The Real Reason You Need to Turn Off Your Cell Phone on Airplanes

Newsflash: Keeping your cell phone on during flights won’t make the plane crash. It won’t make the world explode. It won’t cause danger to you or any bystanders. And still it has been prohibited since the early 1990s.

This could change now.

From all I can tell, it looks like the days of cell phone-free flights are numbered: The FCC is considering changing its rules to permit the use of cell phones (and other wireless-data devices) during airline flights. According to the article, there are even companies offering cell service in some parts of the world already.

What a bummer.

The evidence that safety wasn’t the main issue has been pretty convincing for quite some time now. I always figured the real reason there were no cell phones allowed on planes (and wi-fi is still not a standard) was a laudable conspiracy among high-ranking members of the international flight safety agencies. I took them to be sane people who wanted to protect us from our lower selves (and the lower selves of our seat neighbors).

The real reason we need to turn off our phones on planes is the same why we maintain libraries even when no-one reads books anymore: We have a deep-rooted desire for sanctuaries of silence.

In a world of constant noise, chatter, and beeping email inboxes, this desire becomes a necessity.

The real reason we need to turn off our phones on planes is that we need to shut up for a while. To be alone with our thoughts. Our thoughts, and a plastic-wrapped egg-and-tuna sandwich.

Link: The Coming (Carfree) Artistic Revolution

I’ve been holding a driver’s license since 1999, but rarely ever used it. If I’ve driven more than 7.000 kilometers since then I’d be surprised, and this includes 3.000+ kilometres on one single trip to France back in 2000, and another 2.000 kilometres just three weeks ago, from the most-Northern part of Germany all the way down to the South, 30 kilometres from the Austrian border.

The trip was wonderful – but, once again, it also confirmed to me the surprising stupidity of Germany’s favorite hobby.

Sure: Even with a pretty standard car, you can – in theory – travel at 180 km/h on our autobahn. In practice, this only works if there aren’t too many trucks on the road, no general speed limits imposed, no construction sites to stop you, or simply slow-moving traffic. But even then, your driving experience will vary widely, depending on the weather (Rain? Snow? Hail?), lighting (Night? Annoying headlights. Day? Too much sun in your face!), and road conditions. And when all these conditions are perfect, it’s still tiresome and stressful to drive at these speeds for hours. Not to mention the danger of being among thousands of tired, angry or distracted people who are driving at 180 km/h themselves while making salary negotiations on their phones.

That’s why I prefer trains.

On a modern train, I can pee standing up while traveling at 200+ km/h. Excuse my example, but the running smoothness of an ICE high speed train really is astounding. You can read, chat, eat, work, sit at the bar, walk around or, yes, use the bathroom, and you almost won’t notice any movement (or noise) at all. I have a hard time figuring out why anybody would prefer driving on their own, when they can have all this comfort and quietness at a very competitive price.

With this introduction, an interesting article on why L.A. should get rid of the car, how achieving it could spur an artistic revolution, and in which sense all this may already be happening. Be warned: The article is a bit long-winded. But there’s a nice pay-off, including stats like these:

For every 30 years LA continues to spend money on cars, we could build out […] 1,800 miles of subway. This is the equivalent of building a subway under every freeway in LA County (527 miles), The NYC Subway (223 miles), The London Tube (250 miles), The Tokyo Subway (121 miles), Shanghai Metro (287 miles), and Seoul Metropolitan (327 miles) combined.

If you’re an artist and believe that a car is necessary for a happy life, I recommend you to read it, pay close attention, and ask some questions, for example: How much work, money and energy do we dedicate to our cars and how much would be used better for our art?

Mountain Shores: The Lost Episode

The newest episode of the Mountain Shores podcast is here! Accompanied by some interesting background noises (including the clinking of whisky glasses and what might be traffic, a mountain storm, or alien interference), Milo and I met to talk about the importance of limiting how much we have on our plates if we want to produce the goods.

We discuss balancing quality and quantity and growing organically when it comes to blogging. We also briefly reflect on the bite-sized success of our first ever joint course The C.A.K.E. Method – and happily announce that the doors are open now for the last time in 2013.

In order to work closely with you, we will only make ten new spots available. If you’d like to grab one of them, it would be a pleasure to have you! We’re getting this started on the day of the friendly anarchist birthday, so what better time could there be to have some C.A.K.E. with me?

Long Haul Reinvention, Thinking in Public, and the Idle Computer

Over the last few weeks, I was happy to stumble on a few familiar topics on other places around the internet.

To begin with, it looks like James Altucher beats me when it comes to the long haul:

Time it takes to reinvent yourself: five years.

