Sustainable pace

What Is Sustainable Pace?

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:00:04 +0100

Sustainable Pace is an essential part of both Extreme Programming and the Agile Manifesto. In contrast to aspects like Test-Driven Development or Continuous Integration, Sustainable Pace is less known, less formalized, and thus is often perceived as fuzzy or diffuse.

Origins

The concept behind Sustainable Pace had been discussed in the aftermath of the creation of the Agile Manifesto in 2001. The foundation had been established by XP guru Kent Beck in the first edition of "Extreme Programming Explained" (1999), where he suggested working no more than 40 hours a week, and never working overtime a second week in a row. With the "Eight Hour Burn", software craftsman Robert C. Martin focused more on the energy aspect than on time alone, which led Ron Jeffries to call the practice "Sustainable Pace", and not "40 Hour Week".

Finally, one of the principles behind the Agile Manifesto was dedicated to "Sustainable Pace", which can be regarded as the most widely accepted definition:

"Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely."

Later that year, Alistair Cockburn noted the manifesto authors were motivated to discuss Sustainable Pace both because of the project effectiveness and the social responsibility side, with a strong focus on the former.

Effectiveness

Back in the 1920s, Henry Ford proved that productivity is not increased by work time, he found he made the largest profits with labourers working 40 hour weeks. It's interesting to note that most laws, like the EU working time directive (work no longer than 48 hours per week), are not only influenced by social responsibility, but rather productivity concerns. However, as a german study from 2011 suggests, still one in six university graduates works longer than 48 hours.

What happens if software development occurs during overtime? Several studies show a productivity boost in the first week of overtime, with productivity decreasing rapidly and ultimately falling below the productivity level of the 40 hour standard. During overtime, people fail to notice a drop in their cognitive abilities, resulting in mistakes and finally quality degradation. The difference in quality is referred to as "technical debt". Martin Fowler translated the metaphor to software development,

"Just as a business incurs some debt to take advantage of a market opportunity developers may incur technical debt to hit an important deadline."

and Ward Cunningham, who coined the debt metaphor in 1992, elaborated

"Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt."

In system theory, the accumulation of technical debt due to overtime could be described by the "shifting the burden" archetype.

Scheduled overtime, as a main source for technical debt, should be avoided, and if technical debt occurs, it should be addressed as soon as possible, in order to work in a more predictable, more balanced system.

In 2004, Kent Beck revised "Extreme Programming Explained", and replaced the "40 Hour Week" with the concept of "Energized Work":

"Work only as many hours as you can be productive and only as many hours as you can sustain."

This change did not go unnoticed, as Software Kanban guru David J. Anderson described his perception of that paradigm shift. Being influenced by the book "The power of full engagement" by sport scientists Loehr and Schwartz, he describes how his view on large scale software development changed, he no longer regarded it as a marathon, but a series of short sprints, where energy is expended vigourously and restored during pauses. He also mentions favouring rituals over self-discipline.

Concepts that combine both the sprint and the ritual aspects are the Pomodoro Technique and Slack.

Work should not happen at a strictly constant pace, but more dynamically by expending energy and restoring it, making use of rituals.

Well-being

Happiness research teaches us that income and happiness only correlate up to a certain point. There must be other aspects beyond financial success that increase happiness. Bruno Frey introduced the term procedural utility, which states that happiness cannot be achieved directly, it is more like a byproduct. In self-organizing teams, like in Scrum, people feel more competent, related and autonomous, which are three main sources of procedural utility. The New Economics Foundation has also dealt with the findings of happiness research, digesting it into the Five ways to well-being.

Summary

Sustainable Pace is not about taking it easy and going slow. It's just the opposite, you should expend energy vigourously, and regain strength by resting. In the long run, make sure you invest your energy wisely, and set your priorities taking into account the findings of happiness research.

As stated in Bronnie Ware's The Five Regrets Of The Dying, having worked too hard is something especially males regret at the end of their lives. We should not work for the purpose of being successful and happy later on, but focus on well-being now. It should be the measure for success and a starting point for meaningful work.

