“You have given us too much to do. We’re not going to do a thing until you get your act in better order.” | Commander Gerald Carr on Apollo 13 after Mission Control sent far too many directions, corrections, and orders. The team went on to take a 12 hour break to simply recharge and reconnect.
The story made me chuckle. It also reminded me of 2 powerful ideas –
(1) Sometimes, the most effective thing we can do is to switch off, recharge, and reconnect.
(2) We have an obligation to our leaders to be upfront with them when they’re being consistently counter productive. The right time and place may not be during the heat of the moment – but our leaders can only improve if we’re willing to share feedback*.
*Note: If they’re the kind who don’t take to feedback, they’re bosses, not leaders.
We recently needed to replace our HVAC or heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system. Our HVAC supplier shared that the trend was to replace gas powered furnaces with heat pumps. I had heard about heat pumps as a low carbon alternative to traditional gas furnaces. And this turned out to be a great excuse to do some research. Here’s what I learnt:
(1) What?: A heat pump is a two-way air conditioner. This 2 minute video was the best quick explainer I found.
(2) Why?: Heat pumps are newer/better technology that make it possible to heat homes with electricity. Most heat pump systems will still have a gas valve as it is most efficient to turn on the gas when temperatures within the home go <40 degrees F (4 degrees C). Once they go above this temperature, the electricity can take over.
And as our sources of electricity becomes cleaner/more renewable, heat pumps help reduce our reliance on natural gas.
(3) How is it going?: Heat pump adoption has begun taking off recently with the Nordics leading the charge – see image below. (By the way, what is it with Norway and electric vehciles + heat pumps?)
It is also fascinating to see the penetration of heat pumps in the Nordics given how cold the climate is. The current hypothesis for this penetration is a strategic focus from these governments to reduce their dependence on oil/natural gas.
At our end, we ended up making the switch. Our gas furnace had a few issues – so this feels like a double win at the moment. That aside, I’m excited for heat pump technology to become mainstream. Looking forward to seeing updates to this chart next year with more countries moving to the right.
We watched a YouTube video about a day in the coldest village on earth. It was an amazing watch with some vivid images.
Using melted ice first thing in the morning to brush and freshen up – there is no running water as pipes freeze at -40+ degree Fahrenheit
School only opens when it is <-40 degrees (!)
Kids can only walk outside 10 minutes at a time in the extreme cold and have to be fully covered from head to toe – with the risk of death looming every day
Having to run out of the house in the freezing cold to use the bathroom
Learning to fend for yourself every step of the way – e.g., learning to fish after drilling holes in the ice.
Parents spoke of their wish for their kids to get educated and leave for better paying jobs.
As much as it was a great video for our kids, it was also a wonderful reminder for me about the privilege and comfort I take for granted every day.
The simplest way to improve our effectiveness as a facilitator of meetings is to continually measure ourselves on our ability to create a sense of urgency.
A sense of urgency does not guarantee a good meeting. There’s a lot more that we need to do to facilitate the right level of discussion. But it sure does reduce the chances of us wasting time on conversations that go nowhere.
I was feeling weighed down by a few things the other day. So I took some time later in the day to write down what these were.
It turns out I was anxious about 4 things. Of these, 2 were completely out of my control. 1 of them was 90% out of my control – but there was one small action I could take to make progress (I did).
And the final thing needed to be solved over the course of the next few weeks. But it was a good nudge to think proactively about what I needed to do to give it the best chances of success.
Until I wrote these down, I was dealing with unnamed fears. It reminded me of the Master Yoda quote – “Named your fears must be before banish them, you can.”
Naming these fears helped me better understand which ones were in my control vs. not. It is why problems well stated are problems half solved.
Taking the time to define problems right moves us from anxiety to action… to progress.
We were going to give a couch away for free recently so it could be reused by someone in need. However, the service we signed up for refused to accept it due to a small stain – a bizarre/myopic policy.
So, we decided to put it up for sale for a small amount on Craigslist. We got a series of quotes and had someone pick it up within 2 hours.
After this happened, my mind wandered for a few minutes to explore another possibility – had I given this away too cheap? Maybe I could have charged significantly more?
3 reflections –
(1) It is amazing how quickly I went from “So glad we could find another home” to “Should I have charged more?” A full 2 days after writing about moving goalposts. :-)
(2) Money is such an easy factor to optimize for. It is so easy to ignore the many intangible trade-offs because, well, they are intangible.
Beware optimizing for things that are easy to optimize.
(3) The best way to think about optimization is to pick your areas in advance. There are very few areas in life that are worth optimizing. For the rest, best to be a “satisficer” and move on.
