Category: General

How we Spend is a Greater Influence than our Vote

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While some of us live in close ridings, where only a handful of votes can determine the outcome, most of us have less impact on elections. Voting is still important, and impactful. The power you give to others, through spending, is often greater.

What matters more?

  • 1 vote for the environment; or constantly burning fossil fuels for driving and heating, while importing from countries with poor environmental protections?
  • 1 vote for a higher minimum wage, or buying from companies paying unlivable wages, or outsourcing to cheaper regions?
  • 1 vote for promoting human rights, or buying from countries that actively suppress the rights of their citizens?

I didn’t name specific parties, as it is a subjective judgement to say which candidate or party best addresses each issue. Regardless, the companies we give money will influence government in more obvious directions, and will also directly impact the issues we value.

Actions prove our beliefs, and the more significant actions offer greater proof. If the greatest action we take is a vote every handful of years, how much do we really care?

4 Reasons Why You Should Switch to Signal Messenger

Signal Messenger
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Signal Messenger

Many people haven’t heard of Signal, it doesn’t have backing from any of the big tech corporations, while authoritarian regimes try to block it entirely. I only stumbled upon Signal after it was mentioned in a few articles involving Reporters communicating securely with Sources. This also happened around the same time as Facebook was exposed for using their apps to collect all sorts of information. Facebook isn’t alone in such practices, which contributes to the 4 reasons why you should switch to Signal Messenger:

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Stop the Pendulum

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Ever notice how often people gleefully describe a situation as pendulum swinging in their favor? This is rarely a result to celebrate, for one of two reasons:

  1. We are in the middle of two extremes, and the pendulum continues to swing beyond us.
  2. We are near an extreme, and the pendulum inevitably swings back to the other extreme.

The worst part: Pendulums aren’t actually going anywhere, they just bounce back and forth till they finally run out of energy.

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Heroes are Symptoms of a Broken System

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Why are heroes symptoms of a broken system? When a system works well, the regular efforts of people are enough to fulfill the system’s purpose. When it is broken, people need to go above and beyond.

  • If financial systems operated diligently, bailouts would be small and caused by an external disaster.
  • If work was effectively planned and coordinated, overtime would be reserved for truly unpredictable staffing shortages.
  • If Gotham’s justice system effectively addressed crime, there would have been no need for Bruce Wayne to become Batman.

This may all sound obvious, but we still hear plenty of examples where people use acts of heroism as purely good signs. Something along the lines of, “Isn’t it great that someone went above and beyond to save us?” No. At best, it is lucky on 3 counts:

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An Alternative to Delayed Accumulating Priority Queuing

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I attended an interesting presentation today, where a problem of APQ was presented. As I understood the presentation, it is challenging to effectively implement APQ without over penalizing the more urgent classes. Using a healthcare example, it would mean an emergency department choosing a CTAS 5 patient (lowest acuity/urgency) with too short of an extra wait over a CTAS 4 patient. While I followed the concerns with standard APQ, I saw new challenges created with the proposed solution.

The presentation demonstrates delaying the accumulation for lower priority groups until a determined period has concluded. I see several related challenges:

  1. If another lower priority patient arrives within the delay window, the priority alone would not be enough to sort/prioritize. We would have to include arrival order to sort, or wait until one began to accumulate.
    • This is only a problem if they end up at the front of the queue before accumulating.
    • This is further exacerbated by increasing numbers of categories. Would each group get a progressively longer delay? Then we could be faced with many, all in the case of no arrivals of top priority, zero priority patients.
      • CTAS 1-5
  2. The solution requires an extra complication of tracking time before accumulation.
    • This may seem inconsequential, but I would argue it is more pronounced when comparing to the proposed solution.

To keep all of the benefits of delaying, without the 2 challenges, we simply need to flip the intervention. Rather than delaying the accumulation, start the lowest acuity at 0, while each higher acuity group gets a progressively higher starting acuity:

Comparing time to reach priority level 120, base level of CTAS 1
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Stretch out of your Functional Fixedness

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We learn many powerful lessons throughout life, but rarely apply the principles and practices to all relevant contexts. As mentioned in the video below, many appreciate and apply the concept of diversification to financial investments, but they apply equally to skills. The novelty of initial experiences can wear off, technology can negate any value, etc.

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Check your Critic

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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt

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Use Strengths to Kickstart Skills

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Many of us want to develop new skills, become more resilient. Starting as a complete newbie is intimidating, often to the point of endless procrastination. When the barriers are too great, what can you do?

Borrow from your current strengths

  • What skills and strengths do you already have?
  • Do any of them intersect, or share commonalities, with the new skill?
  • How can the similarities be used to transfer competence from one skill to the other?
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