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Distributed Scrum

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:22:10 +0100

Last night I listened to the latest episode of Software Engineering Radio, "Distributed Scrum", with Rini van Solingen. Having worked on open source projects and having mentored in Google Summer of Code for three years, I've had my share of distributed teams, but I have never done distributed Scrum, so I was interested.

I've heard of Rini van Solingen through Jeff Sutherland's translation of his book "The Power of Scrum". It's not your generic Scrum book, it is novel with a proper narrative. Rini described that a fiction book is better suited at managers as stories appeal more to them than theory. Also, it doesn't focus on the artifacts of Scrum, but on the effects. I haven't read it, but it's supposed to be a quick two hour read.

At the start of the show the host and Rini tried to define what distributed really means. There were different approaches, I agreed with the criteria a distance over 30 meters. It doesn't really matter if you are 30 meters or 3000 kilometers apart, your chance of collaboration is highly diminished beyond a few meters.

Rini argued that this gap can be bridged by lowering the perceived distance. For example he mentioned Sococo, a company that offers virtual offices, where people hook up with their headphones and microphone, and whenever they enter a virtual room, they only hear the people who are also in this very room. You can also put up information radiators like Scrum or Kanban boards in these virtual offices. I would really love to try that.

You also have to take cultural differences into account. I learned this through Google Summer of Code, where some students were rather polite than honest. At that time, I wasn't really aware of this being a cultural thing.

So what did I learn, with respect to Scrum? The focus should be on the people, not the artifacts. Rini even said that he favored having a Scrum board in every location instead of just a single one, so the teams are forced to keep each other up to date. First and foremost, letting the team work things out for themselves seems to be more promising then imposing rules and reglementation.

In the end, face to face time is still crucial according to Rini. I laughed at his quote, that a group of people is not a team unless they got drunk in the same location at the same time. When I think of conferences or code sprints I have been to, this rings a bell. There is no technology yet that can replace sharing a common experience in real life.

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Introducing Mobi Pick

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:12:20 +0100

So far I haven't found a decent datepicker that is responsive even on older smartphones. So I decided to come up with one myself. As it is a datepicker for mobiles, I called it Mobi Pick. I know it's not much of a pun.

Mobi Pick - an Android-style datepicker widget for jQuery Mobile

For the date calculations I used XDate, which made dealing with overflows easy: Imagine setting the picker to May 31th and then navigating a month forward, you would normally land on July 1st instead of June 30th. XDate has these solutions built in, while still having a decent file size of around 3 KB.

As some browsers, like Mobile Safari on iOS5 or the newer Operas, already support the input type date, I wanted a solution that only springs into action if there is no native solution. I used Modernizr to detect if there is native support, and then used yepnope to load the Mobi Pick scripts. I learnt this technique here. You can also add the attributes min and max to the input to specify date constraints.

I've also included translations for six languages.

Feel free to check out the demo and report any issues.

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All the good times that I've wasted having good times

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:56:08 +0100

Back when I was a student, I had been in a band called "The Tempolimits". For all you kids out there, this was before studying sucked. Now everything is over regulated and it appeals more to control freaks than adults. But that's another story. I don't recall how I finally managed to get a degree in computer science, but what I'm more proud of is a weird album of eclectic songs that our band put together between 2005 and 2006. Yes, those were silly times indeed.

I remember we were having a gig at Gebäude Neun in Cologne, when we met Holger Lörsch, singer of the legendary Krautrock band "Unsichtbare Affen" ("Invisible Monkeys"). Apparently he liked us (I guess it was something he ate that night), and came up with the idea of producing an album for us. We told him we didn't have a concept for an album yet, when he squished his cigarette butt and proclaimed: "We'll record a concept album! A concept album without a concept!" Back then it sounded like a marvellous idea.

