Everyone is Replaceable At Work But...

It's been said before that everyone is replaceable at work but is that really the case? With time, everyone is replaceable as the people left behind slowly fill the hole that was left in the project by the person leaving. The size of the hole, however, differs depending on the contribution of the person to said project. I remember this particular instance where it took more than 2 years to fill in the hole of that one person that left - these are the kind of people that a company should work to keep.

Employers must identify these people to insure that they're properly taken care of by the company as loosing them as far reaching consequences.

How long do you think it would take to replace you?

Funny enough, I want my departure to be as seamless as possible. I always want to leave a project at the same state, or better, than when I was there. This is why I spent a lot of time mentoring others in everything that I do as I never want to be in a situation where my departure would leave the project in a bad spot.

Maybe this is the approach everyone should have? Why would you want to leave the project you've spent so much time working on in a bad spot?

We're Dumb!

I recently came across a list of people that were put to death due to being convicted of Witchcraft. When we think about someone being put to death due to Witchcraft we probably think about something that occurred in the 1700s but surprisingly this isn't the case as we've had a Witch put to death as recent as 2020 according to Wikipedia.

"Who knows why we were taught to fear the witches, and not those who burned them alive."

-Unknown

While we have the ability to think we choose to, often blindly, follow other people that does the thinking for us as well as live our lives mostly on habits. When we, blindly, take someone else's thinking as our own we're sometime face with a situation like the Witch-hunt mentioned above where a group of people believe that it's within their rights to prosecute others for, what they believe to be, Witchcraft. 

Thinking is like a muscle that we must exercise in order to be proficient with it. 

The biggest problem that we face as a specie today is that we've created some very smart, but deadly, inventions that are often being controlled by not so smart people. If we think about the Atomic Bomb currently in Putin's possession (and at one point at Trump's disposal) it's not difficult to see that this is an extinction level problem. 

Leaders of the world either forced their way into the role or are voted in but in neither case is "being smart" a requirement and it's essentially the responsibility of the masses to insure the world leaders qualifies for the role. 

Recently, I've been frustrated that some very good people have been influenced in all sorts of extremist ways (think freedom truckers, patriot parties...). If we, in-fact, lived in an tyrannical world I would see these as necessary but what we have today is mostly angry people directing their hate towards good world leaders and they either want to replace them for one of their own or another leader that is, himself, behind a tyrannical scheme.

True freedom comes with a responsibility and that responsibility is for each one of us to educate ourselves from good, trusted, resources rather mamajaba32 on Youtube. I'm fully aware that everyone thinks that they're right but in order to be sure we're right for anything we constantly have to challenge our belief from trusted sources.

I know I've been all over the place with this post yet the bulk of the message is simply this: We're dumb! You can be young and dumb, that's kind of what's expected, but you can't be old and dumb.

Nobody Will Remember You (And That's Okay)

I once said that life was about choosing how to be remembered yet there will come a time when nobody will remember us. Slowly but surely time will forget that we ever existed whether it be shortly after our death or a thousand years in the future.

Out of the billions of people that ever existed only a handful of them are still remembered today. If we think of Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Albert Einstein ... all of those individuals left a mark that will likely be remembered for thousands of more years but there might come a point when history will forget about them too as in order to remember anything we need the ability to carry forward the knowledge from one generation to the next. In the event of a global catastrophe, that would prevent a generation to share its knowledge to the next, this chain would be broken only for history to start anew.

This is "okay" because it simply can't be helped. There's nothing, anyone, can do that will leave a permanent trace into this vanishing thing that we call time. A million years from now, humans may not even be around anymore. 

Sometimes one has to wonder what's the point of all of this? A religious person might say that our existence is some sort of test that will determine where we'll be in our next, eternal, life. I always found it a bit strange that what ever behavior we have in our brief existence on this planet is, somehow, playing such a major role in another, more permanent, state of existence. 

If we, somehow, lost all of our history and started anew it would be interesting to see what kind of religion humans would create for itself. My guess is that the Sun would, once again, reach deity status in much similar ways as our ancestors have... up until a prophet comes along to shake things up.

The Future is Vegetarian

It makes sense for a specie with self-awareness to move away from barbaric origins in favor of a nobler future. We've made a lot of progress in that regard and one of the ways we can further this is by moving away from meat. Animal cruelty aside, it's not difficult to see that we will eventually reach a point when our meat habits will no longer be sustainable. 

Maybe it's my, albeit small, Buddhist side of me speaking but does it really make sense to have our specie consume another for survival? Consuming another specie has been useful to us in the past yet we now have the technology to move away from it. Why not explore these options further?

While the current meat alternatives aren't necessarily the healthier option it's still a step in the right direction.

If we ever reach space age then we will need to make changes to our diet. It wouldn't make sense, for example, to bring cows for long term space travel. 

If we think about it from the perspective that the planet we live on has limited resources and that once we reach space age we will need to find alternatives to meat then why not start looking at alternatives now? We may not need to remove meat from our diet completely, yet, but we should start thinking about revisiting some of our meals.

Manager Vs Leader

Lately I've been finding that I'm an excellent manager but a very poor leader. As a manager, I'm good at coming up with processes and assigning tasks to others but I doubt that other people see me as being inspiring (a quality of a good leader).

Being in a management-ish role, I have more people than ever before looking up to me for answers to their day to day struggles. Sometimes, I share these answers but it doesn't seem to stick and I'm required to repeat myself frequently as a result. My current belief is that, given more leadership capabilities, this wouldn't be as much of a problem

According to the book Launching a Leadership Revolution, by Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward, Leadership effectiveness is determined by three things:

• Character - Doing what you say you're going to do even when nobody is looking (or being trustworthy). 
• Tasks - Ability to accomplish the tasks at hand.
• Relationships - Being able to connect with other people.

Relationship is, perhaps by far, the area I struggle with the most. Making friends has never been one of my strong points. It's not that I'm a bad person it's that I find the entire process of building relationships kind of exhausting. 

It is said that Extroverts are those that gain energy from being around people and that Introverts are those that gain energy being alone... I'm definitely in the later group.

What now?

Relationship is one of the most important qualities to have as a human being. If you don't have relationship skills then your human experience is going to be a lonely one. This flaw of mine is something I absolutely need to solve. How? Re-reading the Launching a Leadership Revolution book might be a great place for me to start.

Wish me luck!