Longtime readers (hi there!) will recall that TOA started exactly four years ago today. Happy B-Day, TOA! The natural follow up – how old are you now? – is less clear, being four on my first birthday. It’s a circular argument waiting to happen, a carousel in need of a quarter. I’m comfortable leaving the question open, how to account for when, because despite a thousand posts all I have to show for it is an ever-growing list of unanswerable questions. How old are you now? I’ll just add it to the list.
The questions go all the way back to day one. Why do people remember my first post being about tipping? And why do they forget that half of it was about calories? Poor Dunkleman. I forgot too, by the way, I just looked it up. I’ll settle for being happy that I still believe in what I wrote about tipping. As for the post itself, it was fine, but why was my first word 'hi'? Don’t ask me. I guess I didn't realize I’d look back, if I'd known I probably would have chosen a better word, possibly thus, or iktsuarpok.
Speaking of which, I remain puzzled by that entire Lost In Translation word bracket. What was I thinking? What could I possibly say in the semifinal round after having already written about each word… twice? One day, I’ll hire a research team to look into it, this commitment to write up to four posts about one word. I guess I grew out of it, eventually writing about books or sports or holidays, though you could argue I kept at it, posing a new question of what I could possible have to say after writing about next to nothing for four years. There aren’t any clear reasons for writing about Champions League Finals or podcasts or coffee. Why not just experience these things like everybody else, and leave it alone?
A giant question mark could (should?) replace every TOA syllable about biking. Tales of Two Cities is a mystery to me, starting with whether I’ve committed copyright infringement and including when I’ll turn it into a book. The reading reviews are equally puzzling, a befuddling use of time for one or even two people. If I liked a book enough to write about it, why not just reread it instead? The gold medalist here is running, looking back I’m completely stumped and can’t even form a question to express my confusion. My only defense is that this is arguably the most normal thing about TOA, these long, winding rants about wasting time and reducing future knee functionality inexplicably a popular niche genre. I guess a better question would consider the general state of personal nonfiction, and possibly probe into the sanity of your average runner-writer.
What, when, and why prompt interesting questions, but perhaps who opens up the longest line of inquiry. TOA is for… whom? I’ve read that everything is written to someone, and usually One, I think I’ve even written that exact thought myself somewhere in these endless syllables. I guess I forgot to question it because although some posts have obvious addressees, I can’t begin to form a coherent theory about for whom I intended this, or this, or this. Let’s not even talk about Proper Admin, or ask why I used ‘whom’ twice… well, thrice now… in the same paragraph, after successfully avoiding the question of its proper administration for these past four years.
At the very least, reader, you are certain, I can answer… where? Where is TOA? No, I cannot, I cannot where, because despite four weary years of this crap I have no idea where TOA happens. Did I write this post here in my apartment on a thirteen and a half year old Macbook? Or was it in my head, the structure being worked out as I strolled about this afternoon, sipping crap coffee made tolerable by a modest remedy of faux Bailey’s? I guess it wasn’t this morning, when I looked at the ceiling where I always see nothing, no words or ideas to look up to, unless you are the sort who believes ideas are ‘incubated’, a writer who cracks codes by sitting on it for long enough. My subconscious must be bored after nesting for so long, it must be a flight risk, and probably will go away, everything does, once it figures out… where.
I guess this means we’re left with how, the final question. How does this all happen, this mess of questions and confusions? I warned you all, I warned that it would be an awful blog, and now I continue to insist it is true, on average, despite all the lies, lying, and liars, but big surprise, spoiler alert, I don’t have a clue about how. I don’t know if I should be at the library willfully ignoring the public, don’t know if I should be sitting outside with a pen and pad in pantomime solitude, don't know if I should buy the best equipment to help me write from my apartment. I’m not sure how it gets done during the day or if I do any better at night. Sometimes I schedule posts weeks in advance while others get finalized minutes before my fake deadlines, but that’s not based on how I think one way or the other affects the product. This post took the same amount of time as this post, and I have no idea how. Maybe I’ll have these answers in four more years, though I’m not sure how I’ll get them.
So, four years of this and I only have questions. But I’m pleased to note that there is one thing I know for sure, one answer I have, and although I’ve yet to find it a question I’m sure the answer alone is important. I’ve learned after a thousand posts that the answer is the leap, the same today as it was on day one. I’ve had to make a leap, every time, and so it’s fitting that it all started on a leap day. The blank page is a leap, to discover the questions in the emptiness, and to accept the truth in the answers. The rough draft is a leap, to throw away your best because you can do better, and to have confidence that the well runs deep. The final product is a leap, to post an answer to an unasked or unknown question, and to have perspective that with time answers create more questions.
The biggest leap is the next day, after you’ve landed and found yourself right back where you started. This is the nature of the leap. The blank page, the rough draft, the final product, each leap brings us to the next, and with it the same looming questions. Can we leap again, to go around once more on the same carousel, with its ups and downs that always bring us back to the start? Can we fight our expectations and disappointments to begin anew? We are all beginners, I’ve said it before, we are all beginners, and beginning requires the leap.
Good luck to you, loyal reader. Not just on the way up, not just on the way down, you won’t need luck then, but good luck when it’s all over, and you’re back in the same place. Every day is a leap, but it’s much tougher than it sounds, so the next time you need to begin, remember that each leap is worth celebrating. Good luck, and happy leap day, or maybe happy holidays, just in case you don't celebrate it.
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Thursday, February 27, 2020
the business bro finds a flaw in the math
I once supported the management of a division of offshore contractors. In addition to my primary responsibilities of training, project management, and performance feedback for a small team within that division, I also took on occasional recurring tasks to help us understand overall performance. One example was invoice validation. I took the team’s reported work hours, compared them against their projects, and validated their monthly wage allocation.
I eventually trained a replacement as part of my transition out of the role. The new guy became outraged when he saw the hourly wages reported on the invoice. How can we pay them like that? It’s sick, it’s inhumane! This went on for almost a minute. It was true, everything he was saying, but I felt something about his thinking came up short. The offshore team’s wage was roughly one-third of the US minimum wage but it was also an offshore wage. Borders not only change laws, they also change the value of money.
A Business Bro must always crunch the numbers. I looked up statistics like the minimum wage, the cost of living, and currency conversion rates, and then converted the offshore wage into an approximate equivalent of a Boston salary. The final result didn't make anyone rich, offshore or not, but it was more than I was making at the time. Our offshore colleagues earned one-third of our minimum wage but they had far more local spending power than me.
I felt pretty good about my math. I could see the arc of history in my figures, a real life example of how capitalism enables nations to build each other up through free trade in a functioning open market. Yes, my replacement’s outrage was flawed, his reaction was certainly knee-jerk, and he should have taken into account the way things worked before his outburst. If you earn to spend, it’s not about what you earn but what you can buy.
But as I look back on this incident, I suspect there’s a flaw in my thinking, too. There’s something not quite right about the way human concerns can be written off with some figures multiplied together in a short equation. There’s a flaw in my thinking and math isn’t going to be much help in figuring it out.
I eventually trained a replacement as part of my transition out of the role. The new guy became outraged when he saw the hourly wages reported on the invoice. How can we pay them like that? It’s sick, it’s inhumane! This went on for almost a minute. It was true, everything he was saying, but I felt something about his thinking came up short. The offshore team’s wage was roughly one-third of the US minimum wage but it was also an offshore wage. Borders not only change laws, they also change the value of money.
A Business Bro must always crunch the numbers. I looked up statistics like the minimum wage, the cost of living, and currency conversion rates, and then converted the offshore wage into an approximate equivalent of a Boston salary. The final result didn't make anyone rich, offshore or not, but it was more than I was making at the time. Our offshore colleagues earned one-third of our minimum wage but they had far more local spending power than me.
I felt pretty good about my math. I could see the arc of history in my figures, a real life example of how capitalism enables nations to build each other up through free trade in a functioning open market. Yes, my replacement’s outrage was flawed, his reaction was certainly knee-jerk, and he should have taken into account the way things worked before his outburst. If you earn to spend, it’s not about what you earn but what you can buy.
But as I look back on this incident, I suspect there’s a flaw in my thinking, too. There’s something not quite right about the way human concerns can be written off with some figures multiplied together in a short equation. There’s a flaw in my thinking and math isn’t going to be much help in figuring it out.
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
leftovers - the goal (sapporo ramen, part one - bottlenecks)
I mentioned in this post that suggesting seating capacity was a bottleneck for Sapporo Ramen defeated the unstated assumption of The Goal. This is mostly because, in theory, increasing capacity is always a solution to a bottleneck problem - not enough production capacity, just add more machines, right? Let’s challenge that assumption today and consider the most appropriate way to think about capacity in the context of bottleneck resources.
A subtle lesson in The Goal is how primary bottlenecks can remain hidden when constrained by other factors in the system. The seating capacity at any restaurant is one possible example, the inability to serve enough customers possibly obscuring a kitchen's limitations. So, although adding two hundred tables might enable any restaurant to eliminate lost revenue due to waiting customers, at some point the kitchen won't be able to keep up with the new orders. Sapporo Ramen's bottleneck is never really going to be its capacity until seating is decoupled from production capability. For most traditional restaurants, such a feat is all but impossible.
A restaurant could overcome the kitchen limitation by increasing production efficiency. Sapporo Ramen could add seats anytime it increased the rate of ramen production. This is why I identified ramen production as the bottleneck of the organization, not capacity, because one follows the other. Restaurants can raise revenue in these situations by funneling production output into takeout and delivery services, often far cheaper infrastructure investments than adding seats. The restaurant could then examine the performance and decide if adding seats would lead to even better results. My guess is that one vital consideration here would be profitable side items - for example, most restaurants cannot include alcohol in its takeout orders. If the potential of these items was significant, I suppose the restaurant might conclude that bringing customers onto its premises would result in higher profits (1).