We had an incredible line-up of musicians: Like drummer Herbert Decker, who not only had played gigs with Can back in the old days, but had a wooden leg from a motorcycle accident, and didn't shy from incorporating this in his act. If you listen closely, you can hear him stomping on the track "Chicken ticketed". Johannes Flünz on stand-up bass had been a regular in several Dixieland Jazz combos since the 1960s, Paulino Balassoni once was in a band that opened for Miles Davis, and let's not even begin to speak about the breathtakingly sexy Monica Schachmann, playing the harp in the Cologne Philharmonics.

Unfortunately, Holger Lörsch disappeared one day. He just stopped showing up. We were pissed. Apparently, he got into some shitty world music band in Brazil, and we never met him again. We had to do the mixes all by ourselves, and what mattered even more, had to cover for all the expenses. Man, what a let down. We were just students back then, no money, nothing. The studio guys were mad at us. But through a weird course of events our accordionist, Simon Spatzenbach, made a fortune on the swiss edition of "Who wants to be a millionaire", and paid our bills just as we were starting to sell our instruments and gear. Thanks Simon, we'll never forget you!

And the record? No surprise, it tanked. Somehow we stopped touring and lost all enthusiasm for our project. All that remains are the files on my hard disk. Until today! Now you can listen to our album "Waiting For The Tempolimits (To Leave)" for the first time in five years. You can also take a look at the accompanying booklet, or take a peek at the website we built back then. I've also uploaded a lot of wacky pictures.

Let me know if you like it. But I guess not. As I said, those were silly times indeed.

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Beyond Tellerrand day two

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:36:53 +0100

The second day of Beyond Tellerrand was started by Des Traynor with a magnificent talk on data visualization. Similar to Vitaly Friedman the day before, his point was to focus on the message and to reach the user. If the user has to process a diagram, it's too complicated. He had some nice diagrams, done wrong and done right. I loved how he removed all the fluff from some example diagrams and came up with probably less aesthetic, but more clear content.

Content was also the topic of Steph Hay's energetic talk. She presented some interesting methods to bring content down to the core information level, without losing personality or it becoming generic. I liked the example of woot, a daily deals site that manages to attract customers not primarily by its products, but the stories told around them.

But Simon Collison's talk was the true highlight of the first session. He reflected on the state of the craft of designing from his own perspective. His humble, zen-like approach felt truly authentic, and his words deeply resonated in me. I loved how he managed to bring his point across by sharing personal stories. Needless to say, the audience loved him.

It must have been something I ate at lunch, but somehow Tomas Caspers talk on accessibility didn't do it for me. His slides, for some reason, consisted of endless pictures of cute animals. I appreciated the absurdity and weirdness of that, and ultimately think that Tomas outwitted all of us by giving us the experience of inaccessibility, thus stressing the importance of accessibility. A misunderstood piece of dadaist art, and I mean that as a genuine compliment.

Dan Rubin's talk was about usability testing. He showed a clever method to do super quick design iterations: Having created a site in Photoshop, he used this as a background image on an HTML body, and just added some form field and links to it. Done! The HTML and stylesheet were dead simple (only some absolute positioning) and allowed him to improve the prototype for each single tester. This really blew my mind.

Jake Archibald's talk about Code Reuse was another tech talk, about having a library's potential users in mind when designing its API's. I was already quite familiar with the content here, so I was able to enjoy Jake's hilarious performance with lots of laugh-out-loud moments, british in-your-face humour at its best.

To me, the general feel of Beyond Tellerrand was that, maybe due to the ultra fast pace of technological evolution, many members of the web community used their talks to reflect upon their work. There were a lot of talks posing the "why" question and promoting core values, maybe in order to define a common ground from where to move on. In short, favoring functionality and content over appearance and fluff, as well as favoring honesty and craftsmanship over ninjas and trends are my key take-away points. Or: Get the basics right!

Overall the quality of the talks has been excellent. Marc Thiele surely has a hand for selecting interesting people who know how to thrill their audiences. Their quality and diversity really made this conference unique. I'll be looking out for next years dates of Beyond Tellerrand.

