Use of time

Studying for my CCNA material, and I begin to realize why some people make so much money and others make so little.

It’s a Sunday afternoon, around 2 PM, and I’m working on material that will help me advance.  I could be doing nothing.  But no, I’m learning about UTP, Fiber, and wireless media.  That’s transmission mediums, not songs and movies.  Layer 1 and 2 kind of stuff.  Not layer 7.  Anyways, my realization narrowed down to the use of time. 

It’s all about the use of time.  Time is the one thing we have control of in our lives, so it’s up to each individual to make the best use of that time.  You can spend that time watching Sunday afternoon football.  Or you can spend that time reading and studying to advance your career or your business.  Or you can be actively working on your career or your business. 

Time is the one thing everyone has the same amount of, regardless of income or social standing.  And yet most of us choose to spend our time very badly.  Or not at all.  Me?  I’ve grown tired of living other people’s lives and creations.  I have my own thoughts in my head that I want to turn into reality.  But the only way to turn those things into reality is pure labor.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Straight up, old fashioned work.  Nothing more, nothing less.

And work is the application of force on an object.  In standard physics, work has to move a physical object, but I think mental movement of the average brain also equates to be work.  Or at least that’s my thought on the matter. 

And yet, the more I think about it most people want the result without putting in the effort or the work.  They want the shiny car on the hill, but they don’t want what it takes to get the shiny car on the hill.  So they don’t get the shiny car on the hill.  I think I’m getting to the point of being someone people want to be.  But they don’t understand what it took to get to where I am.  They want the success without the budgeting.  

And I guess that’s the real crux of it.  There are things that just have to be done if you want to succeed.  You will run your life like a business.  You will spend time working on yourself as opposed to consuming other peoples media (movies/TV/books in this context).  You will create your worlds instead of living in others. 

On College: or how to blow $500

I’ve spent some time thinking, and I think I’ve come to the realization why I’m demotivated with taking a CCNA course.  I have been taking the course since August, and now we’re four chapters in.  I have no desire or motivation to learn what should be an interesting subject to me, and it’s not the material.  It’s the thought that I’m spending time and money and I have to teach myself. 

I’ve tried self-teaching the CCNA material before.  There’s just a lot of it and I wasn’t making the grounds I thought I should be. I wasn’t learning things and retaining them properly to pass the test.  So I decided to take a class at Amarillo College.  And now, I’m doing the exact same thing.  It’s the exact same self-teaching I was doing before, except this time I’m paying more for it.  Instead of buying a $50 book, I’m taking a $500 class. 

What did I expect?  A teacher that would spend the time teaching instead of speeding through slides with disorganized manner.  An actual education, perhaps? 

I guess that’s the big fallacy of college, and I’d completely forgotten it.  You don’t go to college and get taught.  You go to college and find out you are spending large amounts of money to someone else so you can read a book and teach yourself.  I’m fairly convinced you could do the whole thing with networking and a few considerably less money.  You’d get the same effect. 

Yes, I have a college degree.  I think it was an absolute waste of money. 

I think college goes back to the OODA loop, at least from the student perspective.  For the student, college solves a problem that no longer exists.  The faculty and simply there to make a buck and keep the meat grinder rolling.  

With that, I’m going to broadly disqualify most of the science, technology, engineering, math, and accounting.  Those problems still exist.  But the method of teaching just sucks. 

Brain Drain

I have stated before that I think schools teach the wrong thing.  I think I should elaborate on that point.

Point 1.  It’s an infographic about college degrees going from rare to super common in 40 years. 

Point 2.  An infographic about America’s most and least educated cities.

See, for years the mentality has always been that you should get a college degree to better yourself.  By that line of thinking, then the most and least educated cities should be a good indicator or where economic growth is occurring.   

I’m stopping that train of thought right now.  I know where I was going with it, but it was an A/B conversation.  Too simplistic and wrong.  Also, my conclusions were wrong. Or at least my assumed thoughts were wrong.  In general, there’s the idea that the most/least educated cities should also show the most/least growth.   More education equals more growth.  That’s what we’ve been told for years.  More specifically, more college education leads to more growth.  I think there might be a direct correlation up to a point, but it’s not a permanent equation. 

I don’t think the answer is as simple as the question sounds.  The question sounds like “what one single thing can we do to cause every single person to succeed?”

I don’t think there is such a thing.  First, the question is exceptionally vague.  How you define success is up to the individual.  As such, a broad level of success is invalid.  It’s much like the war on poverty.  Poverty is defined as the bottom percentage of the population.  I can’t remember what the number is specifically, but you can never win if the bottom percentage of the population is AUTOMATICALLY declared to be in poverty.  It doesn’t matter if the average person on the bottom drives a Ferrari and has $10,000 a day income.  It’s still the bottom. 

Education level is supposed to be a major factor in growth, but if that’s the case then economic output should have gone up astronomically in the last 40 years.  I’m not sure if it has or hasn’t.  What I do know is that some degrees aren’t worth a darn.  Certain classes of degrees aren’t worth the paper they are printed on, and as such a degree in such a program is relatively useless. 

