Author: alearningaday

Every time the Quartz team introduces a new series, I sign up. Their current “Quartz Obsession” is a two week series on “The Race to Zero Emissions.” And, today’s series is about the world’s first zero emissions natural gas plant from Net Power.

The logic behind this is simple and powerful. There are two ways we can solve the over-heating of the earth’s atmosphere – a) find ways to reflect the sun’s rays back using, say, Sulphur particles in the atmosphere or b) reduce the amount of Carbon dioxide we send up.

There is no consensus on the downstream effects of the former and would require a lot of international cooperation. But, the latter becomes particularly interesting if we find a way to do so. Most of our emissions come because we burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. And, Net Power’s founders have found a way to create a zero emissions fossil fuel plant. By replacing gases like steam that power turbines with the excess Carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas, they’ve created a system that is emission free and, as a bonus, more efficient than traditional plants.

This is an absolute game changer and will hopefully go live by early next year. The Net Power team hope to license this technology.

For this transformation to happen, we’ll need more new plants like Net Power created to service the growing electricity demand from electric vehicles. Many think tanks believe natural gas will be the best way to do that.

And, this technology would be a huge step forward.

PS: To learn more, check out the Quartz series on https://bit.ly/RacetoZeroEmissions.

I find it helpful to mentally calculate the cost of a large meeting from time to time. The rough math is ~$100 x # of people in the meeting.

The more closer you get to folks at the top of the organizational food chain, replace $100 with $200 or $300.

So, if your average large meeting costs $1,000-$2,000 per hour, what would you do differently?

There’s a line that’s stuck with me over the years – “Be kind. The world will roll on without you.”

It is a simple and beautiful idea and resonates deeply with me as it is provides an instant dash of perspective.

That instant dash of perspective, in turn, adds so much calm to life. It reminds me that it is futile to to stress or panic about the little things. The world will roll on.

Instead, we’re better off staying engaged with life, keeping focused on what we control and doing our best to make this all meaningful.

Effective communication is not about how articulately you say something.

It involves understanding what the other person is saying and ensuring what you are saying is heard in that context.

I was in a meeting recently where I was asked a flurry of questions. I responded by answering them.

That’s the natural thing to do, right? That’s what we were taught in school. Answering questions well is a good thing.

On reflection, however, I realized I spent more time answering question versus understanding the question behind the question. It isn’t the first time I’m realizing it – but, it is one of those moments when this insight crystallized.

I think I’ve taken two things from that experience. First, beware rapid fire answering of questions. If there are a flurry of questions, it is worth pausing and understanding the question behind the question.

Second, if you’re unable to understand the question behind the question, ask.

If you want to learn something, put in effort to teach it well. Good teaching deals with taking facts, knowledge and procedures and condensing them into mental models.

And, that process of synthesizing knowledge into mental models that drive action is exactly how learning is done.

But, where can you find a willing student? It turns out that you don’t need a willing student at a desk to learn how to teach. Here are a few ideas –

• Write a great training manual for your next hire and share it for feedback
• Put your thoughts down on a blog
• Create a training program or improve an existing one
• Explain it to your dog or a wall

At some point, all this practice will actually make you a good teacher. When that happens, willing students will find you.

But, as you probably have guessed, that is the just the by product of a good process.

I define perspective as the trait which enables us to understand ourselves and our place in the universe. Politics, on the other hand, is the furthering of one’s idea on a basis other than merit.

Most of us experience some form of politics in our workplaces. Some of us experience it in our homes. And, for those who work on large non profits or community service initiatives, we definitely experience it in those. I’ve heard it said that politics simply requires two people in a room. Sadly, that is often true.

There’s a strong correlation between a lack of perspective and an individual’s propensity to engage in politics. As a friend beautifully expressed it – “It strikes me that the narrower one’s world-view is, the less perspective one has and the higher one’s propensity for politics in that narrow arena. E.g., the power-hungry mother-in-law whose entire world revolves around a household will be Machiavellian in creating wedges in the family.” 

I’ve also observed a strong correlation between a lack of perspective and unhappiness. The causation there is straightforward – narrow views and constant politics do not a happy life make.

If that is the case, where does perspective come from? And, how can we get more of it?

When I think of perspective these days, I think of this Joseph Addison quote.

“When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together”

If this doesn’t give us perspective, I don’t know what will.

It follows that I think perspective comes from being acutely aware of our own mortality. That, in turn, brings a strong sense of what actually matters in the really long run.

Dag Hammarskold once said – “In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us.” This quote sums it up beautifully. If we knew we have five days to live, we’d likely go about our work and life very differently. We’d pay less attention to petty arguments and turf wars and, instead, lavish attention and care to the things we care about.

That’s the approach to life that comes with perspective.

And, it is an approach I’ve learned to value above all others.

Sometimes, I think life, happiness and all the other good stuff is just about learning to balance two ideas. The first is that it could always be better. And, the second is that it could always be worse.

They seem in conflict. But, they aren’t.

It could always be better is what inspires us to wake up in the morning and get things done. We’re taking up space in this world and we might as well make it count. This pursuit to make things better makes us better. And, in time, as we get better, we can choose (for it is a choice) to help make our families and communities better.

But, a blind pursuit of better rarely brings happiness. Gratitude, on the other hand, does. And, gratitude comes with realizing that it could always be worse. There is so much we take for granted every single day.

PS: This is a classic illustration of the importance of opposing forces in our lives. Such forces bring the necessary tension for learning and growth. Extremes are rarely useful because we lose the opportunity to learn from each other. That’s a useful lesson as we discuss and embrace faith, ideology and even political views.

The word “essay” comes from the French word Essayer which means “to try.” An essay is something you try to figure something out. Paul Graham, who shared this thought on his blog continues —

Figure out what? You don’t know yet. And so you can’t begin with a thesis, because you don’t have one, and may never have one. An essay doesn’t begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay, you don’t take a position and defend it. You notice a door that’s ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what’s inside.

If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is Montaigne’s great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That’s why I write them.

In the things you write in school you are, in theory, merely explaining yourself to the reader. In a real essay you’re writing for yourself. You’re thinking out loud.

I shared this today as part of my last technology note this year as part of the Notes by Ada project. I generally share the longer version of these notes on Medium and LinkedIn (experimented with both over the course of the year) and a synopsis of sorts here. I thought the above paragraphs beautifully summarized why I set out to do this. I had many questions about technology and figured I’d write my way to clarity.

This is also why writing here every day is such a fascinating experience. Writing clarifies thinking and I’m grateful for the opportunity to think out loud, share my notes with you and, every once a while, hear back from you when things resonate.

Here’s to more essayer. :)