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Beyond Tellerrand day one

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:44:53 +0100

Day one of Beyond Tellerrand 2011 has been quite impressive. First of all, the location (Capitol-Theater in Düsseldorf) is not what I expected from a conference, as it is normally used for the performing arts. The auditorium had tables with little lamps on them, where you could sit around cozily, and during the talks the lights were dimmed. I feel I was able to immerse myself more into the talks by this setting.

I was also surprised that a lot of talks didn't focus on technical solutions or products, but were more on a meta level. For example, instead of just building an application or a design, Steph Troet showed us techniques how to analyze what problems should be solved in the first place, before implementing a solution. Naomi Atkinson energizing talk was about not only creating a brand for your clients, but also for yourself, and finally becoming who you really want to be. I disliked the word brand here, to me it has some negative connotations, maybe identity would have worked better for me. And Vitaly Friedman (of Smashing Magazine fame) stressed how good design is not about appearance or trends alone, but just the same about function, helping a user to accomplish their goals, while the design is assistive but remains invisible.

But there were also great technical talks, especially the first one by Chris Heilmann, who showed a lot of interesting things going on at Mozilla, the most promising being BrowserID, which is supposed to solve the ongoing problem of easily authenticating on the web. Aaron Gustafson talked about progressive enhancement being only a subset of graceful degradation, stressing that adoption of new technologies should not be postponed. I liked how he addressed ARIA, there was some new info for me here. Then Heiko Behrens gave an overview over mobile strategies with web technologies, like web apps, hybrid apps, interpreted apps. His live coding was impressive, hats off to him.

What I liked most was the absence of omnipresent sponsors, I felt there was a focus on individuals, who shared their passionate opinions. I liked how Chris Heilmann stated the web needed "more honesty, less ninjas", Naomi Atkinson's focus on actualizing your potential, or how Vitaly Friedman argued passionately that design is basically storytelling.

Thanks to Marc Thiele for putting together this conference and assembling a fascinating line-up of speakers! A summary of day two will follow tomorrow.

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Bogor Botanical Gardens

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 11:57:24 +0100

When you're in Indonesia you should reserve some time to visit the Bogor Botanical Gardens on the island of Java. The city of Bogor is about two hours from Jakarta, and its gardens are an oasis of quiet and fresh air.

Here's me in front of some huge shrubbery (the Knights who say Ni would have been proud).

You can walk there for hours! Due to the vast number of trees it's almost completely shady and relatively cool. You can also bring a car inside if you don't want to walk all the way. The entrance fee is ridiculously low, merely Rp10.500, which is less than 1 Euro.

I've uploaded more pictures, you can also comment there if you like.

A home cinema for minimalists

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 11:33:00 +0100

In our home there is no TV. We have thrown it out about five years ago and didn't regret it. But there is one aspect I miss: watching films. We used to watch films on the computer screen, but since we've moved to a bigger apartment there is no appropriate setting that allows this in a comfortable manner.

I thought I had found the solution when acquiring a projector two weeks ago. But the day after having watched the first film in our home cinema, I was having doubts. Don't get me wrong, I was truly impressed what even low price projectors are capable of. But somehow it felt wrong.

I disliked that I had to wire a lot of new cables.
I disliked the idea of having to maintain another device.
I disliked how I needed to tell my daughter not to touch anything.
I disliked the idea of giving money to huge consumer electronics manufacturers.
I disliked that watching films could become a time consuming (and finally less rewarding) habit.
I disliked having to choose from an infinite number of movies via video on demand.
I disliked the idea that having this home cinema would keep me from going out.

The decision had been made, return the projector and get a refund. But what about watching films? I still wanted to do that! The solution was quite obvious: go to the cinema.

I liked the idea of having a clean and minimalist home.
I liked not having another device that could break and drive me mad.
I liked how my daughter can enjoy playing without possibly breaking stuff.
I liked the idea of giving money to the people in my home town.
I liked having less habits and more slack time.
I liked the idea of having only a limited selection of movies.
I liked the idea of sharing an experience with other people in the cinema.

In Bonn we have three great cinemas, Bonner Kinemathek, Rex and Neue Filmbühne (plus the annual silent film festival). From now on, I will refer to each of these cinemas as my home cinema.

