Work Smarter not Harder

 If you read my comments on that last article about people dying in China you understand why the title above. If you survive many unsafe jobs like I did you can choose to Work Smarter Not Harder over time.

For example, I was up in a tree trimming limbs and my friend who was also a Landscaping Contractor said, "hurry up. I want them to pay us today!" Soon after that I tried to go faster with a small chain saw but was working too fast to be safe. So, when I cut a limb it pushed the chain saw down towards my leg (the weight of the limb. So, I switched off the power of the engine but the blade cut through my jeans and into my leg as it stopped. I told my landscaper contractor buddy that we often did jobs as partners with I wouldn't do any tree trimming jobs with him ever again as the blood ran down my leg from the chain saw stopping in my leg on that small chain saw.

another time the same (FRIEND) brought a huge boulder from a quarry the size of a car. I noticed he had welded a hydraulic hoist on the side of his Dump Truck. we were in La Jolla around 1979 when we did this and we had several men there helping us from Mexico that day. I felt I wanted to protect these men as the huge boulder the size of a car hung off the hydraulic hoist my friend had welded to the side of his dump truck. My friend said, "Pull out the struts under the boulder." I knew I could do this really fast hopefully before this hoist might break or something and wanted to protect these men from death or dismemberment. So, I moved really fast and yanked the support out from under the boulder but as i rose up out of there the boulder crashed to the ground in front of me because the hydraulic hoist had broken off the dump Truck. So, I said to my friend: "That's the last bouldering Job I will do with you Lawrence!"

and I kept my word on that.

However, there is more to the story than that. I was following my friend's dump truck from the rock quarry where the large skip loader put the big car sized boulder into his dump truck there at the quarry. So, as we drove from there down Interstate 5 to La Jolla I noticed Archangel Michael was sitting on this boulder. I asked him why he was there. He didn't say anything but I realized that this boulder I had to watch out for.

So, when the crisis was near I knew sort of what to do to save the lives of all of the men working for us.

So, we all lived through this (even when the hydraulic hoist broke off the Dump truck that my friend had welded in place likely the night before or something.

So, the point is: Don't die at your job or get maimed!

"Work Smarter not Harder"

So, you don't die or get maimed  like many do all over the world every day at their jobs. 

Work Smarter NOT Harder

 Since overwork kills more people than anything else I have noticed since 1950 the key is "Working Smarter not harder".

This is sort of a motto of people who go to college by the way. You go to college so that you CAN "work Smarter not harder".

Since the 1950s I noticed overwork kills more people than anything else really whereas I have found personally being out in nature keeps me alive the best when I have time to "Smell the Roses" so to speak.

I remember going to Yellowstone National Park in our motor home then in the 2000s about the time I started this blog with my youngest daughter and my wife. There was a Grizzly bear Siting and people were gathering to see this Grizzly bear. My wife was too scared to take our daughter who was about 8 years old then out to see the Grizzly bear. 

However, I wanted to see this as i had never before seen a Grizzly bear except from a car and there is always a danger one will rip your doors off your car or rip off your hood of your car or break a window to your car. So, if you are out in the open you have to be more careful.

So, I went to see this Grizzly bear in Yellowstone with a lot of other people and the bear was happy eating flowers in a meadow and very peaceful at that time. But, then some idiot got too close so the Ranger supervising all this arrested the man so he wouldn't be killed getting that close to the bear.

And I looked at all this and the Grizzly seemed like a Flower Child out of the 1960s out in nature eating flowers.

So, the point here is: "Work Smarter NOT Harder" because this is the key to a long and happy life.

How does one do this?

I think not working in a big city is the start of all of this where you have more free time like living out int he country somewhere so you have more time to "Smell the Roses" and to stay alive and be happy rather than just working yourself to death under fluorescent lights in an office in a big city where there are no trees to help heal you every day like there are out in the country.

Find a Way to work smarter not harder before you are dead from overwork from ages 20 to 40 years of age.

Nothing kills like working yourself to death.

But then again some people are such workaholics that all they can do is die it seems.

So, maybe you have to let them slowly or quickly kill themselves?

Anyway, I made it to 78 by working smarter not harder. So, if you want to live a long time you need some sort of strategy to do that.

It doesn't happen all by itself because we are not bears in the woods eating flowers for all to see. 

What are two of the most important things if you want to live to a ripe old age? Efficiency and "Work Smarter not harder"

First of all, growing up in the 1950s I watched all sorts of people self destruct through overwork between the ages of 18 and 40 or 50. IN fact so many people I knew  died before 50  that 50 seemed like 70 to me in the 1950s. Most people it seemed were gone by 50 UNLESS they had their health and finances in order. The rest tended to die pretty young.

Because I'm not stupid and my father was valedictorian of his senior high school class, watching everyone die made me afraid too but because I could ask good questions of myself and others I soon realized that the main reason people were dying of working was basically fear and ignorance.

In some ways one of the best things that happened to me was being betrayed by my religion I grew up in. This made me very different in that I realized that all the people I trusted could not be trusted. I realized that all the people I considered like my family were not my family and instead were pretty ignorant instead.