Does this thought apply in general? It only applies if physical space is related to production. A restaurant works within these limits by linking kitchen size to seating capacity. When capacity is increased, daily costs such as rent, wages, and depreciation all rise and therefore a restaurant must take in more revenue than it did at a smaller capacity. The first step here is to make it possible to increase revenue, and that can't happen unless a portion of the increased capacity is in the kitchen. Organizations that do not follow this rule might seem to have an advantage, but usually this is true of its competitors. The thought might not apply in general, but if it doesn't then its likely in the cases when capacity isn't a relevant concern.
Footnotes / leftovers...
1. Restaurant geometry
The layout of most seating areas suggests that cost per customer will rise at an ever-growing rate as capacity increases. Let’s say your current restaurant serves four people, all seated around one table. If you wanted to quadruple the capacity and you took into account factors like allowing walking space between the tables or ensuring room for people to sit and stand, you would definitely need to more than quadruple the space. The only counter is to line up four tables to make one long table seating eight per side - does that sound like any restaurant you know? I suspect geometry is why I see restaurants open new locations much more often that I do see them expand the size of their existing premises - multiple small locations simply cost less per customer when compared to one giant venue.
A subtle lesson in The Goal is how primary bottlenecks can remain hidden when constrained by other factors in the system. The seating capacity at any restaurant is one possible example, the inability to serve enough customers possibly obscuring a kitchen's limitations. So, although adding two hundred tables might enable any restaurant to eliminate lost revenue due to waiting customers, at some point the kitchen won't be able to keep up with the new orders. Sapporo Ramen's bottleneck is never really going to be its capacity until seating is decoupled from production capability. For most traditional restaurants, such a feat is all but impossible.
A restaurant could overcome the kitchen limitation by increasing production efficiency. Sapporo Ramen could add seats anytime it increased the rate of ramen production. This is why I identified ramen production as the bottleneck of the organization, not capacity, because one follows the other. Restaurants can raise revenue in these situations by funneling production output into takeout and delivery services, often far cheaper infrastructure investments than adding seats. The restaurant could then examine the performance and decide if adding seats would lead to even better results. My guess is that one vital consideration here would be profitable side items - for example, most restaurants cannot include alcohol in its takeout orders. If the potential of these items was significant, I suppose the restaurant might conclude that bringing customers onto its premises would result in higher profits (1).
Does this thought apply in general? It only applies if physical space is related to production. A restaurant works within these limits by linking kitchen size to seating capacity. When capacity is increased, daily costs such as rent, wages, and depreciation all rise and therefore a restaurant must take in more revenue than it did at a smaller capacity. The first step here is to make it possible to increase revenue, and that can't happen unless a portion of the increased capacity is in the kitchen. Organizations that do not follow this rule might seem to have an advantage, but usually this is true of its competitors. The thought might not apply in general, but if it doesn't then its likely in the cases when capacity isn't a relevant concern.
Footnotes / leftovers...
1. Restaurant geometry
The layout of most seating areas suggests that cost per customer will rise at an ever-growing rate as capacity increases. Let’s say your current restaurant serves four people, all seated around one table. If you wanted to quadruple the capacity and you took into account factors like allowing walking space between the tables or ensuring room for people to sit and stand, you would definitely need to more than quadruple the space. The only counter is to line up four tables to make one long table seating eight per side - does that sound like any restaurant you know? I suspect geometry is why I see restaurants open new locations much more often that I do see them expand the size of their existing premises - multiple small locations simply cost less per customer when compared to one giant venue.
Sunday, February 23, 2020
mementos
I don’t watch movies anymore. I estimate that over the past ten years, I’ve seen ten movies (though a few of those I've watched more than once). It's not that I dislike movies, I just don't watch them. It raises an interesting question - if I started watching movies again, would I just rewatch old movies, or would I try some new ones?
A movie like Memento makes a strong case for the former. The whole plot is that a guy with no short-term memory searches for his wife's killer using a system of clues to help him remember (and the plot hole is that he knows this, but movies are like donuts, the hole makes the whole, so let's ignore this issue, and by the way this isn't related at all to why I don't watch movies anymore... let's move on). Somewhat in the spirit of Memento, I don't remember anything about it, except that it was great.
As I thought about this movie, I realized that the movie’s extreme portrayal of amnesia dismisses the constant battle we all wage against our short-term memory. Aren't we all more like the Memento guy that we'd care to admit? I use plenty of memory aids to keep track of small details, such as the way I hang an empty garbage bag on my doorknob to remind myself about trash day. It seems like a minor miracle that I'm not walking around snapping Polaroids or scribbling notes onto my palms (and when I get a smartphone, I bet I do start taking photos as a way to supplement my to-do list).
The problem with my Memento system is that if I miss the memento, I have no chance. This heightens the urgency of leaving my reminders in obvious places. If my bike helmet is on my sneakers, I'll definitely take it, but a helmet on the coat rack might greet me when I return home. A less common issue is that if I don’t complete the action dictated by the reminder, I risk leaving tasks half-completed. This is why I often forget things halfway between the reminder and the destination. If I’m packing a lunch, for example, it starts in the fridge and ends in the bag, so the most likely place to forget it is on the table. These problems often start with a distraction (like seeing a garbage bag dangling on the doorknob) so I will do much better if I remember to start and finish, but unfortunately there isn't a memento that helps me remember to complete the task.
Perhaps my old ally The Checklist is the best way to address this concern. I use a checklist to pack for trips and I've never forgotten anything essential at home. But the checklist still allows for distraction, and that's the bigger problem. Checklists only work in this situation if I can anticipate the potential distractions. Until I know how to effectively focus through a distraction (or refocus after a distraction) I’m going to continue forgetting things.
A moment during a recent hospice volunteer shift reminded me that I shouldn't forget, I'm only a moment from starring in Memento 2. As my shift was ending, I took our garbage and recycling out to the backyard. First, I dumped the contents from our small recycling container into the large bin that is always at the end of the driveway. Then, I went into the storage shed to retrieve the garbage can. I dumped in the bag, closed the shed, and locked the door. I went inside and signed out. I was about halfway down the front the block when I remembered that I’d left the small recycling container outside by the shed. I turned around, retrieved the bin, and brought it back inside.
As I made my way down the front steps for the second time in five minutes, a strange thought occurred to me. Was it more surprising that I forgot, or more surprising that I remembered that I forgot? I don’t remember what I concluded that night. I suppose it’s a good sign that I remembered without an external reminder but it hides the reminder in my initial forgetting. Ultimately, the only thing I need to remember is that I’m going to forget, and that each memento is just another step closer to the void.
A movie like Memento makes a strong case for the former. The whole plot is that a guy with no short-term memory searches for his wife's killer using a system of clues to help him remember (and the plot hole is that he knows this, but movies are like donuts, the hole makes the whole, so let's ignore this issue, and by the way this isn't related at all to why I don't watch movies anymore... let's move on). Somewhat in the spirit of Memento, I don't remember anything about it, except that it was great.
As I thought about this movie, I realized that the movie’s extreme portrayal of amnesia dismisses the constant battle we all wage against our short-term memory. Aren't we all more like the Memento guy that we'd care to admit? I use plenty of memory aids to keep track of small details, such as the way I hang an empty garbage bag on my doorknob to remind myself about trash day. It seems like a minor miracle that I'm not walking around snapping Polaroids or scribbling notes onto my palms (and when I get a smartphone, I bet I do start taking photos as a way to supplement my to-do list).
The problem with my Memento system is that if I miss the memento, I have no chance. This heightens the urgency of leaving my reminders in obvious places. If my bike helmet is on my sneakers, I'll definitely take it, but a helmet on the coat rack might greet me when I return home. A less common issue is that if I don’t complete the action dictated by the reminder, I risk leaving tasks half-completed. This is why I often forget things halfway between the reminder and the destination. If I’m packing a lunch, for example, it starts in the fridge and ends in the bag, so the most likely place to forget it is on the table. These problems often start with a distraction (like seeing a garbage bag dangling on the doorknob) so I will do much better if I remember to start and finish, but unfortunately there isn't a memento that helps me remember to complete the task.
Perhaps my old ally The Checklist is the best way to address this concern. I use a checklist to pack for trips and I've never forgotten anything essential at home. But the checklist still allows for distraction, and that's the bigger problem. Checklists only work in this situation if I can anticipate the potential distractions. Until I know how to effectively focus through a distraction (or refocus after a distraction) I’m going to continue forgetting things.
A moment during a recent hospice volunteer shift reminded me that I shouldn't forget, I'm only a moment from starring in Memento 2. As my shift was ending, I took our garbage and recycling out to the backyard. First, I dumped the contents from our small recycling container into the large bin that is always at the end of the driveway. Then, I went into the storage shed to retrieve the garbage can. I dumped in the bag, closed the shed, and locked the door. I went inside and signed out. I was about halfway down the front the block when I remembered that I’d left the small recycling container outside by the shed. I turned around, retrieved the bin, and brought it back inside.
As I made my way down the front steps for the second time in five minutes, a strange thought occurred to me. Was it more surprising that I forgot, or more surprising that I remembered that I forgot? I don’t remember what I concluded that night. I suppose it’s a good sign that I remembered without an external reminder but it hides the reminder in my initial forgetting. Ultimately, the only thing I need to remember is that I’m going to forget, and that each memento is just another step closer to the void.
Saturday, February 22, 2020
options and decisions
The great buzzword of all time might be ‘decision-making’. People talk about this skill with reverence and seek out the quality in leaders of all varieties. When something goes right, they are quick to trace the origin of their success to a good decision. But the truth is that most people should talk about being good at choosing options rather than making decisions.
I worked my way backward to this conclusion. When thinking about people I consider poor decision-makers, I realized that their true deficiency was identifying options. These are the people that will often lament after the fact – if I’d known about THAT, I would have done it differently! It's a suggestive complaint, implying that if we are given the right choices, we always make the right decisions.
