PC Virus Reinforces Green Thinking

My blog postings have been interrupted lately because my computer caught a virus.  As I write, it is still in the infirmary being disinfected.

I suppose it was bound to happen.  I tend to think of myself as slightly more savvy than the saps that get caught in the Nigerian spam phishing schemes, but the more time you spend on the internet, especially browsing, the more likely you are to catch something.  I was informed that the particular “rogue antivirus software” that infiltrated my hard drive has been known to inhabit even the most reputable sites on the Web like the WSJ where I am a frequent visitor.  Web surfing does have a parallel to promiscuity and STDs:  if you visit the unfamiliar often enough, you will contract something you were not looking for even if you use protection.  I wanted to deny anything was wrong and sheepishly took my computer in to the doctor, as if admitting your computer caught a virus was akin to admitting you spend your web time in the dregs and dark corners of cyberspace.  Not true, my computer doc, told me. 

The thing that gets me is computer diagnostic charges now cause the consumer to make the old value assessment on service versus replacement.  I never thought I would actually weigh the possibility of purchasing a new computer for $400 versus sinking 1/3 the cost into a virus removal and operating system verification / reload on my nearly nine-year-old computer. 

As cool as it would be to chuck the Compaq dinosaur (pre-HP merge) with 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard drive for something many, many times sexier, the green side of me speaks up louder to keep something that works working for its natural life.  This is a core belief of mine, which I consider sustainable thinking.  Reducing consumerism for consumerism’s sake is being green.  My computer still works for what I need it for; why trade up?  The same goes for my car, and my clothes, and most everything else in my life.

I use things until they fail.  I wear socks until they are hole-y, then darn them and wear them out again until they develop holes in places that either cannot be fixed or hurt when I wear them.  I develop strange relationships with things that have lasted, things I initially did not care for, but because I have cared for it for so long, I begin to become attached to the item. 

My footwear is a good example.  I wear them until they truly fall apart.  I may buy a pair of shoes for work and it could take years for me to really like them, for them to finally fit my foot like a slipper.  I had a pair of Florsheims that I reluctantly bought out of need than because they were what I was really looking for.  Now nearly seven years later, they are on their deathbed and I cannot pull the plug.  Likewise, just when a t-shirt gets broken it, when it hangs on your body just so, it develops its first hole; there is no way I throw it away.  I may not wear it in public, but I cannot euthanize it.

This preservation first philosophy can be taken too far.  I held onto my last car, a Chrysler LeBaron (RIP), a little too long. My mechanic gave me a frequent customer discount card I was there so often. A part of me saw the car, which looked ok from the outside and knew it had miles left on it. However its innards, save for the battery, were gone. I had entire systems going on me—brakes, ignition, suspension—but to me it still seemed cheaper than the alternative. In hindsight, I kept it two years too long, and it cost me thousands that could have gone toward a gently used replacement machine.

Yet, economically it makes sense to toss sometimes.  I bent the fork on my mountain bike in graduate school.  It was a hybrid mountain bike ($350 new) that had seen better days.  She was actually stolen while I was an undergrad in Charlottesville and returned via a police sting to a pawn shop eighteen months later, but that is another story for another time.  The bike was beat and I sought a repair place to fix it.  When the repair estimate broke $150, I thought, no way; I can get a newer, higher quality bike for only a fraction more.  The bike repair man would not even make me an offer for parts. It hurt me, but I actually tossed an otherwise perfectly usable bike with a fatal bent fork flaw into a dumpster, and learned to leave earlier and walk faster.

I am not sure how much profit my computer virus doctor will make on my virus repair.  He has his right to his living, and I would not want to deny him that.  But it makes it a harder decision to fix rather than replace when the fix, deemed as relatively minor as far as requiring time, components or expertise, becomes such a large portion of the cost of a new, better item.  His work is guaranteed and I can imagine if I am not happy, I may end up with a new computer anyway. 

All around us consumer durables, things we buy that last multiple uses for years, like lawn mowers and cell phones are starting to cost too much to fix.  We must address the consumer aspect of the decision, but also think of environmental stewardship and figure out what the best overall decision is.  Why have our landfills overflowing with items brought to demise through minor dings just because the repair market is so expensive? In many cases, the responsible answer is to fix, find another use or find a secondary market (sell / trade it used) for it.  As you weave your way through life, weigh the green side of the story before you make your choice each time, and not just the greenbacks.

Happiness Is…

…an elusive ideal. Well, constant happiness is. And this is a subject I have seen pop up a lot in lectures, articles, the internet. Company CEO’s like Zappos.com’s Tony Hsieh have supposedly dedicated their careers to figuring it out and then finding a way to deliver it to their customers. John Lennon relied on a warm gun.

When something so overlooked, or assumed, or harmless (on the surface) pops up more than a few times, I take note because most likely there is a larger zeitgeist at work.

Richard Florida, he of Creative Class fame, mentioned in a talk that research shows happiness is derived from three things:  a job you love, challenges and an appealing lifestyle. He talked about other items which need attention and affect those big three.  For instance, social connections are important in providing happiness, as well as quality of place (where you live).

A TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks) that I discovered recently expounded about happiness in the context of choice. It explored how an outcome is more appealing when you have no choice; you can talk yourself into it more (‘getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me’). But when there are two or more equally appealing options, people tend to beat themselves up over whether they made the right choice, and are less pleased than folks who are forced to accept something. They must have committed Robert Frost’s  “The Road Not Taken” to memory.

And even the Reader’s Digest had an article on how to improve your happiness through gratitude, natch.  The piece suggests a person list things they are grateful for every day for ten weeks.  Results showed people who did this were 25% happier, felt better about their job and exercised 1.5 hours more week than those who did not keep a gratitude list.

When society is attempting to affect the overall happiness of its people, I get worried. I must have missed a memo on this subject because there must be a dark side driving these efforts:  are we, as a country, more clinically depressed in 2010 than we were in the past? Are the murder rates up? Is happiness a euphemistic cover-up for another more serious inadequacy plaguing society? I get it, it must be affecting our GDP.

Bipolars included, I tend to think of any state of being, happiness included, as a sine wave. Extremes define an emotion and happiness does not seem to be one of those things you can have pegged on maximum all the time. In fact, I think the norm would be something between agony and happiness. I think we call this “fine” when someone asks how we are doing.

I have this theory that selfishness is the root of all pain in the world.  It may be baloney.  But happiness as a core goal appears self-centered and vain. I hate to play the relevance card, but is life all about hedonism? I thought we were here to do good work, to make the world better one day at a time.

Some days, most days in fact, the serotonin levels in most of us are just so-so, which means an even-keel kind of day. Status quo:  no ecstasy, no crises. This means things are under control. For Type As like me, control is more crucial. As Ice Cube would say “Today I didn’t even have to use my AK.  I have to say it was a good day”. And that makes me happy.

Life in Our Post-Capitalist Society

I read a disturbing article today in the Wall Street Journal about some 11th hour shady dealings with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704152804574628350980043082.html#mod=djemWMPt. I cannot begin to know everything about FM & FM except on some very basic level:  they are broken, do not serve their purpose anymore, and yet still exist at the folly of all involved.

I am ashamed, sickened and angered all at the same time. I can accept a government screw-up (usually), and I frown upon an overly-eager solution without proper study (sometimes), but I cannot accept purposeful, deceitful, negligent acts that are wasteful and economically detrimental to the average American who entrusts the government with power to make smart decisions as trustees of our taxes.  And both parties wonder why they have massive swings and political bloodletting in the House and Senate every two years—because of stunts like this. There is definitely some sinning involved in running this country; I will not pretend to think the president can make decisions under his personal free will even most of the time, but at least he can act ethically all the time. 

This Freddie and Fannie business is not the business of the government and only clarifies how out-of-control things are in Washington, D.C. If our government were a business, no one would invest in it because it is not solvent and is too overdiversified. The government thinks it is Warren Buffet running Berkshire Hathaway (a successful conglomerate), but it ends up operating thousands of things poorly (another excellent WSJ article exists on this topic and I will post a follow-up after I purge the bile in my system).  There are numerous Wall Street examples of big companies overpaying for the opportunity to own and run smaller companies, only to run them into the ground because of various forms of incompetence (see Quaker Oats’ purchase of Snapple for one). If shareholders owned our government, they would want it to sell off its non-core assets and focus on its mission and value proposition:  what is that, by the way, it has been so long I forget…running a democracy.

So what will life be like in this post-capitalist country we call the United States of America? The government feels it has expertise in, and can “solve” healthcare, and the automobile, banking and housing industries.  None of these are essential to running a democracy. Tack those onto Amtrak and the analogy of our government as a poorly-run, unfocused conglomerate is crystal clear. The really criminal act behind the Freddie / Fannie debacle is that FM & FM were originally created, I believe, to provide mortages to first-time homebuyers and other limited-credit history purchasers. This means FM2 should be the most conservative lenders in the market because they serve those who no one else will touch (due to high risk), and because they are lending taxpayer OPM (other people’s money). Instead, the corrupt and incompetent F & F CEOs oversaw lax standards and risky loans just like every other lender. We, the taxpayers, trusted FM & FM to do the right thing. Not only did they not, but their management will get rewarded and the ”companies” will have the backing of we, the taxpayers. Oh, and if any publicly traded company could not pay its dividends on its shares, as FM2 cannot, they would strike the dividend—not borrow money from the public to pay dividends to those same people they owe (the public).  Robbing Peter to pay Peter?  That is asinine.

Citizens need access to real-time political activity, a gadfly in the know who can broadcast, so that inquiring minds who want to know (I want to know) can possibly act or at least speak out against actions we disagree with. Can someone open the green curtain in Oz? Too often it is after the fact the public finds out; everything in the media seems to be a post-mortem on events.  We, the people, struggle to counteract the inertia of the government half the time, and then cannot stop it the other half.

