Utility work is so annoying, but so great

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The county is tearing up our streets again, and I’m not sure why. It seems to be some kind of conduit they’re laying down, but I’m not sure what for. It’s a mess.

A few years ago they made a huge mess laying down new water pipes down the street. They (intentionally) destroyed the bottom of all of our driveways and caused quite a headache for a while when they were working on it.

Before that, AT&T came through and laid fiber in the neighborhood. While they were doing it, they hit a gas line once, water once, and power twice. It was an adventure.

It was all a pain for us living in the neighborhood.

Here’s the thing, though: We have super fast internet, clean water, and reliable power. None of that happens without the hard work of constantly updating our infrastructure.

This post is as much for me as it is for anyone else, to remember to be grateful for what’s happening. Right now our streets are torn up, we have to take alternate routes through the neighborhood at times, and it’s just a big mess.

I’m so very thankful for it.

Are fossil fuels moral?

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You know that I love to challenge my existing beliefs to see if they’re solid or not, so when a friend gave me a copy of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” by Alex Epstein, I was excited to give it a read. I couldn’t understand why a book would have that title (other than to interest people, which it did), so I was happy to dig in.

As it turns out, I agree with Epstein’s two main points.

Fossil fuels have helped humanity tremendously. There is no doubt about that. Fossil fuels have saved millions of lives thanks to improved living conditions, medical advances, food production, and much more. Related, Epstein says:

“If we look at history, an incredibly disproportionate percentage of valuable ideas have come in the last several centuries, coinciding with fossil-fueled civilization. Why? Because such a productive civilization buys us time to think and discover, and then use that knowledge to become more productive, and buy more time to think and discover.”

We’re not ready to stop using fossil fuels. I also agree with this. While I think alternative sources (largely solar) are the future, we’re not close to giving up fossil fuels yet. His book was written eight years ago, and we’re getting a bit closer, but still have a long way to go. His point holds, with his main support being this:

“We don’t want to “save the planet” from human beings; we want to improve the planet for human beings. We need to say this loudly and proudly. We need to say that human life is our one and only standard of value.”

Do those make continued use of fossil fuels moral?

That said, neither of those reasons make the long-term use of fossil fuels moral. As long as we can supply the world with adequate energy, we should generate as much of that energy as possible using means that are healthier for the planet.

For much of the book, he sets up a strawman that I don’t think many people believe in: green energy will mean a reduction in the quality of human life. There are likely some people out there that want to see fossil fuel usage stopped immediately, consequences be damned, but most people that I talk to tend to take a more reasonable approach. We should keep working forward, finding better ways to capture, store, and use cleaner sources of energy, but continue to supplement with fossil fuels as needed.

It reminds me of my post from last year comparing electric cars today to digital cameras in the 90’s. In the comic I shared, people make fun of electric cars that use fossil fuels to generate their electricity, but I simply see it as a necessary step along the way. For electric cars and similar “green” initiatives, things will be bumpy for the next few decades, and using fossil fuels to smooth out the transition seems like a wise thing to do.

We should all be immensely thankful for what fossil fuels have meant for our lives to this point, and continue to use them as needed in the future. Hopefully, over time, they can help pave the way to their own demise, but we don’t need to make hasty and detrimental choices on the way there.

It’s like vacation starts tomorrow

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One of the best tips for getting things done is to always pretend like you’re leaving for vacation tomorrow and it’s your last day in the office for the next week. When people are preparing to leave the office for vacation, they tend to do a few things:

  • Write out a plan for what needs to get done before they leave and create a daily to-do list.
  • Get their email inbox cleaned out.
  • Make sure all meetings for the next few weeks are squared away.
  • Return any lingering phone messages.

It’s fantastic! By the end of the day, they’ve accomplished more than they often do in a week, and hopefully can enjoy some time away.

For many people, their day-to-day doesn’t look like the list above. They don’t plan their day; they let their day plan them. Emails can linger for days in their inbox. Things get messy.

The idea of truly pretending that you’re going on vacation tomorrow likely won’t work; it’s hard to fake enthusiasm like that. However, grabbing a few of those practices every day can be a fantastic way to make every day smoother and more productive.