There are some who are surely scratching their heads at this point. What’s the point of this, aren’t these the same thing, isn’t choosing an option always just a decision, the decision being which option? Perhaps my, eh hem, ‘insight’ is all semantics, so I’ll concede the point, but let's try it another way – the skill of ‘decision-making’ masks the more relevant skill of ‘defining options’.
People who thoroughly identify their options seem to take advantage of an almost-innate human capacity for selection. So, my advice to someone who wants to make better decisions is that instead of weighing the merits of A or B, learn to identify additional options, C, D, and E, because the more good options we have, the more likely we are to make the right decision.
I worked my way backward to this conclusion. When thinking about people I consider poor decision-makers, I realized that their true deficiency was identifying options. These are the people that will often lament after the fact – if I’d known about THAT, I would have done it differently! It's a suggestive complaint, implying that if we are given the right choices, we always make the right decisions.
There are some who are surely scratching their heads at this point. What’s the point of this, aren’t these the same thing, isn’t choosing an option always just a decision, the decision being which option? Perhaps my, eh hem, ‘insight’ is all semantics, so I’ll concede the point, but let's try it another way – the skill of ‘decision-making’ masks the more relevant skill of ‘defining options’.
People who thoroughly identify their options seem to take advantage of an almost-innate human capacity for selection. So, my advice to someone who wants to make better decisions is that instead of weighing the merits of A or B, learn to identify additional options, C, D, and E, because the more good options we have, the more likely we are to make the right decision.
Thursday, February 20, 2020
proper admin - february 2020 (winter brake)
Longtime readers may recall (many, many) posts about the various ways I’ve tried to build rest periods into my workout plan. I’m not talking about a day off after a long run, I mean more like the way schools give kids summer vacation. After a decade of allowing injuries to dictate my breaks, I made a major breakthrough last February and voluntarily stopped running for twelve consecutive days. Almost a fortnight!
In hindsight, this victory for my willpower and long-range planning was hardly one for my fitness as the rest seemed to have no effect on the rest of the year. I’m still committed to the idea of a break, however, so I’m trying something a little different this winter. Instead of ceasing all running activity for a set number of days, I’m simply emphasizing strength workouts ahead of running. I’m doing this because unlike my twelve-day rest, doing workouts seemed to have an effect throughout the year. When I was working out in 2019, I felt I ran better. The spirit of this winter’s plan is more along the lines of an athlete’s off-season rather than a student’s summer vacation.
Since I’m still running this isn't really a break. Let's call it a brake, in honor of my slowing down. The Brake started during the last week of January and I've limited my running to just a couple of miles at a time, maybe a 5K once or twice. If weather conditions are poor, I skip running, as I do when I'm busy. I’ve done my strength workout five or six days a week, including on days I’ve run (a departure from my usual routine). The goal is to lock in a habit of doing near-daily strength work because I think this is the key to my staying fit while running thirty-plus miles per week the rest of the year. My understanding of habits is that they take around three to six weeks to fully form, so that’s the expectation I have for my brake – sometime in the next two or three weeks, I should be ready to put my feet on the accelerator once again.
In hindsight, this victory for my willpower and long-range planning was hardly one for my fitness as the rest seemed to have no effect on the rest of the year. I’m still committed to the idea of a break, however, so I’m trying something a little different this winter. Instead of ceasing all running activity for a set number of days, I’m simply emphasizing strength workouts ahead of running. I’m doing this because unlike my twelve-day rest, doing workouts seemed to have an effect throughout the year. When I was working out in 2019, I felt I ran better. The spirit of this winter’s plan is more along the lines of an athlete’s off-season rather than a student’s summer vacation.
Since I’m still running this isn't really a break. Let's call it a brake, in honor of my slowing down. The Brake started during the last week of January and I've limited my running to just a couple of miles at a time, maybe a 5K once or twice. If weather conditions are poor, I skip running, as I do when I'm busy. I’ve done my strength workout five or six days a week, including on days I’ve run (a departure from my usual routine). The goal is to lock in a habit of doing near-daily strength work because I think this is the key to my staying fit while running thirty-plus miles per week the rest of the year. My understanding of habits is that they take around three to six weeks to fully form, so that’s the expectation I have for my brake – sometime in the next two or three weeks, I should be ready to put my feet on the accelerator once again.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
reading review - raised in captivity
Raised in Captivity by Chuck Klosterman (August 2019)
Longtime TOA favorite Chuck Klosterman’s first short story collection proved to be among the more interesting books I read in 2019. His status – celebrity? – means his new releases are accompanied by book tours and I was lucky to see him read for a third time (1). He said this collection was ‘fictional nonfiction’, a series of very short stories written as if they were true, and although I admit I have no idea what distinction he was trying to describe it does seem like a very appropriate summary of the book.
It’s possible that he simply meant his writing would be no different than his past work, mostly essay collections about pop culture topics like music, sports, and television, except that he would untether himself from the constraint of facts. This might explain why these stories felt more like his essays than anyone else’s short fiction, Etgar Keret perhaps excepted (Chuck's ‘Not That Kind of Person’ reminded me of Keret’s ‘Good Intentions’). Ambiguity aside, I liked reading it, and the nine I chose to reread this time only bolstered my resolve to reread the entire collection someday.
A personal challenge for short story collections is the lack of continuity in my notes. However, some ideas were far too good, jumping out at me throughout the fall and reminding me of some basic truths in my life. The observation that we miss our old friends the most when we finally see them again inspired this post while an autumn conversation demonstrated why pretending can sometimes become our worst feature.
An insight I am still trying to work out is how although most people are right in their beliefs, they rarely understand how they are right. Perhaps it's because we rarely need to tell others about the things we understand perfectly and therefore we never practice expressing ourselves in such matters, preferring to share instead those ideas we have yet to fully grasp.
Footnotes / endnotes
1. Pod alert!
He also promoted his book on a number of podcasts I regularly listen to - since I forgot to keep track, I just Googled it, only to discover that he seems to have appeared on around 425 pods to promote the book's release. Nice job, I guess?
Longtime TOA favorite Chuck Klosterman’s first short story collection proved to be among the more interesting books I read in 2019. His status – celebrity? – means his new releases are accompanied by book tours and I was lucky to see him read for a third time (1). He said this collection was ‘fictional nonfiction’, a series of very short stories written as if they were true, and although I admit I have no idea what distinction he was trying to describe it does seem like a very appropriate summary of the book.
It’s possible that he simply meant his writing would be no different than his past work, mostly essay collections about pop culture topics like music, sports, and television, except that he would untether himself from the constraint of facts. This might explain why these stories felt more like his essays than anyone else’s short fiction, Etgar Keret perhaps excepted (Chuck's ‘Not That Kind of Person’ reminded me of Keret’s ‘Good Intentions’). Ambiguity aside, I liked reading it, and the nine I chose to reread this time only bolstered my resolve to reread the entire collection someday.
A personal challenge for short story collections is the lack of continuity in my notes. However, some ideas were far too good, jumping out at me throughout the fall and reminding me of some basic truths in my life. The observation that we miss our old friends the most when we finally see them again inspired this post while an autumn conversation demonstrated why pretending can sometimes become our worst feature.
An insight I am still trying to work out is how although most people are right in their beliefs, they rarely understand how they are right. Perhaps it's because we rarely need to tell others about the things we understand perfectly and therefore we never practice expressing ourselves in such matters, preferring to share instead those ideas we have yet to fully grasp.
Footnotes / endnotes
1. Pod alert!
He also promoted his book on a number of podcasts I regularly listen to - since I forgot to keep track, I just Googled it, only to discover that he seems to have appeared on around 425 pods to promote the book's release. Nice job, I guess?
Sunday, February 16, 2020
one plus five equals one
The statistic I remember most clearly from Threads is how five out of every six people benefit from immigration. I’ve heard similar analyses in other places, each instance a subtle suggestion that we should rip open all our borders like birthday presents and immediately enjoy the limitless gift of fully unrestricted movement. At the very least, it implies that perhaps anti-immigration policies should be reconsidered due to their overall net harm to the country.
Being a bit-part immigrant myself, I suspect I’m bound by some kind of duty to fully support all aspects of the open borders position. And let’s be honest, reader, five out of six is pretty good, why that's me, you, and three others who benefit each time our borders swell with the gift of another entrant. It seems crazy to consider that when five out of six win, the best strategy would involve doing something else.
And yet, I can’t really see the first five in that statistic until I learn more about that last one. When five out of six benefit, doesn’t that mean one out of six is harmed? I’m not exactly sure who that one out of six is supposed to be but this person must exist somewhere. I wonder how that one person is harmed by immigration and what we collectively do to help that one person. My intuition suggests immigration causes far more harm to this one person than it does help me and my party of five, partly because my hunch is that we provide next to no help for the one in six. If there is a good reason why someone being harmed by pro-immigration policy would support it, I’ve yet to hear it.
It seems to me that the best way to implement pro-immigration policies has little to do with implementing pro-immigration policies. It has nothing to do with pandering to the majority or appealing for enough support to steamroll any and all opposition. The best thing to do would be to think about that one out of six. Why are they in the one and not in the five? Did their workplaces close because neighbors prefer to order slightly cheaper goods over their slightly faster phones from slightly more profitable companies? Are they the homeless who sleep under ‘refugees welcome’ signs? Are they crippled veterans, collecting a steady supply of thank yous and loose change in their Styrofoam cups? Not all of these things are directly or even indirectly related to immigration but in a certain way it doesn’t matter – if someone feels part of that one out of six, there probably isn’t going to be much support for any pro-immigration policies.
