Thursday, October 02, 2014

Efficiency vs Health

I have to admit to being a bit of a Fitbit addict.  Fitbit tracks steps and it has a social media component that allows people I am "connected" to see how many steps I do and I can see what they do.  And my kids and brothers all have them.  Not that I am competitive at all but Lyle particularly pushes me a bit since I do not want him to have more steps than I do.

So how does this relate to efficiency which is really the theme of this blog?  For perfect efficiency, I should set my life up to take less steps.  I should have all my files at my desk and everything I need should be in reach.  But to get more steps, it is best to have to go to the basement to file things and get up to get things.  I find the steps I get for just doing "normal" stuff as opposed to "working out" are fairly easy.  So building a life with "fairly easy" built in seems logical.

Or a more blatant example.  I could drive my car to a meeting or walk.  Walking might take 15 minutes longer so is less efficient.  And the same is true of automation and hiring things done (EG - mowing the grass or manually emptying the dehumidifier rather than piping it direct to the drain)

So I am conflicted since I am an efficiency and a health person.  Which do I choose.

So... moving the file cabinet to the basement...furthest from my desk I can get it.

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Speaking of health, I always thought it was more fiscally prudent to own a car rather than lease it.  But recent research links car ownership with poor health.

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By the way, in case you have not seen this yet, have a look at the blog post put out by Hootsuite when they launched the controlled BETA trials.
 http://blog.hootsuite.com/new-hootsuite-feature-content-suggestion/

Content curation and moderation is one of the next waves that will automate.  It has been going on for years (we let the editors choose what they think is important).  Soon, machines will be assisting in this task.

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One of my friends owns a multihundred million dollar company that sells hardwood.  I needed some hardwood flooring so bought it from him.

He was teasing that his margins were down this month because of the order he sold to me to which I replied "if you think your margins are bad this month, next month it will be your bad debts you have to worry about."

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Spam takes time but not as much as it seems.  I can log in and see 100 emails waiting but if they are all spam, that is about a minute to deal with them.  Now if I have to act on them, it can be a couple of hours.

That said, I do think the new Canadian Spam law might help reduce the number of unwanted emails.  Of course half my business interests are in the US and it will not help those.

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And my son who works selling wind turbines at Siemens thought it was only fair if I put pictures of my other kids children on my blog I should include his.