Aug Insights

The Care of Our Time

Benjamin Franklin once challenged a friend,  “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”  You’ll love your time more once you realize how much of it you are wasting. Start buying back some of the only resource you can’t buy more of by considering whether the routines that dominate your life may have seduced you into believing that you actually know where your time really goes. 

This short article from HBR shares a simple technique that used for a few minutes each day may ultimately save you months, perhaps years. The late great Peter Drucker also recommended this exercise for senior leaders in his wonderful book “The Effective Executive”.  Once you try it, you’ll realize the truth of another great adage, slightly modified; if you don’t measure it, you won’t manage it.

Days of Disruption (No. 4): The Truly World Wide Web, at last

Most of us have heard of Moore’s law, named after legendary Intel founder Gordon Moore who predicted, correctly, decades ago that microprocessor speeds would double every 18 months and be accompanied by a halving of costs.  Equally impressive is the progress that has been made in the speed of communication between computers.   In recent years, this standard has gone from 3G to 4G (which brought us smartphones and e-commerce) and soon, 5G.

In a recent blog posting Peter Diamandis (founder of the XPrize foundation) writes of the jump from 3G to 4G that  “if you thought that was big, think again.  With plans for wide-scale deployment in 2020, 5G will be 100X faster than 4G, and 10X faster than your average broadband connection.”   Perhaps more important, 5G will enable the entire population of the world to be connected to the internet; a truly world wide web, at last. 

“Diamandis predicts  “And as the population of online users doubles, we’re about to witness perhaps the most historic acceleration of progress and technological innovation known to man.”  Learn more about the implications for you and your business in his short blog posting “Connecting  8 billion by 2024.   

Econ Recon:

Even the Bear Must Eat:   Before the fall of the Soviet Union, the London Times described it as a “third world country with first world weapons.”  Thirty years later, how much has really changed?  Those who fear Russia’s aggressiveness and military might under Putin would do well to remember that an economy is required to “feed the bear.” 

When one looks closely at Russia, it is not only a demographic basket case with early mortality and a plummeting birth rate, it has a very tiny economy in both absolute and relative terms compared to the US.   Brian Beaulieu of ITR economics shares an eye-opening graphic of the relative sizes of national economies and offers ten reasons why there is no equivalency between Russia and the US.    It may change your view of the dynamic between the two countries.