Planning, Procrastination and Life Leeches

The last couple of weeks, there was heavy activity at my home. The day was coming close for the return of my sister-in-law to our hometown in India. I am not a big fan of airports which I disclosed with ample detail in my previous post here. International travel causes a lot of stress to me, with the shopping, packing, weighing bags with no end until the departure of the flight.

My sister-in-law began packing a month and half in advance. She would weigh the bags(which is not suitable for weighing bags) every weekend. However, there would be more shopping every weekend and more items added to the bags. So the contents in the bags would be rearranged and weighed again. I concluded that my sister-in-law is a kind of person who likes to get things done ahead of time and likes to be in control. The lesson I learnt through my international trips, is to postpone packing until the last couple days before the day of journey.

The day of the departure finally arrived. While we were driving to the airport I saw the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me saying 'I was gonna procrastinate today... but I'll wait till tomorrow'. I like bumper stickers messages like that; It was funny and messages like that bring a smile on your face unlike the serious and sensitive religous and political messages. I felt that my sister-in-law should take a cue from the message. But is there a broader lesson to be learnt for my sister-in-law and myself included who like to be in control of every aspects of our lives.

During the senior(final) year of my Bachelors, I was travelling in a train from Kolkata, what was then called Calcutta, to my hometown after a disappointing performance at a job interview. Train rides have left great impressions and memories on me. While I was watching through the cabin window, I saw rows of fields; sugarcane, corn, rice paddy immaculately swaying in the distance. As I watched the fields and electric ploes passby, I thought about my performance and blamed my poor lack of planning and procrastination. I pondered and repented the number of hours I wasted each day instead of practising or reading a book in preparation for the interview.

My friends tried to help me by saying that they didn't do any better either. They always denied doing well in an exam. Even good students deny they did well and that re-assurance was of little effect as I felt they were lying and I could care less if they did any worse than me. The competition was with other students from the entire country and not just a bunch of my classmates. I concluded that I should plan better if I was do good in future for my GRE, GATE and other upcoming competitive exams coming up later that year. A few months later, I got the job offer from my interview in Kolkata.

As I grew older, I did not grow any wiser. There are still ocassions where I blame myself like a guy on deathbed thinking about not having spent quality times with his family. I think most humans fall into that pschological guilt trap. And sometimes life chores can be burdensome, they can be simple but their multitude can be overwhelming. Also the randomness of life can throw something unexpected at you inspite of all the detailed planning.

We live in an age where 24 hours is not enough to do the things we need to do. Each one of us have things to do every day and every month of the year; rent, mortgages, utility bills, credit card statements, automobile maintenance, laundry, home and lawn maintenance, health, life and home insurance, immigration, investments, retirement planning, vacation planning; and responsibilities; kids, spouse, parents, sublings, relatives and friends.

The above items are just the personal tasks. The list expands when we add the tasks from that we have to do at work. In the current world where multi-tasking is not a 'good-to-have' trait but is required, one has to juggle between projects, meetings, scheduling, prioritizing various tasks, follow ups, documenting etc.

All these life leeches(tasks and chores) can leave a perpetual mental burden on us. This overwhelming list can cause us to procrastinate till the last day. Then there are modern inventions; the killers of limited productive time; Internet, TV, Sports, Cell Phones. There is no doubt that these all add value when used optimally and when consumed in moderation. These modern day distractions have caused much unwanted procrastination for many of us.

Over the last couple years of pondering, reading and watching, utilizing many or all of the aforementioned modern day inventions, I did come up with some ideas and tricks that I utilize to accomplish the various tasks. Some of these are not so modern and might need a pen and paper. Neither are these ideas in any form earth shattering(I am fully aware of the limitations of my brain) but they work for me. These ideas and tricks can be found in the concluding post to this article.

Note: The concluding post will be linked to this article later when it is published.

Did the Bee beat the Beatle?

Recently NPR, the much revered Public Radio Station, ran an article titled Bee Vs. Car: Who Gets More Miles Per Gallon?. You can listen to it on the embedded mp3 link below.


The article states that the new VW prototype will be giving a mileage of 170 mpg. I was very much surprised and felt happy that someone out there is working on creating better cars with vastly improved mileage.

The sad part is that NPR would not let the carmaker have their day of glory. I don't think NPR is anti-technology or anti-science. If anything, they are the opposite. One would wonder why they would run such an article under the science section. The only reason I can thing of, is that the creators of the segment thought it was funny. But sometimes, being funny can be out of character for somebody like NPR that’s known for its sincere, thought provoking, serious news content. Also at time the naive joke can do unintended harm to other worthy causes. I know VW has a long way before they can have a successful car on the road with 170mpg and this article will have little impact if the technology advance becomes a reality. Here is a CNET review from the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show. This car can be on the roads by 2013.

So, what is the beef that I have with this article? The article states that VW new car is promising 170 miles per gallon of car fuel gasoline. They think that a Bee beats this car hands down with its 4.7 million miles per gallon of bee fuel i.e., honey. They also had a bee expert supporting their claim who came up with the number for bee mileage - 4,704,280 mpg.