Maybe there's a film you want to see? Let me know and I'll tag along.

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Life on Mars

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:09:19 +0100

In October we spent a few weeks in Indonesia. We flew from Frankfurt to Jakarta, with a stopover in Doha, Qatar. At least this was the plan.

I remember falling asleep shortly after we took off in Germany, only to wake up to a pitch black sky. Outer space! How long did I sleep, days, weeks, or even years? Still trying to wrap my head around this I heard the aircraft was getting ready to land. On Mars.

I was able to spot a few lights in the barren landscape of sand and rocks. Settlements? When did that happen? Suddenly the aircraft turned, and my eyes gazed at a giant building in the middle of the desert: Whoa! They really built a space station!

The touchdown was flawless, and I took a deep breath before getting out of the plane, apparently having to face the hostile conditions of Mars without even the most basic space suit. Luckily I was wearing my woolly hat.

With relief we boarded a shuttle that had docked the aircraft. The shuttle took us to Mars space station, a huge, sterile building, devoid of any identity, seemingly detached from time and space.

And it was crowded! Space travellers, from the most remote parts of the galaxy, arriving, departing. Smells beyond wildest fantasies. The weirdest languages imaginable. The most obscure toilet facilities.

I calmed myself down. This must be a dream. But I hyperventilated, and blacked out.

Waking up I found myself in another aircraft. "Coffee or tea"? I shrugged and glanced out of the window. Earth! I sunk back into my chair and opted for tea. We were getting close to Jakarta. What a nightmare.

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Using Kanbanery for my personal Kanban

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:16:01 +0100

Yesterday I did some research on web tools for my personal task management.

Wait a minute. Who in their right mind would need something like this?

The reason is that I'm still on the minimalism trip and want to expand it from possessions (100 thing challenge) to behaviour. I'm not one of the superbusy, but still have possibly too many things going on. I need a tool to help me find out what activities I perform, and identify those that are not worth the while. After this experiment, the tool will be discarded.

First of all, I want a Kanban tool. The main goal is to limit concurrent tasks in order to focus and become more mindful. Kanban's "work in progress" limit matches this requirement perfectly. If I encounter a bottleneck, I know I'm too busy. Then, I want a hosted solution, nothing I would have to maintain. And of course, it would have to be for free. Yes, I know I'm cheap.

There are a million of these tools out there! If it would have been free, I would have gone for Jira and Greenhopper, but so I checked three solutions, VersionOne, Kanbanery and Pivotal Tracker.

I ended up with Kanbanery, because it allows customizations while still having a very clean interface. The free plan comes with a single Kanban board. You can create as many columns as you want (and label them), and also introduce a WIP limit for each column. You can add stories, put them into colour-coded categories, and also create subtasks. You can create templates for recurring projects. That's all I need! But another upside is Kanbanery's free Android app.

Are you using a tool for personal task management? Which one? Let's discuss on Google Plus as I'm too lazy to maintain comments here.

Agile traffic - All's well that honks well

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:56:10 +0200

In October I've spent about 24 hours on the roads of Jakarta. At first I was annoyed, as the traffic was seemingly not moving at all, but slowly I myself was deeply moved by the subtle, graceful and yet effective way in which Indonesians manage to get from A to B. While in German traffic every tiny aspect is regulated (signs galore), Indonesian traffic is a great example of agility at its best. I'm not saying Indonesian traffic is superior to German traffic, it's just more agile, it has less overhead and regulates itself.

(Of course there are upsides to regulations, for example security aspects. In Indonesia you have a lot of inadequately equipped vehicles, and also reckless behaviour like mobile phone usage. I don't think this is something that should be left to the traffic participants alone. I think of that as a framework, like Scrum in agile software development).

A typical Indonesian road is a strip of tar of varying width, surrounded by a ditch where vendors are offering fruit and food in tiny stalls. There is no sidewalk. Lines marking lane borders are rare, so sometimes a single lane is used by up to five vehicles, slow buses on the outer left (Indonesians drive on the left), normal vehicles next, and motorcycles in between. Yes, it's pretty crowded. These dynamic lanes seem to have a life of their own, they form and are abandoned organically. There is no comfort zone, or if there is one, it's thinner than the paper (or laptop) I'm writing on. If there is space, it is used.