The key is to get to six out of six. Until we get six out of six, we haven’t accomplished anything. Those who have been harmed need real needs met and real concerns addressed, with the five out of six being a logical starting point to provide such support. Six out of six happens when everybody shares the benefit from immigration, not when the benefits apply to a select handful. When everybody benefits, it will cease to be a policy debate. When everybody benefits, immigration will become just another welcome fact of life. If we can get to five of six, which is admittedly very good, then I think it's worth going for six of six. If we can find a way to bring along that one person we leave behind today, if we can somehow become a six for six country, then we can truly say we’ve found a way to work together, that we can benefit fully and equally from the potential of diversity, and that we can finally be worthy of all those who want to move here and build their future on our foundation.
Being a bit-part immigrant myself, I suspect I’m bound by some kind of duty to fully support all aspects of the open borders position. And let’s be honest, reader, five out of six is pretty good, why that's me, you, and three others who benefit each time our borders swell with the gift of another entrant. It seems crazy to consider that when five out of six win, the best strategy would involve doing something else.
And yet, I can’t really see the first five in that statistic until I learn more about that last one. When five out of six benefit, doesn’t that mean one out of six is harmed? I’m not exactly sure who that one out of six is supposed to be but this person must exist somewhere. I wonder how that one person is harmed by immigration and what we collectively do to help that one person. My intuition suggests immigration causes far more harm to this one person than it does help me and my party of five, partly because my hunch is that we provide next to no help for the one in six. If there is a good reason why someone being harmed by pro-immigration policy would support it, I’ve yet to hear it.
It seems to me that the best way to implement pro-immigration policies has little to do with implementing pro-immigration policies. It has nothing to do with pandering to the majority or appealing for enough support to steamroll any and all opposition. The best thing to do would be to think about that one out of six. Why are they in the one and not in the five? Did their workplaces close because neighbors prefer to order slightly cheaper goods over their slightly faster phones from slightly more profitable companies? Are they the homeless who sleep under ‘refugees welcome’ signs? Are they crippled veterans, collecting a steady supply of thank yous and loose change in their Styrofoam cups? Not all of these things are directly or even indirectly related to immigration but in a certain way it doesn’t matter – if someone feels part of that one out of six, there probably isn’t going to be much support for any pro-immigration policies.
The key is to get to six out of six. Until we get six out of six, we haven’t accomplished anything. Those who have been harmed need real needs met and real concerns addressed, with the five out of six being a logical starting point to provide such support. Six out of six happens when everybody shares the benefit from immigration, not when the benefits apply to a select handful. When everybody benefits, it will cease to be a policy debate. When everybody benefits, immigration will become just another welcome fact of life. If we can get to five of six, which is admittedly very good, then I think it's worth going for six of six. If we can find a way to bring along that one person we leave behind today, if we can somehow become a six for six country, then we can truly say we’ve found a way to work together, that we can benefit fully and equally from the potential of diversity, and that we can finally be worthy of all those who want to move here and build their future on our foundation.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
business bros think in billions
A colleague once asked me to help him build a data model. Its purpose was to rank suppliers in a portfolio based on certain performance criteria. His scoring system was thoughtful and at first glance the ranking seemed to pass the major common sense criteria – the relative ranking reflected intuition, it highlighted known problem areas, and the highest ranked suppliers scored close to 100.
The problem was one last binary criteria. My colleague just couldn't work it out. Ideally, the model would look for this factor, mark it as yes or no, and adjust the ranking. Simply, it would split the list in two, the suppliers with 'yes' all ahead of those with 'no'. The problem was a technical question asking how to split the list into two groups, the subsets then applying the same criteria to rank the segregated suppliers.
I realized that there were clever ways to solve this challenge. You could, for example, mark the highest score for any ‘NO’, find the difference of that and a perfect score, then proportionally grade the 'YES' suppliers along a curve with those two scores as the endpoints. However, I had no time, so I just said, ‘why not add one billion points if you have a YES?’ and went back to my desk.
The problem was one last binary criteria. My colleague just couldn't work it out. Ideally, the model would look for this factor, mark it as yes or no, and adjust the ranking. Simply, it would split the list in two, the suppliers with 'yes' all ahead of those with 'no'. The problem was a technical question asking how to split the list into two groups, the subsets then applying the same criteria to rank the segregated suppliers.
I realized that there were clever ways to solve this challenge. You could, for example, mark the highest score for any ‘NO’, find the difference of that and a perfect score, then proportionally grade the 'YES' suppliers along a curve with those two scores as the endpoints. However, I had no time, so I just said, ‘why not add one billion points if you have a YES?’ and went back to my desk.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
reading review - adultery and other choices
Adultery and Other Choices by Andre Dubus (September 2019)
I decided months ago to work through Andre Dubus’s entire collected works. Adultery and Other Choices, despite my sniffy remarks regarding 'crumbling marriages' in yesterday's review of Separate Flights, proved worthy of my effort. It covers varied ground compared to his first collection, and I reread three times as many stories - ‘An Afternoon with the Old Man’, ‘Contrition’, and ‘The Fat Girl’. 'Contrition' wasn't my favorite reread, but I count the other two among my favorites from 2019. (I should note that ‘The Fat Girl’ seems widely considered among his very best stories.)
I read this collection about a year and a half ago and was surprised to see my notes almost triple in length on the second pass. It's probably a good sign for my reading eye, although perhaps a faint symptom of overindulgence, but in my defense the notes here were also longer than those for Separate Flights. In this collection, I noticed more insights into the universal and enjoyed how he brought them to life in his stories; in Separate Flights, I felt less certain at times about the broader applicability of its lessons.
The thought I liked the most was how people fear or fight change because their current lifestyle enables them to channel their full energy into a pursuit, challenge, or craft. I can certainly relate to that far better than I could have five years ago. There are likely an endless number of lifestyle changes available to me that would improve my life but it’s hard to see past the disruption such a change would have on the energy I could devote to my current commitments, each an activity I like very much. Of course, perhaps I'm simply living out another one of Dubus's insights - people who cannot express themselves often confuse what they like to do with what they have to do.
I decided months ago to work through Andre Dubus’s entire collected works. Adultery and Other Choices, despite my sniffy remarks regarding 'crumbling marriages' in yesterday's review of Separate Flights, proved worthy of my effort. It covers varied ground compared to his first collection, and I reread three times as many stories - ‘An Afternoon with the Old Man’, ‘Contrition’, and ‘The Fat Girl’. 'Contrition' wasn't my favorite reread, but I count the other two among my favorites from 2019. (I should note that ‘The Fat Girl’ seems widely considered among his very best stories.)
I read this collection about a year and a half ago and was surprised to see my notes almost triple in length on the second pass. It's probably a good sign for my reading eye, although perhaps a faint symptom of overindulgence, but in my defense the notes here were also longer than those for Separate Flights. In this collection, I noticed more insights into the universal and enjoyed how he brought them to life in his stories; in Separate Flights, I felt less certain at times about the broader applicability of its lessons.
The thought I liked the most was how people fear or fight change because their current lifestyle enables them to channel their full energy into a pursuit, challenge, or craft. I can certainly relate to that far better than I could have five years ago. There are likely an endless number of lifestyle changes available to me that would improve my life but it’s hard to see past the disruption such a change would have on the energy I could devote to my current commitments, each an activity I like very much. Of course, perhaps I'm simply living out another one of Dubus's insights - people who cannot express themselves often confuse what they like to do with what they have to do.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
reading review - separate flights
Separate Flights by Andre Dubus (September 2019)
This 1975 collection, the earliest of Andre Dubus’s career, brings together eight stories that mostly focus on crumbling marriages. Not my first choice of topic, reader, but I enjoyed the writing and like many of my fellow amateur book reviewers thought the bookend works did a little better than the rest.
My favorite story was ‘The Doctor’. I thought it was a great example of how to get a full sense of a character’s thinking without being forced into his head via the first-person perspective. The story is also a great advert of Dubus’s style and in this early work I detected much of what captures my attention in his writing. As a bonus, it has nothing to do with a crumbling marriage... (I think).
I'd like to highlight a couple of notes I took from Separate Flights. First, the difference between outright lies and lies of omission is that the former at least acknowledges certain topics whereas the latter avoids these matters entirely. If the omission means certain open wounds are never acknowledged, the pain might fester until it causes irreparable damage in the future.
I also liked the observation that sometimes people need to talk just to share the burden of a decision. I think a common error in these situations is for a listener to offer unwanted advice. For those who can't tell when their advice is unwanted, I offer my own unwanted advice - sit back, listen, and wait to be asked.
This 1975 collection, the earliest of Andre Dubus’s career, brings together eight stories that mostly focus on crumbling marriages. Not my first choice of topic, reader, but I enjoyed the writing and like many of my fellow amateur book reviewers thought the bookend works did a little better than the rest.
My favorite story was ‘The Doctor’. I thought it was a great example of how to get a full sense of a character’s thinking without being forced into his head via the first-person perspective. The story is also a great advert of Dubus’s style and in this early work I detected much of what captures my attention in his writing. As a bonus, it has nothing to do with a crumbling marriage... (I think).
I'd like to highlight a couple of notes I took from Separate Flights. First, the difference between outright lies and lies of omission is that the former at least acknowledges certain topics whereas the latter avoids these matters entirely. If the omission means certain open wounds are never acknowledged, the pain might fester until it causes irreparable damage in the future.
I also liked the observation that sometimes people need to talk just to share the burden of a decision. I think a common error in these situations is for a listener to offer unwanted advice. For those who can't tell when their advice is unwanted, I offer my own unwanted advice - sit back, listen, and wait to be asked.
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
mia levi
It’s December, and as I always seem to do in this final month of the year, I find myself thinking about Harry Potter (1). In the past, I’ve used this time to reflect on important topics such as Dumbledore’s Ideal Gift Theorem or which book is the best one to reread (#2, it's our choices that show what we truly are). I’ve even ranted about whether anyone would actually watch Quidditch (A: no - J.K., just add flying to soccer!) and I sometimes entertain myself by arguing that the series will eventually be considered sexist (2).