So I did a small math. A bee weighs 80-100 milligrams, lets take the upper end 100 milligrams. Also lets say it carried twice it's weight during the test which is being very liberal. A bee typically carries about 50% of its body weight in the form of pollen during its regular daily job. So a bee carries a weight of 300 milligrams and covers 4.7 million miles on a gallon of honey. With those numbers, the bees takes 1.41 miles to move a ton of weight. Let us compare this with the VW. A car weighs anywhere from 3 to 12 tons; 3 tons being the compact care and 12 tons being the heavy pick up truck. A compact car gives about 30 mpg. So a car not including the passenger, can move a ton of weight to about 90 miles. To me the math is very simple, 1.41 is far less than 90 and the car is the clear winner. There are other problems with this article as well. But I don’t want to list them all out and appear that I am anti-bee. On the contrary, I thank the bees for producing the sweet honey I use in my tea. For all the other views against the article, please view the comments in the NPR site at the end of the article.

What about the unintended harm that this article causes? Consider this; it took decades for the NHTSA fuel economy regulations to enforce fuel economy improvement of 5-10mpg by the carmakers. If a car maker tries and succeeds in making a car that improves the fuel economy from 20-30mpg to about 170-200 mpg, I would give them all kind of support. They are attempting to achieve something far beyond the minimum standards set by the government regulatory bodies. When fuel economy is improved by 8 times, it significantly reduces the current fuel consumption and thereby, provide the fruits of the current cheap fossil fuel we enjoy now to couple more generations. Any endeavor to extend the life of fossil fuel and the benefits we enjoy to future generations needs all the support.

We are in an age where every scienctific view is questioned. Consider this article by USA Today - Is the global warming movement cooling? The problem with the article is not the content but the title itself. Most people read just headlines. They conclude that global warming movement is cooling off and don’t trust any news in support of it adding to the feedback loop. Thanks much also to the conservative political and news media who have already discounted scientific evidence on global warming. They think that green house gas effect is a myth and they drill their way into having their way of life.

Articles like the bee humiliating a car can only cause more people lose interest in scientific and technological advancement. So this is my advice to NPR. Leave the thoughtless, provocative ridicule to someone else (the world has enough of those) and act your normal responsible way. Being serious can be nerdy, but the world needs the nerd to spread the scienfic word out. NPR please be that nerd. You are lot cooler that way.

Mr.Toyoda goes to Washington

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is an american classic movie starring James Stewart. It is about a boy ranger who is appointed to the senate by his state's governor who wants a puppet in that post. James Stewart character named Jefferson Smith(cleverly deduced from Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith) goes to capitol hill and ends up fighting the evil political machinery of US Senate through filibuster process. A detailed review and story of the film can be found here. This fictional movie was released(in 1939) during the great depression era.

Cut to current great recession non-fictional age. Last week, the grandson of the founder and president of Toyota was invited to the hearing of the US senate committee. Here too is a guy not familiar with the DC and it's politics. He comes to DC unwillingly and is asked several uncomfortable questions. Though Mr.Akio Toyoda is no country bumkin, a guy from Japan is as comfortable in the Capitol Hill answering to the Senate committee as Jefferson Smith was answering about his alleged profiting from the land purchase he proposes in his bill. Mr. Toyoda was appointed as President of Toyota less than 9 months ago and is faced with the daunting challenge that his company has ever faced. The similaries are very few, but it made for a good beginning for my post and I could not resist invoking the famous movie.

But getting to the actual point. I loved Toyota for several years. Infact I own a 2007 Corolla and I absolutely love it. It is a great car. I loved the fact that, unlike the US big three car makers, Toyota put reliability, safety and fuel efficiency as the primary goals and it won significant consumer following over the years. Infact they became the number one car seller in 2009 pushing GM to #2. But just within a span of few months from October 2009 to January 2010, the reputation of Toyota went downhill. The stories of the recall have been in the news for some time now. I first heard and read about the recall of Toyota vehicles at my delear during one of my 15K routine maintainance of my Corolla.

If you look at the newspapers they are filled with several articles about Toyota and the mess they are in. Here below you can find some of them that I have read just in February.

Toyota’s Blind Spot dated February 5, 2010.
Twitter Toppled Toyota? dated Wednesday, February 17, 2010.
Toyota Official Says Recall May Not Fully Solve Safety Problem dated February 23, 2010.
Back to Basics for Toyota WSJ op-ed dated FEBRUARY 23, 2010.
Toyota chief blasted by lawmakers despite apology dated 02/24/2010.
Toyota loses rank to Honda
Analysis: Cultures Collide With Toyoda Testimony dated Wednesday, 24 Feb 2010.
'Toyota defense' might rescue jailed Minnesota man dated Thursday Feb 25, 2010.

