Wednesday in the Woods · episode 015
Inspiration through Accumulation
3:06youtube · Licensio, LLC
description
If you happen to have a toddler accessible, try picking them up with one hand. On average, they weigh about as much as a cubic foot of good snowball snow. ⛄❄️
But while the stork delivers a whole child in one swoop, that cubic foot of snow falls as individual flakes or crystals. Each of one of those crystal flakes weighs around one-millionth of a gram. To put things in context, if you build a snowman with three body segments, each one-foot radius, you’re talking between 10 to 20 billion individual snowflakes.
So how does Mother Nature do it? Well, put simply, one flake at a time.
We might not quite have the same resources as her, but we can at least learn from the message. We too can cover a lot of ground and throw some serious weight.
Even when it seems impossible, you can break your problem down into units of production and focus on flow. Customer transactions? Lines of code? Model metrics? Actual snowballs? The principle applies equally.
They may come one at a time, but they add up. The key is to focus on your environment. While you normally don’t want your staff working between -10C and 0C with high relative humidity, you get the picture - focus on creating an environment where those little flakes fall fast and hard and constantly.
Before you know it, you’ll be making snow angels.
Hope 2022 has been kind and warm to you and yours so far.
See you on next week’s Wednesday in the Woods!
PS: if you like snow flakes but don't have your own microscope or macro lenses, check out this link for some stunning science! https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-formation-of-snow-crystals
transcript
~275 words · showhide
from the human-edited captions published with the video. timestamps jump to that point in the video.
- 0:30
Good morning and welcome to the first episode of Wednesday in the Woods in 2022. It's actually Sunday, Sunday in the Snow. And I thought it would be a good time as we start the year to go over a very simple message: snow, all this stuff right. If you've ever shoveled the driveway or a yard, you know how much it weighs. It accumulates And people talk about the 1% rule, right, compounding. The thing that's incredible about snow is that it accumulates linearly.
- 1:05
Every piece of snow weighs, every little snowflake weighs a practically infinitesimal amount. As far as you and I are concerned, it weighs nothing, literally nothing from our perspective. But together, over time, through persistence, Mother Nature sure manages to put down quite a bit of mass. And you wouldn't know unless you get up close here and look at each unit, each little crystal and structure. But together, they sure do accomplish a lot right?
- 1:41
So many of our natural resources, like our water come from snow. And it all happens one little piece at a time. So, as you start your year and you think about your goals, you may want to cover the Sierra Madres with a couple of feet, or you might just want to, let's say, put together a program and start executing in the new year. But, either way, start small and keep it up, just like Mother Nature does, because persistence, step by step, flake by flake, can add up to quite a bit.
- 2:19
So, hope that message helps you get your year going on the right step. Enjoy your week.
- 2:33
[forest sounds]