Precise attribution is nearly impossible, and that’s ok

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When we’re helping a company with their marketing efforts, we have a variety of tools that we employ to help track data and understand how things are performing. Starting with tools like Google Analytics, we set up data scorecards, heatmaps, trackable phone numbers, and a variety of excellent tools to help with our efforts.

At the end of the day, though, it’s essentially impossible to track every sale back to the source and we need to learn to be ok with that.

Earlier this year on the SparkToro blog, Rand Fishkin showed a great example. A new customer walked through how they ended up using SparkToro, and Rand show the tracking (or lack thereof) at each step along the way.

Don’t skip the data

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you stop trying. The tools that I listed above are still incredibly valuable and can help provide a wide view of how things are performing.

I see a similar path in how we decided to hire Blumer CPAs to handle our finances a few years ago.

  • In 2015, we saw Jason Blumer speak at WordCamp Atlanta. I had heard of him, but didn’t know much about him. He did a great job with his talk.
  • As a result, I started listening to his podcast and subscribed to his blog.
  • He produced solid content on both of those, and at one point had a special offer for a one-hour coaching session, which Ali and I signed up for.
  • Not long after that, we decided we needed more help with our finances and he was easily the first person we turned to.
  • We’ve been a happy client of his for a few years now!

If Jason was to look at his marketing and where to spend his time, what was the piece that earned our business? We likely wouldn’t have gone down that road if he hadn’t spoken at WordCamp, so that’s important. Of course, without his podcast he would have slowly faded from view so that helped a lot as well. I’m sure at some point I Googled for “Blumer CPAs” to pull up his site, so his Analytics would show that SEO was what brought us in.

There is no right answer

Jason did a good job of producing excellent content across a variety of mediums, and that helped him gain our business. It’s essentially impossible to track “the thing” that sealed the deal, but he just needs to be ok with that.

Rand’s post goes into much more detail, and I encourage you to read it, but the overall sentiment is to trust your gut. If you’re putting out great content and things are going well, they’re likely closely related even if you can’t tell exactly which post on which platform lead to that great new client.

There is only perception

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In Ryan Holiday’s excellent book “The Obstacle Is the Way“, Holiday offers a ton of excellent wisdom. One snippet that stood out to me was this:

“There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.”

This is true in all areas of life, but lately it seems to be manifesting itself in strong and divisive ways in politics. Two examples come to mind:

Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan: Was it a bold move to show our strength, or was it simply a way to agitate China?

DeSantis sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard: Was it a way to show the country what southern states need to deal with, or was it an example of using humans as pawns in a cruel way?

Politics are an easy example, but it extends to all facets of life. For almost any situation, there is no clear “good” or “bad” — it’s how it’s interpreted by those that view it.

I’m typing this in a coffee shop right now. If the guy across the room were to stand up, walk over, and punch me in the face, is that good or bad? We have laws that say it’s a bad thing, and I think most everyone would agree with it. However, I’m sure there are people that would think I deserve it for some reason or another (“He supports the Atlanta Braves”, “He drives a gas car”, “His texts come through in green instead of blue”). They’d be pretty weak reasons, but there is a small percentage of people that would likely believe strongly enough in one of those to justify it.

It’s important to remember this as we watch events unfold. Our upbringing, our knowledge, our faith, our politics, and many other things will affect how we view things. If someone disagrees with your response to something, it’s possible that they’re wrong, but more likely that they simply have different experiences that have shaped their view. Taking the time to learn about those could be good for both parties.

Some early thoughts on the Kindle Scribe

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Amazon recently announced the Kindle Scribe, a new 10″ Kindle that comes with a pen. It’s very much like a Kindle meets a reMarkable, and I’m very excited about what that could mean.

If you’ve not seen it, here is the official announcement video from Amazon:

The video doesn’t show a lot of how it works, but you get a pretty good idea. It’s a big Kindle that includes a pen to write on the screen. If the software is solid, this will become one of my favorite devices.

I love my Kindle and I love my reMarkable, but they both have shortcomings that the other could fix.

  • The Kindle allows me to highlight text, but not easily leave any commentary in my notes.
  • The reMarkable is great for note-taking and marking up documents, but the lack of books and the lack of a backlight are rough.

In theory, the Kindle Scribe will be the perfect combination to solve those woes.

Pricing

At first glance, the price seems pretty high at $339. The Kindle Paperwhite is a great reading device and it starts at just $99. That’s a big jump!

