Josh Allred's Blog

If we rob the office from a highlighter, most of us don’t feel too badly about that. But then you add minutes to your time card and take coffee without ever replacing it. And on and on and on. Until one day, you’ve realized you have done something you are not proud of. Something not in line with who you are.

At some point, something happens that shakes us that we know we have behaved poorly. What happens is we forget to make decisions along the way because we have already made the justification before. As a result, we are not making a decision each time we steal something.

That’s the danger of routines. You are not actually thinking, you are just following through on a decision previously decided. These decisions send us down paths before we realize this isn’t a path we want to be on.

I know multiple groups that claim to save teens’ lives but don’t actually run programs for them.

Appearances can be deceiving.

What the public thinks and what happens behind the scenes are two different things.

A team of musicologists has finished Beethoven’s 10th symphony. Except the team used AI to teach a machine all of Beethoven’s work to finish the piece.

Remarkable.

Going forward, we are going to continue to see machines outperform humans in every measure. Not just from a technical side but also in creativity.

If your job can be easily written down into a simple set of instructions that means a machine can learn it faster, do it more efficiently with fewer mistakes and won’t ask for bathroom breaks.

But even art isn’t safe from the effects of technology.

The one you are willing to drive to.

The physical boundaries make it unlikely to try every single Indian restaurant in Utah. So, we try something and if it’s our favorite, it gets our endorsement.

It turns out that we do this all the time. Even with automobiles, our world is much smaller than we realize. “Best” just means the distance we are willing to go. In the space that we operate in, we are so limited in what we experience.

No one says it’s time for a new car when things are working. We convince ourselves it’s time for a new vehicle when we have car problems.

We have a tendency to take problems and make them bigger. Creating drama in the process. And it isn’t just with cars. We do this with consumer goods, jobs and relationships. Out with the old and in with the new.

More often than not, we don’t need a new car to solve our problems (inheriting another set in the process). What we need is to recognize the scale of the problem–clarity to what the problem actually is.

You don’t need a new life but likely just need to fix a few things to get back up and running.

Each of us carries an irrational, small view of the world. How could we possibly know everything that is going on at this moment? All the pain and joy everyone is feeling?

Instead, we shrink the world down to a size that we find palpable. Easy to digest. Make shortcuts. Until we make the world too small. Not enough possibilities or opportunities. If someone gets a bigger slice it must mean mine is smaller.

The world is small in the scheme of the universe, and yet, much larger playing field than we tend to operate in.

When I go skiing, there is a difference in the experience when:

1. I have a time I need to be done by.
2. There is an objective (particulary a bigger one) that is at hand.
3. I am just out there with no particular plan.

When I have structure and deadlines there is a need for efficiency. Perhaps, when I even pick up the pace and move a half-step quicker.

When I am just lackadaisical with my time, less gets done.

It’s not a bad thing. We all need unstructured time. Time to let our minds wander, get lost in the mountains, or have leisure. But when we choose to be mindful, there is no question more can be accomplished.

If you don’t like the sound of Radiohead, it doesn’t mean they have a bad sound.

It just doesn’t align with your taste in music. It doesn’t match how you think music should sound.

It might just mean you have bad taste. It might mean you like something more mainstream. Or you simply don’t get the joke.

The internet is so vast. You can discover just about any artist in recorded history. We don’t need to spend our time on those who don’t get what it is we are trying to sell. Move on and find the others.

Do we do this pain to ourselves or is it an outside force?

Is it really the boss’s fault or is it yours for sticking around at a place that doesn’t appreciate you?

Is it the market or economy’s fault or did you make a bad bet?

Is it the emergencies fault or did you not plan for a rainy day?

When we have a more resilient system in place we tend to blame outside forces less. That’s because the pain we feel in this moment stings much less if we planned for it.

Today, when you discover The Beatles, you don’t just get one song but a whole catalog. That’s the magic of recording our history. We all get to benefit from those before us.

This is why you should write a journal or blog each day. Those who care about you will benefit from what you have learned.