This year’s topic is more of general literary interest. I just wanted to share with you, dear reader, that I consider anagrams the single stupidest literary device. Harry Potter uses them at the end of the aforementioned book #2 (yet somehow remains my favorite). It's use is something like this - let’s say there is a fake character named ‘MIA LEVI’, #2's big revelation is that if you rearrange those letters you get ‘I AM EVIL’. This apparently is evidence that my hypothetical MIA LEVI is evil, this evidence being sorely needed because up until then it wasn’t THAT clear whether You-Know-Who was evil... sorry, spoiler alert?
Why are anagrams prevalent? It’s not good enough until some random combination of letters can be rearranged to spell something? Why does this matter? Maybe a disproportionate number of writers love Scrabble and anagrams are like a dog whistle, a high-pitched exclusion of the faux writers like me. I care so little about playing with letters that I'm like the guy who never sees ‘ooooooo’ in his Honey Nut Alphabits.
And no, I’m not bitter about sucking at Scrabble, I don’t even want to be good at a game where you can play ‘JEWS’ for 84 points just because the idiot who designed the board didn’t think carefully about where to put the triple word score. Yup, you know who you are, using a BLANK to play E. Honestly, whoever designed the board was probably the same person who told J.K. that a Golden Snitch worth 150 points was a good idea, or that Muggles would pretend non-Muggles would like such a sport.
You know what, reader…
I think that’s enough for today.
-Tmi
Often soot / sonneted
0. Footnotes / endnotes
Fine, I got help with those.
1. Well, at the time of writing it’s December…
Actually, it’s November 30.
2. Maybe more in an upcoming post…
Here's the shortest available plot summary of the series – Hermione fails, then Harry succeeds.
This year’s topic is more of general literary interest. I just wanted to share with you, dear reader, that I consider anagrams the single stupidest literary device. Harry Potter uses them at the end of the aforementioned book #2 (yet somehow remains my favorite). It's use is something like this - let’s say there is a fake character named ‘MIA LEVI’, #2's big revelation is that if you rearrange those letters you get ‘I AM EVIL’. This apparently is evidence that my hypothetical MIA LEVI is evil, this evidence being sorely needed because up until then it wasn’t THAT clear whether You-Know-Who was evil... sorry, spoiler alert?
Why are anagrams prevalent? It’s not good enough until some random combination of letters can be rearranged to spell something? Why does this matter? Maybe a disproportionate number of writers love Scrabble and anagrams are like a dog whistle, a high-pitched exclusion of the faux writers like me. I care so little about playing with letters that I'm like the guy who never sees ‘ooooooo’ in his Honey Nut Alphabits.
And no, I’m not bitter about sucking at Scrabble, I don’t even want to be good at a game where you can play ‘JEWS’ for 84 points just because the idiot who designed the board didn’t think carefully about where to put the triple word score. Yup, you know who you are, using a BLANK to play E. Honestly, whoever designed the board was probably the same person who told J.K. that a Golden Snitch worth 150 points was a good idea, or that Muggles would pretend non-Muggles would like such a sport.
You know what, reader…
I think that’s enough for today.
-Tmi
Often soot / sonneted
0. Footnotes / endnotes
Fine, I got help with those.
1. Well, at the time of writing it’s December…
Actually, it’s November 30.
2. Maybe more in an upcoming post…
Here's the shortest available plot summary of the series – Hermione fails, then Harry succeeds.
Sunday, February 9, 2020
reading review - the goal (sapporo ramen, part one - bottlenecks)
Hi all,
Let's resume our recent examination of The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt’s 1984 Business Bro classic. I think the best approach for the remaining ideas is to put them in the context of real-life examples. After almost no debate, I chose TOA favorite and Porter Square institution Sapporo Ramen as my example. Of course, I know nothing specific about the restaurant's operations, but I'm comfortable speaking knowledgeably from a foundation of best guesses, wild assumptions, and hunches about ramen lunches.
An organization should always have a simple answer to the question of what it is doing.
Easy – Sapporo Ramen serves bowls of ramen.
One way to start looking for a bottleneck is to learn which parts tend to always be in shortage. Whatever operation is responsible for the production is likely unable to keep up with demand.
There are two possibilities. The obvious bottleneck is seating (well, obvious if you've had to wait an hour for a seat). Restaurant capacity is somewhere between fifteen and twenty people, all in full sight of the five to ten waiting customers. In theory, adding seats would address the shortage. However, expanding capacity must be complex - leases, zoning, buying chairs - all that admin! It might be better to just work with seating as a constant for the purposes of this post. (Plus, there is an unstated assumption in The Goal that ‘bottlenecks’ refer to resource allocation.)
This leaves us with the ramen, a dish with several ingredients – noodles, broth, toppings, etc. There is also equipment (such as the bowl or the chopsticks). I bet only the broth requires any prep work - everything else is likely purchased Sapporo-ready. Therefore, if demand increased, the broth would fall short before any other ramen component.
There should never be idle time for a bottleneck because any lost work through this station is lost forever to the organization.
Sapporo Ramen optimizes revenue if all operational decisions first consider maximal ramen output. This means tools, resources, and staff do other tasks after maximizing ramen production. If a customer waits too long for a bowl, it represents a reduction in the organization’s maximum possible revenue that day.
Quality measurements on bottleneck parts should take place before the bottleneck step because a scrapped part pre-bottleneck is a part lost while anything scrapped post-bottleneck is a cost to the entire system.
There is no time for thorough post-ramen QA so Sapporo Ramen must cull bad ingredients before the chef turns on the stove. The broth presents a challenge because failed broth post-production could dramatically lower the revenue capacity for the next day. (It's possible for inventory to cover this loss but days-old broth is no ideal.) If I were seeking evidence of a robust QA process, I would expect the restaurant's biggest waste item to be discarded broth ingredients prior to preparation. This would mean Sapporo Ramen was as close to 100% certain as possible to producing broth in lockstep with the next day's expected demand.
Bottlenecks waste time if they remain idle, work on defective parts, or produce parts not within the current demand.
Overproduction is a subtle hint of a wasteful process. Ramen sitting on the counter is no good – waterlogged noodles, lukewarm broth, and sinking toppings attract tourists, not customers. Ramen containing 'defective parts' likewise disgusts diners.
Bottlenecks must be protected from supply shocks. Otherwise, there is a significant risk of reduced flow leading to the organization operating below potential.
The ideal inventory level allows the restaurant to meet demand without reducing quality. Storage is a tempting cause for next week's problem. I wonder if Sapporo Ramen has agreements with ingredient vendors, perhaps to pay a premium in exchange for being front of the line whenever sudden demand surges require an emergency infusion of backup seaweed.
The daily supply threat is broth. Sapporo Ramen's main focus should be on ensuring sufficient broth inventory to meet the highest possible demand level. All other ingredients could probably be bought at the local Star Market if needed but there is no equivalent plan for a broth shortage.
If the market is not a constraint, measure productivity and structure decisions based on what maximizes utilization of bottleneck resources. If the market is the constraint, use sales less materials divided by hours consumed.
If Sapporo Ramen sells what it makes, it must maximize ramen production. Otherwise, it must produce within the constraint of its ability to carry inventory costs for whatever goes unsold during business hours.
Someone working a non-bottleneck by definition has excess capacity. The utilization level of a non-bottleneck is determined not by its operating rules but by another constraint in the system.
Restaurant workers always move at top speed, implying a ceaseless contribution to the bottom line. However, not all activity generates value. At Sapporo Ramen, the general job description should read 'ensure order rate matches production rate' and the best employees would be those who contribute the most toward this ideal.
If Sapporo Ramen can produce twenty bowls per hour, the best employees would either generate a new order every three minutes or find ways to increase the production rate. This knowledge should help employees make otherwise arbitrary decisions. When the chef is overwhelmed, a server might top off water glasses to slow the order rate. On the other hand, during a slow period a server might seat a new customer, ignoring empty water glasses along the way, because new customers are more likely to place orders.
Saving time on setup at a non-bottleneck is an illusory way to save costs. By definition, non-bottlenecks have excess capacity.
The result of everyone wanting to optimize his or her own work is chaos. Local optimization must come as a secondary priority to system optimization.
Individual efficiency works unless it slows ramen production. Let's use dish washing as an example. If it takes one minute to wash one bowl by hand and ten minutes to wash one hundred bowls in the dishwasher, then it's obviously more efficient to use the dishwasher - the machine is ten times faster!
Well, not so fast, first this is only true when the dishwasher is full. If the dishwasher is half-full, an employee might wait until it's full before running the dishwasher to ensure maximum efficiency. But what if you need a bowl and no spares are to be found? It's time to wash by hand, inefficient like it's 1985, but if it frees up production capacity then it's the most valuable task.
Let's resume our recent examination of The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt’s 1984 Business Bro classic. I think the best approach for the remaining ideas is to put them in the context of real-life examples. After almost no debate, I chose TOA favorite and Porter Square institution Sapporo Ramen as my example. Of course, I know nothing specific about the restaurant's operations, but I'm comfortable speaking knowledgeably from a foundation of best guesses, wild assumptions, and hunches about ramen lunches.
An organization should always have a simple answer to the question of what it is doing.
Easy – Sapporo Ramen serves bowls of ramen.
One way to start looking for a bottleneck is to learn which parts tend to always be in shortage. Whatever operation is responsible for the production is likely unable to keep up with demand.
There are two possibilities. The obvious bottleneck is seating (well, obvious if you've had to wait an hour for a seat). Restaurant capacity is somewhere between fifteen and twenty people, all in full sight of the five to ten waiting customers. In theory, adding seats would address the shortage. However, expanding capacity must be complex - leases, zoning, buying chairs - all that admin! It might be better to just work with seating as a constant for the purposes of this post. (Plus, there is an unstated assumption in The Goal that ‘bottlenecks’ refer to resource allocation.)
