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g & Every Mother Counts
Every Mother Counts was good enough to give Kim and I a shout out today.
Facebook fatigue, we've seen it all before. About 250 years ago.
I have alluded to some significant disruptive innovation work we are doing at g as we set our course for the next 3 - 5 years. I will lay out the work in a future post but an article in today's New York Times speaks to some of it. Check it out here.
We see that as a thinkers, we are using one tool. The detached, analytic approach championed by Galileo and taught from kindergarten to University. And we see the limitations of that approach if it is used all the time. But there were different ways of thinking prior to this and Rousseau, who turns 300 today was clear about the power of them. Rather than externalize, dissect and analyse, the view within is just as valuable. As it relates to happiness for example, he says “nothing external to ourselves, nothing if not ourselves and our own existence.” So happiness in this case is from within not without.
However, today we know too well that the search for happiness appears to be an "out there" activity. The article continues :
"In 2010, two Harvard psychologists, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, performed a study that used an iPhone app to ask volunteers, at random moments, what they were doing and how happy they were. They discovered that we spend most of our lives not thinking about what we are doing at that moment, whether it’s shopping, eating or, in particular, working. No matter how enjoyable or unenjoyable the activity we’re engaged in is, this gift for distraction comes at a psychic cost: “a wandering mind,” they wrote in the journal Science, “is an unhappy mind.
No one seemed to remark on the incongruity of scientists’ using a technology that, in studying their subjects’ inability to focus, interrupted their focus.
The paradox would not have been lost on Rousseau, who believed we were happy only in our original state of nature — before the advent of technology and society. It was not that our thoughts did not yet wander but rather that there simply were no thoughts, wandering or otherwise, knocking about inside our heads. Our soul, “agitated by nothing,” gave itself up entirely to “the sentiment of its present existence without any idea of the future.” Our first ancestors stood Descartes’s axiom on its head: I don’t think, thus I truly am".
Rousseau saw the distractions of theater as a driver of the wandering mind and a source of unhappiness.
"Staged productions representing life, he believed, distracted us from one another, and from ourselves. Theater replaces lived experience with vicarious experience and condemned participants to wander the sea of the non-present. “Nothing appears good or desirable to individuals that the public has not judged to be such,” he observed, “and the only happiness that most men know is to be esteemed happy.” Status updates and emoticons: Rousseau saw it all".
As I reflect on the Facebook phenomenon and talking with our manny Mike who has just come back from a back packing trip through Europe, we discussed the ludicrous situation of travellers who don't know whether to simply experience the awe of sitting in the Colosseum (yes, do that) or rush to update their Facebook status (really?). If we are honest with ourselves, each of us have 4 -5 really good friends we can pour your hearts out to. So who are our other 200 "friends" on Facebook? And what does it say about us that we have to telegraph every waking moment of our lives to a group of near strangers (yes, the guy you met at Uni 20 years ago who has friended you on Facebook is more of a stranger than a friend)? I see Rousseau was right back then and he would be right today. Facebook is the perfect place for the wandering mind and generated from that derives the opposite of happiness.
This then leads me to our amazing gMums and their desire to really meet one another in person. I see they are tapping in to the very thing Rousseau speaks of. Is it possible that Facebook is distracting ourselves from the one thing we truly want and that is to connect with others live and in person?
The article closes with this:
"the Harvard psychologists noted that, after sex, the two activities during which we are most fully in the present are conversation and exercise. Rousseau saw this as well, but forget the treadmill: he lost himself in mountains and valleys and, while walking, conversed with himself. Indeed, “Reveries of the Solitary Walker” is a manifesto on the benefits of wondering while wandering.
At all times, the Harvard psychologists invite us to click onto their Web site, Trackyourhappiness.org, in order to know how happy — or at one with ourselves — we are at any given moment in the day.
Rousseau, though, would say that happiness lies not in clicking, but in being. Bon anniversaire, Jean-Jacques: may our gift to you be recapturing the present you gave us."
A new day and a new office...
We spent Friday afternoon, reworking the office. I am looking forward to getting in there tomorrow and seeing how the space works. I am very excited. Here are some pics of some of the crew at work. Note Kate blowdrying Dodge's hair with a drill.
Today's New York Times had a great piece about how we can rearrange the way we work each day to maximise our effectiveness. Check it out here. If a click away is a bridge too far, here are some excerpts:
Employees generally need to detach from their work and their work space to recharge their internal resources, he says. Options include walking, reading a book in another room or taking the all-important lunch break, which provides both nutritional and cognitive recharging.
It’s shortsighted not to take this time, or for managers to discourage employees from taking it, he says.
Try to take a break before reaching the absolute bottom of your mental barrel, Professor Trougakos says. Symptoms of needing time to recharge include drifting and daydreaming.
There is no need to take a break if you’re on a roll, Professor Trougakos advises. Working over an extended period can be invigorating — if it’s your choice. What drains your energy reserves most is forcing yourself to go on, he says.
So tomorrow we enjoy the new space and test drive this theory.
Making a resource out of waste - one gMum's journey
For the 7 years we have been in the US getting our "g" thing on, I have been so keen to see the home composting / commercial composting worlds get on board with our product.
And then, out of the Twitterverse of all places, emerged Miriam, the Queen of Compost (she's actually a writer by trade by she does great compost). Check out her post here or just read below about her journey into making a very valuable resource out of her kids gDiapers.
