You Become What You Do

Let's talk about Barry Schwartz' TED talk: The way we think about work is broken.


"And that's how the industrial revolution created a factory system in which there was really nothing you could possibly get out of your day's work, except for the pay at the end of the day. Because the father -- one of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith -- was convinced that human beings were by their very natures lazy, and wouldn't do anything unless you made it worth their while, and the way you made it worth their while was by incentivizing, by giving them rewards. That was the only reason anyone ever did anything. So we created a factory system consistent with that false view of human nature. But once that system of production was in place, there was really no other way for people to operate, except in a way that was consistent with Adam Smith's vision. So the work example is merely an example of how false ideas can create a circumstance that ends up making them true.

It is not true that you "just can't get good help anymore." It is true that you "can't get good help anymore" when you give people work to do that is demeaning and soulless. And interestingly enough, Adam Smith -- the same guy who gave us this incredible invention of mass production, and division of labor -- understood this. He said, of people who worked in assembly lines, of men who worked in assembly lines, he says: "He generally becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human being to become." Now, notice the word here is "become." "He generally becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human being to become." Whether he intended it or not, what Adam Smith was telling us there, is that the very shape of the institution within which people work creates people who are fitted to the demands of that institution and deprives people of the opportunity to derive the kinds of satisfactions from their work that we take for granted."

Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong

What do people really need in their lives? Isn't it actually connection with others?

To see this talk on the TED site, click here.

Why it's time to rethink the pecking order at work

This talk is about why we might be better off rethinking how we organize ourselves at our workplaces.

To see this talk on the TED site, click here.

What Dame Ellen MacArthur learned sailing around the world

We're not the only ones talking about this! Another person's view on what's going on with our economy, surprisingly similar to our conclusions a couple weeks ago, when we were discussing the problem with Free Trade Agreements.

To see this talk on the TED site, click here.

Open Source Blueprints for Civilization

To see this on ted.com click here: Open Source Blueprints for Civilization


"So let me tell you a story. So I finished my 20s with a Ph.D. in fusion energy, and I discovered I was useless. I had no practical skills. The world presented me with options, and I took them. I guess you can call it the consumer lifestyle. So I started a farm in Missouri and learned about the economics of farming. I bought a tractor -- then it broke. I paid to get it repaired -- then it broke again. Then pretty soon, I was broke too.

I realized that the truly appropriate, low-cost tools that I needed to start a sustainable farm and settlement just didn't exist yet. I needed tools that were robust, modular, highly efficient and optimized, low-cost, made from local and recycled materials that would last a lifetime, not designed for obsolescence. I found that I would have to build them myself. So I did just that. And I tested them. And I found that industrial productivity can be achieved on a small scale."

Why are people so upset about Economic Trade Agreements?

What's wrong with Economic Trade Agreements?

Flow, The Secret to Happiness?

"So my research has been focused more on -- after finding out these things that actually corresponded to my own experience, I tried to understand: where -- in everyday life, in our normal experience -- do we feel really happy? And to start those studies about 40 years ago, I began to look at creative people -- first artists and scientists, and so forth -- trying to understand what made them feel that it was worth essentially spending their life doing things for which many of them didn't expect either fame or fortune, but which made their life meaningful and worth doing.
5:29
This was one of the leading composers of American music back in the '70s. And the interview was 40 pages long. But this little excerpt is a very good summary of what he was saying during the interview. And it describes how he feels when composing is going well. And he says by describing it as an ecstatic state.
...
[O]ur nervous system is incapable of processing more than about 110 bits of information per second. And in order to hear me and understand what I'm saying, you need to process about 60 bits per second. That's why you can't hear more than two people. You can't understand more than two people talking to you.
8:44
Well, when you are really involved in this completely engaging process of creating something new, as this man is, he doesn't have enough attention left over to monitor how his body feels, or his problems at home. He can't feel even that he's hungry or tired. His body disappears, his identity disappears from his consciousness, because he doesn't have enough attention, like none of us do, to really do well something that requires a lot of concentration, and at the same time to feel that he exists. So existence is temporarily suspended. And he says that his hand seems to be moving by itself. Now, I could look at my hand for two weeks, and I wouldn't feel any awe or wonder, because I can't compose."

How do we design for wisdom?

If the video above doesn't work, please go here: How to run a company with (almost) no rules

The Surprisingly Logical Minds of Babies

Go listen to this TED talk: The Surprisingly Logical Minds of Babies.

