Fridge Stupid

If, like most people living some distance of the Equator, you experience a few cold months during the year, you probably spend a significant amount of dollars on your heating bill. 

And inside the house or apartment you pay to heat, you also happen to spend money on electricity to refrigerate a cold box called a fridge.

Pretty insane with all that free cold available outside your walls, isn't it.

You see, this is a classic example of a bad habit we've inherited and are repeating on auto pilot. It just doesn't make any sense, but we do it because everybody else does it and we don't see any alternative around. But there are alternatives. Change is slow because there's still money to be made by selling appliances designed to break in a few years. Ever wondered why an old fridge from the 1960's is still working mighty fine when the new one you bought 5 years ago is already dead? But that's another topic.

Let's get back to alternatives.

Imagine a wall mounted fridge that would be a permanent fixture in the house, like, let's say, a heat pump. Since the majority of refrigerators break during transport, this would solve a problem right there. Also, the compressor could be located in the basement of the house, eliminating the unnerving humming present in every modern kitchen. Instead of a few big doors, the fridge would present an array or compartment (vegetables, drinks, meat, etc.) each with its own temperature and individual door to minimizing the cold/heat transfer between the fridge and the house each time a compartment is opened. Finally, during winter months, the cold could come from the outside, simply pushed by a fan. The remainder of the year, the compressor would do the job. Total amount of energy saved: around 80%.

Actually, this "smart fridge" has already been designed by a student of Sylvain Plouffe, professor of Ecodesign at the University of Montreal. I read about it in Jean-Sébastien Trudel's excellent book: Arrêtons de pisser dans de l'eau embouteillée (page 151).

However, I haven't seen any available in stores so far.

Someone knows a top level executive at Frigidaire, GE, Maytag, LG, Whirpool, Kitchenaid, Electrolux, Viking or Miele ?

What Are You Afraid Of?

As a society, we are afraid of the wrong things: terrorism, tsunamis, weather, burglars, financial failure, etc. (I covered this in a former blog post: When Playing Safe Becomes Dangerous)

On the other hand, we're not afraid of things that should scare the shit out of us:

1. BAD FOOD: Pesticide and hormone laden industrial foods, nutrient depleted and over caloric fast food, excess sugar and caffeine that are all responsible for killer diseases like obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

2. STRESS: Another great killer. Too much worry and insane working schedules. Besides, do you you know a lot of happy workaholics?

3. NO PLAY: At some point in their life, most adults forget that the primary objective of having a job in the first place was to earn money to pay for the fun stuff. Somewhere along their career path, they developed a "lifestyle" and lost the notion of fun. Life was not meant to pay the bills.

4. TOO MUCH TV: The great inhibitor to clear thinking, personal growth and action oriented lifestyle. Too many people are turning their brain's 'off switch' too often. As a society, this is a major problem. (See my former Blog Post: The Great Divide)

5. DEPRESSION: Often a result of the 4 preceding points. Currently (at least in the Canada and the US, but I suspect the rest of the developed World is not too far), 75% of the population has taken, is taking or will take anti-depressor. While this is good news for pharmaceutical companies, it is a clear sign that something is wrong in the way we live.

6. A BORING LIFE: As someone famously said: "Most people are just stuff to fill graves with." or as Kevin Spacey yelled in The Ref: "What do you do, besides taking space." This should be the ultimate fear: a life devoid of purpose and fun, merely surviving and paying the bills. Yet, that's what 99% of people end up doing. 

How many people do you know really love life, enjoy every minute of it and make a difference in the World? Strive to be one.

***

“We live in a world of negative conditioning. The three big motivators are … fear, greed, and vanity. They drive the American sales process – and they drive the American salesperson. Our society preys on the fear factor. It’s in 50% of the ads we see (the rest are greed or vanity). Ads about life insurance for death and disability, stolen credit cards, anti-freeze for stalled cars, tires that grip the road in the rain, brakes that stop to avoid hitting a child on a bike, and security systems so your home won’t be robbed. If you see that crap enough, you become “fear-conditioned” ”. – Jeffrey Gitomer, Little Red Book of Selling



"I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." - Mark Twain

 
“I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark 
would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. 
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent 
glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” - Jack London

It Doesn't Really Matter How Big Your Network Is

 

Picture courtesy of Dominick Ménard 

(BTW, pictured FB account not his)

Having 10 000 friends on Facebook, 25 000 followers on Twitter and 3 000 connections on LinkedIn might seem like the ultimate networking achievement (especially to younger folks who don’t know what a Rolodex is), but it’s too easy to connect online with anybody, including a majority of people you don’t really know.

