Saturday, November 12, 2011

The Old Bag Allegory


A domestic conversation with M recently had clear parallels with what I’ve observed at work. At the time, I was performing the mildly onerous daily task of sifting the poop out of the kitty litter box with my trusty slotted scoop and dumping it into one of the used plastic bags we save for this kind of thing. A particularly battered bag had been prominently placed next to the litter box so I went ahead and used it. M said, “From now on, be sure to use the old bags I put by the litter box.”

“Okay,” I said. “But how do you define old bags?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we have a drawer full of plastic bags and to me they’re all used and therefore old bags. But I’m sensing you have a more specific definition of the preferred oldness of the bags to be used for kitty poop and I’m just trying to understand your logic.”

“You don’t need to understand my logic. Just use the bags I set out for you by the litter box.”

“But I do want to understand the logic.”

“Why? Why do you need to understand the logic of which bags are the old bags?” he said with some annoyance.

This is where I started to see the work parallels. I smiled.

“Because, one day when I’m ready to scoop the poop and you are not around, alas and alack there will not be a bag set out for me to use, and I may have to Think for Myself and select a bag from the old bag drawer. Wanting to do the best possible job of following your old bag orders under this challenging circumstance it will help me greatly to know how I can tell which of the old bags are suitably old enough to be graced with cat poop,” I explained.

“Ah—well, a bag that has merely been used to convey vegetables from the grocery store to our house is not sufficiently old. A bag that has been subsequently reused after initial arrival at our house—that is a truly old bag,” he said. We were both laughing by then.

“Aha,” I said. “Now I know.”

And so it goes at work. If you want people to do work that meets your expectations then you had best give them the supporting logic as well, and you’ll get more consistently positive results, even when you aren’t around. They might even help you come up with some better logic; you never know.

“I assume that since you never reuse the green bags the newspapers come in that they can immediately be classified as old bags suitable for kitty poop; would this be a correct assumption?” I asked.

“Why yes,” he replied.

And there you have it.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Eschewing Techie Twinkies

"Moderation in all things - including moderation." - Mark Twain

Too much of a good thing...are social networks, computers, and mobile devices of all stripes robbing us of our opportunity to truly connect with each other and with nature as well as our basic ability to think in depth?
An article in the Sunday Boulder Daily Camera called "The Technology Diet" likens our constant high tech connectedness to a fast food addiction. Some folks, even 20-somethings, are going off the grid completely, seeking to again hear themselves think and get to a point where they can read a book steadily for more than a few minutes without checking email and Facebook.

The article mentions Lewis Mitchell Neef who has posted about Internet craving and the damage it does in his "Adrenal Fatigue Project," a "satire on the pointless blurbs of misinformation that the Internet constantly bombards us with, inducing a heightened awareness and fatigue." Neef urges not to drop out completely but to "use your time wisely and be present" (good advice under any circumstances). Use the Internet to find real connections and further good causes.

Also mentioned is Laleh Mehran's and Chris Coleman's W3fi movement (pronounced "wee-fy"), showcased recently at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. They outline a three-step approach for being productive and avoiding mayhem on the Internet: know yourself online, be aware how your actions affect others, and know how you can connect with others positively and productively.

Andrew Weil has written another of his excellent down-to-earth books recently called Spontaneous Happiness on finding happiness in the modern world and one of his prime recommendations is to limit digital distractions and seek more connection with others and with nature to find the peace and sense of well-being we all seek.

There was a time I remember, my children, when we didn't carry around cell phones, when we didn't have something called a "digital presence on-line," when we read more, made our own music, had real conversations with each other.

I'm becoming more mindful of that lonely state I find myself in sometimes late at night, continually seeking something real online, long past the point of exhaustion, looking for truth in all the wrong places. That's a strong signal that it's time to power off and tune back in to real life.