In Germany, every car and its inhabitants are highly insured, and rules determine what behaviour is acceptable. In my opinion these factors contribute to careless behaviour and even road rage. First, apart from your health, you don't have a lot to lose, any damage is covered. Regulation takes responsibility away from individuals, when a light is green or if there's a zebra crossing, you just go. Any (involuntary) violation of traffic rules is potentially harmful.

In Indonesia, insurances are not common. There are traffic regulations, but they are regarded more as recommendations, and function as additions to common sense. People appear to act responsibly and take care of each other, despite the competitive setting with lots of vehicles on narrow roads. There is more communication among the traffic participants. People signal by hand, and if traffic is really stuck, locals suddenly operate as traffic wardens, directing traffic by signalling and whistling. People pay them a few Rupiah as they pass.

Honking

Allow me to close with my favourite form of in-traffic communication, honking. While in Germany honking is mostly utilized during outbursts of road rage, it has developed it into an art form in Indonesia. There are several kinds of honks the most common one being a single, casual honk. Its subtlety is outstanding, it's like breathing. It's achieved by a minimal turn of the wrist, and seems to be performed effortlessly by any driver.

I like to refer to it as the existential honk, it signals that the vehicle is part of the traffic. It's a mistake to assume that drivers can see you. Motorbikes often carry crates and boxes which make them look like trucks from behind. There are buses where broken rear view mirrors have been replaced by tiny purse mirrors. You have to make yourself heard.

The double or multiple honk is also performed casually, but its nature is more imperative. It's utilized mostly in negotiations during lane changes and on intersections. Every vehicle seems to be in slow, yet continuous motion. The multiple honk is also used to express discontent with the behaviour of other vehicles, often targeted at taxis, the fastest four-wheeler on Indonesian roads. However, it is hardly ever emotionally charged.

The long, aggressive honk, by far the most common in Germany, also exists in Indonesia, but it is rarely heard. It wouldn't help anyway.

Imagine the sound spectrum created by dozens of vehicles. You feel like you're part of a Shakespeare play, adapted for trucks, cars and motorbikes. It feels like real dialogue, with a lot of dynamics, while German honking is more discussion or monologue.

In Indonesia, honking is poetry.

Management 3.0 (2011, Jurgen Appelo)

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 16:44:32 +0200

There has been a lot of buzz around Jurgen Appelo's book Management 3.0 lately. Subtitled "Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders", Appelo introduces a model for agile management, applying the findings of complexity thinking to social systems, like agile software developing teams.

First of all, Appelo makes the point that we usually confuse the terms complex and complicated. He explains complex as foremost unpredictable, while complicated merely means hard to understand. However, our minds work in a linear fashion, in terms of cause and effect. This leads to reductionism, solving complex issues by dividing them into parts, and addressing these independently, leading to insufficient global solutions.

Appelo introduces his Structure-Behaviour Model of systems, which depicts complexity and complicatedness on two axes. There are three levels of predictability (order, complex and chaotic), and two levels of understandability (simple and complicated). Appelo lists some examples for the six combinations, like a clock being an ordered, complicated system, or a double pendulum being a simple, chaotic system.

In contrast to existing models (like "simplify everything"), Appelo suggests a two-dimensional model, with simplification (making things better understandable) in contrast to linearization (making behaviour more predictable). He highlights the danger of mistaking linearisation for simplification, and employs the findings of complexity science instead, like modelling by taking advantage of complex adaptive systems.

Based on this premise, Appelo introduces the Management 3.0 philosophy, consisting of six pillars: Energise people, empower teams, align constraints, develop competence, grow structure and improve everything. He describes every aspect with great care and detail, making it impossible to sum up. I especially liked how he approaches each subject scientifically, citing appropriate prior work and putting his own work in perspective.

