Tiny...

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The Big Tiny by Dee Williams

The Small House Book by Jay Shafer

"I've found that even when you have your freedom-- when you've liberated yourself from your debit, and are happy enough living like a polar bear in winter-- even then you are still stuck with who you are.' Dee Williams. The Big Tiny.

 

You can live quite happily on far less than you own. Most of our stuff is not needed.

A movement is forming behind these thoughts. People building and living in tiny houses, shedding their possessions.

I sympathize with this.

Everynow and then I'll look around for a small, but high quality house. This is very hard to find. Small square feet most always equates with low quality-- poor neighborhoods, poor building quality. Big square feet equates with quality good neighborhoods, good build quality. Why is it so hard to find a small home, well built in a good neighborhood?

More space equates with more stuff, more maintenance, more debt, but not more happiness.

The environment is very high up on the list of concerns in the tiny house movement. Of course someone who lives in a 100 square foot house and who pays 20 dollars a month in utilities has an environmental impact that a tiny fraction of someone who lives in a 2000 square foot house. But what is the overall impact? I'm not a big fan of plans that depend on the moral high ground and declare "I'm doing my part to solve the problem. If everyone did like I'm doing then everything will be great." Unless that tiny house movement becomes broad, it's overall impact will be negligible. It risks becoming another niche with no broad impact.

I do like that they push the limits though. Maybe that's good enough. With enough pressure, then one day I could live in a high quality house, in a good neighborhood that's not 3000 square feet big.

Every now and then I'll run into someone who takes on the world, who proves they are tough, by adopting needlessly harsh goals. Want to prove have what it takes to survive in the wild? Build a cabin in the wild and subsistence farm there. It'll be tough. But it will give you comfort that you are tough enough.

Plus you don't have to deal with society. Engaging with society, with other people is hard work. For some it's very anxiety provoking. If society makes you anxious, why not rebel and leave?

That current is in the tiny house movement. Don't depend on society, it's bad. Do it all yourself. Society won't come face to face with its problems if more than a few people think that way.

People with tiny houses obsess over their house plans. A tiny house must be well planned and laid out or there will be trouble. I like this obsession. I only really use 600 square feet of my 2000 square foot house-- the bedroom, the bath room, the kitchen and living room. With a smarter layout I could easily get by on 400 or 500 without impacting the quality of my life. If I put effort into cutting back, how low could I go? 100 square feet? 200?

Where do families exist in this movement? The tiny house people all seem to be single. What does a family of 4 need?

Tiny houses let's you occupy your time with the minutia of how you live, rather than deal with your real problems. I worry this and Dee Williams. Dee has heart problems. Rather than dealing with these problems, she puts all of her energy into her friends and her tiny house. Anything that doesn't fit within those priorities is left out. Of course It simplifies her thoughts about her life, which helps with anxiety. But she still has big health issues. I think a world with Dee Williams in it, is better than a world without. I wish she would be more forward looking.

Of course the tiny house movement isn't a utopia that solves all our problems. But maybe it points to a better way to live.






 

  

Zen mind. Beginners Mind

Zen is practice. It is a practice I which we may learn a bit more about our nature. For any more than that, you should practice Zen, and read the book.

Sham. How the self-help movement made America Helpless

By Steve Salerno.

The book has a very good point, and much bombast. Take the title its self "How the Self help movement made America helpless' Well… America is far from helpless.

A large part of the book cover the business behind the self help movement-- Dr. Phil, Men are from mars… Deepak Chopra.. and so on. These are people more interested in selling you something then in helping. Often the only think you get out of their message are over simplified feel good platitudes that have little or no real benefit. Maybe you think they work because the problem cured its self with time. Maybe it's a placebo.

The book also has problems with support groups such as AA. Support groups a great if they actually help you deal with your problem. Sometimes  they encourage you to cope, or to cheat or to just accept that you are the kind of person who has a problem. All of which just delays action and defers responsibility. That is dangerous

The book also discusses the problems with the self esteem movement. Poorly done encouraging esteem is just a way of lowering standards and not talking about it.

Maybe the reason people succeed after they "get self confidence" is that they allowed them self to practice a few times. It was the practice that brought the success. The lack of self esteem was just an excuse to not learn.

competing against time.

George Stalk Jr & Thomas M. Holt.

Business usually think in terms of reducing costs. Competing against time argues we should think in terms of reducing time.

A small store than can refresh it's inventory every week will need less inventory than a big store that refreshes its inventory every month, yet have just as much variety. It may be price competitive with the bigger store since it will need far less inventory on hand.

A business that can incorporate customer feedback within weeks is far better off than a business that releases a new product line every year. Mistakes are costly when they can only be corrected once a year. Long term planning is a guessing game that's often wrong. Short product cycles reduce these risks

Ducker covered some of this in "Hustle as Strategy" It's good to dig deeper into the subject.

Of course its very difficult to change an organization to support short product cycles. Much of the book covers this topic. Short cycles require integrated cross disciple thinking and action, and veers away from silos of specialization that drive cost reduction.

Organizations that expedite things to make things faster or create skunk works projects are implicitly admitting their regular structure doesn't support fast product cycles

Read This Before Your Next Meeting

There are three kinds of meetings…

1. Brainstorming meetings where you come up with possible solutions to problems.
2. Working meetings where you actually do work.
3. Meetings where you discuss a decision and how it should be implemented.

Meetings that don't fit into one of these categories are a waist of time, especially meetings that are called with the purpose of making a decision. ​The decision, and all the leg work to support it, should be made before the meeting. The meeting organizer should act like a benevolent dictator.

If you have to choose between delaying a decision, and making a possibly wrong decision, error on the latter side. You will be wrong sometimes. That's not as bad as endless delaying for certainty.

Parents worry "much too much" about what their children are reading, said the author Judy Blume. She argued that they will simply "self-censor" by getting bored of anything they do not understand.

I've wondered and worried about that. If I find a book boring, then is the book boring, or am I self censoring?

When I write down the parts of a book I want to remember, am I self censoring out parts that are important, but I just don't get?