Entertaining Yourself

We have several friends with young children, and some of them have the rule that their kids may not own battery-operated toys. At some level, this makes sense to me. It seems that most battery-operated toys are noisy, aggravating affairs that drive parents crazy.

However, I don't think this rule of thumb is absolutely right.

One of my favorite toys as a kid included batteries. It was a modular robotics set called Capsela, and I would fully consider getting something similar for a kid.

To me, the "no battery-operated toys" rule is an easier-to-enforce version of a deeper rule: "no passive entertainment".

Often, battery-operated toys are to little kids what television is to adults. They entrance with blinking lights and direct the kids through some pre-defined experience. This passive entertainment is easy. It expects nothing from the viewer (other than the viewing). Of course, it doesn't give a whole lot back in return, but that's to be expected. And what more pleasant way to idle away the hours than to let others entertain us?

In contrast, active enterttainment gives the "viewer" a higher position: the role of "participant". In the domain of toys, wooden blocks inspire the creative juices of kids all the time. Paint sets allow kids to create works of art they couldn't otherwise do. And robotics sets (in my opinion) allow kids to develop mechanical and spatial abilities, something that will come in handy in any endeavor.

Generalizing away from the toys debate, there are lots of activities I pursue that fall somewhere along this spectrum. Here is a (somwhat) sorted list of activities, based on how I perceive them, active to passive.

* Writing (I contribute all of it, and I get clarity of thought in return)

* Reading books (I contribute my imagination and my experience, and I get fulfillment and enlightenment)

* Reading insightful blogs (I contribute my experiences and get newly synthesized ideas in return)

* Television (I contribute empathy for characters and get occasional catharsis)

* Inane time-waster Internet sites like Failblog (I contribute nothing and get only some cheap laughs)

In trying to be happier and more fulfilled, I'm trying to reduce the number of my life's "battery-operated toys".

A Job Well Done

Just last month, Stephanie and I finally took the initiative to make our house more our own by painting the walls. Since we were working in a limited (weekend) time frame, we haven't done all the walls we plan to do, but the main living area is looking better.

We did the painting ourselves. After all, to get things looking right, we had to pick the precise colors we wanted. The supplies were cheap—a couple of rollers, some paintbrushes we already had on hand, and a roll of painter's tape.

But in the process of painting our own walls, we gained more than just the savings of painter's fees.

First off, we felt pride in our accomplishment. Neither of us had painted a room before, and when it was done, it looked pretty good! We were both pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

We also got some satisfaction out of working with our hands. Painting is a very manual task, and therefore something that a lot of knowledge workers wouldn't think about doing. I suspect that manual labor is good for the psyche, and it gave us a chance to use our hands for detailed and constructive work. I certainly felt more alive and energized after the task was completed.

We also got the memories. Whenever we look at those walls, we can fondly reflect on the time we spent painting them just the right color. Since we hadn't painted together before, it was a bonding experience, and we learned a lot about each other as we strove to work together.

All in all, it looks about the same as I suspect it would have had we asked painters to come in and do the work for us. However, to us it appears far better.

Saving Time? For What?

Daylight Saving Time fast approaches. The days are getting longer, especially up in the Northwest.

Of course, Daylight Saving Time doesn't actually create any new daylight, or even save existing daylight. Instead, it moves our schedules so that we get maximum use out of the daylight we have anyway.

DST makes a few assumptions: For example, it assumes that most people don't wake up in time to enjoy a four- or five-o'clock sunrise. (In my experience, this is true.) Second, it assumes that people will stay awake late enough to reap the benefits of the sunlight's extending into the evening hours.

Daylight Saving Time is a neat trick, but it's not magic. I attempt something similar in my own life whenever I try and "save time" on some project. Whether it's hurrying to get through my morning routine, or doing my work in a more efficient way, "saving time" is something I habitually do.

Just like the official "time-saving" plan, I'm not really creating more time in the process. I might better term it "redistributing time". After all, when saving time, I have to be saving it for something else—if I saved time for no purpose, that time would likely go to waste.

But in some sense, I am literally saving time—socking away some of it now so that I can enjoy it later.

As an exercise, try making an "undesirable" list—include everything you'd like to "save time" doing. Basically, things that you would rather spend less time on. For me, this includes:

• Paying bills
• Taking out the kitchen garbage
• Wading through lots of e-mail

Once you've isolated some things on which you want to save some time, plan how you will spend less time on them. Some options:

• Automate the task (online bill-pay, for example)
• Consolidation (taking out all the garbage at once whenever one trash bin is full, to reduce garbage-removal trips)
• Dropping the activity entirely (if the consequences wouldn't be harsh)

These and other tactics can help you save time on the less desirable portions of your life—your imagination's the limit!

What Are They Selling?

Have you ever had a visit from one of those pesky knife salesmen? If they're anything like the ones I've seen, they always seem to have overpriced, inferior merchandise and a hard sell to go with it.

When one of these folks arrives, it is unlikely that he will be received well. Every once in a while, he will happen upon someone with a genuine need for new knives, but this is rare. After all, anyone who has been thinking about how much they would like a new set of knives is either buying it on their own, or doesn't have the money to purchase yet. The goal of a knife salesman is not to find people who need new knives—it is to find ordinary people, then convince them that they need new knives. It's no wonder they're so unpopular—they're trying to create a need so they can make the sale.