How can a useless degree increase economic output?  Entrepreneurship is the answer, but that is something else that isn’t taught in school. 

Before I go into a deeper and even more unfathomable hole of half-thought out proofs and random thoughts, I think I’ll end.  Just realize not all thought experiments end well.  Sometimes, the answer isn’t that clean and you end up with more questions than answers.  

In a parking lot

Still contemplating the this/that complex that usually encompasses most people. That choice provides a false duality that bleeds over into the rest of life.  All choices become a/b choices when often a and b aren't good choices in the first place.  That simplicity removes the possibility that all choices can have more than one answer.  Yet it's that specific trait that is desired by business.  Perhaps it's an educational failing.  I remember having an argument with an English teacher in 7th or 8th grade about being dropped off at school.  High school moved band to first period, and the school was small enough to have 7th/8th graders in high school band.  My parents gave my brother the option of taking me to school in the morning or not. He was in high shool.  The teacher wouldn't even entertain the possibility that my brother had been given a choice.  She was a firm believer in a/b choices.   

Such separations become obvious in politics.  It gets to the point where neither side will talk to the other.  They both blame each other, but both sides are still having an a/b conversation.   

I'm not mad at current society.  Our failings are simply amplifications of being taught the wrong thing.  We failed the OODA loop, and we're solving problems that simply don't exist anymore.  

The biggest problem with the A/B option is best described by Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.  It says that any logical model of reality is incomplete (and very likely inconsistent) and must be continuously refined and adapted in the face of new observations.  A and B are never complete theorems, and neither side even decently describes humanity.  They never do.  But it ends up being a squirmy little box, so people shove and shove trying to get their idea into the box.  All the while, parts flow out in all directions.  

Observation is the key to understanding.  Those items that just don't seem to fit in the box don't fit in the box.  They need to be moved into a new home, where they fit within what they do.  And once you find the right home, that bit won't try to escape the box.  The only problem is your A/B solution suddenly becomes an A through Z solution, and it's hard to describe the entire thing.  

In order to describe life, the theory has to be necessarily complex to fit everything.  Simplicity just doesn't work when you combine free will.  That's the crux of it all.  That's the point that breaks apart every good thought and plan.

I'll stop now, before this falls off into more of a chasm than it already is.

Side note:  this one is called "in a parking lot" because it was partially written in a Wal-Mart parking lot while my wife ran into the store.

disorganized mess

This is going to be a disorganized mess, but I’m okay with that.  It’s hard when you observe situations and know there is connecting tissue there, but you don’t know what that connecting tissue is.  I think I’ve been reading too much about too many different things.  All of it combined makes for a giant mess of a thought process.  Here are several of the incomplete thoughts running through my head in recent days.

The income gap: how do some people find it so easy to make money while others struggle with McJobs?  It probably started with something I read about conversations overheard in the Goldman Sachs elevator.  Though I can’t attribute anything, nor do I believe it actually happened, one conversation went like such:

Some girl asked me what I would do with $10 million dollars.  I told her I’d wonder where the rest of my money went.

I think I read that statement as something to aspire to.  I guess money is so demonized that people don’t understand why someone would want “that much money”.  My thought is simple: I want the money for the opportunity it provides.  My lack of money creates insecurity and unneeded stress.  I spend so much money a money servicing debt and making others rich that there is nothing left to make me rich.  But that’s only the case for another 2-3 years.  The lack of finances also prevents pursing opportunities and learning things I desire to learn.  Without extra money, I don’t have the $100-200 to risk on something to determine whether an idea is feasible.  I don’t have what equates to relatively minor sums of cash to try initial experiments.  Because with those initial experiments, I expect to lose my initial capital.  And I don’t have the spare capital to lose.

Going back to my original thought: how do some people seem to be able to make large incomes easily while others don’t seem to be able to hold 2 cents to their name.  It makes me think there is something there worth studying and understanding.

2^nd: Next time you are driving, think about how much time and effort you have spent paying for your car.  Think of the undue stress of buying that car.  Once you have made it through the buying process, it’s off to the bill payment process.  And then finally, the bill payment process is over and the vehicle is yours after years of blood, sweat, and tears. 

Now drive by a wrecker yard and see what your investment in time in stress is worth a few years down the road.  Or in the next 15 minutes.

There are more, but those are the beginning thoughts.  That, or maybe I should quit reading John Boyd.

Game worlds

I talked at one point about Fallout 3 a few times.  I can’t find the other one, otherwise I’d link it here. 

I ended up buying The Elder Scrolls IV Skyrim, and I’ve been spending some time with that here and there.  Though it is hard for me to accept, I occasionally need a break from work.  So I generally play video games.  And I only use timed increments.  Unless it’s the weekend. 

Anyways, going back to an article I think I wrote but I can’t find.  The article was about how Fallout 3 lacked a sense of desperation and misery that one would expect from a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  Sure, it looks great.  But the horror of the world, even though it is discussed, is fairly blah.  Its violence for violence’s sake and it doesn't have the impact it should.  The world should feel terrible most of the time, and yet it doesn't.  Society is making a comeback, and the horror just isn't there like it should be. 