This is especially true as your network gets bigger and/or more valuable. Lots of vultures, leeches and suckers will try to piggy back on you like remoras on a great white shark. 

A friend of mine was recently asked if he knew Mr X. His answer: The name sounds familiar, let me check on Facebook…

For him, it’s OK to have 2 500 online “friends” he doesn’t really know as his job is to drive traffic to nightclubs and he uses Facebook merely as a promotion platform.

However if, like most people, your business requires a higher trust level, you might want to pay less attention to the size of your network (spread) and a lot more to its strength (depth).

Here’s the first test of your network’s depth: To how many people can you easily borrow 500$ ?

All of a sudden, your network is a bit smaller, isn’t it?

Now, think of all the doors in the World where you can go knocking uninvited and crash on a sofa for the night.

This is the heart of your network. These are the people worth fighting for. These are the friends that make life worth living.

Don't rely too much on the others.

True wealth you see, is not measured in dollars or in absolute numbers. 

The Great Divide

Artist : Andre Martins de Barros

The average American reads, on average, 1 book a year, but watches 4,5 h of TV per day. (1)

You can safely bet that the time spent on the Internet follows a similar trend.

And when people do read, what do they elect to feed their minds with?

News Junk Food: newspapers and other deliverers of useless and pessimistic information. Quit reading the paper. If something is important, other people will rapidly tell you. Case in point: when 9/11 happened, did you have to wait to learn about it in the next morning newspaper? I didn't think so.

Anyways, 80% of people don't read newspaper articles past the first paragraph.

Among these functional illiterates, there always has been a rare minority of avid learners, what Mike Lipkin calls adaptive navigators. Curious people always striving to improve themselves by knowledge acquisition.

Until very recently, looking for specific and interesting knowledge in palatable form whas a full time job. If you wanted to read anything else than the current fads and bestsellers, you had to venture out of major bookstores and go treasure hunting into the all too rare giant libraries of major cities or into small unknown and dusty bookstores. Last time I was in Europe, I remember scavenging the booksellers of La Seine in Paris for worn out books of Kessel, Cendrars and Monfreid.

In order to avoid bad or average books (and thus save valuable time), you had to ask friends (in person, in a letter or over the phone...) for recommendations and you had to note everything on a scrap of paper.

But now, with the rise of Internet, it has never been easier to find arcane knowledge with a few keystrokes. There are forums of experts in every field you can imagine. There's Amazon.com and its billions of titles, there's eBay, Craigslist and other online marketplaces.

Looking for an out of print french book published in in 1937? Try http://www.livre-rare-book.com/ an online search engine to peek into the inventory of 560 booksellers with over 3 million second hand books.

Knowledge is everywhere, it is within easy reach and it inexpensive.

These are good times for knowledge hungry people!

What that means is that the knowledge gap between active knowledge seekers and passive ordinary people is getting bigger and bigger everyday.

It has been said that if you read a book a week in a specific field, within 5 years, you'll be a national expert on that subject.

When people toiled the fields or pushed levers on an assembly line, the impact of that knowledge gap would have been different. But in an era like ours, where people are paid for their knowledge and brainpower, and where sound decision making is becoming critical in an ever complexifying World, this is something with HUGE consequences.

There's a widening gap between the have and the have not, and the only way to stand on the good side of that canyon is to massively feed your brain with interesting things.

What have you read lately?

***

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who doesn't know how to read. - Mark Twain




(1) A note about video content: I know, I know, there are fantastic learning opportunities offered by TV and other video formats. We all love Discovery Channel. However, most TV programs and video content is - how could I put it? - less intellectual. Moreover, your mind works very differently when watching video (passive) than when reading (active). The former favors surface and emotional reactions while the latter favors abstract reasoning and multi-layered analysis.

What is your Superpower?

I don't have new year resolutions. I have a plan.

It is quite simple: I have devised who I want to be 10 years from now and I have made a baby steps trajectory to get there.

I read it every morning and revise it once a year, usually in early January.

I have different objectives: financial, familial, physical, things I want to learn, skills I want to develop, people I want to meet, etc, etc. Not just things I want to buy.

