I have spent the past month thinking. Thinking not of design, career or of general progression, but of a situation that I have found it difficult to completely comprehend. For someone who believes there is an explanation to everything, not having a single one to rely upon is difficult. It’s interesting to be able to leverage earlier posts not only to formulate new ideas, but to use them as learning opportunities as well. Two of my earlier posts - one regarding the “hierarchy of needs” and the other around “happiness” have found themselves on center stage once again. This story is a new one - in attempting to reach self-actualization, the mind becomes overly concerned with reaching that pinnacle, and virtually ignores everything else. In my situation, I had numerous goals in mind:
- Explore new creative and intellectual territories.
- Explore an alternative career path.
- Invest time in myself. While the goals seem innocuous enough, they have had a very negative impact on my personal life. I am left to wonder - at what cost is the desire for self-actualization worth it? The desire for self-actualization - for me - can also be a channel of escapism. It’s when that channel becomes too open where … When layers of the hierarchy become eroded, and you no longer have the direction that your goals were providing, your reality crashes to the ground. It’s similar to climbing a mountain, realizing that the ‘apex’ has been reached, and then looking back to realize that the mountain is no longer there. How are you going to get down? The aspect that is central to avoiding this dilemma is time. Time is the only thing that is constant through your journey across the hierarchy. It’s the measurement that you need to be focused on to ensure your survival. But is it really just about time? No, it’s about what is going on during that time period that you need to be focused on. Staying with the climbing example for a moment, if you are climbing with a partner and start to ignore what your partner is telling you or what trouble they may be experiencing, you will eventually alienate yourself and your support structure will soon be no more.
- Recording events periodically and then revisiting those events to see if anything has changed, or to identify patterns.
- Not doing so leaves you vulnerable and unaware. You are blind because you are unaware. You need to have a mechanism or approach that provides you with a separate perspective such that you can regain awareness and make conscious decisions. In my situation, I made the error of focusing too intently on the objective vs. the world around me. I used time as a mechanism for keeping track of a schedule and assignment deadlines, but little else. This is where I ultimately failed. Time passes and it’s Priorities will shift, but staying true to one’s values and what is ultimately important to them is … A nuclear reactor is a device in which nuclear chain reactions are initiated, controlled, and sustained at a steady rate. These nuclear reactions generate heat, and this heat is used to power steam turbines, which ultimately generate electricity which is then sent to the grid. The danger that’s inherent in a nuclear reactor is the nuclear reaction itself. When these reactions are well controlled, things are great - when these reactions get out of control, however, the results can be catastrophic. Let’s say that you are put in charge of a new nuclear reactor and have the opportunity to design the monitoring system that will tell you if such a catastrophe is near. Ultimately, you need a single indicator that conveys real danger. What would that indicator look like? Would it be something synonymous with a red-yellow-green indicator? Is that enough? The problem with this technique, of course, is that it doesn’t contain enough information. Once you reach yellow status, how much longer is it until you reach red? And why have you hit yellow in the first place? Okay. Maybe one monitor isn’t enough. Let’s streamline the discussion and go to the far extreme. Let’s say you have monitors in place for every subsystem within the plant. Now you’ll really know what’s going on! Or will you? The sheer number of subsystem monitors will likely overwhelm you and you’ll miss out on the big picture. Of course, there is a compromise - a blend of individual subsystem monitors that align with the top-level monitor. At one level, you’ll know immediately if something is amiss, but you’ll also know where to focus your energy in remedying the problem. In a controlled environment such as a nuclear reactor, it’s fairly predictable when things will go wrong and the monitoring systems are advanced enough where they can catch problems fairly quickly. In one sense, this is obvious - a nuclear reactor is a useful, but dangerous machine and having the proper controls in place is undoubtedly the right thing to do. Ironically enough, implementing a similar monitoring structure to one’s life is rarely considered but the results for long-term damage are perhaps that much greater. The question is - what system do you use? What makes sense? … The most significant use of nuclear reactors is as an energy source for the generation of electrical power (see Nuclear power) and for the power in some ships (see Nuclear marine propulsion). This is usually accomplished by methods that involve using heat from the nuclear reaction to power steam turbines. There are also other less common uses as discussed below. Let’s say that you are put in charge of a new nuclear reactor. Time management. The phrase itself is interesting - how does one manage time? Time
- Recording events periodically and then revisiting those events to see if anything has changed, or to identify patterns.
- Not doing so leaves you vulnerable and unaware. You are blind because you are unaware. You need to have a mechanism or approach that provides you with a separate perspective such that you can regain awareness and make conscious decisions.