Geoff Wilson, a commenter on the WSJ’s website regarding the aformentioned article posted: “It used to be that this country was founded on the moral precept that you should stand on your own two feet and ask for nothing from anyone else, and in exchange everyone else agreed that they would ask for nothing from you in return. We had an essentially classless society, and it was wonderful. We were the envy of the world. Why were we not smart enough to see that introducing class conflict through legislation during the progressive era would tear us apart?”  Well put, Mr. Wilson. Each time I read the Freddie / Fannie story, it roils me so deeply that I cannot help but feel that this country is guided by the premise every man for himself than I am my neighbor’s keeper. You see it at work; you see it on the roads; now you see it in the government. The average citizen sees the waste and spending disregard and reacts with one thought:  I need to acquire as much as possible as quickly as possible by hook or by crook because the horizon on life-as-we-know-it is limited.  The government is not managing its spending aka my taxes wisely and is going to really sink its teeth into me to pay for its mistakes sooner rather than later. And so goes the American dream.

Resolutions for the Wallet

As part of the JCCI Forward Dollars + Sense issue forum (see previous posts), I promised to re-address my financial state of the house.  This year my wife and I once again blew the Christmas budget. Unlike last year, instead of fretting I used it as a way to tidy up some unfinished money talk. We had a meeting of the minds on the topic and, in the wake of our shrinking bank account, resolved to not assign blame to where debt came from but collectively and rigorously work within our budget to retire recently growing debts. We were able to enjoy Christmas because of our talk.

I came up with four challenges for me in the upcoming year based upon the Dollars + Sense wisdom I gained, and from my own, shared financial observations.  I will track my progress in 2010.

Challenge 1 - Think about the household budget as an entrepreneur:  ‘you are your own business’. Too often I have earned, divided and spent based on past patterns and not critically analyzed the best uses for my money. You get ahead on the business balance sheet by maximizing income, controlling costs, and doing more with less. I need to do this with our budget. Also, debt is not always bad in business, but you lose freedom. I have compared our current household budget against five other model budgets I researched on the internet. Never have I done this, but benchmarking has been really helpful and educational thus far. I learned we are spending significantly more on housing than most, but also spending less on medical. I want to look for new opportunities to earn more, as well as spend less in 2010 (don’t we all). For instance, I have never bought anything from Craig’s List or sold anything on Ebay. Maybe there is some hidden savings or income there, respectively.

Challenge 2 – Rededicate myself to investments and retirement planning. I was always a little more interested in these topics than the average bear, so I got an early start in my life. Ironically, since earning my MBA and becoming a father, I have lost the energy and interest to track our holdings and portfolio. Shame on me. I have retirement accounts that have accumulated some serious moss, and are in need of a roll. I need to study up on the market and get by edge back.

Challenge 3 – Discuss the long-term financial plan with spouse, and work back to a budget.  Simply put, having a baby really whacked our financial and budgetary discipline. We have more short-term needs with a small child as well as potential educational expenses to plan for—and then there are our own personal and couple goals. It is hard to accommodate them all, but it will take more talk and a lot more walk to make it all work. In my head I have our financial hurricane meltdown plan worked out, but I fear if things went bad, or on the other side—even better than expected—we might still head in our own directions based on our own emergency plans. If we want to end up together, we need to know where to run when the levee breaks.  Reverse engineering a budget from bottom-up is the perfect foil to an idealistic and squishy top-down model.

Challenge 4 – Build an eight-to twelve month reserve. Yes, the difference between eight and twelve is 50%, but that is a measure of the uncertainty we live with today. Twelve months is a nice round number for planning’s sake, even if it is pie-in-the-sky thinking. I would love to say I have six months in the bank for a catastrophic event already, which I do not, but I want to aim high here and this means being very aggressive in the expenditures department. They say pay yourself first, but I need to pay myself and my other self first in order to make this work.

As far as saving goes, I will save in 2010 BAMN (by any means necessary) to co-opt a political acronym. The Dollars + Sense forum offered many creative ideas and I want to put them and my own into action. Some of the methods I am investigating:  Coupons 2.0 (clipping, internet, customer loyalty and credit card rewards programs) and Negotiation. I am already a coupon clipper, but I think there are advanced techniques to be studies and implemented. Negotiating includes some methods which are outside my comfort zone but which I want to experiment with like barter, asking for discounts off sticker (retail), seeking better prices when paying in cash, and utilizing debt more strategically.

From a buying standpoint, I want to shop everything. No venue is sacred and no opportunity for saving on a purchase taken for granted. On some level, people with the money to buy call the shots in this economy and, even where relationships once begat loyalty, the name of the game is what have you done for me lately?

2010 has that feeling to me like it will be big on some personal level and in a good way. If we start off with discipline and hope, the rest may not take care of itself, but I might find I am able to battle bears and help run a household with success.

Is God in the Details?

Paula Scher of design firm Pentagram offered a poignant quote in a recent Fast Company article:  “I don’t like technology because I don’t like to talk about technology”. Besides a sympathetic nod to my own beliefs toward technology, I appreciate her quote because it has a direct parallel to architecture, the design of space, and the field within which I currently operate. Scher was speaking about her work in the context of having a discussion about how a visual design concept is accomplished, graphically and technically. She said when she explains her idea, she does not want to talk about “HTML, Flash” and the languages of the code programmers. Scher is razor-focused on design issues—concept, experience, finished product—and to her the execution is, frankly, a waste of time. Amen, sister!