For me, it's a truly remarkable book with great relevance in day-to-day work. For example, we have used his technique of do it yourself team values for three months now, which led to some good communication and helped us define some common ground. I should blog some more about our experiments, it was really insightful.

All in all, the book feels consistent, perfectly well-researched, and aware of its context. It's closing with a great quote, "all models are wrong, but some are useful": There is no single best solution, no best practice. It leads Appelo to defining the term agile as "staying successful in ever-changing environments", which sums it up perfectly for my money.

Easily the best book I have read this year! Despite having entered the 100 thing challenge, this is a book I'm keeping for now. But of course, you can borrow it, just let me know.

The heist

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:39:08 +0200

This is a confession. First of all, I'm not a criminal. I'm an ethical guy, a respected member of my community. But last week, I took part in a robbery. Here's the whole story.

This was a chance you only get once in a lifetime: Strolling innocently down the road, my curiosity took the better of me, and led me to a glamourous apartment. The latest consumer electronics! A vintage writing desk! A mesmerizing handcrafted guitar! These people seemed to have it all.

I stopped and breathed deeply. A bell rang. That's what I want too! My hands were shaking. Could I go through with this? I looked up, gazing into the void, then focusing. I could. I would finally be rich.

Obviously, I couldn't do it by myself. There was my girl, but I needed professionals. I needed henchmen. I checked 'h' in the yellow pages, nothing. Then my contacts, and after talking to a guy in the back of some alley, I was recommended two guys from Palestine. Could I trust them? Hell, I would.

A car, I needed a car. A big one, with lots of space for the goods. Down at the gas station, they had great vans. I rented one for the date in question, and cleverly gave a false identity. I was unstoppable.

Now for a driver. I phoned some of the usual suspects, and finally ended up with a shady semi-greek woman. Told me she had experience, so I was glad to have her on board. Also had a drivers license, she said casually.

I went home in ecstasy. But suddenly I stopped, shivering. What am I doing here?! But it was too late to go back now. The point of no return. Do or die. I calmed myself down with a shave, and lay down.

The day came. Dawn. I barely slept, my hands were getting sweaty, my head spinning. Syncing clocks with my girl, ready to go. I had it all figured out, down to the minute. Off we went.

The greek woman and I put on false mustaches, got the van, and boy, she drove like mad. But arriving at the scene, the Palestinians were early! They had already started. Doomed...doomed. But to my surprise, things went smooth. Too smooth for my taste! But people didn't even take notice. I realized, our disguises must have worked.

In and out we went, the Palestinians carrying twice their body-weight, without turning a hair. These guys were pros! And they were playing on my team. I felt like a god. Then, even ahead of time, we were ready to go. Off to Cuba! The greek woman stepped on it, and we howled as if it was the end of the world. We did it!

(This is how I experienced our move from Vorgebirggstraße to Adolfstraße. I'm eternally grateful to everyone involved. Unfortunately, having entered the 100 thing challenge earlier, the joke was on me.)

Grow your own

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:22:00 +0200

I'm still in the 100 thing challenge, and despite helping me to declutter our home, it has made me aware of few very cool items I own and definitely want to keep. One beloved item is my sprouting set.

As I'm living in an urban environment, it's not always easy to sustain an affordable supply of organic food. We have decided to subscribe to an excellent vegetable delivery service, but it only delivers once a week. In order to have a constant supply of fresh and organic food, I have adopted the sprouting habit. I'm not at all good with plants, and I will never be a farmer. Still, I'm proud that I can grow my own food!

My sprouting set consists of three glasses, a metal rack that allows the glasses to stand both normally and upside down, and a terra cotta bowl. Each glass has a screw on lid, which contains a metal mesh, so you can add and remove water easily.

You can create your own set, buy a cheap plastic one, or go with me and buy the expert Eschenfelder Sprossen Set. I'm very happy with it and considering the prices of grown sprouts you'll make your money back in no time. Especially the terra cotta bowl is useful, as the metal rack stands solidly in it and you will not have any spillage of excess water.

