On March the 26th Earth Hour will take place, with the support of the WWF. Back in 2009, together with my family we went to the switch board and flipped the switches for an hour, took out a couple of candles and a bottle of wine and sat down and talked. It was a great experience. We did it as part of the Earth Hour movement.
There is not much you can do without power at night and if you never spent a period of time, voluntarily, without power, I recommend you do it, it will make you see how dependent we are on electricity and through it to all of the resources of the little blue ball we call Earth and home.
On March the 26th we will do this again, we will go to the switch board and flip the switches for an hour, sit down around a candle, have a drink and talk. Hope you will do it too. Hope it will inspire all of us to be more conscious about how much energy we use, how dependent we are on dead dinosaurs and, most of all, I hope it will convince us to take the measures necessary to reduces our footprint.
I love reading about great people, people who have vision, drive, people who make things happen and have an impact on the how the world spins. I also used to dream fiercely bold dreams, when I was a kid. I used to see myself changing the world. And I’m sure you do or have done so too. Actually I still dream those dreams, but there is a crucial difference between now and then. I used to believe with all my might that I can create the biggest natural park in the world and protect animals and plants on a scale nobody has done before. It was not a matter of if, it was a matter of when. Now I’m ashamed to say that I give up on most of the dreams before the dreaming is even ended. I murdered, in cold blood, my own dreams. Even worse, I down scale, instead of dreaming on beating Bill Gates and his own game and building a software empire that will put Microsoft to shame I’m thinking of, maybe, doing some freelance jobs on the side.
When did this happen? And why? Is it the fear of failure? Never tried never failed, right? I don’t know. But I do know something; all those people I admire so much where not afraid to dream big. Aim for the moon, even if you miss you will be among the stars. That’s a good saying.
Yet, there is also the reverse of the medal. Boundless ambitions are so hurtful and can drown all pleasures of life. I’ve seen ambitions do more harm than laziness and the lack of any ambition can ever do. The trick is, as in all things, to be wise about it, dream big, aim high and enjoy what you have, be happy with what you already achieved. Look back at the road you walked so far an enjoy where life has taken you.
At lest this is what I plan to do. And not just plan, but actually do. Step by step win back that childhood wonder and certainty. It’s the only way I see to actually achieve those dreams.
Posted on February 24, 2011 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
Things you have to do again and again and again are the stuff that plagues nightmares. Mundane and brain-dead repetitive tasks are the reason machines are so popular. I’ve read somewhere that the guy who invented the electric door lock, which is the thing you push a button, it starts to buzz and the you can open the door, was invented and built by a system administrator at an IT company who had to get up every time somebody was at office door and let him in. He hated this so much so he started to build an electric door lock he can open remotely. He later calculated that the time it took him to build the prototypes and make a working copy was far greater than the sum of all the interruptions he would have had if he kept getting up to open the door and he worked for that company for the rest of his life. I couldn’t find a reference for this, but even if it’s not true, it’s still a good story. My first thought was that this was a great example for laziness driving innovation, which I still believe is a major fact and it is also a great example of how a repetitive tasks can drive you crazy. You can end up like poor Charlie Chaplin.
My believe in the evil of repetitive tasks was thoroughly shaken by the assignments Michael Bierut, a professor at the Yale School of Art gave to his students. He asked them to find a task that will only take them a few minutes to complete and do it daily for 100 days. The task had to be something creative, but still, it is a repetitive task. Some of the results are amazing.
The underlying fact is that creativity without some sort of discipline rarely generates great results. And hard work is the secret ingredient behind most, if not all, great achievements. Sometimes repetitive is not so evil. Yet doing exactly the same thing, over and over again will kill more brain cells than you could ever hope to count to, even if you did it daily for the rest of your life.
Posted on February 18, 2011 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
If you have no patience to read though it all, the bare bones idea of the post is that I think that the reforms of the educational system that most governments undertake are utterly useless. It does not matter how you grade and how many years of school are mandatory. Only two things matter: how good the teachers are and how good is the material they teach.
That was the idea, the rest of the post is a rant, let it be known! A good rant, I believe, but a rant nevertheless. This latest outburst against our glorious education system came to me while sitting on the toilet and reading the latest news from the free newspaper we get at the subway. Free is the only price I’m willing to pay for most newspapers that are published these days and the toilet seems the most fitting place to read it, since it’s full of crap anyway.
While reading the latest and greatest conquests of our glorious political leaders there was a small article in a corner about the new education law. Should I say the annual education reform? Or is it the semi-annual, there are so many I keep forgetting. Anyway, in this last example of pure genius, somebody thought that it would be a good idea to force kids go to school starting with the age of six and to move the 9th grade from high school to elementary school. Also, there were two minor changes that the rector of a university cannot have a political position and a rule against nepotism.
