Josh Allred's Blog

India has a huge crisis with toilets. With a population of 1.3 billion people, they simply doesn’t have enough of them. Which means most people, particularly in rural areas, end up defecating outside which spreads into the water supply and leads to diseases.

Diarrheal diseases (from poor sanitation) in India leads to over 126,000 deaths every year, making it the 5th leading cause of death in India.

Over the last several years, 30 billion dollars has been poured into building 110 million toilets. So, why do so many toilets still go unused?

Because sometimes people are charged to use them, many don’t have water, some are physically not safe for women and many are just a hole in the ground with some walls put up.

Here’s the lesson:

We design through the lens of our own imagination. Which makes it extremely difficult when we are designing for someone else who lives a completely different life than us.

Who’s it for? What’s it for? These questions must be asked over and over again.

HT Jacqueline Novogratz

In studying the largest objects in the universe (like stars) and the smallest (like quarks), you will find what is true in one scale is not on another.

So the simplest example is gravity. Gravity on earth shows objects falling at the same rate. That is inconsistent in space.

There is an metaphor here:

The friction we have with people often has to do with scale. We are too focused in and lose the big picture. And it can be easy to hang in the clouds while skipping the details too.

Perhaps then, when we approach solving really difficult problems, we should address the scale we are going to use. Do we need to see this from the 30,000 foot view or do we need a microscope?

Not the kind of vacation you are going to take but what you can focus on that will make an impact in this world?

Often, we are not given the time, money or resources to change at a global scale. It is unlikely you will be the one to cure cancer. Bill Gates is probably not going to fund your idea either.

So, we give up.

We shouldn’t though. While changing the whole world is probably out of reach, we get a chance to change a segment of it.

Scale isn’t the problem here. Changing a tiny slice is an incredible endeavor. The problem is consistency. Showing up day after day, that is really powerful.

How many of us are scared to let a dream run a bit more wild? To dare to fly a bit higher?

It’s not over until it is over. If you are not feeling satisfied it is perhaps you are not tapping into your full potential.

You just finished 10 years of medical school, accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and now realize you don’t want to be a doctor, what do you do?

You can’t get your ten years of time, effort, energy and money back. It is gone. You spent it. However…

You get to decide what you want to do next.

Understanding sunk costs, seeing when you have made a wrong decision and are fighting to make a square peg fit in a round hole–that is extremely difficult thing to do. Most of us don’t want to admit we are wrong.

That is why it took Semmelweis 20 years to convince doctors to adopt the practice of washing their hands after it was first introduced.

Change creates friction and inevitably there is a price to pay for it. It might mean uprooting your life. More likely, it is looking in the mirror and admitting, “I made a mistake.”

Mistakes are not a bad thing when dealing with incomplete information. Knowing what you know now you can make a better decision. Sometimes you need to make the journey up the road to realize this is a dead end.

We pose questions like “How did we get here?” and “What happens next?”

Important questions. For sure. Ones that deserve much careful thought.

We also forget that we are the anomaly.

There is no one else like us. Like you.

You are unique beyond measure. There is only one of you in this entire universe. Think about it.

So why be so careless with your actions?

Your actions have consequences, more than what can ever be measured or comprehended.

Who will?

Because when you decide to leave a decisions on the table eventually someone else is going to decide for you.

The environment, more importantly the culture, are just too powerful. Always nudging us to do one thing over another.

It takes effort to be mindful and to decide for yourself. No one is going to do it for you.

Tuned guitars sound so much better than ones out of tune.

Every guitar has to be routinely tuned. It isn’t the default setting for a guitar to stay tuned. You have to make slight turns to the strings as you play.

The more you play, the more you tune.

Musicians are always making slight adjustments again and again and again. You’re not surprised or caught of guard by this. It is expected.

Choose your metaphor here.

I loved this performance from Edward Snowden. Whether you agree with what he did or not in the past, this is the type of guts we need to see more in our culture.

Bravery can be jumping in front of a bullet. But more often than not, it is pushing back against the waive of injustice that is all around us.

Speaking up to voice inequality isn’t a gift. It is a skill. Most people, except perhaps psychopaths, can see when someone is hurting. We talk about when no one is watching, will you do the right thing? But I think it is the other way around.

When everyone is watching will you have the voice to speak up?

“That commute this morning was terrible.”

“The internet is out!”

“I overcooked the chicken.”

We find things to talk about so we can have a shared experience. Often the choice is something negative because it’s easy to spot something that is out of place.

The problem though isn’t to find something to talk about. It is finding something that is worth talking about.

Capturing an audience, telling a story that will change the emotion in the room–that is a skill. Talking about the weather isn’t going to get anyone to re-examine their choices.

Godwin’s Law states that the longer an internet conversation goes the more likely someone will make a comparison to Nazi’s or Hitler.

While not scientifically proven it merited an addition to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2012.

If we were to take someone from Nazi Germany and put them in front of a computer and the internet what do you think they would notice?

It’s an interesting thought experiment. But I think we would be surprised to hear them say how much outrage there is. One reaction after another.

Outrage is nothing new but it might be the drug of choice for 2021.