Imagine a world where this was the every day. I want to go there. I never thought dirt would make me so excited.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Saving 3000 diapers from the landfill...a gDiaper success story
A few weeks ago, I posted the picture above on my instagram feed and said: From compost to garden in 2 yrs -- saved over 3k diapers from landfill thanks to gDiapers.
Well, Jason, one of the founders of gDiapers contacted me and asked me to share our story with him and so I decided to blog about it here.
I first heard of gDiapers back in 2008, before I was pregnant with my son who is about to turn three. I believe I saw them in a Gaiam catalog at my mother-in-law's house and I immediately was taken by how great they were, since they provided a happy medium between cloth and disposables.
Fast forward to the end of 2008 when I was pregnant with my son, and after a lot of research, I decided that we would go the gDiaper route. My son was born on 07-08-09 and I was petrified to use the diapers at first because it just seemed like the logistics were beyond my capabilities. But we pulled off the proverbial bandaid when he was just 9 days old because his umbilical cord fell off. The first day of use was so easy, I couldn't believe I had ever been even remotely concerned about it (though I should mention that I realized quickly that everyone involved needed to be VERY aware of how to flush a diaper since my husband came home and just plopped on in the toilet upstairs and flushed -- which may or may not have resulted in an overflowing toilet and water raining down through the pot lights in my kitchen below. Oops.) But aside from that small misstep, the gDiapers were super easy to use. However, what I was still concerned about in the back of my head was composting...again, I couldn't wrap my mind around it, so I just avoided it.
After a couple of months of flushing EVERY diaper (which, with a newborn is A LOT of flushes) we realized that our water bill had gone up significantly. So, we decided to start composting. It was fall, and not the idea time to start a compost pile, but we figured it was worth a shot so we just went for it. Our town provides a basic compost bin at a minimal cost, but we knew we wanted the bins to be where the sun could hit them which mean being very close to our driveway and street, based on how our property is set up, so we opted for something a bit more attractive. From that moment on, we composted everything. Kitchen scraps, garden waste, lawn clippings, leaves and gDiapers (the wet ones only, of course) -- if it was compostable, we did everything we could to get it in the bin.
Because we started in the fall, the compost never really had a chance to get to the right temperature before it got covered with snow. It quickly filled up, but surprisingly, every time we thought there was no way we could ever fit anything in the composter again, we would open it up and it would have compacted. Over the winter, we just cleared the top of it of snow (so we could fill it) and went from there...there were a LOT of diapers in there. I will be completely honest. We didn't compost every pee diaper -- if I was out and about, I didn't save them to bring home. But we did flush every poopy diaper.
In the spring, we started to clear out our gardens and added a lot more yard waste which brought the green vs. brown levels back to a more normal level. We just kept doing what we were doing and the compost kept compacting and we kept adding to it and every once in a while my husband would turn it by taking a shovel and moving it over a spot.
(turning the compost)
(first attempt at using the compost, the compost was pretty new...so it wasn't 'gold' yet - here's the layer we put down under the compost from the nursery)
The first time we actually used all of the compost was in the late spring of 2010 - it had not all turned to 'gold', but we were able to use it as the base for our new raised vegetable bed and then we added compost from a local nursery to the top of it. That year, we had a HUGE crop of vegetables.
Over the next year, my son started daycare and unfortunately, though they allowed us to use the gDiapers, they did not save them to compost, so I know that those ended up in the landfill. Since they decompose much faster than paper diapers, I was at least pleased to know that we were doing the best we could.
Our son stopped using gDiapers in the Fall of 2011 because he was potty training and his daycare required pull-ups. At home, he was in underwear. But our daughter was born on October 27, 2011 and so we started the cycle all over again. This spring, we opened up the compost bin and spread out the dirt in our vegetable garden for the second time. We had bought a second compost bin and allowed the original one to sit for an entire year. When we opened up the bin to spread it, it was beautiful, perfect dirt...nothing short of amazing!! And really, totally easy. I know I have waxed on and on about this now for a bazillion words, but really, the effort is minimal and the impact is amazing.
(second compost pile that sat for a year turned into perfect dirt!!)
Our son wore gDiapers for 2.5 years. Averaging around 1900 diapers the first year and then around 1000 for the second year (since he was in daycare two days a week) - that's almost 3000 diapers saved from the landfill by either composting or flushing (the poopy ones). Even with the lack of cooperation from his daycare program, that's still a big impact!!
Fair Dinkum humility?
I just had an epiphany. For all you non-Aussies, beware the humility you may see in us people from the Antipodes. I suspect it is often fraudulent. Because in Australia we have to deal with a very insidious character trait (other than the fact we are all thieves).
We are trapped in an odd fixation about what it means to achieve. It seems we can't delineate between self-confidence and arrogance. So we avoid both and throw up humility. It is the perfect survival strategy against the dreaded Tall Poppy Syndrome (people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their peers.) that has deeply hurt Australia's ability to innovate and compete internationally. We would rather offer a good dose of "humility" than say with pride that we did something great and risk being chopped down (like a tall poppy) by our peers. It is comical watching Olympic champions and successful business people dodging and weaving a genuine compliment. "I was in the right place at the right time", "my opposition wasn't on their game", "we were lucky with timing".
I hate arrogance like anyone but the opposite of that: humility as a way to avoid this syndrome is kind of more twisted really.
Humility from a genuine place is the answer.