As a licensed architect with a half-dozen work environments and over ten years in the field in my rear-view mirror, I can say with confidence that most architects are mistakenly identified as designers; most architects are actually technical specialists. As a profession, we are tested for our license on technical merit, not creativity or design superiority. In fact, in most firms it is anathema to actually discuss design. Architects would rather banter about building codes and egress, specification verbiage, or how to (properly) detail a soffit. Our lunch times are not hotly contested arguments over beauty, color, proportion, axis, positive and negative space, sensory experience or Vitruvian firmness, commodity and delight. Only in select boutique design firms or among a coterie of young, idealistic recent architecture school graduates (after hours) will there be discussion about how recent trends in real estate, graphic design, advertising, the latest issue of any interior / architecture / industrial design magazine, business, pop culture, a design conference, any writer, painter, recent play, show or cinema has affected their project or personal thoughts on design.

This is because most architects don’t talk design. Design is too etherial, too subjective and gray, too reliant on rhetoric, salesmanship and belief. Most building design professionals crave concrete (pun intended) solutions, things that have right and wrong answers and can be proven by cross-referencing, calling up product representatives or comparing cost per square foot. So many prospective architects graduate with one major insecurity:  an undeveloped sense of design. They did not educate themselves well, did not get it in school, did not spend the time to study, practice, read or understand the finer points of what makes an environment stimulating. They did not learn to think, communicate graphically (draw), orally or even write well for that matter. When they got out of school, they sought safe harbor interning at an average firm learning how to put drawings together, detail, and administer a project. Never mind that it does not take an architecture school degree to do any of those things. Design work was left to the lead designer of the firm (whew!) because every firm has one, and only one. Graduates that can design, atrophy in places like this because architects are paid to solve problems, not waste time on design.

To me, the space and experience of architecture is the thing, the design, not the type of studs, drywall or fire stair. For me, knowing how to detail is no more relevant than a web designer knowing how to program code.  Architects need to understand there is nothing wrong with providing design vision:  this is what it should look like, and this is how it needs to perform.  I don’t care how it gets done. We need to get over the guilt of being a designer like it is second-class citizenship. A design expert’s bailiwick is as relevant as the seasoned project manager’s. The counter argument is that clients, the real world, do not pay for design. Bull. Ironically, architecture firm principals are the only ones who do not grasp the significance of design. Corporate America pays for design because it recognizes the only way to differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace is design.  This is done through innovation, not exercises in sizing downspouts. As Scher put it so well, people should be sweating the design, not the details.

Christmas: Kid Gloves Removed

Cheers to anyone who can enjoy the Christmas season without a little anxiety.

Every Christmas I feel a little anxiety, but not caused from current, real-time dilemmas or holiday stress. I traced my feelings to their beginnings and ended up in my youth, somewhere between age 8 and 12.  I call it kid-worries, youthful uneasiness or anxiety lite because kids do not have much to fret about at Christmas compared to adults, unless they have not been good.  And I got a lump of coal in my stocking for Christmas once (although I did receive some gifts that year), so I know how that feels.

Let me try to explain what I mean by kid-worries.  Growing up, I have great memories of anticipating Christmas.  There were four main kid adventures to Christmas prep:  setting up the tree and hanging ornaments, decorating outside, setting up the train set, and gift wrapping.  Each was its own kid-tradition with various feats that you had to grow into in order to accomplish. The older you got, the more you could take part.

Christmas at our house was the moist, burning lint, slightly potpourri-fragrant smell of the game room in winter with our baseboard electric heaters drying mittens and shoes; the static shocks of touching everything metal; watching holiday cartoon specials; secretively planning gifts; John Denver and Kenny Rogers eight-tracks and festive radio favorites on the stereo as we decorated; the sight of everything changing.  Christmas was a transformation, a real production at our house.

So I have tried to examine why the kid-worries come back this time of year, and I am naming the source as music, more specifically, Christmas carols.  Not just any carols, but what I call adult-themed carols (not that kind of adult theme) which bring up images that concern a kid. 

For me, there are three types of carols:  religious carols (“Silent Night”, “O Come Emmanuel”), kid-friendly carols (“Jingle Bells”, “Frosty the Snowman”) and adult-themed carols (“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire…”). Kid carols were easy to learn and relate to; they were fun, fantastic and helped reinforce the magic of the season.  Religious carols had a deeper meaning that Christians could relate to; they reminded us that Christmas was about preparation for the miracle of the birth of Jesus.  Adult carols were somewhat familiar, but somewhat inscrutable as far as lyrics went; they had titles that kids understood, but lyrics that could also worry a kid.

Maybe I was an oddball, but I paid attention to carol lyrics. I think it was because I felt like they were a puzzle piece to understanding what Christmas would be like for me when I was grown-up, like I needed to know the carols for later in life to understand the significance of what was going on.

Adult carols are troublesome to kids because they hint that the holidays, which are fun and all about presents and play as a kid, get more complicated when you are grown up. I always knew I would grow up, go to college and be on my own; I trusted that growing up would be fun and not produce anxiety.  But how does a kid resolve these issues brought up in Christmas lyrics?