This leaves us with the ramen, a dish with several ingredients – noodles, broth, toppings, etc. There is also equipment (such as the bowl or the chopsticks). I bet only the broth requires any prep work - everything else is likely purchased Sapporo-ready. Therefore, if demand increased, the broth would fall short before any other ramen component.
There should never be idle time for a bottleneck because any lost work through this station is lost forever to the organization.
Sapporo Ramen optimizes revenue if all operational decisions first consider maximal ramen output. This means tools, resources, and staff do other tasks after maximizing ramen production. If a customer waits too long for a bowl, it represents a reduction in the organization’s maximum possible revenue that day.
Quality measurements on bottleneck parts should take place before the bottleneck step because a scrapped part pre-bottleneck is a part lost while anything scrapped post-bottleneck is a cost to the entire system.
There is no time for thorough post-ramen QA so Sapporo Ramen must cull bad ingredients before the chef turns on the stove. The broth presents a challenge because failed broth post-production could dramatically lower the revenue capacity for the next day. (It's possible for inventory to cover this loss but days-old broth is no ideal.) If I were seeking evidence of a robust QA process, I would expect the restaurant's biggest waste item to be discarded broth ingredients prior to preparation. This would mean Sapporo Ramen was as close to 100% certain as possible to producing broth in lockstep with the next day's expected demand.
Bottlenecks waste time if they remain idle, work on defective parts, or produce parts not within the current demand.
Overproduction is a subtle hint of a wasteful process. Ramen sitting on the counter is no good – waterlogged noodles, lukewarm broth, and sinking toppings attract tourists, not customers. Ramen containing 'defective parts' likewise disgusts diners.
Bottlenecks must be protected from supply shocks. Otherwise, there is a significant risk of reduced flow leading to the organization operating below potential.
The ideal inventory level allows the restaurant to meet demand without reducing quality. Storage is a tempting cause for next week's problem. I wonder if Sapporo Ramen has agreements with ingredient vendors, perhaps to pay a premium in exchange for being front of the line whenever sudden demand surges require an emergency infusion of backup seaweed.
The daily supply threat is broth. Sapporo Ramen's main focus should be on ensuring sufficient broth inventory to meet the highest possible demand level. All other ingredients could probably be bought at the local Star Market if needed but there is no equivalent plan for a broth shortage.
If the market is not a constraint, measure productivity and structure decisions based on what maximizes utilization of bottleneck resources. If the market is the constraint, use sales less materials divided by hours consumed.
If Sapporo Ramen sells what it makes, it must maximize ramen production. Otherwise, it must produce within the constraint of its ability to carry inventory costs for whatever goes unsold during business hours.
Someone working a non-bottleneck by definition has excess capacity. The utilization level of a non-bottleneck is determined not by its operating rules but by another constraint in the system.
Restaurant workers always move at top speed, implying a ceaseless contribution to the bottom line. However, not all activity generates value. At Sapporo Ramen, the general job description should read 'ensure order rate matches production rate' and the best employees would be those who contribute the most toward this ideal.
If Sapporo Ramen can produce twenty bowls per hour, the best employees would either generate a new order every three minutes or find ways to increase the production rate. This knowledge should help employees make otherwise arbitrary decisions. When the chef is overwhelmed, a server might top off water glasses to slow the order rate. On the other hand, during a slow period a server might seat a new customer, ignoring empty water glasses along the way, because new customers are more likely to place orders.
Saving time on setup at a non-bottleneck is an illusory way to save costs. By definition, non-bottlenecks have excess capacity.
The result of everyone wanting to optimize his or her own work is chaos. Local optimization must come as a secondary priority to system optimization.
Individual efficiency works unless it slows ramen production. Let's use dish washing as an example. If it takes one minute to wash one bowl by hand and ten minutes to wash one hundred bowls in the dishwasher, then it's obviously more efficient to use the dishwasher - the machine is ten times faster!
Well, not so fast, first this is only true when the dishwasher is full. If the dishwasher is half-full, an employee might wait until it's full before running the dishwasher to ensure maximum efficiency. But what if you need a bowl and no spares are to be found? It's time to wash by hand, inefficient like it's 1985, but if it frees up production capacity then it's the most valuable task.
Saturday, February 8, 2020
reading review - all these wonders
All These Wonders by Catherine Burns (August 2019)
This is the second story collection I’ve read from The Moth. As expected, I found a handful of memorable stories mixed into the larger group of entertaining but forgettable tales.
I read eight of these stories multiple times (see the full list alongside my thoughts in the book notes). Working strictly from memory, I believe the story I liked best was ‘Prom’. It’s a classic Moth story in a way, not the least of which because it’s simultaneously hilarious, moving, relatable and difficult to hear, but perhaps most importantly because when it ends you just feel like you’re slightly more likely to live a better life than you were before hearing the story.
I’ve noted in the past on TOA that I often struggle to find themes or continuity from story collections. Even when intended, I feel authors establish a thread with more success in other genres. However, as The Moth naturally gravitates toward poignant, difficult stories, I thought it helped the collection hold together a little better than other similar works. Moving on or moving forward into uncertainty isn’t always as simple as listening to a podcast like The Moth (or reading a collection of its stories, or even reading a pompous blog post about those stories) but as one storyteller noted, the grass is always greener where you water it. It seems that The Moth represents such an effort for both its storytellers and audience members and in All These Wonders we have the privilege of hearing so many recount their best attempt to light up the dark path ahead - with honesty, courage, and of course, humor.
This is the second story collection I’ve read from The Moth. As expected, I found a handful of memorable stories mixed into the larger group of entertaining but forgettable tales.
I read eight of these stories multiple times (see the full list alongside my thoughts in the book notes). Working strictly from memory, I believe the story I liked best was ‘Prom’. It’s a classic Moth story in a way, not the least of which because it’s simultaneously hilarious, moving, relatable and difficult to hear, but perhaps most importantly because when it ends you just feel like you’re slightly more likely to live a better life than you were before hearing the story.
I’ve noted in the past on TOA that I often struggle to find themes or continuity from story collections. Even when intended, I feel authors establish a thread with more success in other genres. However, as The Moth naturally gravitates toward poignant, difficult stories, I thought it helped the collection hold together a little better than other similar works. Moving on or moving forward into uncertainty isn’t always as simple as listening to a podcast like The Moth (or reading a collection of its stories, or even reading a pompous blog post about those stories) but as one storyteller noted, the grass is always greener where you water it. It seems that The Moth represents such an effort for both its storytellers and audience members and in All These Wonders we have the privilege of hearing so many recount their best attempt to light up the dark path ahead - with honesty, courage, and of course, humor.
Thursday, February 6, 2020
leftovers #2 – not so fast
I suppose since the first leftover was my origin story, I should square the circle and describe the future of my eating habits. It's simple, these days I try to eat when I’m hungry, and in the future I'd like to do this all the time. At the moment, I estimate I’m hungry around 75% of the time I eat. Some obvious areas of improvement are silly - I’ve had a few Boston Cremes since August, not a single one when hungry - while in other cases the challenge is more about navigating social situations and might prove more difficult for me.
The immediate frontier for me is on the satiety side. I’ve always oveate and this bad habit was reinforced by intermittent fasting. I’ve had my moments but lack consistency. I’ll never forget ordering paella at a Portuguese restaurant at the end of the summer, there was a lot of food on my plate and I shocked myself when half of it came home with me in a container. If you had asked me at this time last year, I would have said a dog was more likely to ignore a fallen roast beef sandwich than I was to bring home leftovers from my own plate.
The challenge is equal parts technical and mental. The technique is easy, I eat too fast, so slower eating should help me get a grip on my fullness signal. The mental side requires more work. I need to get it into my head that the refrigerator is a friend, or at least a trusted ally, and find ways to get excess portions into the right containers. The demon I battle every time is a profound aversion to wasting food, this force that drives me to Haymarket on weekends ensuring a deep sense of loss anytime I see something edible in the waste basket. I wonder sometimes what role this feeling played in making it impossible for me to continue volunteering at a food bank. The planet is not without challenges but a food shortage isn’t among them, a fact lost in the rationing system imposed on the city’s most vulnerable residents.
The immediate frontier for me is on the satiety side. I’ve always oveate and this bad habit was reinforced by intermittent fasting. I’ve had my moments but lack consistency. I’ll never forget ordering paella at a Portuguese restaurant at the end of the summer, there was a lot of food on my plate and I shocked myself when half of it came home with me in a container. If you had asked me at this time last year, I would have said a dog was more likely to ignore a fallen roast beef sandwich than I was to bring home leftovers from my own plate.
The challenge is equal parts technical and mental. The technique is easy, I eat too fast, so slower eating should help me get a grip on my fullness signal. The mental side requires more work. I need to get it into my head that the refrigerator is a friend, or at least a trusted ally, and find ways to get excess portions into the right containers. The demon I battle every time is a profound aversion to wasting food, this force that drives me to Haymarket on weekends ensuring a deep sense of loss anytime I see something edible in the waste basket. I wonder sometimes what role this feeling played in making it impossible for me to continue volunteering at a food bank. The planet is not without challenges but a food shortage isn’t among them, a fact lost in the rationing system imposed on the city’s most vulnerable residents.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
leftovers – not so fast
My ‘intermittent fasting’ dates back to my early twenties. I would go out, have a few too many units, and end up eating some kind of late night meal. I always remember it being Chinese food. After stuffing myself, I would show myself mercy and call it a night.
