Caution: Time sink ahead

When I was working, my TV viewing used to average well under one hour per day (I think). An occasional sitcom (The Office or The Apprentice), 30-minutes of BBC World News, and a few PBS travel shows (Rick Steves' Europe, GlobeTrekker) now and then. There were also many days when we wouldn’t turn on the TV at all. And I was very diligent about turning off the TV so that I could make time for books.

Now that I don’t have to go to work, I am seeing a steady increase in my TV viewing. It is so easy to give in when there is the illusion that there’s plenty of time. There are always interesting (and interesting-sounding) TV shows on. The trick (for me) is in not even turning on the TV so that I don’t fritter away my time instead of using it for all the things I was hoping to do if only I had more time.

A quick web search reveals that this fact is well known and studied: There is increased TV viewing in the retirement community. When you stop working, keep this in mind and keep from reaching for the remote.

Project: No more IC engines

Now that I have been vegetating and traveling for 2.5 months, I am just starting to look at things that others are working on, the type of projects that sound interesting.

I read this article in the paper edition of Wired Magazine today, and was very impressed with what Shai Agassi is attempting to do. I don’t know if his plan is even feasible, but the sheer audacity of the idea is what impressed me the most. Imagine doing away from Internal Combustion engines altogether. No wonder Shimon Peres called his guy's phone directly.

Agassi dealt with the battery issue by simply swatting it away. Previous approaches relied on a traditional manufacturing formula: We make the cars, you buy them. Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of "smart" charge spots. Drivers could plug in anywhere, anytime, and would subscribe to a specific plan—unlimited miles, a maximum number of miles each month, or pay as you go—all for less than the equivalent cost for gas.

A couple of quotes from the article that resonated:

Shimon Peres: My great advantage is that I'm ignorant. My own mentor was David Ben-Gurion. He used to say all experts are experts for things that did happen. There are no experts for things that may happen.

They were joining the cause, not just the company. "Once you have a mission," Agassi told me over dinner one night last winter, "you can't go back to having a job."

Be sure to check out the article.

Addendum: When I read the following quote by Buckminster Fuller, I immediately thought of this article.

"To build a new system you don't compete with the old one, you build a new system that makes the old one obsolete."

Crowdsourcing and whales

I am currently reading Jeff Howe’s book Crowdsourcing. (Definition: outsourcing tasks to an undefined large group of people.) I find the concept both fascinating as well as very promising. While reading the book, it occurred to me that I had actually witnessed an example of crowdsourcing just last week, while I was on a cruise in Alaska.

There were over 2000 passengers and a good number of them had excellent (foot-long) telephoto cameras. From the ship's decks, they’d shoot photos of whales. The ship staff included a naturalist and in a presentation she explained that each whale’s tail had unique designs (its finger-print of sorts). She then asked that anyone who had managed to get decent photos of a whale’s tail consider uploading those photos to a marine database in Seattle. The volunteers and professionals there would then use scanning software as well as the date and time of sighting to track the movement of the whale herds worldwide.

After returning home, I looked it up and sure enough, even USA Today had run an article about this back in May 2008.
(http://www.whaleshark.org/)

The reason I mention crowdsourcing in a retirement blog is that I believe that just a few years down the road, retirement won’t be the step change it is today, a phase of not working after a 9-to-5 corporate job. Rather, people will slowly transition into participating in ever more ‘crowdsourced’ projects and activities, some of which may augment their incomes and many that won’t. A much more diffused version of retirement.

Books to read (while in India)

In our current thinking, my wife and I plan to move our base to India starting in 2009. Since neither of us is working and we don't own a home here in the US, there isn't that much reason for us to continue to live in the U.S. So, after nearly 2 decades here, we are hoping to try out living in India.

In light of that, everything for us these days falls into one of two categories -- before-India or post-move. Where we travel to, what we buy, which restaurant we choose are all governed by this.

When it comes to reading books, the ones that I feel might be easier to get in India, I am saving to read later. I decided that I would maintain my list of books to read in India here, just in case anyone else might be interested.

* Maximum City
* Unaccustomed Earth
* A Million Mutinies Now
* Shashi Tharoor (Riot or The Elephant, the Tiger & the Cell Phone )
* The White Tiger (Adiga)
* Rushdie (perhaps The Enchantress of Florence)
* Q&A by Vikas Swarup

Timid variations

In the same vein as my previous post, here’s something I found in Paul Theroux’ book “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.” Again, it reminded me of how I was starting to feel at times about my day job towards the end.

“I can tell that I am growing old,” says the narrator in Borges’s story “The Congress.” One unmistakable sign is the fact that I find novelty neither interesting nor surprising, perhaps because I see nothing essentially new in it – it’s little more than timid variations on what’s already been.”

Goals that didn't bring happiness

This morning, I read something that the famed Japanese author, Haruki Murakami said. He was referring to the time in the 90’s when Japan (he felt) sort of lost its way after dominating the world market with cameras, cars, and TV sets. Referring to the Japanese people’s beliefs as a whole, he said:

“But hard work didn’t bring us to a better place. We found that money is not the answer. We had our goals. We achieved them, but the achievement didn’t bring us happiness.”

I read that and thought it was perfect. If anyone asked me why I wasn’t working anymore, I could paraphrase that.

The Last Cup of Coffee on the Last Day at Work

An Imagined Rendezvous
Sunday, June 15, 2008

On my last Friday afternoon at work
I walked alone to the office coffee club
The same walk that I’d made hundreds of times

I was anticipating the whole ritual
Dropping my quarter into the Folgers can that doubled as the coin-box
shaking those NJoy canisters of sugar and creamer
and then pouring
and stirring slowly
for one last time.

And then the first sip, the most pleasurable one.
That night, I planned to retire my long-serving coffee mug.

At the lounge, of all people, I ran into him.
Hey, I heard you were let go, he said
I was probably imagining the glee in his voice
It was actually a mutual letting go, but I nodded yes.

He had never thought too highly of me
Our disrespect was mutual.
Because of that we were overly courteous to each other.
He took over and started to pour the coffee for me
robbing me of my ritual.

So do you have something lined up already? he asked.
I am not looking for a job, I said.
He paused and drank in that information.
But, but what will you do with all the time you will have? he asked,
his tone betraying confused curiosity.
Well, I haven’t read a single Rimbaud or a Baudelaire, I said.
He looked up from pouring the coffee,
question marks in his eyes.

He had always suspected that I was slightly off
and now I was confirming it.
My response had made him visibly uneasy.

Okay, I’ll see you around, he said
though we both knew we wouldn’t.

And with our coffee mugs full,
we both walked away
each smugly sympathetic of the other.