On a slightly less obnoxious level, advertisements also peddle desires instead of products. After all, the ultimate goal of advertising is to implant us with needs that we wouldn't otherwise have. In recent years, advertising has taken an almost Freudian turn and focused in on our ids, to the exclusion of reason and logic. With the goal of invoking skewed perceptions of reality, from "my family's safety depends on having this SUV" to "people will finally be friends with me if I drink X brand beer", advertisers do their best to aim low and hit below the belt.

The most pernicious form of this is advertising to young children, who cannot perceive the difference between fact and fiction. Here, the target of the advertising (the kid) doesn't have much money, so the goal is to create in the child a need strong enough that he persistently nags, wheedles or cajoles his parents into buying the latest whatsit. How low can you go?

Modern advertisements, like knife salesmen, are selling the need, not the product. Are you buying?

February Book Roundup

February reading went well—here are the five books I managed to complete in this short month.

The happiness project by Gretchen Rubin

A fascinating tale of a year-long plan to become happier. I particularly enjoyed hearing the personal moments that she shares, especially when she is open enough to describe moments in which she failed at her goals. An inspiring read.

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles J. Wheelan

On the recommendation of a friend, I put this at the front of my "to read" list. It proved worth the effort—Wheelan is a great storyteller and shares what economics has to teach us about the world around us. He carefully describes the delicate problems we face in balancing harsh capitalism and market-destroying protectionism. In my reading, one question kept popping up: should we help the size of a pie (like our global economy) increase at all costs, or try to guarantee that everyone gets some piece of that pie?

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough

A brilliantly conceived book whose time has come. Written by a couple of designers, the narrative centers around what can be done to avoid the incessant debate between accommodating growing human needs and preserving nature's own delicate balance. They propose making things in ways that are actually positive to the environment they inhabit, and they exhibit several case studies, some of actual projects they have done.

Phrases That Sell by Edward W. Werz

As part of my self-improvement quest, I've been investigating the web site of Take Back Your Brain, a site founded around the idea of using the tool of advertising to your own ends, and on your own brain. What a great idea! This book is a reference book that was actually pretty helpful in coming up with some new ideas.

Clouds in a Glass of Beer by Craig F. Bohren

This is the awesomest book I've ever read on atmospheric physics. Though it's on a seemingly arcane topic, he poses and then answers all sorts of interesting questions, from "Why is wet sand darker than dry sand?" to "Why is cars' exhaust so much more visible when they first start than after they've been going for a while?" These are things worth thinking about, and this book really has changed the way I see the world. (Caution: your spouse might not be thrilled when s/he finds you deep in analysis of the steam coming off of cooking food.)

Bucking tradition for efficiency's sake

As a freshman in college, I was introduced through friends to a new keyboard layout, named Dvorak. Its layout resembles the traditional "Qwerty" keyboard, but the positions of the letters are modified to optimize for how people type. (Legend has it that the Qwerty layout was designed to make sure that people typed slowly, so as not to beat up the typewriters' innards with extreme speed.)

I was intrigued, and the idea absorbed me for weeks. The elegance of optimizing the keyboard's layout to suit me seemed genius. And I wondered: should I do it?

This was essentially a tradeoff of time. As for the long term, I knew that I would spend a good portion of the next forty years at a computer. At the same time, I was at college, so I had papers to write and programs to code, both requiring a lot of keyboarding. Learning a new keyboard layout could slow me down a lot in the short term, making it more difficult and time-consuming to finish my coursework.

Life is full of these kinds of compromises. Should you work on the proposal due tomorrow, or spend some strategic time planning a more streamlined business process? Plan a lesson for teaching a course, or devise a better process for planning lessons?

In the end, I decided to stick with my trusty Qwerty skills for a while, though later, when I was keyboarding a lot less (only writing letters home once a week, as a missionary), I made the switch—the short-term cost had gone down enough to make the long-term benefit more appealing. And to this day, I still do most all my typing in the Dvorak layout.

The guiding question should be: is it worth more to you to have your current performance in the short term, or increased performance in the long term?

What You Don't See

I have been frustrated lately at the difference between visible and invisible facets of our lives. For example, having a new Mercedes out front is visible to all your friends and neighbors. A four-hundred dollar monthly payment? Not so visible.

Buying a new house looks the same from the outside whether you're putting three percent down, twenty percent down, or paying in cash—first you don't own a house, then you do. There are important differences between each scenario, but this is not something that is immediately visible to those around you.

Most of the rewards of provident living are of the invisible variety. The great thing about having no debt, for example, is the security and peace of not owing anything to anyone. However, this intangible benefit goes unnoticed by others.

And it seems in vain to try and make the invisible rewards of provident living as visible as their visible brethren—such efforts are likely to be regarded as bad taste and met with bitterness. For example, if you pay off your house and have a "burn the mortgage" party, how many people are going to be thrilled about coming? Can you place in the windshield of your car a sign bearing the words, "Paid for"? (Disclaimer: I have not attempted this, but I suspect it would engender some contempt. If you give this a try, let me know how it goes.)

So all of our material possessions are on display, and bear in mind that choosing the immaterial benefits of living within your means will not get you further in the visible spectrum. So give up on the Joneses.

Would it change our behavior if, when we noticed that a neighbor has a fancy Land Rover, we also saw immediately the monthly payments they're making? If we knew how much maintenance was required by the neighbor's boat? I think it might make us more frugal around the board.