Why 10 years? Because most people overestimate what can be done in a year and vastly underestimate what can be done in 10 years.

You see, most people (98,5%) have no dream except the ones they've been sold by our materialistic society: be rich, famous, have a Mac Mansion and a trophy wife (or rich husband) and travel the World as a Jet Setter. Not that it is inherently bad, but it is insufficient at best.

If you have no idea of What's Next? after you reach your basic material goals, you'll just feel empty and disappointed once you get there. This is the reason why Hollywood is full of of overly young, beautiful, successful and lost junkies flirting with overdose.

I believe everyone has a great talent (a superpower), that it is generally linked to a great dream and that it is something we enjoy doing.

Children have awesome dreams, but as they grow up, these "unrealistic" dreams are strangled by well meaning dreamless and boring adults.

Our job then, is to find back the dream, develop the talent and use it to change the World for the better.

Every time I get caught in the day to day and my life drifts toward the average and the ordinary, a red light flashes on my internal dashboard and I ask myself how I want to be remembered when I die; and good husband, wonderful friend or respected coworker is definitely not enough.

What about you?

What is your superpower?

What is your Big Dream?

How do you want to be remembered?


I say, this new year, we set out to change the World for the better.

What do you say?

Are you in?

***

“In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them in much the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world is more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breaths toward infecting them, when we uttered our comforting falsities or drew our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came from the vibrations from a woman’s glance.”
– Middlemarch

The tragedy of the average man is that he goes to his grave with his music still in him.
– Longfellow

Are you GOOD or FLEXIBLE ?

(c) www.dilbert.com

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a client. It went something like this:

Client: I want this and this and that, and I want it for yesterday. I don't care if you have to work nights and week ends, I'm the client, I'm paying you and I'm always right.

Me: I hear you. I will do everything I can to give you the best possible product at a decent price in the shortest time possible; but it will not be exactly as you say because: 1) You're late 2) You do not have the budget and 3) We have other good clients in the pipeline and the word I gave them is worth more than any money you can put on the table.

Client: You're not very flexible.

Me: No we're not. But we're very good instead.

Client: And you're cocky as well.

Me: No, not cocky; honest.

Client: What you're saying is that you are walking out of this deal.

Me: Not exactly. What I am saying is that we will walk out of any deal that will prevent us to deliver top quality.

***

I am in the service business and I have a variation of this conversation at least once a week.

People are always surprised when a business refuses money, even when the rest of the deal is crappy. For them, it just doesn't make sense. When you think short term, this way of thinking is just impossible.

When you think long term however, it is the only way to go.

FLEXIBLE Business will always:

- say YES
- promise whatever is asked of them
- over-promise and under-deliver
- accept money, regardless of what is attached to it
- bend their own rules and principles

By so doing:

- they will please the client in the short run, but disappoint him in the long run
- burn their staff and lose the respect of their team
- this will lead to high turnover with the added costs, lower morale and other problems that come along with it
- their best people will leave for better (GOOD) companies
- in the end, only the mediocre, insecure and newbies will remain

The more FLEXIBLE they'll be, the more they'll need to be, because by being FLEXIBLE, they will create conditions where is is impossible to be good.

On the other hand, GOOD companies will do just the opposite. By choosing their projects well, they might lose some money short term, but over time they will excel and establish a stellar track record. And by so doing, they will gain the respect of their staff and attract superstars into their team. They will never neglect an established client to accommodate a new one in a hurry. They will also get good client referrals because they will very rarely disappoint their clients. Their word will become more valuable than all the money they will have left on the table.

By refusing jobs where they cannot excel, they'll become better and better. Their portfolio and referrals will attract other interesting customers looking for a GOOD business partner rather than a FLEXIBLE one. And these are the best and most profitable clients a business can have.

You see, it's Pareto's principle all over again: 80% of your profits comes from 20% of your clients. And that's the 20% of very good clients that never complains. On the other hand, 80% of your problems comes from 20% of your clients. These are the ones that are never satisfied, that want you to be more FLEXIBLE.

Be careful not to neglect your good (and quiet) clients to please the vocal ones asking you to be more FLEXIBLE.

What Exactly are the World Bank and the IMF doing?

The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one fifth in the poorest countries went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995. And the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for the International Development, the IMF, and the rest of the banks, corporations and governments involved in international “aid” continue to tell us that they are doing their jobs, that progress has been made.” – John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man