Master This Machine » Self, Society, Sustainability.

The sustainability conversation is maturing.

Today on my Twitter feed I came across the article “Sustainability is dead. Long live sustainability” on ZDNet. Dead… really? Over the last few years I’ve seen sustainability conversation increase, rather than decrease. Lately, though, I’ve been turned off by the constant use — overuse, actually — of the word “sustainability” to mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. At the same time, I’ve become more convinced that the systems thinking and design capabilities demanded of sustainability practitioners will only become important. Based on that ZDNet article, I’m certainly not the only person who feels this way.

The sustainability conversation is maturing. Many people continue to talk about “green”-this and “eco”-that, but conscious enterprises are already moving away from words and toward processes that improve their environmental performance. I personally no longer think of sustainability as just being about the environment. In fact, I want for industry to let go of “balancing” social, environmental, and financial factors and embrace business models that create profit as a direct result of improving society and the environment.

Techniques for managing email overload.

For about three months now, I’ve been trying these techniques for managing email overload:

Answer email only at specific times during the day.

During other times, don’t look at your email. Train yourself not to be interrupted by your inbox.

Turn off the email notifications for your email program.

This goes right along with answering email only at specific times during the day. The purpose of a notification is to tell you about something that’s such a high priority that it requires your immediate attention.

When you check your email, answer all of it at once.

Answering everything at once forces you to be brief.

This is the most radical productivity tip that I’ve come across, and it’s also the most difficult to implement. Many of the emails in my inbox aren’t directed to me, so I can read them and quickly file them away. The problem is that the remaining emails usually require me to do some kind of task before I can respond. Writing a letter saying “let me get back to you soon” only promotes email overload in other people’s inboxes, so I try not to do this unless I know my task will take a few days. The approach I’ve adopted so far is a hybrid approach: I do the requested task right then and there if it’s small, or create a to-do if it’s a big task so that I can answer the email later. I’m still refining this approach.

What email overload management approaches work for you?

Biodegradable electronics.

I came across a recent article discussing a new grant to Bristol University’s Dr. Jonathan Rossiter on “biodegradable robotic organisms.” The article gives great context for the value of a biodegradable robot, but I was hoping for more technical details. In particular, I’m wondering how the robot’s electronics will biodegrade. Are we talking about alternatives to silicon… or perhaps something beyond silicon?

Biological computation isn’t new, obviously; just look at our own brains. What would it take, though, to produce biodegradable electronics at industrial scales?

Photo “Pink Delphinium Petals Confetti Biodegradable £10.95 per litre The Wedding of my Dreams” by The Wedding of my dreams, on Flickr.

by Chris Posted on May 6, 2012

Posted in Sustainability | Tagged science | Leave a comment

Focus on two things, done right.

Just like everyone else, I’ve been reading Steve Job’s biography by Walter Isaacson. It’s a fascinating and engaging read that shows both the bright and the dark sides of Steve Jobs. One topic that the book emphasizes repeatedly is Steve Jobs’ push to simplify Apple’s product line and focus the company on just a few things, done right. I’ve been thinking about how focus is important in my own personal life — especially because we all have limited time.

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by Chris Posted on April 16, 2012

Posted in Productivity | Tagged personal growth | 1 Comment

Refactor your work environment.

I’ve recently become a manager of a project to develop one of the Federal Aviation Administration’s major environmental analysis software tools. This project’s been going on for about eight years, and the development team’s using a practice known as agile software development — iterative, lean software development focused on asking what the customer wants, doing a bit of development to suit the customer’s desire, showing the updated software, and repeating. The agile development practice embraces changing software requirements, rather than fighting them — and fighting changing software requirements becomes increasingly difficult to do the larger and longer a project gets.

One important part of agile software development is refactoring: simplifying working computer code so that it does the same thing it already does but is simpler, clearer, easier to maintain, and so on. This prevents code “rot.” As I’ve gone deeper into my study of agile practices, I’ve begun to realize that I could apply the idea of refactoring to my own work environment. Two weeks ago, I gave it a try.

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by Chris Posted on April 2, 2012

Posted in Business, Productivity | Tagged agile, coding | 3 Comments

“Sustainable fashion” is not an oxymoron.

Okay, so I’m not too proud to admit it: I watched “The Devil Wears Prada” some time ago with my girlfriend. I’m not even too proud to admit that I liked it. But during the middle of the movie, Paul Hawken’s statement that “fashion is the deliberate inculcation of obsolescence” suddenly hit me. I thought to myself:

“Okay, I get it. Get a bunch of designers, design a bunch of clothing, drape it on a few models, and go to a few big shows with the sole purpose of obsoleting the bunch of clothes we designed and draped on a few models last year. After we do all that, we’ll do it again next year. Great idea, huh?”

