Two TED speeches on waste

This week I want to examine two talks on TED. Both seem to deal with the subject of waste. Dan Phillips uses building materials that would otherwise be wasted in landfills and make homes out of them. Jason Fried campaigns against the senseless waste of time created by the company meeting.

Dan Phillips



Dan Phillips has made his living constructing affordable homes from materials that would otherwise be sent to the landfill. The homes have lots of character, "warts" and things that don't look perfect or regular. Phillips counters that our desire to have houses (and most things) look perfect and predictable have led to a stunning amount of landfill waste. For instance, if we see a cracked window pane, it disrupts the pattern.

Some notable quotes:

• "Looking up into the turret, there are bulges and pokes and sags... and if that ruins your life, then you probably shouldn't live there."
• "This light is the same light that appears in every middle class foyer in America. Don't put it in the foyer. Put it in the shower."
• "The Apollonian perspective creates an awful lot of waste. If something isn't perfect, if something doesn't line up with that pre-meditated model of perfect... dumpster!"

When I helped my brother renovate his house, he was re-installing a sink temporarily, and wanted to re-use some copper pipe for the hot and cold water leads. So I helped him, and it involved positioning the old sink, a heavy piece of 1930s nostalgia, while he bent the copper pipe properly, and sweated the pipes together. This process took well over an hour, and I suggested that next time he buy a $20 sink connection from Home Depot, which would have made the job take five minutes. But reusing material is a mindset that forces you to re-think the whole concept of time and what it is worth in the grand scheme. It's like walking to work. It takes me 20 minutes each way. I spend easily 40 minutes walking every day. It changes my conception of time, but I have a lot more value for that time, because I'm able to exercise and listen to a podcast or two.


Jason Fried
"Where do you go when you really need to get something done?"



Where do I go when I really need to get something done? It can be the office, but only later in the evening or on the weekend. Sometimes it helps to be in a coffee shop. The library can be effective. Sometimes at home in the morning, rarely at night however. Fried likens the work process to sleep. Sleep is ineffective when done in 15 minute increments; sleep's effects are useful only when it progresses through stages. I would agree. On days where I can spend 3-4 hours on a project, uninterrupted, that work has been high quality work. At the same time, some work can be monotonous by nature, can be emotionally draining, and requires frequent distraction to numb the pain.

Fried argues for "no talk afternoons" where office managers and fellow employees will agree to keep silent and not disturb each other while working for the entire afternoon. He also tells managers to cancel this afternoon's meeting... and next week's meeting too. He frames meetings not in "hours lost" but "employee hours lost." A one-hour meeting represents one-hour lost. But if ten people attend the meeting, then multiply that hour lost by ten. By conducting the meeting, the employer has lost ten employee hours, which could have been spent on more productive ventures.

Meetings offer a chance for social interaction, the type of which can be rare in an office which requires less and less human interaction to accomplish tasks. At the same time, meetings seem to put employees in a dismal mood, as they rarely seem to offer a chance for true collaboration. The type of scheduled weekly meetings that nearly every company division or department conducts seem necessary because everyone must be present, and we don't have to go through the misery of scheduling just to have a sit down.

What is the future of meetings? As the gen-x and gen-y employees of today move into tomorrow's management positions, is the weekly meeting a thing of the past? Are gen-x employees savvy enough to find other, more efficient ways to meet? My feeling is that better managers will find more effective ways to meet, and less effective managers will continue with the status quo. Maybe managers don't want to cancel meetings because those meetings provide the only chance for interaction at the office.

Finally, Fried has been asking people "where do you work best?" for years, which got me to thinking about types of data that I could collect from people "over time." I have been trying to think of some enduring questions that I would like to get some direction on before I formally construct them into a survey. Maybe this would be an ideal time to drop them into an internet survey, post them on my website, and try to gather some data from passers by.

"You cannot write up intuition and send it to the White House in intelligence reports"

Robert and Dayna Baer, two former CIA agents who married each other, appeared on Fresh Air on March 7, 2011. They discussed life in the CIA, what it's like to fall in love with another agent, but more interestingly, the current crises in the Middle East and North Africa. Mr. Baer's conclusions that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have commandeered precious intelligence resources away from other countries in the Muslim world was striking. Then he said that despite the lack of intelligence in the region, even good intelligence would have struggled to predict the current uprisings. He stated:

Mr. BAER: You can't collect intelligence on ephemera, of a Tunisian vendor lighting himself on fire and sparking a revolt. We were vaguely aware and have been aware for a long time that if food prices continue to go up, demographic problems and the rest of it, it's eventually going to crack. But, you know, the way it did crack and how quickly, you just - it's a matter of intuition and you cannot write up intuition and send it to the White House in intelligence reports. It just doesn't wash.

I love his statement about writing up intuition and selling it as intelligence. It really helps to differentiate between true knowledge, which has been gathered systematically, analyzed and reviewed, and intuition, which is an educated guess to explain a given situation. What passes for news or intelligence these days is simply intuition. How much will true intelligence be valued in the world of the future?

Building an Ideal Workspace

I worked on refining the workspace over the weekend, and I documented this with a few photographs... below is my attempt at time-lapse photography. As you can see in the transition, my office also served as a storage room for all of the clutter in my house.




I am an ardent list-maker, and there were lists scattered all over the desk and the floor.




The desk and table were not aligned in such a way that maximized space.




Gradually, I sorted through a lot of old binders and notebooks from my master's program and found a new home for them. I also rearranged some plants; now that the days are getting longer, they will get enough sunlight in their new places. There is a lot of floor space now, which ironically now has five distinct piles of work (one pile consists of research articles I printed out for a study I am currently conducting... they need to find a binder).

Another important feature, to address my list-making habit... I purchased a 4' x 8' piece of masonite dry-erase board from Home Depot for $12. They cut it down to 3' x 6', and I screwed this to the wall. I'll pick up the charge when I lose my security deposit, but until then, it will be worth it. I have already filled it with three lists, and a complex diagram of the website I am currently redesigning. I can take a picture of a list with my iPhone so I have it with me at work, which seems to simplify the list-following process.