Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

A block of attention

All around us the air quality in Colorado has been impacted by several wildfires. Just walking outside the door makes everything smell like a campfire. Having lived in Colorado for over a decade, I have some basis for comparison to say that this is by far the longest period of this type of smoke filled horizon I have ever seen. The Waldo Canyon fire (2012) came and went much quicker than whatever is happening now. 

Anyway… 

One of the things that happened yesterday was that I spent a lot of time thinking about nonaligned manufacturing techniques within certain industries. Some markets are driven by similar goods with similar inputs, but some production output differences exist. Nothing really separates one output from another except quality and process. One example of this market condition seemed to stand out to me as highly irregular. I first focused on and thought about how some markets face conditions where the same initial goods being put into the product result in dramatically different outcomes for the producers. One such market is the American bourbon market. Some producers face extreme scarcity in the market with products that barely make it to the shelves and other products exist that are really good at taking up shelf space. A lot of other examples exist, but the American bourbon market is one where relatively similar inputs exist and the outcomes create extreme price stratification in the marketplace. Some outputs are worth 10x their relatively similar counterparts. I started to wonder if this was a failure of certain producers or a case of exceptulaism within the market. I wondered about the hypothesis, “How could some producers be so much better at the craft of making American bourbon than other producers?” All of that questioning centered around my thoughts on nonaligned manufacturing techniques within certain industries could create such different demand within the market. You would think that every producer would attempt to align to the highest possible outcome, but that does not appear to be the case. 

Yeah I’m not sure why I spent so much time wondering about that yesterday, but that is what happened and it was a good old fashion pondering session. Obviously, I’m supposed to be spending my time thinking deeply about the intersection of technology and modernity. That was not really within that intersection based wheelhouse, but it was something that caught a block of my attention. Really deep and focused thought has to be at the forefront of the things I’m trying to actively achieve on a daily basis. Being able to focus on something with a relentless passion and focus is very important. Going all in to focus on one thing to conduct research and write is an important part of the process. Generally I have found that nibbling on concepts along the way does not produce meaningful results.

A 99-day publishing streak continues…


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