The next day would always present its challenges. The one constant was that although I was happy to drink plenty of water and coffee, I never felt like eating. I’m sure the 3AM dumplings had something to do with it. I would eventually get around to eating at dinnertime, usually around 7PM, and this was often a healthy meal (by the standards of the weekend). Do the math on my eating schedule, reader, and you see the framework for intermittent fasting. Over the years, I slowly expanded this post-hangover approach to regularly include a few fasting days per month.
I stopped recently, a predictable consequence of reconsidering habits in other aspects of my life. For example, my exercise habits changed as I started listening to my body and responding to its signals, and perhaps this prompted me to consider the same approach at the dinner table. One thing about fasting is that since you don’t eat when you are hungry, you always resume eating when you are (really) hungry. I started by responding to the hunger criteria alone and my fasting stopped almost immediately.
The next day would always present its challenges. The one constant was that although I was happy to drink plenty of water and coffee, I never felt like eating. I’m sure the 3AM dumplings had something to do with it. I would eventually get around to eating at dinnertime, usually around 7PM, and this was often a healthy meal (by the standards of the weekend). Do the math on my eating schedule, reader, and you see the framework for intermittent fasting. Over the years, I slowly expanded this post-hangover approach to regularly include a few fasting days per month.
I stopped recently, a predictable consequence of reconsidering habits in other aspects of my life. For example, my exercise habits changed as I started listening to my body and responding to its signals, and perhaps this prompted me to consider the same approach at the dinner table. One thing about fasting is that since you don’t eat when you are hungry, you always resume eating when you are (really) hungry. I started by responding to the hunger criteria alone and my fasting stopped almost immediately.
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
not so fast
I’ve heard that ‘intermittent fasting’ is making news these days (1). In addition to its growing popularity as a diet and weight loss tactic, science is building an improving case for a number of other benefits. I’m happy for whoever benefits from this news but I gave up on fasting a few months ago and I feel a return to fasting is unlikely.
I changed my routine in the summer to emphasize eating when I felt hungry rather than based on external factors like time. Reading Intuitive Eating pushed me in this direction but the change was part of a larger trend of listening to my body rather than listening to my intellect. What does science know about me that I won’t learn by listening to my body?
So, am I now captain of the anti-fasting team? Hardly. Fasting might be a great tool to help reestablish communication between mind and body. I think it’s also good for people to know that if you don’t feel hungry, you can skip meals. It’s beneficial! But I think offering fasting as a solution for people who do not listen to their hunger signals or ignore their satiety cues is a crutch for continuing an unhealthy behavior. The goal should be to help people establish healthy habits; I support fasting to the extent that it can help certain people move toward this goal but I don't think fasting alone is enough to reach the target.
Footnotes
1. You got the news... how?
I got this news as I usually do, a number of people who knew my habits heard about it first and asked me about my thoughts. There was a lot of surprise when I responded that I’d not fasted since August.
I changed my routine in the summer to emphasize eating when I felt hungry rather than based on external factors like time. Reading Intuitive Eating pushed me in this direction but the change was part of a larger trend of listening to my body rather than listening to my intellect. What does science know about me that I won’t learn by listening to my body?
So, am I now captain of the anti-fasting team? Hardly. Fasting might be a great tool to help reestablish communication between mind and body. I think it’s also good for people to know that if you don’t feel hungry, you can skip meals. It’s beneficial! But I think offering fasting as a solution for people who do not listen to their hunger signals or ignore their satiety cues is a crutch for continuing an unhealthy behavior. The goal should be to help people establish healthy habits; I support fasting to the extent that it can help certain people move toward this goal but I don't think fasting alone is enough to reach the target.
Footnotes
1. You got the news... how?
I got this news as I usually do, a number of people who knew my habits heard about it first and asked me about my thoughts. There was a lot of surprise when I responded that I’d not fasted since August.
Sunday, February 2, 2020
set free the t
Many locals hate the ‘T’. I didn’t take a poll, I didn’t run a survey, it’s just my hunch based on a decade in Boston, but I know I’m right. Constant delays, weekend shutdowns, rising fares, the ‘T’ works tirelessly to earn this vitriol. Some say it’s so bad that the solution is to shut it down, to set the ‘T’ free, and usher in a sustainable transit future defined by innovation, technology, and individual responsibility.
Longtime readers will know that I take a dim view of these opinions. A recent article about safety ‘not being a priority’ at the ‘T’ was the latest such example. The report was an embarrassment, I get that, but let’s put this 'safety' into context. The ‘T’ is a mass transit system, thus, by definition it’s safe. Does a squirt gun need a trigger lock? Numbers, numbers always help, in 2018 there were 360 deaths on the Commonwealth’s roads, or 352 more than on the ‘T’. Everyone understand why I think this 'safety culture' stuff is fake news? If safety isn’t a priority at the ‘T’, what’s the priority on Storrow Drive? I can't wait to replace mass transit with mass ride shares, this city needs more assaults, gridlock, and corporate profits like Mayor Marty needs coaching for his Boston accent (1).
The surest way to a stupid opinion is to ignore context. Twenty-five years ago, I remember standing in front of a ‘T’ kiosk while my mom wasted five minutes buying a handful of Chuck-E-Cheese tokens. Then, we forced those tokens through the occasionally functional gates for the privilege of waiting indefinitely for the next train. A coup meant the Alewife subway came within ten minutes. These days, I swipe my automatically recharged Charlie card over a sensor, a process that takes three seconds, and read the schedule on an electronic board. Next train, three minutes! Five minutes later, the train shows up, and everyone complains.
I respect the right to complain. If it isn’t in the Bill of Rights it should be. But some complaints bother me. How do I put this? It’s when I sense contradiction, the hollow hypocrisy killing my brain cells with each additional syllable. Ever hear a billionaire talk, talk, talk about paying fair tax burdens? It's kind of like that. Now, those billionaires probably didn't understand my second paragraph, built on the premise that actions speak louder than words. Hearing the rich talk, talk, talk about fair shares rings hollow just like it does when drivers complain about the T's safety culture.
The other side of this issue is that there is so much more to complain about regarding the 'T'. Why complain about 'safety culture' when you could just talk about prices? I don't even know where to begin here, I’ll start by pointing out that a roundtrip train ticket to Boston from Weston, the Commonwealth's richest town, costs $10 every weekend. This is a ‘buffet ticket’, good for unlimited (but unsafe!) train trips all weekend (2). It’s great that I can save a little cash to get to Weston, I guess I’ll shop local and support their struggling businesses. And while I’m on my shopping spree, someone traveling from Chelsea to Boston via bus pays $1.70 one-way ($2.40 if a subway gets involved). Is there a ‘buffet ticket’ for these weekends? What do you think? Numbers, numbers always help, all I know is that Ten Dollar Weston has a median household income over four times that of Chelsea.
The ‘T’ doesn’t need complaints, posted by bus passengers while sitting in a traffic jam caused by cars. The ‘T’ needs money. If the ‘safety culture’ is a problem, what is $5 billion of debt? The obvious answer is to jack up fairs – whoops, fares – but this answer feels naive, a little ‘Business 101’, because it works from an assumption that the ‘T’ operates like the sidewalk lemonade stand. Should the ‘T’ really make price equal cost? This works well when only the buyer and the seller benefit but it falls apart quickly under more complex conditions.
We pseudo-economists like to use a big word here, ‘externality’. It means value created outside the transaction. Air pollution is a negative externality because it increases the chance that I get lung cancer. My guess is that the ‘T’ is among the Commonwealth’s largest producers of positive externalities (3). My boss needs me at work, I need to get to work, and the ‘T’ solves for X. But we, the boss and I, benefit beyond our working relationship because we both know I can sell my skills to a larger pool of bidders just as we both know the organization can choose employees from a larger pool of candidates. In a way, the ‘T’ ensures I’m paid fairly while my organization gets a fair price. All of this costs $90 per monthly pass (often subsidized by employers, occasionally available pretax) but the total benefits to all involved surely far exceed the price.
So, the question boils down to fair. What is each person’s ‘fare share’ for the ‘T’? I don’t believe in free rides (!) so I say you pay for what you get, the cost being roughly equivalent to benefit from the ‘T’. A wage worker likely benefits from the ‘T’ to the tune of dollars a week, perhaps by using mass transit to access slightly higher paying jobs or a wider range of support and resources. But a rich person running a huge company likely benefits by several magnitudes more than any employee, perhaps by hundreds or even thousands of dollars a day, as the mobility of the workforce enables accelerated wealth creation. My thought then is that one reason wealth tends to accrue with the wealthy is through a resource like the 'T'. Quiz, who do you think I feel should pay more for it?
So does this mean a $100 ticket to Weston? Not quite. Actually, step one is to set it free, all of it, no more fares. Set the ‘T’ free! Step two is the fun part, I’m going to increase taxes, because when benefits accrue indirectly – higher pay, lower expenses, appreciating assets – the only fair mechanism is through taxes. This will help almost all people, you and I, because hey, we ain’t as rich, and our increased tax liability will be less than what we currently pay for fares. Those who end up paying more are simply (and finally) being charged their fare share. This approach makes sense to me because it’s an allocation based on cost reflecting benefit, an approach that we should all agree is only fair.
Footnotes / omitted rants
0. For starters...
I struggled to pick a title, I strongly considered 'fare share' but in the end opted for wordplay ahead of the pun.
1. I'm still a big fan, though.
The alternate joke here would have involved Governor Baker identifying rants, but given that this post is a rant, I decided against it.
2. I tried linking this thought to ‘providence’, I gave up, thank God.
It’s the same price for unlimited weekend trips to Providence. Ten bucks to Providence, and back, unlimited trips all weekend. Providence isn’t in the Commonwealth!
3. Economics 101
First, a clarification – I think it's more accurate to say the ‘T’ (basically) produces a public good rather than a net positive externality, but TOA isn’t an economics space (and never will be).
3a. But, if it was...
