Gleanings of the Week Ending June 2, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

The World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant - Built in the dessert outside Las Vega. When finished it will generate 370 megawatts of electricity on sunny days.

Ultra-efficient Solar - solar cell technology is getting better all the time…and approaching the point of producing electricity more cheaply that fossil fuels

Perspectives on the Geothermal Energy Association Showcase in DC - The US has the greatest installed base of geothermal energy in the world but investors and entrepreneurs are developing elsewhere because of policies/politics

Too Much Vitamin D Can Be as Unhealthy as Too Little, Study Suggests - Based on a quarter million blood tests in Copenhagen.

21st Century Bloodletting Reduces Cardiovascular Risk - a study done of obese people donating blood… with a positive result for them

The 10 Ways to Know Whether Your Job is Meaningful - this is an older post…but I just found it.

Seven Ways to Save on Health Care Costs - Some practical suggestions from Fidelity

Pocket marvels: 40 years of handheld computers - a slide show of history. I was disappointed that they didn’t include the early TI calculators.

The Evolution of Solar Technology - It all started in 1839!

California and American West Top 2012 State Clean Energy Index - 6 states now generate more than 10% of their utility-scale electricity from wind, solar, and geothermal…twice as many as in 2010

Quote of the Day - 03/23/2012

One of the truest pleasures of marriage is solitude. Also the most deeply reassuring. I continued to do my own job…she hers. - John Bayley in Elegy for Iris

~~~~~

I’ve been married for close to 40 years and I find that Bayley’s observation is true for me. It is the ‘alone but not too alone’ aspect of marriage. It is such a pleasure to have solitude without loneliness. These days my husband and I are often in the house together but doing separate activities. We come together periodically for meals or a project…or just because we need some interaction. Neither of us feels obligated to interact more or differently; we are well tuned to each other.

Is this true for all marriages that have been sustained over a long time? Does it make a difference if one or both people are introverts?

Satisfaction and Joy with Life (Quote of the Day - 2/22/2012)

Life is a little work, a little sleep, a little love and it is all over. – Mary Roberts Rhinehart

~~~~~

This quote is somewhat like ‘Life is short. Eat dessert first!’ - using the word ‘little’ and ‘short’ to point out the potential of our life being ‘all over’ relatively quickly in the scheme of things. The underlying message is to enjoy your life all along the way rather than thinking to wait for some future time.

In recent years, more and more people have attained the ability to appear ‘always working’ with the advent of mobile devices that enable work to be accomplished virtually anywhere and anytime. Farmers - or anyone that cares for animals as part of their work - have always been in this mode so there was really only a short interval in history when most people could easily distinguish between their work/not work time.

For many of us, our definition of work is evolving. Having a component of satisfaction and joy in our work is more important than ever because time boxed ‘balance’ is often not possible. In other words - work/life balance is no longer a viable strategy. Instead - a dynamic mix of activities make up our life. We can categorize a snapshot of our current activies in various ways if that helps us decide their relative value for us. Here's a quick way to do some analysis using the color coded 2x2 matrixes at the bottom of this post: 

1. Check to make sure you agree with my color coding; make adjustments as needed.
2. Make a list of activities that are taking the majority of your time. Usually the top 10 or so are the ones to focus on.
3. For each activity - look at it from all the perspectives in the 2x2 blocks below and note any that are 'non-green' 
4. Are there activities that have a lot of red? If there are - find a way to stop doing them or to change them in some way to make them more satisfying.
5. Are there activities that have a lot of yellow? Those may be activities to keep but make sure your motivation for continuing is still great enough to overcome their negative aspects.
6. For activities that are 'green' - good for you. These are keepers!

 

Lessons About Work/Life Issues I Learned from My Grandmother

In honor of a grandmother than would have been 105 years old this month….. 

My grandmother ran the family mill/feed store while I was growing up in the 60s. She had assumed the role after the last of her 9 children started school. The feed store office where she worked accommodated young visitors and I enjoyed at least one day with her every time we visited my grandparents. She was probably the only professional woman that I observed both while she worked and at home during that time period. Here are some things I learned from her: 