Now, guess which of the changes caused an outrage with academia? What? The 9th grade thing? No, you are wrong, the nepotism and political position rules. And these guys are supposed to shape the minds of the young generation.
Beyond that, please, if anybody can explain, I beg of you, tell me what is so important in starting school at the age of 6 instead of 7 and how does it help to move the 9th grade to elementary school? And yes, I understand that at least with 9 grades, if kids drop-out, they will have some kind of education, and yes, I understand that there is a theory kids are more advanced these days, but what’s the point? This is completely useless, a waste of time, money effort and I’m sure, some sort of a diversion and a way for politicians to point out they didn’t just sat on their asses idle for a year.
I think I’m entitled to rant about education and to have an opinion about it. I’ve been and still am a faithful customer of the education system for more than 20 years of my life, and counting (hopefully for only a few more months). I’ve gone through all levels, learned in 4 countries and changed education institutions 7 times. I’ve studied in systems that had grades from 1 to 5, from 1 to 6, from 1 to 10 and the winner of most useless, from 1 to 12. I’ve studied in countries where I was the older in class because only kids that were really falling behind did the 4th grade, the rest just jumped to the 5th and I was coming from a system where the 4th grade was for everybody. I graduated elementary school after the 9th grade, as our leaders wants us to change the system to, and graduated high school after the 11th grade, because there was no 12th grade.
And in all these schools and systems only one thing was important, how good the teachers were and how good the textbooks were, the rest was unimportant, from start to finish. You can be inspired sitting in a warn-out bench and be born out of your mind sitting behind a state of the art computer.
If it was my choice I would freeze all these useless reforms and focus on getting the best people this country has to offer to want to be teachers, be rewarded to be teachers, be proud to be teachers and let them be teachers and shape the minds of the young. Let them write clear and good textbooks, the kind you will cherish and be inspired by when you read it, the kinds that open kids eyes. And let the teachers tell stories, inspire and show how kids can use their knowledge to build the things they are dreaming off.
But no, let us argue for half a year about a law against nepotism, because that’s what ruined the education system. I’m glad I’m out of school and sad for all the 6 year olds.
One of my previous rants about education is here (in romanian).
Posted on February 8, 2011 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
There are piles and piles of books on how to get things, countles techniques and tips and tricks.
Yet the one thing that helps me get things done is motivation. If there is enough motivation, combined with a tight deadline, miracles happen.
On the other hand, if there is no motivation there is… what do you call the opposite of miracles? Boredom and routine? Yup, those are the ones.
A couple of days ago Seth wrote a post called Treat different customers differently. It’s an very short post that can be summed up by the following phrase “… the only way you can treat different customers differently is if you understand that their values (and their value to you) vary. It’s easier than ever to discern and test these values, and you do everyone a service when you differentiate“.
At first an alarm went off in my head saying “Wait, what?”. This seems so counterintuitive, it seems that since… forever marketing books and the common practice preached to treat all costumers the same. Smile to everybody, be nice to your customers.
Yet, to differentiate does not mean to discriminate. It doesn’t mean to treat some good and be an ass to everybody else. If you think about it, one of the most used and abused models of monetisation for websites and online services nowadays is the freemium model. And what does that model do if not differentiate? You give great attention to all your costumers but give some extra to those that pay.
And if you think further about it, freemium is the perfect demonstration that the Pareto 80:20 principle works beyond doubt. There’s something for you to think about. Check who are the people that benefit from your services (your coworkers, friends, actual customers) and think if you should differentiate or not and who is part of those so precious 20%.
Posted on January 20, 2011 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
In Isaac Asimov’s famous Foundation series an central and intriguing role is played by the so-called science of Psychohistory. Quoting Wikipedia: “Psychohistory is a fictional science in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation universe which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make (nearly) exact predictions of the collective actions of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire”.
As so many things from science fiction that seem to come to life, lately (see mobile phones, the Internet and tons of other gadgets), psychohistory doesn’t seem to be so far fetched anymore.
I’ve recently finished reading the brilliant Guns, Germs and Steel book by Jared Diamond and the thought that kept circling around my head was: “This is so psychohistory”. And in a sense is, Diamond argues at one point, same as Asimov in his books, that the actions of individuals are lost in the sea of actions by the masses.
If you ever wondered why Eurasia became the center of power on our planet, want to understand what influences the development of societies or you just are a geek that would like to see how psychohistory looks in real life, read Guns, Germs and Steel, it’s a fascinating book.
