"How an Electric Kettle Can Teach Us About Life's Grand Cycle"

What can an electric kettle teach us about human flourishing? This morning, a small design feature saved my clumsy knuckles from a painful burn and set off a chain of reflections on optimization, innovation, and the meaning of progress. From the engineer’s foresight to the global logistics behind this simple kettle, our world is full of solutions to life's endless imperfections.

But what if those imperfections are essential? What if every scalded hand, every challenge, every trauma, is part of a grand cycle—one that inspires ingenuity, resilience, and the pursuit of something better? Dive into this thought-provoking exploration of how minor innovations can illuminate profound truths about time, purpose, and the beauty of our imperfect journey.

“However much you are using it, and whatever you are using it for, I am certain you are not tapping into all its possibilities. No matter how grand or granular your problems and challenges, ChatGPT will provide illumination and clarity as a strategic thought partner.

I've uploaded so much of my writing to ChatGPT that it…”

“Traditionally we think of time in 3 regions: past, present, and future.  There are many fashionable platitudes about how to treat each of these.  I think many of those platitudes are wrong.

Each of these essays takes issue with popular notions of time, and attempts to reconstruct our sensibility to facilitate:

• Inner peace

• High performance

• Organizational success”

“…If you’re not doing that, you’re likely keeping busy with other things, but that’s not being a CEO.  Being CEO will probably keep you busy, but it’s not about keeping busy.  Busyness is simply a byproduct of doing what needs to be done, and many weeks that fills many hours.  But some weeks it doesn’t….”

“Think of what this means for the creative process, then.  We envision what is not real, comparing it to the perfect ideal, and then work to create it in reality.  But the moment it enters concrete reality it loses its timeless perfection, and that’s always really hard, because a part of it still lives beyond space and time, where all perfections meet.

A big part of us wants to keep it there where it will not be sullied by reality, and that is why, I believe, we drag our feet on creative projects, because that way they can stay ideal and we need never see them fall.

But, keeping things perfect will not help you…”

“When you want to change the results, you change the causes.  And to change the causes for the better, and consistently, once and for all we build systems.  Then we take stock of our new dissatisfaction, identity causes, and build or tweak the systems.  Always and forever.  That’s really all there is to it.

If you remember one thing from this post, let it be this…”

“…I had this thought: "Careers and organizations are built one deal at a time."  There are many different shapes to this.  Entrepreneurs need to find the deals, or create systems to do so.  But employment is only possible because their organizations make deals in some way shape or form…”

“…By the way, we’re getting to the end.  You’ll need to make a choice soon.

Will you re-read this?  That would solve your problem of existence for a little while.

Will you skim it?  That would solve your problem of existence for a little less while.

Will you sit with it?

Will you plan your next move?

Or do you know pretty well what you will do next?

Either way, the problem will never cease, for as long as you live.  And the greater problem will never cease as long as humans live.  We’re all in this together, solving it as best we can, through our different worldviews.

You’re blessed to be one of the problem solvers…”

"Systems are breaking down all the time.  Like, all the time.  Usually we don’t notice it, because we’re on the outside being served.  But it’s torment to see it happen and deal with it from the inside.  You feel like everyone is watching you.  In reality, people are just waiting to get on to their next thing and they quickly forget too once their problems are solved.  Yes, maybe some people would have had emails returned to sender, and maybe a couple even did.  But, you know what?  It happens.  It happens to all of us.  We know this and we show grace to the organizations to which it happens.

Even through the agitation and anxiety of this episode, I saw another part of my spirit and psychology operating.  And I knew it was correct, even if iI didn’t believe it..."

"What this means is that growing sustaining businesses, or organizations of any kind really, is actually a branch of social science.

It seems obvious really, at least now.  Management is the study and practice of coordinating groups for a purpose.  Marketing is the study and practice of persuasion through media.  And information science is the study and practice of how we track, analyze, and store the relational observations that we find significant.  Those are my own definitions of the moment, but that’s how I see them.

Think about it though…if we take a step back, wouldn’t EVERY area of human study be properly categorized as some kind of social science?  Humans do everything in groups and for groups.  Without group identity and allegiance there is no motivation to or validation for any of the work we do..."

"ChatGPT is a tool.  It won’t just do things for you.  But you can guide and shape its “thinking” process and it becomes a really flexible and powerful creative partner.  The images at the end of this sequence are quite wonderful IMHO.

I didn’t just ask it to visualize commerce.  That will give you a certain result, but not a particularly inspiring one that I’m not going to share.

Let me walk you through the process and show you what was returned along the way…"

“The only thing we know is that time will keep coming.  So, take that as a starting point and ask “what do I want out of this life?”, because it’s going to keep coming whether you want it to or not.  And everyone else is in it too.”

“We can’t stop our biological processes.  We can’t stop our thoughts.  We can’t stop time or collapse space back into the singularity from whence it expanded.  We can’t detach from society, and most especially the people we love.  The future is coming, whether we want it to or not.  We must at least maintain and at best build.  And that’s being human.”

“These are the 3 ingredients to any group, and it will rise or fall based on their success. The common thread is sacrifice, because all of these require someone else to offer their scarce resources in support, motivated by the promise of a better future. What is the better future you promise? Effectively answer that question, and your communication will attract people to fund, run, and advocate for your organization.

That, and only that, is how to go FAR ➡️”

“But what if you had friends everywhere you went?  Life would seem much more fun and worthwhile, wouldn’t it?

I think of friends as the leavening of life.  Everything is lighter and more vital with friends in the mix.  There’s something about friendship, and nothing else like it.

It can be complicated, because it’s harder to keep decisions and evaluations objective when friends are involved, although some might argue the best friends manage to do that too.  Some professions even have regulations that prevent forming friendships between certain kinds of people, so you’ll have to conform to the ethical and legal standards of your industry.

But watching these two dance…”

“While today’s information and media landscape may be pathological and contributing to greater dysfunction than in past eras (and I’m not so sure that I grant this for numerous reasons - the health of humans and society is a dynamic and ever unsettled conversation, due simply to the nature of the spacetime that we navigate in each moment), we have a perennial condition that seeks to reconcile what I have come to call “influence and outfluence”.  They will never be precisely balanced, and we must discern this constantly.  As social beings, we are constantly in communication, community, and collaboration with our fellow social beings.  As such, there is no self, and no other to speak of.  No me or you.  Just us, interfluencing one another.  Somehow we all have a vision of an improved world that we work toward together.  It can be no other way.  Take a broad enough view and humans ultimately become a hive mind, very much like ants.”

“When I think about human commerce, the exchanges we seek and enact, this is how I imagine it.  Many, many individuals and overlapping audiences, with limited attention that is always stretching in some direction or another, searching, seeking a goal.  I think the goal is a sense of completion, and you need to figure out how your product, service, and organization fits into that collective project of completion. Once you do, you will meet your goals.”