Monthly Archives: May 2019

This I Believe – May 1, 2019

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Happiness = Growth + Collaboration

I believe growth and collaboration provide a path to happiness.

I believe my happiness is determined by the decisions I make on two questions: 1) Where do I need to improve? 2) How can I work hard with others to solve hard problems?

Everything else is details.

Connecting Makes Life Happier

I believe we are naturally sensitive to relationships. Connecting with others feels good. Solving hard problems with others feels even better.

Communication Makes Life Easier

I believe the world is changing fast and communication is essential to adapting to the changes.

I believe communication between people is a challenge. I believe improving communication makes life easier.

I believe the brain filters information. I believe we all have different filters, the filters are not obvious and the filters make communication challenging.

I believe 10 of us could sit in the same meeting and walk out with 12 different versions of what happened.

I believe that given any topic we all have different views of what is obvious and what isn’t, what is hard and what isn’t and what is helpful and what isn’t.

I believe different viewpoints can be either advantages or disadvantages based on the communication skills of the group.

I believe there are differences between listening and being genuinely curious and between talking and attempting to convince.

I believe the groups which will adapt fastest are the groups which do the best job of finding and integrating new information into their worldview.

I believe we adapt faster when we communicate.

General

I believe the answer to any challenge is a combination of physics and people.

I believe we underestimate our capacity for understanding.

I believe we overestimate our awareness of our surroundings and our awareness of our beliefs.

I believe limiting the volume of information and increasing the structure of information makes it easier to share.

Challenges

I believe cancer is a challenge but we are rapidly approaching both prevention and cures. I believe we will get there faster once we learn how to have better conversations about beliefs and effort.

I believe food production is a challenge. I believe the challenge is in determining quality (what to eat) not quantity (generating enough to eat). I believe we will make faster progress on food production once we are able to start having civilized conversations regarding nutrition.

I believe climate change is a challenge but we will make better progress once we are able to have a conversation.

I believe connection is challenging and getting harder.

As we moved from tribes to villages to cities to suburbs our lives developed more silos.

In a fairly short period of time we’ve gone from tribes of families working together to feed and take care of each other, to communities where our work, schools, friends and family are all in separate silos. If we’re lucky there is understanding and flexibility between the silos but often each silo has a priority which conflicts with the others.

I believe livelihood is the greatest challenge we face.

I believe our happiness is dependent on our ability to contribute to a group.

The challenges we’re facing with connection and communication make livelihood harder and harder and often conflicting with the necessities of friends and family.

Trends – Automation & Instability

I believe somewhere in the second half of the 20th Century (~1970-1990) priorities of business shifted from workers to shareholders.

The majority of successful businesses have always been sensitive to capitol but in the late 20th century it became more profitable to focus on keeping shareholders happy rather than keeping workers happy. We humans are complicated which makes us hard to deal with sometimes :).

I believe the focus on the costs of employees coupled with the increasing availability of automation will increase the rate people are replaced with machines.

I believe there are three things which are different with this revolution when compared to the agricultural revolution and industrial revolution: 1) The have-nots have greater visibility of what the haves have. 2) In this revolution people are not required to increase capitol, and 3) It takes effort to adapt and to survive, and with the current trend adaptation will need to be constant and faster than before.

I believe automation brings unprecedented opportunity. I also believe the current trends point to automation generating social instability as more people fall farther behind due to the rate of change in how families generate livelihoods.

Trends – Education

I believe the current trends in the costs of education are unsustainable.

I also believe the value of education is falling as the costs are rising. I believe the value is falling because of both what and how we are teaching our kids.

Education has traditionally been memorize and repeat (knowledge) vs teaching knowledge, wisdom and skill, especially in such vital skills such as collaboration and communication (pictures and words).

I believe the teaching profession is over regulated and undervalued, meaning that teachers’ salary is significantly lower than the job which we are asking them to perform.

The Good News

I believe we’re intelligent, we like working together and we’ll sort it out.