WAIT, is it lode or load? – Part 2
Thursday, January 26, 2023
So many innovations in a car’s mechanical and fuel efficiency have been derived, not from the newer technologies and engineering marvels, but from simply ‘taking weight out of the car.’
Hence, fuel efficiency improves, and manufacturing costs drop from a simple innovation that uses a smaller, lighter-weight part to do the same job – magnified by every additional vehicle produced.
New technologies, electric or hybrid cars, will eventually improve with similar savings (maybe) in weight. Current battery technologies are a weight problem vis-à-vis the weight of old engine equipment weight removed.
Improvements over time and lighter-weight battery innovation will have their impact, but don’t hold your breath just yet. When those innovations and tweaks happen at the factory, what we don’t see in weight reductions will have their most significant bottom-line impact, worth their weight in gold!
Whether these innovations move needles any time soon on climate change is for climatologists and the car company CFOs to debate in decades to come; until then, we’ll have to wait and see …
I’ve been re-inventing and deconstructing my work days, plans, and expenditures at home and work all my adult life, often frustrated at my conflicts and challenges to put the weight of my work on the right task at the appropriate time – among so many things ADHD folk wrestle with, issues I never understood fully, because I tried my conventional wisdom/best recipe for applying work ethic, patience, urgency and tolerance for BS so many others had.
But I didn’t have a note from my doctor and didn’t know why I needed one.
Given my ‘adjustment last July 8th,’ I believe I’m bringing better decision-making processes to bear on those never-ending tasks. Thank you, doctors, researchers, drug makers, and a lifetime of waiting – it would have been so much better if we’d known all along!
Or would it have been?
I struggle to reconcile that because accepting life as it has been, being the only option, and waiting for some magical epiphany of understanding I didn’t know existed seems self-defeating and foolish.
Some days have extra weight; some have weight loss; each month brings fresh surprises, so I’ll wait and see …
So far, it feels like I’m making a difference. Too soon yet to imagine my life being much different than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic – this looks better/different, feels different, but too soon to calculate long-term benefits. It’s a bit of a regression because I’m reinstituting some old-school processes to drive my work, follow-ups, and that ‘time to think’ part of my day.
Also, finding and having the time to do ‘future business development work’ is easier now that I schedule time for that – finding better day designing (execution is tougher) splits between office, home office, writing desk, social life, me-time and domestic chores – in terms of what I do, when I do it and where I do it. Not so much a time-motion study as a ‘what works best during my 14 hours a day of working my best,’ and better scheduling sleep, meals, diet, exercise, etc. is grand theory.
Give me a few months and I’ll report whether it’s paying off.
I’ve done one significant thing for the planet and my wallet - keeping my vehicle on the road for another year or two. Keeping it out of the auto wrecker’s autopsy bench and out of the landfill a little longer – and I’ll wait for better and improved battery technology.
I’ll keep it out of the wrecking yard and landfill longer, which allows more time to research hybrids (at this point, that’s what I believe will be best for me and reliability in our climate), and the technology will get better. I’ve never felt I should stay ‘up with everything, or have the newest best thing (there have been a few exceptions), as we see what next new thangs come on the market.’
Whatever our reason – budgetary, lifestyle, striving for better personal achievement or trying to find faster and better ways to serve those we serve and are accountable to – examining what we do, how we spend/waste/conserve our time and/or money is ONE way to improve and/or stretch how far our life and money can go …
How can anyone know if pock-marking the planet with lithium mines and helium wells is the right thing to do? How can anyone know which man or A.I. made solution will turn out better, best, or most tolerable for us?
We do know that we are making better guesses.
Better chances of a higher percentage of every human endeavour will be better than they were before.
Maybe better to pause and take the time, but if the odds are most things won’t work, or won’t work yet, maybe speed and haste are our allies – how can we know?
In closing, a tickle for your brain and some more for your ears:
First, “We don’t know what we don’t know, but we know when we don’t anything!” – Confucius