When you realize you cannot trust the people you loved and cared for and you watch them die all around you because they don't go to doctors or overwork until they die at 20, 30 or 40 years of age, what are you going to think?

My realization was: "Adults are pretty crazy and also pretty ignorant." This was a true statement for most people in the 1950s generally speaking. And most people who had lived through the Great Depression and World War II and the Korean War had serious PTSD and were in some ways dysfunctional as adults because of this too.

So, as I watched people die around me from not going to the doctor when they needed it and over working until they died I began to formulate my own plan for potential long term survival.

And at the top of one of my lists was "Efficiency and 'work smarter not harder'.

I looked around me and noticed that people worked 40 years for a gold watch and then died after that pretty soon. I didn't want to do this too. I didn't want to work for other people who stole money from me that I had earned them.

Instead I wanted to run my own businesses instead and have a good life by being very efficient and "Working Smarter not harder".

As a direct result of this kind of thinking I am still alive and relatively healthy at age 76 even though my health forced me to retire at age 50. Recently (the last year) my 50 year old son got Myasthenia Gravis from having Covid and so if he isn't careful he cannot breathe or at least his body will not breathe for him. So, if he is awake he can make himself breathe but if he is asleep he could die. So, like me, at age 50 he is having health problems too even though they are totally different than the heart virus I got at age 50 that forced me to retire too.

But, if I hadn't been very efficient before I was 50 I would be dead now and likely would have died at age 50 when I got sick with a heart virus.

So, I have been now retired 26 years since then because I had already worked on Efficiency and "Working smarter not harder".

Otherwise I would be dead now and likely would have been dead at 50.

So, I'm alive by God's Grace

There is a saying that helps keep people alive even though some don't like it:

"God helps those who help themselves."

Those who are not opportunists are mostly all dead now.

By God's Grace

Unfortunately, the law of "Survival of the Fittest" is always in place no matter what anyone does. So, learning to be a survivor and in my case a "Compassionate Survivor" is everything if you want to go on living past 20 or 30 years of age.

By God's Grace

Work Smarter not Harder

Do you live to work or do you work to live and eat?

This is actually an important question because in many Asian countries especially, people work as slaves for whatever business or company they work for sort of like worker ants until they die somewhere between 20 and 30 years of age from overwork.

I think I like the "rugged individualist" model of the U.S. much better, where you work to start your own business so you can have enough free time where you actually want to be alive to recreate, to have a family and enjoy your family.

This way you are working for yourself and your family and to enjoy your family and vacations but also to serve your clients in the business or businesses you own.

Otherwise, if you live in the first model more prevalent in Asia you work ONLY to serve others until you die from overwork. 

But, if you can choose a free "Rugged individualist" lifestyle like we have available to people who are educated in the U.S. then maybe this will result in a long and happy life!

By God's Grace

Note: Life isn't ever perfect anywhere but if you are self directed and intelligent enough about your choices, life can be almost like living in heaven here on earth for longer and longer periods of your life!

Just remember if you are a victim then that was your choice. IF you don't like the choices you have made then make different ones that will make you happier now and into the future.

Work Smarter not Harder

When the Russian Revolution was overcoming the Soviet Union when it collapsed and created Yeltsin's democracy, the younger people bringing this about used fax machines and early cell phones and the early version of the Internet and emails to communicate to bring this about. Because the older Soviet leadership was not tech savvy then.

Often good things are created by people just one or two steps ahead of the old guard.

The U.S. is weary of terrorist bombinbs like the two 1993

1993 World Trade Center bombing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing‎

Wikipedia

The World Trade Center bombing occurred on February 26, 1993, when a truck ... Yousef arrived illegally in the United States on September 1, 1992, traveling ...

and then 2001:

September 11 attacks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks‎

Wikipedia

From top to bottom, and left to right: the World Trade Center burning; a section ..... site of the collapsed World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Howevever, when people look at the middle East now and Iraq and Afghanistan, what really has been accomplished?

Maybe a trillion or more dollars have been spent with not a lot to show for it by just the United States. The argument could also be made that the response to what happened in 2001 there and our reaction to it helped cause the Great Recession which seriously affected not only the U.S. but also to some degree the whole world.

If you have ever seen any people deal with a completely unbelievable and unexpected crisis, often the first reactions aren't very useful. But, over time, people learn to be more and more efficient at accomplishing what they actually want to happen.

Unfortunately, this is true for the terrorists as much as for Americans and Europe. So, in order to have a country still 50 to 100 years from now we must be very efficient indeed in what comes next.

I see the problem as basically "World View". And a person or groups world view is often formed in various different ways. In some ways we here in the U.S. form our world view from friends, the Internet, TV and movies. However, in many parts of the world people's world views are completely from family and friends and what happens to them. People in many countries never even go to school at all. So, trying to make them think like Americans or even Europeans is not going to be   productive.