The way I use ‘positive net externality’ assumes that the positives of rides far outweigh the negatives. In other words, we all would have agreed that the amount of benefit gained from having the 'T' (such as greater mobility) exceeds its costs (such as pollution).
Longtime readers will know that I take a dim view of these opinions. A recent article about safety ‘not being a priority’ at the ‘T’ was the latest such example. The report was an embarrassment, I get that, but let’s put this 'safety' into context. The ‘T’ is a mass transit system, thus, by definition it’s safe. Does a squirt gun need a trigger lock? Numbers, numbers always help, in 2018 there were 360 deaths on the Commonwealth’s roads, or 352 more than on the ‘T’. Everyone understand why I think this 'safety culture' stuff is fake news? If safety isn’t a priority at the ‘T’, what’s the priority on Storrow Drive? I can't wait to replace mass transit with mass ride shares, this city needs more assaults, gridlock, and corporate profits like Mayor Marty needs coaching for his Boston accent (1).
The surest way to a stupid opinion is to ignore context. Twenty-five years ago, I remember standing in front of a ‘T’ kiosk while my mom wasted five minutes buying a handful of Chuck-E-Cheese tokens. Then, we forced those tokens through the occasionally functional gates for the privilege of waiting indefinitely for the next train. A coup meant the Alewife subway came within ten minutes. These days, I swipe my automatically recharged Charlie card over a sensor, a process that takes three seconds, and read the schedule on an electronic board. Next train, three minutes! Five minutes later, the train shows up, and everyone complains.
I respect the right to complain. If it isn’t in the Bill of Rights it should be. But some complaints bother me. How do I put this? It’s when I sense contradiction, the hollow hypocrisy killing my brain cells with each additional syllable. Ever hear a billionaire talk, talk, talk about paying fair tax burdens? It's kind of like that. Now, those billionaires probably didn't understand my second paragraph, built on the premise that actions speak louder than words. Hearing the rich talk, talk, talk about fair shares rings hollow just like it does when drivers complain about the T's safety culture.
The other side of this issue is that there is so much more to complain about regarding the 'T'. Why complain about 'safety culture' when you could just talk about prices? I don't even know where to begin here, I’ll start by pointing out that a roundtrip train ticket to Boston from Weston, the Commonwealth's richest town, costs $10 every weekend. This is a ‘buffet ticket’, good for unlimited (but unsafe!) train trips all weekend (2). It’s great that I can save a little cash to get to Weston, I guess I’ll shop local and support their struggling businesses. And while I’m on my shopping spree, someone traveling from Chelsea to Boston via bus pays $1.70 one-way ($2.40 if a subway gets involved). Is there a ‘buffet ticket’ for these weekends? What do you think? Numbers, numbers always help, all I know is that Ten Dollar Weston has a median household income over four times that of Chelsea.
The ‘T’ doesn’t need complaints, posted by bus passengers while sitting in a traffic jam caused by cars. The ‘T’ needs money. If the ‘safety culture’ is a problem, what is $5 billion of debt? The obvious answer is to jack up fairs – whoops, fares – but this answer feels naive, a little ‘Business 101’, because it works from an assumption that the ‘T’ operates like the sidewalk lemonade stand. Should the ‘T’ really make price equal cost? This works well when only the buyer and the seller benefit but it falls apart quickly under more complex conditions.
We pseudo-economists like to use a big word here, ‘externality’. It means value created outside the transaction. Air pollution is a negative externality because it increases the chance that I get lung cancer. My guess is that the ‘T’ is among the Commonwealth’s largest producers of positive externalities (3). My boss needs me at work, I need to get to work, and the ‘T’ solves for X. But we, the boss and I, benefit beyond our working relationship because we both know I can sell my skills to a larger pool of bidders just as we both know the organization can choose employees from a larger pool of candidates. In a way, the ‘T’ ensures I’m paid fairly while my organization gets a fair price. All of this costs $90 per monthly pass (often subsidized by employers, occasionally available pretax) but the total benefits to all involved surely far exceed the price.
So, the question boils down to fair. What is each person’s ‘fare share’ for the ‘T’? I don’t believe in free rides (!) so I say you pay for what you get, the cost being roughly equivalent to benefit from the ‘T’. A wage worker likely benefits from the ‘T’ to the tune of dollars a week, perhaps by using mass transit to access slightly higher paying jobs or a wider range of support and resources. But a rich person running a huge company likely benefits by several magnitudes more than any employee, perhaps by hundreds or even thousands of dollars a day, as the mobility of the workforce enables accelerated wealth creation. My thought then is that one reason wealth tends to accrue with the wealthy is through a resource like the 'T'. Quiz, who do you think I feel should pay more for it?
So does this mean a $100 ticket to Weston? Not quite. Actually, step one is to set it free, all of it, no more fares. Set the ‘T’ free! Step two is the fun part, I’m going to increase taxes, because when benefits accrue indirectly – higher pay, lower expenses, appreciating assets – the only fair mechanism is through taxes. This will help almost all people, you and I, because hey, we ain’t as rich, and our increased tax liability will be less than what we currently pay for fares. Those who end up paying more are simply (and finally) being charged their fare share. This approach makes sense to me because it’s an allocation based on cost reflecting benefit, an approach that we should all agree is only fair.
Footnotes / omitted rants
0. For starters...
I struggled to pick a title, I strongly considered 'fare share' but in the end opted for wordplay ahead of the pun.
1. I'm still a big fan, though.
The alternate joke here would have involved Governor Baker identifying rants, but given that this post is a rant, I decided against it.
2. I tried linking this thought to ‘providence’, I gave up, thank God.
It’s the same price for unlimited weekend trips to Providence. Ten bucks to Providence, and back, unlimited trips all weekend. Providence isn’t in the Commonwealth!
3. Economics 101
First, a clarification – I think it's more accurate to say the ‘T’ (basically) produces a public good rather than a net positive externality, but TOA isn’t an economics space (and never will be).
3a. But, if it was...
The way I use ‘positive net externality’ assumes that the positives of rides far outweigh the negatives. In other words, we all would have agreed that the amount of benefit gained from having the 'T' (such as greater mobility) exceeds its costs (such as pollution).
Saturday, February 1, 2020
the toa newsletter - february 2020
I don’t have my usual high-arching newsletter bullshit today so let’s just look back at some routines I changed over the past few months.
Book notes at end of day
I often write out notes for a book a few days after I finish reading. My ‘to-do’ stack has piled up of late – I’m looking at it now, I see seven finished books plus four others ‘in progress’. I used to address the backlog in the early morning but I’ve been waking up later since taking a new job.
My current solution is to write out some notes at night. The problem is sleep hygiene, the computer possibly causing me to stay up later than if I’d just read in bed. I stopped using computers within two hours of bedtime a few years ago and I’ve slept well ever since… coincidence?
Ironically, if I stay awake because I write notes instead of reading, I deal with it by… reading in bed! I think it’s clear that once I exhaust temporary remedies, I’ll get around to the only real solution: waking up earlier.
Silent mode
At the start of my new job, I experimented with keeping my phone completely silent. I liked the results, so I’ve stuck with it during work hours and just check it during breaks. The distractions of incoming messages are gone and I don’t miss them at all.
Spending big
I always replace items by trying the cheapest option (including not replacing it at all) before upgrading as necessary. My most memorable example is when I ‘replaced’ my iPod with walking around and hearing stuff – I’m still music free, at least in public. The more common pattern is that I get by, precariously, limping through life with inferior replacements before my growing discomfort breaks my will and forces me into a higher sales tax bracket.
Let’s talk about contact lens solution. I recently tried a twin pack of the CVS store brand, a move that saved me around three bucks every few months. Stupid idea, after dealing with the knock-off for a couple of months, I’m officially shelling out the extra cash for the more ‘Hollywood’ Opti-Free PureMoist. This product has all the glittering marketing bullshit envisioned by The Founding Fathers of Capitalism – with HydraGlyde! Moisture Matrix!! #1 Doctor Recommended!!! My eyes would normally roll at stuff like this, but you know what happens when you use store brand lens solution? Your eyes dry out, and stop rolling.
Book notes at end of day
I often write out notes for a book a few days after I finish reading. My ‘to-do’ stack has piled up of late – I’m looking at it now, I see seven finished books plus four others ‘in progress’. I used to address the backlog in the early morning but I’ve been waking up later since taking a new job.
My current solution is to write out some notes at night. The problem is sleep hygiene, the computer possibly causing me to stay up later than if I’d just read in bed. I stopped using computers within two hours of bedtime a few years ago and I’ve slept well ever since… coincidence?
Ironically, if I stay awake because I write notes instead of reading, I deal with it by… reading in bed! I think it’s clear that once I exhaust temporary remedies, I’ll get around to the only real solution: waking up earlier.
Silent mode
At the start of my new job, I experimented with keeping my phone completely silent. I liked the results, so I’ve stuck with it during work hours and just check it during breaks. The distractions of incoming messages are gone and I don’t miss them at all.
Spending big
I always replace items by trying the cheapest option (including not replacing it at all) before upgrading as necessary. My most memorable example is when I ‘replaced’ my iPod with walking around and hearing stuff – I’m still music free, at least in public. The more common pattern is that I get by, precariously, limping through life with inferior replacements before my growing discomfort breaks my will and forces me into a higher sales tax bracket.
Let’s talk about contact lens solution. I recently tried a twin pack of the CVS store brand, a move that saved me around three bucks every few months. Stupid idea, after dealing with the knock-off for a couple of months, I’m officially shelling out the extra cash for the more ‘Hollywood’ Opti-Free PureMoist. This product has all the glittering marketing bullshit envisioned by The Founding Fathers of Capitalism – with HydraGlyde! Moisture Matrix!! #1 Doctor Recommended!!! My eyes would normally roll at stuff like this, but you know what happens when you use store brand lens solution? Your eyes dry out, and stop rolling.
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