Who would you like to meet?

Many of us are fascinated by the famous. We like to know what they're up to, what they think, what they wear and with whom they're hanging out. Marketers know it and use them to pitch products to us. Movie producers know it and put them in movies so we'll see their movies. Tabloids know it and fill our grocery checkout isles with them.

Few of us get a chance to meet those who fascinate us so. But if you could, who would you meet, and why? What would say to them, or want to ask them? For today, let's keep it to famous living people.

Productivity Increases

Are we too productive? What happens when we don't need so many people to produce everything we consume?

This is on my mind today as more companies continue to shed their employees. While I know this will not be a trend that continues indefinitely, it is very true that humanity can produce more and more with less and less labor each year. Consider the following graph from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.


While there are many charts of productivity available, they all show one unmistakable thing: productivity is always increasing. This is even more true for countries that are just now beginning to industrialize or move into a post-industrial economy.

At some point, each industry will reach a point where a very small number of people will be required to produce everything that can be consumed by the rest of the people. This is true not just in manufacturing, but in virtually every field. In my own industry, computers and software, it takes much less human effort to develop quality software than it ever did before. This trend will continue as well.

The question at hand is what happens when there are more people than required to produce everything, both tangible and intangible, that we need and want.

In the past, access to capital—or stated another way, the ability to acquire goods and services—has been tied to a person's ability to produce something of value for other people. In other words, we trade our valuable items or time for valuable items or time from other people. We do this to provide the necessities and luxuries of life. Absent this ability, we depend on charity, either from private entities (people, churches, or other not-for-profits) or from government (social security, unemployment, etc.).

When the collective output of all working people is greater than the collective demand of all consuming people, we'll have reached a new stage of human development. Giving ability to people to continue accessing their necessities and wants, when in fact their services aren't required in production, will be a challenge we haven't fully addressed yet.

Bringing this from the esoteric to the practical level, we can see this playing out in the auto industry today. People in the US really have all the cars they need today. That's why there's been such a dramatic drop-off in purchasing new automobiles: they weren't really needed, just a high-priced luxury to upgrade routinely. When it was no longer desirable to upgrade, an entire industry was sent into a tailspin. Too many people were producing automobiles for the actual needs of the people.

This type of transition will continue in each industry and gains in automation, standardization, communication and, in short, productivity, decrease the number of people required to generate the supply to meet the demand. It's the same issue that has caused the US Government to pay farmers to idle a percentage of their fields for years. It was considered strategic to make sure we had the excess capacity of food production, so we subsidized that capacity. We are now making the same decision in the auto industry. What other industries will require our subsidies in order to keep the same levels of employment that we've become accustomed to.

"We are soldiers, so our children can be farmers, so their children can be artists." —Thomas Jefferson

The transition from soldiering to farming (production) wasn't as difficult as the transition from production to artistry (poetry, philosophy, music, etc.) will be. It will be exciting, to be sure, but figuring out the fair and equitable distribution of goods and services (wealth) will be the challenge.

Plato stated that contemplative leisure and a love of learning would be required for adequate philosophical discourse, and therefore for just rule. As few people could claim those in ancient times, and many people can do so today, it seems clear that many people will contribute to the ruling of society in ways that have never occurred before. As it should be.

Cool web-link of the week: jott.com

This isn't going to be a technology blog, but on the other hand, making oneself more productive and having a bigger impact in your endeavors will be significantly easier with a judicious use of technology.

So, if you like take make a little notes to yourself all the time, one cool service that you can use is http://www.jott.com/. You don't have to type, you get to record things, and it does a pretty good job of transcribing for you.

Best of all, its' free!

Use this button to call me

Cool web-link of the week: YouMail.com

Ok, I just switched my mobile phone voicemail over to a service from http://www.youmail.com/. It's very cool and easy to use. The service is free, but Sprint charges me for forwarding my voicemail. But it's very nice so I can have greetings that are specific to the caller (my wife, my boss, etc.), or specific to groups of callers (Business, Friends, Family, etc.). It's the ultimate.

Celebrating Excellence

Too often the news contains "All the bad news that's fit to print." This week, however, we here in Indy are celebrating excellence in many of our people around the area. Please see http://indysbestandbrightest.com to see who's providing leadership in our city and making it a better place to live. These are people who are committed to high integrity and the highest standards of excellence.

Life Building

Life is repetitive. We repeat our life tasks daily.

Each day is an opportunity to improve on the previous day and build ourselves into the person we know we really are.

So why is it so hard to see the progress we'd like in our lives: professional, personal, social, and spiritual? Why do resolutions go unfulfilled and goals go unmet?

Building systems (or processes) for success seems to be what helps me most. It's a way to build a habit of success. While I'm not good at it yet, I have done it a few times and see the power of it. It's sort of like golf; I'm mostly a hack, but the joy of the occasional wonderful shot make it a sport that I have enjoyed playing. Building a new habit that leads to sustained life growth is a wonderful joy.

So, I have decided that one of my ways to seek continual improvement in my own life is to begin a blog. Why a blog? Well, personal journaling or keeping a diary hasn't been something I get involved in enough to sustain. I suspect that with a more visible medium like this, I'll be able to sustain the effort easier. And having access wherever I am will make it easier as well.

The other reason I like the blogosphere is that I'll be able to get ideas contributed back. Development in isolation can inadvertently overlook important things. As they say, "None of us is as smart as all of us."

So, look for my reflections here in the future, as I start to share some of my thoughts on continual improvement in all aspects of life.