How to sprout

First, put some seeds into the empty glass (I usually add just as many as it takes to fill the bottom of the glass). Then add some water, until the glass is half full, then put it on the metal rack and wait a few hours. I usually do this in the evening, so the seeds have 10 hours of soaking time.

The next day, I remove the water, add some fresh water and swirl it around a little, and then again remove all the water. Then the glass is placed upside down onto the metal rack, so all water can pour out of the glass into the bowl. You should repeat the swirling procedure twice a day, as it keeps your sprouts from molding.

I mainly use three types of sprouts, alfalfa, mung beans and fenugreek. I buy Davert seeds, and they never disappoint, a high rate of seeds actually sprout, which takes between three to five days. Usually I eat them in salads or on buttered breads. I like the delicateness and texture of alfalfa, the nutritiousness of mung beans, and the spicyness of fenugreek.

And the best part: even my three year old daughter loves alfalfa, in fact, she can't get enough of it. And she also loves to watch them grow and help with the procedure. What more could any parent want

Happiness (Bruno S. Frey)

nospam@example.com (Christoph Baudson) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:17:28 +0200

Bruno Frey is a professor of Economics at the University of Zurich, and this book, subtitled "A revolution in economics", compiles the results of several papers he (co-)authored. In a nutshell, he argues that conventional economic theory assumes people always make rational choices in order to maximize their utility, while happiness research claims that people's choices are significantly less rational, and utility doesn't correspond to well-being.

Utility

In traditional economics, utility is typically modelled as income, as it comes in numbers and is thus convenient to use. But maximizing utility does not maximize happiness, because people quickly adapt to an increased level of income, and it only makes them happier up to a certain point. Beyond that, money will likely be more of a burden. Relative income is much more important, for example people are happy with a raise until they realize their collegues are earning more.

Still, people assume a higher income will make them happier than it actually will, for example, people are willing to commute significantly longer in a job that pays more. However, the cost for commuting ultimately exceeds the benefits of a higher salary. Frey describes such behaviour as mispredicting utility.

People seem to overestimate the impact of goods or actions with extrinsic attributes, such as possessions, fame or more bluntly, watching TV, while underestimating those with intrinsic attributes, like skills, relatedness or autonomy. People also quickly adapt to the former, like getting used to a flatscreen TV, while having a conversation with a friend is something we truly enjoy over and over again.

As the traditional interpretation seems to be inadequate, Frey suggests to replace utility with experienced utility.

Measuring experienced utility

A major drawback of experienced utility is that it's hard to measure. The most common instruments are surveys, where people report their subjective well-being in questionnaires. As this is a quite simple way to gather data, there is lots of it around. Unfortunately, you can hardly compare the results of people's reports, as person A's happy might be person B's normal.

Furthermore, an unsolved issue is causality. Are high incomes making people happy, or are happy people simply making more money? This may sound like a trivial objection, however simple correlation is not enough to proof what is cause and what effect.

Procedural utility

Frey also mentions procedural utility, another aspect of experienced utility. Here, the outcome is not the sole factor for utility, the process is also considered. For example, employees who are granted participation rights and are working in processes experienced as fair, report significantly higher happiness than people under worse conditions, even if they earn the same wages.

I can relate to the approach of procedural utility, as I experience happiness not as much as a goal, but more like the side effect of a good life. It sparks up here and there quite unpredictably. This is also what the paradox of hedonism teaches us, pleasure cannot be acquired directly, it can only be acquired indirectly.

A revolution?

Despite having studied some economics I can hardly judge how revolutionary these findings really are. Still, to me, they are, especially the notion that I'm most likely unable to predict what makes me happy is somehow liberating. It takes the sting out of any goals. I'm not meaning to abandon them all, but reaching them should be in balance with enjoying the way there, taking a look what's around, and being more playful and open.

As Bill Hicks said, it's just a ride.

As I'm still on the 100 thing challenge, this book is up for grabs. I propose a contest! If you want it, just hit the retweet button below and you are in. I will send this book free of charge to the winner, who will be drawn in one week, on July 19th.
Update: The winner is @schneefreundin. Congratulations!