Let me give you four examples. “Let It Snow” is a romantic carol about being with a significant other at Christmas. Kids do not relate well to this. This brings up insecurities like how to reconcile being with a girlfriend and your family at the same time, and how would you choose between them? “White Christmas” has the line ‘just like the ones I used to know’. As a kid I remember thinking, ‘you mean there might be Christmases (with regularity) that are not white (I grew up in Pennsylvania)?’ If so, what kind of Christmas is that (welcome to Florida) and why would I have to put up with it? In “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas“, we hear “troubles will be far away”, but this only sounds like a temporary escape. Why do I need Christmas as an escape from daily grown-up life? Or “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”…‘you can count on me’. This carol seems to send the message that it takes quite an effort to get home to visit for the holidays. Why would that ever be the case?

It is not hard to see why kids could get the wrong idea about Christmas from the adult perspective. From these songs a kid could catch the Peter Pan syndrome and think:  what kind of world is the grown-up world where everything is turned upside-down, and what can I do to avoid it? Why would I want a life without white Christmases, where I have to fight to get home for the holidays, have to decide whether I spend it with my girlfriend or my family, and use Christmas as a break from my troubles? A kid cannot help but think, with sincerity: what will I have in my future life to equip me to cope with the adult world and compensate me for this wrecked tradition and unfortunate, imminent reality?

Christmas as an adult is complicated because it is not a single, solitary life anymore living the ideal Christmas fantasy. Instead, a kid’s life becomes an adult’s who is also a fiancée, a spouse and or a father or mother, where playing in the snow gives way to slogging off to work. It is too easy to get caught up in providing a memorable Christmas for others that it becomes a time of stress about how to afford Christmas, plan for travel, cook and bake ,and be mindful of Jesus as the genesis of the season.

It is easy, even as a kid, to get overwhelmed with the complexity of Christmas, both on the logistical day-to-day, and emotional levels. We must remember kids pick up on this; they can see when adults fake it. Kids need to understand that not everything is merry, and the complexity can be understood, discussed and accepted, and not buried.

As a fairly new parent I want to challenge myself, when the time comes, with reframing Christmas from the adult perspective for my child in a way that celebrates adulthood at Christmas, not frustrates it. I want to convey the magic that adults get to share in, the things to look forward to, and how my understanding as a Catholic has grown over the years to help me appreciate the mystery behind my religious roots and the meaning of Christmas.

Being a grown-up at Christmas is not a bad thing. There are days when I wonder how I got here, and I definitely am still looking for the manual that lead me to believe I could handle adulthood the way the Christmas carols depicted it. I think the key is to have a part of you that still a little boy, still believes in Santa and never grows up. And there is nothing wrong with going to bed wishing for a snow day either.

Ways We Increase Our Life Span

This is the companion piece to my previous post related to the book Urban Sprawl and Public Health.  In the book, the authors examine how America has negatively affected its collective health through myopic urban planning and neighborhood design. The sprawl targeted by the book is well-documented in more ascerbic and judgmental eloquence by James Howard Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere. If you have ever enjoyed historic cities and downtowns, traveled outside the U.S. or felt like the environment you were living in was off-base, missing something, or just plain ill-conceived, Kunstler’s two books are for you.

But I digress. I write now about the flip side to sprawl, or how we can counteract its effects. Since few individuals have the power to single-handedly alter their neighborhood, town and the urban environment to their own maximium physical benefit, we need to discuss things we can control which allow us to increase our life span by improving our quality of life.  As I mentioned in my previous post, the authors of Urban Sprawl and Public Health collected numerous studies that prove how certain aspects of our environment are detrimental to a long, healthy life. These are some things, some mentioned in the book, that contribute to a longer-than-average life—not mortality issues like access to clean water, but greater life expectancy, all things being equal.

1a)  Social Networks.  Sprawl proved that having citizens engaged with the people they share their environment with is important. We are social animals and need family and friends to stay sane, literally. For many, stable mental health hinges on having people to talk to, do things with, and share feelings with. When people feel better about themselves and their place in the world, they take care of themselves and contribute to society when tied in.

1b) Companionship. Companionship is different than social networks in that companionship means a living mate. Usually this is a spouse, but pet ownership also increases life span. The underlying premise here is that caring for someone / something, sharing feelings and ideally love, communicating, and interacting on a daily basis adds value to humans’ lives. Not only does this lower stress and keep the brain active, but balances feelings and gives people, especially the elderly, who likely have experienced a lot of loss later in life, purpose and reasons to keep living. People who have responsiblities tend to take care of themselves out of obligation. People who have a life partner, or pet, have someone to keep them active which increases life span.

3)  Exercise. Just as a sedentary lifestyle will prematurely age a person, exercise will add years. Yes, certain activities can be detrimental long-term, and even wear out body parts. Nevetheless, the health benefits of even tame exercise—balanced metabolism, cardiovascular, muscle and joint strength, maintaining range of motion, posture and bone health to name a few—cannot be overlooked. Exercise gets people out of the house, meeting people, breathing the (usually) higher quality air outside, and getting exposure to sunlight, which aids the body. People who exercise feel better about themselves, report increased mental acuity and stay self-sufficient longer.

