car were invented today, would we accept it as is? Meaning, given everything that goes into making the car and everything that is affected because of the car (read: environment), I wonder if consumers would accept it as a product.

Nordic spas – This past summer, just before moving to DC, I spent some time at in Quebec. It was the first time that I’d seen the idea of (hot, cold, hot) in an establishment. Growing up in Canada, it was a common thing — in the winter — to sit in the hot tub for awhile, jump in the pool for a minute (or the snow!) and then get back into the hot tub. I remember trying to find some scientific evidence to back this up as a (positive) thing for the human body, but I couldn’t find anything. That’s not to say that there isn’t any out there.

Blowing in a dog’s face – I find it interesting that dog’s don’t like it when someone blows in their face — but — they can’t wait to stick their head out the window when you’re driving down the road. I wonder if this has something to do with carbon dioxide (on the exhale of someone blowing in their face) vs. oxygen (from the car ride).

Jaywalking – Intuitively, I would think that laws against jaywalking would have been written with a focus on keeping pedestrians safe. Believe it or not — this was not the case. I forgot where I heard it (maybe NPR?), but did you know that jaywalking was — in a way — instituted because of the automobile associations lobbying legislators? In doing some research for this (part) of this post, I found from three days ago talking about this very thing.

Visioning for a job? – Have you ever noticed how couples plan for a baby? Even before they’ve conceived, (sometimes) they’ve bought the crib, painted the room, and are in a sense, planning for this new part of their lives. I wonder why this is normalized, but doing the same thing for a job is viewed with some disdain. Why shouldn’t someone wake up and get dressed as if they’re going to work (even though they may not be)? They could even go to the “office” (library?) and prepare themselves for work.

Secret to happiness – Short and sweet. The secret to happiness is not wishing things were different from they currently are.

Evolution of the electric car – I wonder if there’s a special (or one in the works?) on the evolution of the electric car. I remember reading that the electric car was first invented in the 19th century, but fell out of favor when the internal combustion engine was invented (see: ).

People’s relationships to their body – It’s interesting to see how people relate to their body (in general) in comparison to how they relate to their body at a place where the body can sometimes be more prominent (at the gym or the beach).

~~

That’s narrowed down my list to four! Three of those are “recurring posts” (, , and personality tests). There is one post that I do want to dedicate some time to, so I didn’t want to shorten it here. Look for it in the next little while.