Here’s a description of the five years:

  • Year One: you’re flailing and reading everything and just starting to DO.
  • Year Two: you know who you need to talk to and network with.
  • You’re Doing every day. You finally know what the monopoly board looks like in your new endeavors.
  • Year Three: you’re good enough to start making money. It might not be a living yet.
  • Year Four: you’re making a good living
  • Year Five: you’re making wealth

Sometimes I get frustrated in years 1-4. I say, “why isn’t it happening yet?” and I punch the floor and hurt my hand and throw a coconut on the floor in a weird ritual. That’s okay. Just keep going. Or stop and pick a new field. It doesn’t matter. Eventually you’re dead and then it’s hard to reinvent yourself.

We may be off concerning the exact period of time it takes to reinvent yourself, but it may be that my own guess in How to Change Your Life in 10 Years was a bit conversative. Whether 5 or 10 years though, the take-away point is that any real transition takes a while. When it doesn’t, either of two things might be happening:

  1. We’re looking at an outlier rather than the new norm. Buying into their “secret to success” won’t do a thing for us.
  2. We’re looking at the faux overnight success of someone who put in a lot of effort behind the scenes (or before jumping on the stage). If we want to copy their secret, it would come down to “do your thing and keep your head down”.

[¶]

Next up, Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) on his approach to blogging – which seems to entail experiment as method and looks akin to what I called “thinking in public” recently:

In this case, my system involved publicly experimenting with a variety of writing styles and topics and closely monitoring the reactions of readers. I was honing my writing skills and my understanding of the reading public. I didn’t have a specific goal. I was aiming for “better.”

I reasoned that my system would generate good opportunities for me in ways I couldn’t predict with any precision. That’s what makes it a system and not a goal. I was simply improving my odds that something good would happen. I just didn’t know when it might happen or in what form it would come.

Turns out his blogging ventures lead Adams to writing opportunities at the Wall Street Journal, which later led to a book deal. Yet another example for how the long haul works once you start publishing content online. (And in case you don’t get the book deal, here’s Hugh Howey’s very positive take on self-publishing along with some impressive numbers.)

[¶]

Finally, a sweet idleness-related line in a software review by John Siracusa:

A rule of thumb emerges [for the new Mac OS X Mavericks]: if it doesn’t benefit the user, either immediately or in the future, do it less frequently; if possible, don’t do it at all.

This behavior results from what Siracusa calls the “race to sleep” phenomenon. It refers to a computer trying to get a task done as efficiently as possible in order to go idle afterwards, saving energy and battery life. Efficiency in this sense could mean postponing a task in order to get it done “in batch” with a few others that accumulate over time; or it could mean not doing a task at all if the user won’t notice it anyway (an animation happening in a background window, for example).

To be sure, we’re talking fractions of milliseconds here. But somewhere in there, I guess, is some strange digital poetry to be found – and a metaphor for our own work days: A reminder to work smarter and to do as little as possible, so we can sleep earlier and idle more. If we don’t do that, we may be dumber than our computers already.

Excuse Club

The first rule of Excuse Club is: You must talk about Excuse Club.

Excuse Club is the dark and muddy basement where you lock up your dreams in order to tell yourself that you’ll deal with them later. And while you feel forgotten and abandoned down there, truth is that you’re never really on your own.

An exercise: Imagine yourself as the person you would like to be. I’m sure you’re pretty great as you are, but maybe there are some things you’d like to change. To become an even happier person, maybe. A person that would also bring some good vibes to others. Said cheesier, imagine your “best self”. Not by some arbitrary benchmark, to be sure, but according to your own terms.

Next, imagine some of your friends, family members, co-workers, and acquaintances. And imagine their cheesy “best selves”: There will be artists among them, but also cooks, philosophers, stay-at-home parents, rocket scientists and gardeners, mixed in with the occasional really great accountant. (Their own terms, remember!)

Now compare these people from your imagination to the current state of affairs out there, in the harsh cold light of reality. I bet a sandwich they won’t be exactly what you just had in mind. Look at yourself: You’ll still be wonderful and might even be quite successful, but could it be that something is missing? Some spark? Some weird “thing” in the air?

Where is it?

And where is that person you just envisioned?

The answer is that she’s stuck in Excuse Club. She’s stuck in Excuse Club with all these other people: Your friends, your family members, your co-workers and acquaintances.

And the problem is that she cannot get out. They all cannot get out.

They all cannot get out as long as you just keep fighting in that basement.

They cannot get out as long as you keep making excuses and accepting excuses. As long as you don’t start raising consciousness for this problem.

They all cannot get out until we start have some serious conversation about Excuse Club. Until we acknowledge its existence and start working to find a way out. Because there is a way, as obscure as it may be right now.

This isn’t about reaching perfection. Rather, it’s about understanding that making the first step in the right direction is perfect by itself. Because anywhere is better than that bloody basement full of elephant emperors displaying their new clothes.

If someone’s stuck, don’t just look away. Don’t accept his excuses. Maybe you can give him a hand to find his way out of the basement. And even if you cannot, maybe you’ll gain some insights yourself.

The second rule of Excuse Club is: You must talk about Excuse Club.