4) Good diet. Part and parcel with exercise is eating well.  Nutrition science is, believe it or not, a nascent field and only beginning to understand how food affects our bodies long-term. Not only what type we put in our bodies is important, but research is proving that what quality also matters. As genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), hormone, antibiotic and steroid-laden livestock reach more tables, we realize all chicken breasts and t-bone steaks are not created equally. Mass food production companies are taking short cuts, and people must be ever vigilant about eating whole, and naturally and organically, when possible. The food pyramid is under scrutiny as being out-of-date and each industry becomes its own special interest group as producers lobby for your dollar in the grocery stores. Whether it is the latest fad wonderfood—wine, pomegranite, acai berry—or legitimate proven wonder foods like blueberries, those that pay attention to balanced kind, quality and quantity in their diet live healthier longer.

5) Pleasant (Low Stress) Environment.  We cannot chose our families, genes, ethnicity, economic upbringing or many other factors that affect our lifestyle and life span, but we can choose what kind of job we have and where we live.  Those two items are noted in Urban Sprawl as contributing to a beneficial environment, if chosen wisely. People with happy home lives to come home to, jobs that they love, and neighborhoods that they feel good about and care for experience increased life expectancy. On a simplistic level, if you can identify anything in your life that produces stress and replace it with something that does not, you have reduced the stressors that lead to hypertension, high blood pressure, and myriad other bodily system defects detrimental to health—and traded up for a longer life.

6a) More Education.  Studies show that there is a correlation between education level and life expectancy. Many individuals who are uneducated work physically riskier jobs, which stress the body, expose it to toxins or potential long-term injury. The uneducated tend to not read as much, not stay informed about government, available societal resources, or  personal issues, and not seek out health care when needed. These are self-defeating activities. Even a high school education raises someone from a more at-risk population to a more hopeful position. With more schooling comes better jobs, access to stronger social and professional networks, more resources. Ignorance is not bliss.

6b) Higher Income.  Education and income are interrelated; although not directly correlated, if an individual has more education, they tend to make more money. People who make more money tend to live longer. Greater income provides many things, particularly access to information, quality health care, and opportunity. We all know money can provide many things of comfort and life-extending benefit, but not everything. Still, it is interesting to note that those with money are somehow putting it to use and finding ways to extend their lives with it.

This list is not exhaustive, but I found it very instructional almost at how to change my daily routines if I want a higher quality, longer life. Of course, it is within the power of a select few who can go out tomorrow and, on a whim, earn more money or eliminate all the stress-inducers from their lives. If each of us can make an overture or two, it will pay off. 

These topics are very American-centric; yet I encourge curious readers to check out Urban Sprawl and Public Health and understand that we are crafting our own environments and in charge of our own lifestyle, our own patterns of life and daily routine. It is in our own interest to fight inertia, laziness, apathy and the movement of the masses to find out how we can make our lives better on an individual-level, and on a community / social level. In our supposedly capitalist society, money is our vote when law falls short. If we buy the subpar homes and neighborhoods cranked out by crass developers, and the dodgy food products invented by agribusiness, and the gas-guzzling monstrosities the car makers offer, we are our own worst enemies. Everything is interconnected. We need to demand better and hold out for higher quality.  Our family and friends will thank us because we will be around to see the change.

My American Dream

As the government mulls over extending the economic stimulus for home buyers, potentially in breadth to include more than just first-time buyers, potentially in depth to offer a greater tax credit, I think of how powerful tax credits are in shaping economic activity. The cash-for-clunkers program cost America $11 billion I believe, according to NPR; yet since the program was halted, apparently car salesman have seen a sharp decline.

Home ownership is a very subsidized industry, and I believe increasingly that subsidies have a time and a place, but probably should not be permanent. The Fed has been offering some sort of benefit to buy a home since the end of WWII, whether it is low-interest loans or the ability to write-off mortgage interest on income taxes. We forget how something so arbitrary, like homeownership (why not vacations to Disney), has become a significant cog in the economic wheel. Should it be?

I think the government is never critical or specific enough about the kind of behavior it hopes to elicit. Instead of any home sales, should it not encorage specific home sales—adopt-a-home, but discourage buying a newly built or custom home? Isn’t the problem a huge glut of built or partially built homes sitting, unoccupied, the targets of vandals, swimming pools becoming mosquito cesspools, condo associations buckling under their own weight because residents pulled out and no one can pay the maintenance?

Home ownership was never part of my American dream. I did want one someday, but I enjoyed renting even to the point my wife and I purchased our first house. Renting is a very responsible and sensible method of living until you are sure you are going to stay in a place for a while, and you can afford it.  To afford home ownership does not mean just the mortgage payment, but the time involved in upkeep, the hidden costs of maintenance, the insurance that seems to go up over 10% a year lately and the taxes that can change with each voter referendum. Just this past year I have had to replace my entire A/C system, repair an under-slab plumbing leak, replace my water heater and other minor headaches. I need to remove a large, mature, termite-riddled tree from the front yard—and that does not include the cosmetic things I would like to do, like paint the house or replace our plastic laminate counters which are pulling off the wall. These are the things a renter must think about before buying.