I spoke to several friends and colleagues. Surprisingly the opinion was divided on the lines of immigration status. Immigrants had the opinion that Toyota is being penalized to make way for the American Big Three to regain share. US Citizens(born and naturalized alike) felt that this is just a beginnging of a lot more recalls, that Toyota is hiding facts and domestic companies should be preferred and incentivized over international firms. (A thing to note is that recent naturalized citizens tend to think like immigrants and citizens naturalized about a decade or long tend to think like citizens.) I dont agree with either of them. I think the above two opinions are prejudiced.

Audi, Ford and GM have had recalls that caused severa damage to the reputation and market share of the makers. Only GM seems to have managed to escape recall crisis with less damage. But what we have now are different times. Audi and Ford had lot of time to fix the faulty vehicles before the actual news of the recalls became widespread by the news dispensing mechanisms-newspapers, TV and Radio of that time. In the current times, news can spread repidly and instantly to almost every corner of the world with Internet and more so with the help of social networks. In the current social networking world, one doesn't have to depend on traditional media to get the news. For eg.:The earthquake in Chile was delivered to me not by the traditional media but through my family and friends way away in India. So politics had nothing to do with the bad publicity that Toyota is getting. It is just the instant news dissemination age that is compounding the trouble for Toyota. The politicians in DC are always late to react and react only to appease their constituencies, vote banks and special interests.

A recent news mentions the call from a southern republican senator who advised the senate hearing committee to tone down on the criticism and political rhetoric against Toyota. It is not surprising given the fact that Toyota has some maufacturing facitlities mostly in the southern states and that it employs about 36,000 people in the maufacturing facilities directly and employs about 166,000 people indirectly through dealerships and suppliers in the U.S. The myth of a naive foreign company in U.S. caught in the storm like a deer in a headlight can be dispensed of when you look at the list of Toyota’s powerful friends in Washington in the linked article dated Mon., Feb. 8, 2010.

Lets get to the other side of the criticism. The criticism that this is not an end of the recalls cannot be either supported or discarded as only time can tell. Leaving speculation to speculators, we can only deal with facts at hand. The slow response of Toyota in responding to the recall and publicly accepting, apologizing for the faults has given some fuel to the critics. But this delay could as well be attributable to a different managerial style-that of a Japanese rather than to Toyota trying to hide facts. It is definitely a failure of US PR wing of Toyota. Despite this debacle, Toyota is still in top three in the recent report card from the independent and widely popular Consumer Reports. In spite of the criticism and bailout from the government, Chrysler dropped to the bottom, and GM held on to it's bottom but one position. Only Ford improved one position better than last year and that position is very far from the top three. So the Big Three are still a far distance away in quality and reliability ratings of foreign makes.

So where did Toyota go wrong. Between the highly reliable period of the 90's and the deadly late 2000's, something went wrong. Before we look up the history, I want to express my own impression of Toyota of that period. My impression is purely based on watching their promotions on TV and talking to people. I felt that Toyota cars were highly reliable, cheap and very good with mileage; infact best in the market. They were the first to bring in Hybrid vehicles with Prius. But if you watched their promos on TV, none of these aspects were highlighted. Take a look at this Toyota Tundra commercial video. More of those can be found here, here and here. Infact Tundra dominated Toyota's commercials, emphasizing power over every other positive side of thier company. Commercials for their flagship Corolla and Camry were far and in between. In fact the cost of these two models fell by a few percetage points during this period. It is as if they were trying to move into a new direction.

I looked at the history of toyota to find who led toyota during the 2000's. The president of Toyota from 2005-June 2009 before Akio Toyoda was Katsuaki Watanabe. His Wikipedia entry will tell you that he was responsible for building a full-size pick-up truck manufacturing plant in San Antonio, Texas U.S.A. It utlimately resulted in a huge loss for Toyota. He also led a rigorous effort to cut cost at every possible oppurtunity, thereby sabotaging their quailty and the Toyota Way. He and his predecessor also rigorously led toyota into nascar. On hindsight the shift from traditional emphasis on quality to quantity and getting to No.1 in a rush is conspicous. But one does not have look at history to get to that conclusion. Mr. Akio Toyoda himself has mentioned that during several press conferences.

What can Mr.Toyoda do now. With toyota death count at 56, the time for action is now. They should be frank and find a fix for all the faulty vehicles and do them quick. It is easier said than done, but that is the only way to do. Redo their commercials on TV around the fixes and reliability and give up their power dream of Tundras. Emphasis on quality and fuel economy(with oil close to $2.75 and expected to rise) will surely bring back the customers. Until then they just to wait out the media damage and not do anything stupid.

I am sure Mr. Toyoda is doing what is best for him and the company of his forefathers including public apologizing and crying. But what can we as customers do about it. Keep a watch for Toyota recalls at autoblog's ultimate toyota recall guide and at Toyota's recall site. Contact your dealer if your vehicle is on the list and get it fixed. While driving on the road, if you see a Toyota approaching you, get out of it's way if you can. I am kidding but watch out if your own toyota has problems with acceleration and braking systems. In case you are stuck in a car with unintended acceleration, here is something you can do and hope for the best.