Skyrim portrays the horror different, though.  I think it does a better job than Fallout 3 of portraying human depravity and human suffering.  Fallout 3 uses every in your face technique it can.  Skyrim uses subtlety, and it works much better.  A necromancer den in Skyrim seems to speak more to horror than a Fiend camp in Fallout 3.  Yay, the Fiends are drug addicted bad guys who are horrible people.  Where are the after effects?  Where is the trail of dead bodies or piles of skulls?  It just isn’t there.

A necromancer den has a distinct degree of horror because it is separated from the rest of the humanity in the game.  The rest of the characters in the game are hearty, peace loving folk.  So when you see depravity, it is a shock.  In Fallout 3, you see depravity and it’s the nature of the beast.  And the depravity isn’t very depraved.  You don’t see burned corpses over open fires.  You don’t see dead bodies piled in cages, or hung from ceilings. 

I’d throw in pictures, but you can see how well those turn out.  They look just like my Fallout 3 pictures.  This one was of the Shrine of Azura in snowfall.  Five minutes later, I got wasted by a daedra in the Azura’s Star quest.  Anyways. 

I think there are good and bad parts to both games, but both are worth playing.  

Going to Work

I’ve thought about this for a while, and I think it’s true. 

People treat change in their life like a trip to Disney Land when they should be treating it like work.

A trip to Disney Land is this magical, one time thing.  You plan for months on end and build up oodles of anticipation.  Then you go, and it’s nothing like you thought it would be and it’s over before you realize it.

Great.  Now time to start over on another trip to Disney Land.

Or not.  Perhaps the best solution is to go to work.  Let’s look at work for a bit.  You show up pretty much every day of the week.  Or five days a week.  Still, you show up a lot.  You show up whether you want to or not.  You show up despite the weather and your attitude.  You show up, and you keep showing up until you get fired or get a paycheck.

While you are there, you have to put out effort the entire time you are there.  Sure, there’s a coffee break here and there and perhaps lunch, but you still have to keep showing up.  And after putting in all that effort, you still don’t get a paycheck.  You have to continue waiting.

The problem is your first paycheck doesn’t even get handed to you until after three weeks of working.  You show up every day with no reward with the hopes that after a bit you will get a paycheck.  There are people that have put out effort and never ended up with a paycheck. 

So if you want to change, start treating it like a job and not like a trip to Disney Land.  

Show up every day.

Show up whether you want to or not.

Don't expect results for two weeks.

Are 100 people smarter than 1?

Something I’ve been thinking about, but I don’t think I’ve said.  There’s a fundamental basis for most arguments for the collective society.  Every single one of those arguments start with the assumption that 100 people are smarter than 1.  It sounds like a great theory.  But it’s glossed over as being fact without ever being examined.

So… in theory, 100 people will produce a result that is better than 1.  But there’s a few problems with that theory.  The first is commonly found in team building exercises throughout junior high, high school, and college.  The average team does not produce the results of all team members.  The average team is led by one or two strong willed people and the just do the work.  Growing that larger, you will add a few more people, but the result will be the same.  Let’s say it’s 10 people out of 100.  So out of those first 100 people, only 10 are making actual decisions. 

Another logical problem with the idea that 100 people are smarter than 1.  What makes anyone the 10 that make decisions are the smartest in the group?  Nothing.  Remember, it’s not intelligence that makes the decisions in groups, it is force of personality.  The world is full of charismatic fools.  It’s also generally a giant Hollywood myth that all intelligent people are built like tanks and have strong personalities.  That’s not to say there are people who fit the Hollywood fantasy.  But we’re talking the average here, not the exceptional or the exception.  And most of what you are going to be dealing with is the average.

Another problem you run into is the Abilene Paradox.  It’s a paradox in which a collection of intelligent people end of doing something no one in the group wants to do.  I have a sister that has a degree in psychology.  She said the problem was groupthink.  The problem is how do you avoid groupthink?  In our discussion, the only real answer was strong personal accountability.  Not group accountability.  No the ability of the group of collectively decide it is doing something wrong.

What groupthink and the Abilene Paradox show us is that just because a group makes a decision doesn’t mean that decision is the best decision.  Group decision making can completely go off the deep end when it comes to moral or legal accountability.  Watergate was a good example of the Abilene Paradox in play.  Everyone that was a part knew they were doing something wrong, but no one said anything.  It’s also one of the major explanations for the extent of the Jewish Holocaust. 

And yet, despite all these arguments we will continue to see people arguing the brilliance of group decision making. 

Here’s another thought: do you hire people that are completely opposed to your agenda?   No.  After a while, you will have a collection of people who think like the person that hired them.  The entire group now has one general mindset.  With that general mindset, any decision they make is very likely to be in the same direction that any of the individuals would have gone.  It is also highly unlikely the group will ever go in the opposite direction.   So the groups’ decisions will probably be predictably in the same manner and the same method.

Unless the group seeks outside counsel, the decisions of the group will almost always be in the same direction because everyone in the group was selected for their similarities in belief. 

Once again, I’m going to say I don’t agree or think group decision making is the best way.  100 people are not smarter than 1.  The decisions made by 100 are not always better than the decisions made by 1.