My American dream is very simple:  own everything I possess.  A quaint notion, you think, how un-2009 of me.  I like the idea of knowing when I go to sleep, everything that surrounds me is rightfully mine, with which I am free to do as I please.  Because, until you actually own something outright, you do not have true freedom with it. And then when you buy anything, you become more encumbered, financially and physically.  Part of me would like to be like Jules in Pulp Fiction in another life and just “walk the earth” as he so simply put it.

I guess for me I am not a man of many creature comforts.  I do not like things or gadgets per se.  I appreciate nice objects for what they are, but I am not sure if I am vain enough to enjoy something I know I cannot afford.  For instance, I could not lease the BWM 3-series that I adore; somehow that would feel fake to me.

Debt-free living is my ultimate goal; it is what I work for.  It might be the asymptote I fight toward, a Sisyphus-like task, and it may never happen. Yet, I am not giving in to the notion that Americans must upgrade everything every four-point-seven five years, regardless of need.  This is where you lose ground in the equity built up, both in “investments” like a house, but in utilitarian objects, too. Financially, I am tethered to my spouse, who has different money philosophies as me.  If something is to be purchased, it usually is not me doing it.  Paige usually buys and asks for forgiveness. So I realize my dream is not completely within my control, and it is particularly difficult when everything financial is a negotiation—and my wife is the better negotiator.

Nevertheless, at the moment I feel pretty good. All my debts, save for my school loans, are shared debts and large debts. If I can only pay off the new air conditioning system, the house, my wife’s car and our collective school loans, my dream will be realized!  Somehow I think my soon-to-be one year-old will figure into this calculation, and then there is the largest future debt of all:  retirement. So I keep working and dreaming…or is it dreaming and working…?

Learning from Mistakes

I subscribe to a neat email newsletter from Bruce Tulgan, the authority on Generation X and Y knowledge.  His newsletter, available at  www.rainmakerthinking.com includes a video topic addressed every week along with some text that complements his weekly message on how to be a better manager.

Recently, he has a great piece on “The Fallacy of Learning from Mistakes”. I find this message right on because he has misguided quotes from managers who think it is a good policy to let junior members give a task a shot first, instead of teaching them how to do something the right way the first time.

I do not know too many people who enjoy making mistakes. As a recovering perfectionist, this is definitely not in my genes. In addition, it rubs me the wrong way because it is wasteful:  it takes too much time. I understand now that you cannot do something perfect the first time, but there are usually so many intricacies to almost any task that it is always best to have someone teach you how to do it first—and then give it your best shot. 

This is the way we were taught in grade school. Somewhere along the line, in the transition from the ideal world of academics to the real world of work, people got too busy to teach. We now laud superiors that teach as mentors, those who we want to emulate because they know so much and care.  But really, all bosses should be this way. Still, I was shocked when I came out of school and realized I had to teach myself a lot—not because I did not inherently know it all coming out of school because I did not, but because my project managers were, for the most part, too busy to teach or, by default, to care about my work product.

As time went on, it became something I became inured to, like a rub that becomes calloused, and you end up not feeling the pain anymore because you are used to it. This lack of teaching in the professional realm is disappointing, and I hear it from colleagues in other industries. And it took Bruce Tulgan to remind me not only how things should be, but what I intially found distasteful about work life right off the bat. I think they call this being jaded—instead of being bothered by something enough to do anything about it, you forget how it should be and live with it; you adapt in a bad way, with bad habits and apathy, until you forget the best way, the right way.  Then it takes a young kid with idealism right out of school to say ‘this is not right’. And you readdress the situation, from the perspective of an older, wiser, less energetic pro. If you are in a position to effect change as a manger, you might attempt to make a change. If not, you say, ‘eh’ and forget about it.

I used to be that idealistic kid; now I am somewhere in between. Clearly I lost touch with the idea that teaching from mistakes, a position of weakness, is wrong because I should still be asking for, heck demanding tutoring. It is a fallacy I have not challenged for some time: somehow learning from your mistakes morphed into learning by making mistakes. In my industry, you could lose your license or get sued for this. This is one of the things that keeps professionals with licenses up at night, and why checks and balances and review of work is so important.  This is why so many busy managers with too little time rely on the trial-and-error template instead of the position of strength:  teach the right way first, correct trifling things second.

Trial-and-error learning is also inefficient. It wastes resources:  time, energy, materials and thus, money. Think of how many things in your life you learned better because you did it wrong, wrong, wrong until you got it right. Not many, if any. I much rather prefer to do it any other way. Learning a skill is about teaching your body motor or mind memory. It involves practice, not mistake after mistake without guidance. Would you learn to swim by trial-and-error? Would you learn to drive this way? There are not too many things that allow for this as a best or safe way to learn. On top of this, people learn different ways and not everyone learns the same.

I think there are generational differences at work, too, as Baby Boomers and Silents from the school of hard knocks might feel it more appropriate to instill a right-of-passage way of learning and achieving. I get that. I was a freshman once; I played on sports teams, endured hazing and understand pecking order, apprenticeship and all that. But when I got to be a senior, I had a difficult time passing down the pain. Call me soft or maybe enlightened, I did not see the point.  I am a masochist, not a sadist. Why not be a good guy and pass down the useful nuggets to the youngsters so they can be better than I was when they were seniors?