So, many times you are dealing with people like they were in the 12th to 14th century. So, we appear to people like this like we are literally from another planet. Because they might not even watch TV or ever go to school where they live (both as boys and girls). Educating people like this is almost impossible. (maybe one or two or 20 or 100 or 1000 but not hundreds of thousands and millions of people.)

Even if you come here to the U.S. regional loyalty often trumps national loyalty. But, at least here we root for football teams and baseball teams rather than getting our rifles out and shooting anyone from another locality that comes near. However, this is often how things are done around the world if you are not here in the U.S.

So now, imagine you are sending in drones to kill these people's relatives. What are those people going to think? They are going to take up arms against the U.S. and that is the problem with what we are doing now. We are UFOS fighting people out of the 12th century in their minds who know only what they know because they haven't had the advantages people here have had here and in Europe for hundreds of years already.

And that is where we stand today. So, what is your strategy for keeping our country the U.S. intact the next 100 to 500 years without stuff getting blown up here by 12th century people from other countries coming here right where we all live? 


Later: Terrorist stuff out of the Middle East has been seriously affecting life here in the U.S. since about World War II. So, we have already dealt with at least 64 years of various levels of terrorism directed at Americans (inside and outside of the U.S) and directly at America. It is not that hard to imagine therefore, various kinds of terrorism out of the middle East still trying to reach Americans and America 25, 50 or even 100 years from now. So, an adaptable long term strategy lasting 25 to 100 years needs to be in place. Because that is what we are now facing in reality.  And, for me, this is a very sobering thought when I consider that we only had to deal with Hitler for about 15 years at most before he was assassinated. However, we had to deal with the Soviet Communists from 1917 until 1990 and be in a cold war with them from about 1945 until 1990.

Work Smarter Not Harder

Work Smarter Not Harder. As any successful person will tell you: it is not what you know but who you know. Of course to be mentally and physically prepared for anything you might want to do in life can be very helpful. However, I have found the most important thing is to be an opportunist. So when a situation arises always be ready to ask that right question or be available so you can be chosen by a Potential friend, a potential lover, a potential employer or whatever you goal might be at that time.

At about age 9 or 10 I realized that there were different kinds of kids going different directions with their lives. At first I was frightened by this realization. However, I soon began to see all the different types of choices that I could make with my life.

I started working at delivering newspapers with my bicycle at age 10 and the same year when I trained the next newspaper boy within 2 years after I moved to the same junior high he went to we became best friends throughout high school. I can remember at age 12 being paid 1 dollar cash per hour to dig a ditch. I worked with 2 friends 8 hours that day. When I got paid my hands were blistered from digging without gloves and skin peeled off in many places as I was paid the 8 dollars. I remember thinking, "That was an awful lot of work and aggravation for 8 dollars. That same year I began working for my father every summer until I was 17 years old.

By the time I was 13 or 14 he gave me 2 dollars and 50 cents per hour, because I had learned enough of the Electrical trade in building houses and warehouses to be worth that to him. So I was happy to be learning so much not only in learning a trade but also to be meeting many tradesmen and business people and learning how awful and strange the real world was for most people. I couldn't talk about this to my mother and grandmother because they were not worldly people and besides it wouldn't have been polite to do this in 1960 to 1965. So I just kept to myself mostly how horrified I felt to be exposed to the insanity of the workaday world at 12 to 17. Because I had worked so hard at jobs from ages 10 to 21 I was so exhausted from working by age 21 I felt I was ready to retire.

However, I also was going to college and my first major was in Computer Data Processing. What this meant was that I was studying working with IBM Computers(There would be no microcomputers or PC's for about 10 years more then in 1968 and 1969.)
So I was working and studying about programming and operating mainframe computers. So the computers and peripheral equipment, for example, would occupy the size of a very large living room or small warehouse and be worth about 1 million dollars at least. So you can see it was very different than now. Also, there was only batch filing then. Random access memory was only a dream then and hadn't been invented yet. Neither had the computer chip made of silicon.

So, First I worked on an IBM 1620 computer that did automatic grading of all multiple choice forms for all the testing done from kindergarten through junior college in the city I grew up in. With this experience I got a job working for Foremost McKesson helping to automate one of their warehouses. After that I worked for a company that did automated accounting for the biggest car dealerships in my state. At that point I was working 7 days a week midnight to noon. However, since I couldn't physically adjust to working a graveyard shift I eventually found I had to stop after I had a car accident from lack of sleep.

I found as the years passed and I married and had a son and then 2 daughters I realized that like my father I preferred to work for myself and own my own business so I owned several businesses.

What is amazing to me looking back is that all the most important events in my life started when I was young in seeking out the right people to hang out with who were going toward college and who had a future. It wasn't that I didn't have other friends that were going in other directions. It was just that I realized that to have the life I wanted there were certain decisions that I had to make. Everyone values different things so it is important to make choices you can live with long term. For if there is any one thing I know for sure it is that: "Don't do anything you can't live with the rest of your life". Because if you do you might take your own life. That is a given!

So if you want to have a life that is worth living, "Work Smarter Not Harder"