Maggie's Farm

Then there is the expansion of office politics, in general.  I realize all offices have politics.  I'm not complaining about this.  But politics are just a way of people getting what they desire by making other people do and say what they want.  In business, where the goal should be positive value creation, politics just gets in the way.  So why do people think politics are meaningful?  Only because it's all they've ever known.  The aggressive growth of politics in my office is, to me, a sign of a mature business shifting into decline.  Which is sad to say, but that has usually been my experience.
  Office issues are why I entered therapy in the last year.  I realized I'd gotten my physical stature back into decent working order by going to the gym.  Work was weighing heavily on me.  Why not get my mental health back into decent working order?  Politics of all sorts bother me much less now.  It's not my game, so why bother playing?  Just focus on what you can control, don't worry about what you can't control.  I can't let the long slow decline of the office cause me to enter a downward spiral.

Second, there is data.  I've posted about this a few times.  Then I read an article which added context to my views.  In the last two years, we've created 90% of the data we currently store and use.  There is no sign this is slowing down.  Data, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.  Putting too much trust in it to solve problems and expecting it to do things it can't do is a problem.  The reliance on data is growing not only because we're learning how to use it better, but mostly because there is more and more of it.  But what does that do?  Open the doors to fraudulent activity.  It's rather stunning how much money is lost, just in advertising alone, to fraud.  Other businesses suffer as well.  Not worried about it?  It costs you money, because all that fraud adds costs to purchase prices.  And most of the fraud is literally data.  In other words, they are driven by bots and malware of various forms.  Personally, that's a good thing.  Makes a good portion of my job meaningful.  Data may very much be a double-edged sword, but there are some huge upsides to its proper use as I'll get to shortly.

 Finally, there is everyday wear and tear.  I am not a holiday person.  I don't tend to get excited and happy at Christmas.  I don't know why, but this year I am.  Partially, it's realizing this year has been a slog, and the wind down for the new cycle is actually exciting.  In addition, I've been dealing with a large number of people who are struggling with the holidays for the first time.  Normally they are the happy ones.  It's a role reversal in which I find myself interacting with folks who are somber.  I'm not happy because they are so down, I'm happy because I'm not down at all.  In years past, being around happy people made the holidays worthwhile, so I hope I can improve their point of view.
This year I've begun to realize the world is on the verge of some great things.  Hans Rosling's well-known video 200 Countries in 200 Years shows the progress we've made.  As Rudiger Dornbusch once said "In Economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, then they happen faster than you thought they could."  I'm not suggesting we're going to have a recession, or that we won't.  We're certainly overdue (though I'd argue we never left the last one) in a standard sense.  I'm not making predictions of this sort. 
  However, I do think we are on the verge of some great times and massive advancement.  If we think in terms of first world versus third world issues, you can see the difference virtually every day.  Someone recently told me "be happy for what you have, you're not living in a third world nation, be grateful."  Certainly, First World Problems are nothing to cry about within the grand scheme of universal life.  At the end of the day, though, my problems are my problems, and I have to deal with them and need to be concerned with them.  A little bit of complaining isn't bad or wrong.  On the other hand, I realize dealing effectively with my problems offers tremendous upside.  Recognizing this may be what leads us toward better things.  We improve because we expect to improve, so we work hard for our progress.  It's a bit of a tautology, it's also a bit of circular reasoning.  But it's been working for me, so I suspect there is something to this mindset.  After all, nobility isn't about being superior to others, it's being superior to your former self.

  As a gift for Christmas, I (shhh) purchased the family an Amazon Echo.  We won't use it until it arrives in January (Amazon backlog).  I'm intrigued to see what it capable of doing besides wake us up, play music or tell the weather.  I plan to link my heating and cooling to it, and let machine learning do the rest.  I'll see if I can hook my lights up to it, so I can turn off any room simply by asking.  Where devices like this go from here, I don't know, but the prospects are exciting.  Maybe next year I'll just order my groceries on the Echo and they will appear on my doorstep, or I'll request my dry cleaner pick up my clothes.  A small sample what I believe will be many good things on the horizon.
  I failed to mention is that the Echo is data.  Lots of data.  Using it, creating it, accessing it, storing it, managing it.  90% was created in the last 2 years?  Another 90% may be created by the end of 2017 as machine learning takes off.  Let's be positive about the future of this data, but let's not believe that it's going to solve all our problems.  It will create many interesting new opportunities, though.

  So we take the good with the bad, we add perspective, context and make the best of our situations.  None of us are perfect people living in a perfect world, but there's no reason to feel bad about imperfections for very long.  No year is ever perfect, either.  Some years are better than others.  Which is why I look forward to 2017, because I think it will be a particularly good year.  I hope it will be for all our readers, and the world in general. 

  Hope everyone here at Maggie's has a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.