The main concept at work here, pun intended, is to not gain without understanding—not necessarily no pain, no gain.  You could call it the Trust Fund Baby Corollary:  something earned is valued more than something given. Showing someone the way is different than doing it for them. Giving someone the tools to build is different than gifting them the tree house. As managers, parents and leaders, we need to be less selfish, share our expertise—with intent and limits—and not hoard it, for the benefit of everyone.

Passing on the Collection Plate

I recently visited a Catholic church that offered the ability to set up direct withdrawal for tithing.  Some may shrug this off as a logical progression—so what, what else is new—but for church-goers, there is a lot going on with the collection plate. 

At every Catholic church I have ever attended, tithes are collected either by ushers, or with a collection basket passed pew-to-pew and gathered at the back of the church.  The Church mass builds this in as ceremony:  first, the congregation gives its financial offerings, then the water and wine (and sometimes the tithes, too) are processed up the center aisle and offered as symbolic offerings prior to the Consecration in preparation for Communion.  Tithing, although a private decision as to if and how much, is very much a public activity in the course of mass. 

The Church must be very aware of the guilt or shame attached to not giving when the basket comes your way. I am sure that looking good in the eyes of fellow parishioners works as an incentive to give because giving could be done much more stealthily. You could mail it in. A box or other mechanism in the back could gather offerings.  Attendees could place them in the boxes coming or going.  Many churches have these for additional causes or special collections.  For those lighting candles for individual prayers, you are on your honor to make your offering in the small box when you kneel to pray. Each person making such a supplication should feel obligated to make a contribution to at least cover the cost of the candle that the church provides.  I like this particularly because you might feel like you want to cover for someone else, so you give a little more.  Or your prayer time affects you enough to give more.  Some times you may have nothing in your pocket, so you make up for it the next time.  You make sure God gets his one way or another.

But tithing has big stakes.  The majority of a church’s operating budget comes from tithes and these, it seems, cannot be left to chance. I always think of the Lenten reading from the Gospel of Matthew that calls on Catholics to not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.  In context, you want to give not for approbation but because of your relationship with God. Yet to me, the collection ceremony at mass is all about public giving. Its success relies, at least in some part, on the silent but heavy judgment each person feels when they are confronted with the basket:  you must give.  Every time I attend mass out-of-town, I still feel like I need to give at least $1 to the guest church, even though I give fully to my home church every week regardless.  I wonder what the Church’s company line is on that:  give everything to the home church because it all evens out, or the Stephen Stills love the one you’re with position? Heaven forbid you forgot your envelope or have no cash that day. I have felt that weight. You almost want to stand up and say, it’s not because I don’t want to—I just forgot, ok?!

Is this public giving philosophy not at odds with the teaching of Jesus, just a little bit? That is ok, as long as we admit it. No one’s perfect, and maybe in the future, social stigma will disintegrate toward those not paying for services rendered. Maybe that is what direct-withdrawal tithing is about. I appreciate the Church stepping into the 21st century to accept electronic payment, and probably credit cards, too if you were so inclined. The Church is happy as long as you give. It should have no reason to care who, what, where, when, why or how as long as you tithe appropriately. Churches typically provide envelopes for registered parishioners to give, as a convenience and probably compliance, mechanism.  It is cleaner than cash; it helps with taxes; and it actually hides the amount given.  This is an interesting dichotomy:  the amount is up to you (privately, that is on your conscience), as long as something goes in the dish (publically).

So when confronted with the option to give not only electronically, but privately, I wonder:  what would you do when the collection plate comes your way?  Does the church provide a symbolic coupon to drop in that proves you paid, like when you go to receive your diploma at graduation, but it is not really your diploma but you need to walk off the stage with something in your hand? If not, that is what I would want. For me it would take a lot of practice to get steely enough to sit every week and not bat an eye at the collection plate, with all eyes surreptitiously studying you, knowing that because you had your tithe auto-withdrawn at 12:01am that morning, between you and God you’re square. What are the implications for someone who feels someone else is not pulling their weight?  Would it erode parish goodwill?  Are the individual relationships with God reconciled and strong enough to overcome public scorn for not visibly giving?

My argument is you need something—a sticker (“I Gave”, like the Bloodmobile) or something—because there would be talk.  Not Little House on the Prarie village gossip, but people would wonder.  And what about organized giving, like naming your church in a will?  A bumper sticker at least.

As much as we would like to believe our financial gifts are the business of us and God alone, the church and its attendees are party to it in some way. The Church knows this, and as we come up with new and creative ways to give, we must also address what is appropriate from a social standpoint.  The church is a community. Even with true faith and confidence we crave acceptance, from God and from our neighbor. The social bonds of a faith community are as important as the individual bonds we feel with God.  Both keep us coming back to worship each week. Until the Church can sensitively address the potential social consequences of not publicly giving, it will take a little time for me to warm up to the concept, even if it could save me time and materials in check-writing. My reputation among the congregation is worth at least that much.