Is this inherently unsustainable? Can sustainable fashion exist?

Well, I dare to claim that sustainable fashion is not only possible but has been happening for many millions of years – it’s just not happening in today’s human society. I can think of no better examples of sustainable fashion than the “clothing” used by some animals in courtship rituals. Male deer spend huge amounts of energy growing antlers only to dump them and grow them back even more elaborately next year. Other animals eat the dumped antlers and make waste, which feeds the soil, which feeds plants, which feed deer, and the cycle repeats. No, the cycle isn’t inherently perfect; many factors affect the stability of an ecosystem, but the point is that there -is- a cycle. With the inputs of solar energy and water, this “fashion cycle” is roughly sustainable.

How can sustainable fashion be an oxymoron if it already exists?

We have to think in systems and cycles. What clothes are made from is important, but life cycle questions should drive material selection: if we want to recycle clothing, we might select different materials than we’d choose if we were going to compost clothes. Stakeholder engagement is even more important: if we design clothing for recycling or composting, then we need to build supply chains between those who wear clothes (almost all of us?) and those who would recycle or compost them (like what’s happening in New York City right now), otherwise this is an empty exercise. People giving away clothing to thrift shops is a great thing; the worst is to landfill clothes.

Like most ecosystem cycles, this industrial cycle wouldn’t be perfect, and many factors would affect its stability. But the point is, there *can be* a cycle. What can we do to establish and perpetuate it?

Photo “Fashion Show” by Dance Photographer – Brendan Lally, on Flickr.

by Chris Posted on February 21, 2012

Posted in Sustainability | Tagged ideas, science, systems | 2 Comments

Managing email overload.

Go right to my post on techniques.

I really wish I remember where I’d seen it, but I recently came across an article that talked about managing email overload. This isn’t a new topic by any means, and the most common piece of advice that the article gave is to check email at specific regular intervals of the day rather than “all the time.” A related piece of advice was to turn off the email notifications for your mail program.

The piece of advice that really stood out to me, though, was to answer every single letter in your inbox when you do check, before moving on to any other task. The article suggested that this helps you to get to the point, be brief, and focus on the task of answering email itself. I’ve been reading email overload management articles for months now and not making any changes, but that unique piece of advice sounded so ridiculous that I had to try it. So how has it been working out so far?

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by Chris Posted on January 24, 2012

Posted in Productivity | Tagged communication | 1 Comment

The National Environmental Policy Act: Back to the future.

In late October, I went down to Duke University to take the course “Implementation of NEPA” at the Nicholas School of the Environment, intended to teach us about the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (which everyone calls NEPA — “NEE-pa”). NEPA introduces itself as an Act to “[t]o create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.” Those words, apart from the gender angle, would be right at home in today’s sustainability dialogue. They directly express an idea that still has yet to catch on broadly: humanity exists in a relationship with nature, rather than as an entity above it. Continue reading →

by Chris Posted on December 17, 2011

Posted in Governance, Leadership, Sustainability | Tagged ethics, science, standards | Leave a comment

Sustainability is about both science and ethics.

Imagine a town that needs a new source of food. Their agriculture experts check out a nearby field and estimate that it could yield up to 100 thousand pounds of food annually for decades — push the yield much higher, and nutrient depletion would crash the yield within a few years.

100 thousand pounds of food per year could feed the following:

100 families eating 1 thousand pounds of food annually
200 families eating 500 pounds annually
50 families eating 400 pounds annually, and 40 families eating 2 thousand pounds annually

200 families eating 500 pounds annually might wish they could all eat more; 50 families eating 400 pounds annually might be more than a bit aggravated at their big-family neighbors eating 2 thousand pounds a year. Actually, there are an unlimited number of ways to distribute 100 thousand pounds of food per year. Or — maybe the town should just push the yield up and give everyone more food, then find another field after a few years? Or, should it use synthetic fertilizers? Both?

Given an unlimited number of options, the question of which is preferable is squarely a question of ethics. Determining the yield is a scientific endeavor, but science won’t give the answer on what to do about it — that’s where people have to express their values. We could extend the above food analogy to a host of issues, from local aquifer depletion to global climate change. I bristle a bit at writings that present only the scientific side or only the ethics side without tying the two together.

Do you think most sustainability discussions aren’t scientifically grounded enough? Or, do you think most discussions need a dose of ethics-based content? Or, both?

Photo “White Flower” by doug88888, on Flickr.

by Chris Posted on October 21, 2011

Posted in Sustainability | Tagged ethics, science | 1 Comment

Answer email only at specific times during the day.

Turn off the email notifications for your email program.

When you check your email, answer all of it at once.

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