• Blend (rather than balance) activities as often as you can. She enjoyed having a grandchild with her at work. The scales for trucks and bags of feed were opportunities for practical learning. There always seemed to be something going on. Sometimes it was just being together and quiet: I read and she continued writing her letter to a faraway daughter. She would get an extra case or two of ‘soda pop’ when the truck came to deliver to the vending machine…and take it home for a family gathering. She brought seeds for vegetables home and delighted in my grandfather’s garden experiments.
• Let people know you have high expectations of them. For grandmother - ‘people’ included children as well as adults. It didn’t take being around her very long to understand the boundaries of acceptable behavior and a very strong desire to live up to her expectations.
• Speak with confidence – reflect the authority you have. She very seldom raised her voice. She assumed that people would do what she told them to do; it worked for children and the people that worked for her. In retrospect, she was a very good ‘situational’ leader; there were times she gave very detailed instructions and other times minimal information - she honed her requests for the individual and her judgment of their abilities was very finely tuned.
• Use the best tool for the task. She actually articulated this axiom in the context of food preparation but she applied it everywhere….and she was constantly looking for new and better tools. If she were alive today, she would be using email rather than snail mail and maybe she’d have created a family social network online.
• Ask for assistance. She knew when to ask for help although most of the time she received assistance before she even asked. She never lifted the sacks of feed herself - sometimes she had to ask one of the men to come from the mill to load up for a customer but most of the time they just appeared to do the job. She told a story on herself about an experience in an airport on the way to Alaska. Evidently she didn’t know exactly where her next gate was and, being unfamiliar with the airport, stopped to read a sign more carefully. Within seconds, someone stopped and asked her if she needed assistance. They probably saw this small lady (just over 5 feet) with white hair staring at the sign…and concluded she needed help. She probably smiled at them and accepted their assistance gratefully even though she was seconds away from figuring it out herself.
• Wear comfortable shoes/clothes. Look professional. The mill/feedstore was not air conditioned and it gets pretty hot in the Oklahoma summer. Grandmother wore light weight, pastel shirtwaist dresses she made for herself (so they fit perfectly) with sandals. She always looked comfortable; she also looked like she owned the place --- which was true.
• Eat wisely. She always took her lunch to the mill - mostly ‘rabbit food’ - and stored the part that needed to be kept cool in a cubby hole in the ‘soda pop’ vending machine that she had discovered. At home, when there were large family gatherings and lots of food, she was always the one that was most choosy about what she ate. She liked a wide variety of food but she was very conscious of the way she needed to eat to feel satisfied and stay about the same weight.

Sometimes we think of our world changing so rapidly that nothing stays relevant for very long. When I make a list like this it helps me realize that my fundamental approach to life may not need to change; it’s the things around the edges that are changing. It’s OK for those edges to be volatile…in fact - I enjoy that kind of challenge.

Note: The dogwood picture reminds me of when my grandmother visited me after I moved to the east coast in the mid-80s. We sat on the patio for a picnic lunch while the dogwood petals wafted down around us.  

Quote of the Day - 1/16/2012

"Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus." - Emerson as quoted by Louisa May Alcott in Moods.

  

Moods are an overlay to our perception of the world. The more we hold moods in check by melding everything into a homogeneous demeanor we can sustain for long periods of time, the more consistent everything becomes. This is often the ‘professional’ behavior that training and workplace metrics encourage. It comes at a cost. We are purposely looking through the same lens…that paints the world the same hue…and only shows what lies in its own focus. It can make life easier for us because we know exactly what to expect of ourselves; it can also help our relationships for the same reason.

It can also be boring and stressful.

Acknowledging a different mood, even slightly, can change the experience of an everyday situation and provide new avenues to address problems. For example, usually Andrea is in a good mood in the morning when she gets to work but one morning she arrives having spilled coffee while driving in and now she is upset, feeling that nothing has started right with the day…she is grumpy. She opens her email and there is, yet another, request for help finding a chart set from a recent review. Usually she replies to these requests with a link to the location. It takes less than 5 minutes to find the location and respond. In her grumpy mood - she realizes this same person has been asking this question pretty frequently and she starts a note with a link to the library and plans to tell the person to ‘find it themselves.’ Fortunately she realizes it will come across as abrupt and rude before she hits ‘send.’ The outcome, in the end, was positive because she wrote up a very simple procedure to find the chart sets and now sends it out when requests come in - just below the specific link to the one requested; the number of requests have gone down because the frequent requesters now understand how to easily find the chart sets themselves.

Keeping moods internal - not showing them outwardly - can be stressful. It is probably healthier than not acknowledging the mood at all since the ‘focus’ for your mood is still visible (i.e. you have not narrowed your perception by only experiencing/acknowledging one mood). Because you restrict yourself from jumping up and down with joy or clomping down the hall with tight fists in frustration, there need to be alternative escapes for the emotion of the mood. Think about what works for you. Physical activity works well for me because it serves to break the thread of activity my mood had created:

• Take 5 deep breaths. Air in through your nose…out through your mouth.
• Walk rapidly to your car…and then back.
• Roll your head clockwise 10 times, counterclockwise 10 times.

Remember - The more intense the mood, the more intense the new perception might be so seek to use the positive aspects of that perception while curbing the actions that could damage relationships.

And - enjoy your life’s “train of moods like a string of beads.”