However, I think you also need to compare this device to the reMarkable and others in that genre. The reMarkable starts at $279, but that doesn’t include a pen, which is essential to the product. The pen is another $79 (or $129 for the “marker plus), making the total $358, or about $20 more than the Kindle Scribe. Plus, reMarkable essentially requires their “connect” service for some of the features you need, which is another $3/mo. It’s not much, but it’s more than the $0/mo service for the Kindle Scribe.

So, the Kindle Scribe isn’t cheap by any means, but it’s priced very well compared to the writing tablet competition.

Features

I mentioned some of the features above, and those are really the two that I’m excited about.

I’ve been taking more and more notes as I read, but it’s difficult to do on the Kindle Paperwhite. I create a lot of highlights, but can’t easily add further thoughts to them. With the Kindle Scribe, I presumably can.

With the reMarkable, the screen is not lit at all and requires a bright room or sunlight to read. This is by design, as it allows the tip of the pen to be a tiny bit closer to the surface to help further mimic the feeling of writing on paper. It does an amazing job with that, but I think I’d be ok with a small gap there in order to get some light. I frequently find myself in my office trying to read a document on the reMarkable and struggling due to low light. With the Kindle Paperwhite (and therefore the Kindle Scribe), that is never a problem. The E ink screen works great in bright sunlight or in a dark room.

Why not an iPad?

The main pushback against the reMarkable (and will be against the Kindle Scribe) is “why not just use an iPad?”. It’s a reasonable question, and for many people I’d agree that they just should. The iPad is an amazing device and can serve many of these needs. I find benefit in the reMarkable/Scribe in four ways:

  • Read it outside. E ink is fantastic outside, whereas an iPad is often unusable. It’s a world of difference.
  • Related, E ink is far easier on your eyes for reading, even in ideal lighting conditions. If you’ve ever tried to read a book from an iPad and from a Kindle, you know that the Kindle is a much better experience.
  • The lack of notifications. This is kind of a bogus answer, using a shortcoming as a benefit, but it’s true. As I shared a few years ago about the reMarkable, it’s great to use in church and meetings and places where an iPad might be a little less acceptable.
  • Battery life. The reMarkable can last for weeks, while the iPad can last for hours. The Kindle Scribe should be close to the reMarkable in terms of battery life, which is excellent. It may be a smidge less due to the lit screen, but it’ll still be a device that doesn’t need to be plugged in every night.

Should I get it?

I can’t begin to answer that for you, but hopefully the info about gave you some solid ideas. If you’re a Kindle fan and you were intrigued by the reMarkable, this could be a great device. There are two caveats, though:

  1. As of now, I’ve not seen a real review of the device. I hope Amazon starts pushing a few out to reviewers soon, but nothing yet.
  2. This is a first-generation device. The first reMarkable was good, but the second was far better. Any first-generation device will have some odd shortcomings, and the Kindle Scribe won’t be perfect. Amazon’s history and experience with Kindle should help, but no doubt the “Kindle Scribe 2” that comes out in a few years will be much better.

The Kindle Scribe will be released on November 30, 2022. You can pre-order now if you’re interested.

I’ll share more once I get my hands on it, which I’m quite excited to do!

Only one person can change me

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In recently reading the book “QBQ” (the “Question Before the Question”, which I discussed a bit here), much of it felt similar to some of the ideas in “The Daily Stoic“. The books come from completely different directions, but end up focusing on one idea — you are responsible for yourself.

QBQ had a few great quotes to help summarize this idea. First is the idea of stress and what can lead to it:

Stress is a choice, because whatever the “trigger event”, we always choose our own response.

I think he might have over-simplified a bit, as some people are literally stuck in jobs with horrible bosses that treat them poorly, but many find ways to shine regardless of the situation.

Next are some of his thoughts on communication:

Communication means not only being understood but also understanding the other person. The QBQ is “How can I better understand you?”

If you’ve ever read “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People“, this might sound familiar, as Habit 5 is “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood“. Learning to fully understand the ideas of others will help both parties tremendously.

Taking responsibility for yourself is easy at times, but gets much more difficult when something feels like it’s out of your control. The more you can take ownership of every situation in your life, the more effective you’re likely to be.

