LifeDeluxe

Enough

I was going to drop a note about the excellent speech John Grant gave at the Guardian's annual motor industry lunch, along with a nice pic of the man himself. The pic has sadly been shredded by technology, and a slightly longer version of the speech, which was on 'engagement, not selling' can be found here. I was going to say that the speech begged some questions and debate from the floor, but the event isn't set up that way so it never happened

Anyway, in between my thinking about posting and getting round to it, John has also put up this piece entitled 'enough' which really struck a chord with me.

Having recently seemingly had to upgrade just about every piece of tech kit I use, which to be fair isn't a whole heap, I became really aware of a shift in how I felt about it all - it used to be exciting shiny new box happiness, and now it was more a sense of guilt, knowing I will use about 2% of whatever it can do - so much waste, so much stuff I don't need. Maybe it is just a sign of getting old and being more resistant to change than I thought, but I really did feel enough was enough and that I didn't need something slightly shinier, slightly faster or slightly sharper.

As the piece says, "ENOUGH could also be a consumer reaction; the slowing down of replacement cycles, extending the life of a few good things, a creative after market in reconditioning and clever upgrades", which means that Enough could also then possibly be part of a wider or greater desire to recycle/be responsible/sustainable etc - cherish and condition rather than bring and burn every year?

Either way, it opens up a whole host of new markets and product development possibilities.

Shipbuilding

"If you want to build a ship
don't herd people together to collect wood
and don't assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I have been doing a lot of talking about ship buildng recently, and there always seems to be a lot of wood to collect and no one to do it etc, so tripping over this (with requisite beautiful picture) from the Fruits of Imagination was a nice reminder as to how timeless a good quote is.

And how difficult 'teaching' that 'longing' is going to be, and just how crucial if we are to adapt and grow and change from shipbuilders to navigators etc. Okay, taking the metaphor a bit far here, but this is all about showing more than initaitive and actually being interested in sometimes abstract stuff, something  notoriously difficult to distill and pass on.

One solution is for all individuals to take control of their own destiny....endless self improvement/make me more interesting/pimp my horizons is certainly a way forward, as suggested by Russell Davies in his quick guide to being interesting which is lovely and makes me realise how far short I clearly fall....but at least am trying, sort of.

Think I might have added something about doing things for others as a way of broadening horizons etc...volunteering some time, helping out, making the coffee, not drinking it etc but the principle is sound and goes some way to helping define the 'endless immensity of the sea' for myself.