Systems Mindset Newsletter

May 18, 2010

Sans iPod, she contemplates.

“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.” –Emily Dickenson 
For the past week we’ve been exploring coastal British Columbia. Love it. We hiked into the Skookumchuck tidal rapids at ebb tide yesterday. Incredible power as billions of gallons of water surge through the narrow channel at blistering speed. We’re up here for [...]

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Communication for the New Mobile Lifestyle

May 10, 2010

You are the one with the great lifestyle but, on the road,  lousy interpersonal communication with those back home will compromise your personal gig. Be cavalier about it and you will lose your colleagues and your customers. Because you are on-the-fly and often in different time zones, it’s up to you to make up for [...]

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The Yearning

May 4, 2010

No matter how much your reach expands, there is always something just outside of its range that you long to be able to grasp. -Anonymous
I’ve been reading Abraham Maslow (1908-1970). A “Behaviorist” psychologist, he is famous for his Hierarchy of Needs theory. The theory is pretty much explained by the illustration I show here. I [...]

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The Perfect Business

April 20, 2010

Can you spot the perfect businesses?
What business enjoys recurring/passive income, no competition and a market that extends to 100% of the population? What business is self-perpetuating with no threat of failure as it enforces collection of receipts via the force of law? What business can endlessly borrow and print money?  And because there is no competition, [...]

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The Fabric of Our Lives

March 30, 2010

(Adapted from the book, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, by Sam Carpenter)
Could it be that the common presumption that the world is not functioning well — that the world is a mess — is wrong? Yes, that presumption is wrong, because in any given life, on any given [...]

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Finding Freedom: A Chat with David and Seth

March 15, 2010

In January, David Walsh and Seth Hosko visited for a couple of days in our home in Bend, Oregon. We taped some informal videos that are now posted on their website, Muselife (While there, be sure to subscribe. The site already has a large subscriber base and you might as well climb on board.)
Follow the directions at the bottom of [...]

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The Beauty of Written Policies

February 15, 2010

(This is an excerpt from,  Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less.)
Several years ago we had problems with two Centratel employees. The first one’s work was very good, but he failed a random drug test. The second one’s work quality was also exceptional, but she violated our computer privacy policy.  [...]

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We’re Not Building a Clock!

February 2, 2010

(This is an excerpt from my book Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less.)

Back in the mid-80’s, I was an inspector working with construction crews that build overhead transmission lines. Following detailed written designs and carefully surveyed routes, the crews use massive crane trucks to insert enormous seventy-eighty-foot wood poles in the [...]

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Reactionary

January 19, 2010

The trauma in Haiti is horrible. And not too long ago there was the earthquake nightmare in Pakistan/Azad Kashmir, and just before that, the tsunami in Southeast Asia. Major loss-of-life tragedies of this sort are the predictable result of natural catastrophe combined with non-existent building code, social safety net and security/police systems.
I dedicate this post to first responders the [...]

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Parenting is a Job: The Systems Mindset Dissection

January 5, 2010

Family

(Readership of this blog stretches to over 120 countries, but as I prepared to post this particular essay I realized the message is most applicable to parents in the western world, parents who have the luxury to over-complicate things. Parents in the developing world, where basic survival is often the day’s challenge, will intuitively understand the mechanical sensibility of what I discuss here.)
Flash! Your child doesn’t need [...]

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