Exploring versus exploiting

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When it comes to tools and systems, there are two areas you can lean on: exploring and exploiting. To put it another way, are you spending time exploring new tools and playing with the shiny toys, or are you actually exploiting (in a good way) the tools at your disposal?

Admittedly, I fall a bit too far into the exploring side of things, as I love to test out new tools and make changes to my workflow. I talk about many of them on this blog, and you can see my current toolset on my always changing page for “The tools I use“.

I justify that by considering it a form of entertainment, which isn’t untrue, but it also can be very unproductive. Grey and Myke talked about this quite a bit in Episode 132 of their excellent Cortex podcast, so that might be worth giving a listen to.

I’ll likely continue to be an over-explorer, but I like having this framework to wrap around it so I can perhaps limit things a bit and spend more time exploiting the systems that I already have. I use some very powerful tools already, so spending more time learning to make the best use of what I have will likely be the most efficient way forward. There’s a balance in there somewhere, I’m sure, any maybe one day I’ll find it.

Until then, I’ll spend a lot of time exploring but hopefully can be a bit more focused in exploiting some of the great things that I find.

Don’t wait to be told

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I recently finished reading John Miller’s excellent (and rather short) book QBQ (The Question Behind the Question). The focus of the book is about taking responsibility rather than handing out blame, even when blame feels like it might be more appropriate.

One piece of taking responsibility is choosing to push things forward without waiting for instructions. Depending on your role at work this might be tricky, but I love to see this kind of thing. John put it this way:

“It’s better to be one who is told to wait than one who waits to be told.”

This is something we’re working to instill in our team and it’s heading in the right direction. Many employees (at any company) have a fear of messing up and getting in trouble (or getting fired), so they’d rather play it safe. In my view, as long as the intentions are good the outcome is less important. We certainly want positive outcomes, and if things go poorly we might use it as a lesson on how to improve next time, but I’ll never fault one of our staff for trying to do more to serve our clients.

If you’re in a role where you always choose to wait to be told what to do for fear of making a mistake, it’s worth considering what kind of environment you’re really in.

Storytelling could have saved Google Stadia

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Yesterday, Google announced that they were shutting down Google Stadia. While I was a big fan of the service, the announcement didn’t surprise me very much, as Stadia just never really caught on. If you’re asking “What was Stadia?”, that pretty much explains what happened.

If you saw Google’s official Stadia launch trailer a few years ago, seen here, it probably didn’t help your understanding at all:

After watching that video, you probably have very little idea what Stadia really did. Rather than that two-minute bit of craziness, a simple message would have done much better. Something like:

“Not that long ago, if you wanted to watch a movie at home, you needed a DVD or Blu-ray player, but then Netflix streaming came along and let you just use whatever device you had to stream the movies directly to you.

Similarly, most video games systems like PlayStation and Xbox need a console next to your TV to power the games. Stadia is more like Netflix for video games. As you’re playing the game, Google handles the hard work and just streams the game to whatever device you happen to be on, whether that’s a laptop, tablet, phone, or Chromecast-enabled TV. There are no downloads, no consoles, no updates — just start streaming your games instantly on the devices that you already have.”

I even made a short video a few years ago showing Stadia running a hot new game on an ancient Chromebook that we had, and it ran wonderfully:

The problem is that Google’s messaging was unclear and people just didn’t understand. Even yesterday when it was announced, a very tech-savvy (and video game playing) friend of mine said “What was it, really? It streamed or something? How did it work?“. He had no idea, and he was their target demographic.

Back in 2019 when it first came out, I heard tech podcasts talking about it with statements like “Google has a new video game system, so that’s one more device you’ll need to put next to your TV“. That wasn’t accurate at all, but it wasn’t the fault of the podcast — Google just wasn’t clear.

Storytelling and messaging are vitally important for every business. If you can’t make it clear what you’re offering and how it’ll improve someone’s life, you’ll lose their attention almost immediately. When we build websites, messaging strategy isn’t optional — a beautiful website with poor messaging is destined to fail.

Video game streaming is still a fantastic thing and should continue to grow, with services like Amazon Luna, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and PlayStation Plus streaming, but Google had arguably the best tech and yet they’re the first ones out.

We’ll never know for sure, but I fully believe that better messaging could have made a big difference for Google.