The Hardworking Ant?

Last week we talked about ants as an example of hard work, so I thought we might look at this article in the Boston Review on ants again.

Network interactions, and the uses of downtime

Among harvester ants—the ants I know best—the important interactions are brief antennal contacts. An ant uses the rate at which it meets other ants to decide what to do. If you have ever watched ants closely, you have seen them touch antennae. When a harvester ant moves from tasks inside the nest to tasks outside, its odor changes, so an ant’s hydrocarbons identify its current task as well as its colony. To test how brief antennal contact influences ant behavior, my colleague Michael Greene and I presented ants with little glass beads coated with the odor of ants who are performing a particular task. Some of the beads smelled like patrollers, the first ants to go out of the nest each morning and travel around the colony’s foraging area. The safe return of the patrollers, at a rate of about ten ants per second, stimulates the first foragers to go out to search for food. When foragers meet beads bearing the hydrocarbons of patrollers, at the correct rate, they leave the nest. This experiment shows that an ant’s rate of brief antennal contact influences what the ant does next.

And what an ant does next may not be much at all. Contrary to another of our beloved myths about ants, told by Aesop, Homer, and the writer of Proverbs 6:6, many ants don’t work very hard. In a large harvester-ant colony, about a third of the ants at any time are hanging around doing nothing. As Mark Twain put it, this “will be a disappointment for the Sunday schools.” Because colony behavior is regulated by a network of interactions, inactivity might have its uses. Idle ants may act as a buffer to dampen the interaction rate when it gets too high. My colleagues and I have found that ants will move around to adjust their interaction rate—either they seek each other out when there are few ants, or they avoid each other when crowded. Sometimes interactions create positive feedback, as when ants go out to forage in response to interactions with foragers bringing food back to the nest. But eventually this could lead ants to search for food when there is none left. The colony may need some inert ants, unlikely to be stimulated by interactions, to buffer the network.

Playing 討論逐字稿

We discussed the article Playing.

Closing statements
—So I was thinking about an argument I had with a friend recently, he was saying our whole economic system should be based on measuring whether people are productive. That’s a system that values work only. And like the system we’re in now is all about valuing work. So I was thinking, why is play devalued? Why is it seen to be less important? Then I was looking at the part in the article where it says that play is integral to egalitarian societies. Is it that because they’re basically equal, they play? or is it because they play, so equality results? So does that mean play as a concept is inimical to authority? Because people who are socially different cannot play together, like, you can’t play with your boss, or teachers are told not to get too close to kids, because that’ll erase the authority. So our system, which is all about dominance and people being different levels of human, and authority, it can’t tolerate play. It has to be about work to maintain the system. So basically, if we want to break capitalism, we have to play more!

—I would like to answer her question from the perspective of economics…from our discussion play still has rules, still has some kind of elements like work, but the difference...and you still can gain/create something new from playing, but for work you can expect a certain kind of gain or return. But for playing, the rule is set by you or your own team, there's no limitation, you are free. You can do what you want to do, and in the way you want to do it. From the perspective of our economy, the authority of society wants to create a kind of certain return. So it was good for society for everyone to work and not to play. Like everyone, when in an agricultural society, if you are playing to--you still can play with cultivating vegetables and rice, but if you are playing, you won't make a schedule, or set a goal of how much you want to cultivate. So if everyone is playing, then society won't have certain kind of food or clothes, so these are my thoughts on why people appreciate working or not playing. It's about the certainty. And authority can control people if they are working and not playing.

Playing

First, two short articles to consider:
Playing Isn’t Just For Young Folks (sorry, I lost the link to this article)
One day I decided to take a break from routine and try a new recipe. The next day at work, when asked what I did on my day off, I responded, “I played”, because that’s what it felt like – having some fun trying something different. To my surprise, that co-worker commented that she felt like she had forgotten how to play. And so began a several-minute discussion between all of us on what “play” means.
One woman described being intrigued by watching her grandson, age three, pour water back and forth from several containers and be absorbed in this play for close to thirty minutes. He was enjoying the wetness, watching what a stream of water looks like, seeing one cup fill up and another empty, learning that smaller cups run over when filled from larger cups. (Of course he also was acquiring skills in co-ordination and spacial processing, but he didn’t know that. He was just enjoying himself.)