Alki Delichatsios

This captivating book by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner explains how the majority of huge projects (buildings, road infrastructure, nuclear plants…) statistically run overtime and over budget. So what are the tools to avoid that? My two favroite takeaways:

• Think Slowly, Act Fast. (Think Slow during the Design/Planning phase, Act Fast during the Production phase)
• Think and build in “legos”.

The authors provide fun anecdotes about projects like the Empire State Building and the Guggenheim in Bilbao (and less successful like the California High Speed Rail and the Big Dig in Boston…).

Many of the ideas are consistent with Design Thinking principles: make sure you really understand the context/purpose of the project before moving forward.

And though Flyvbjerg’s process seems contradictory to Agile methods, they actually do resonate on the idea of “build and test and iterate” - but Flyvbjerg emphasizes to do this with prototypes during the planning phase, and not during production phase!

A fun read, and useful even for personal projects like home renovations. :) Thanks Sue for the suggestion.

I was looking forward to reading this book – and while there were a few captivating chapters and I largely agreed with Vaclav Smil’s conclusion on “what we should do moving forward”, I found most parts of the book quite boring and provided too much unnecessary detail.

Smil’s conclusion - which is not super sexy as he states - is to prioritize two highly effective changes:

1. Reduce food waste (which today represents 1/3 of food generated).
2. Eat less meat in affluent countries.

YES and YES.

Here are some other points/graphs that I found interesting:

Population growth over time. It’s important to remind ourselves of some key population figures:

• Humans appeared on Earth 300,000 years ago.
• Approx. 100,000 years ago the human population was 100,000.
• 12,000 years ago, the human population grew to 2-4 million. This is also the start of domestication of plants and animals.
• 2,000 years ago, the population grew to 150-300m, and in the 19th century we hit 1 billion.
• Today we are at 8 billion. And the world population is estimated to peak at 10 billion in about 50 years.

We could not achieve this population growth without domestication.

• Today in the world, there are 1.5 billion cattle, just under 1 billion pigs, and 33 billion chicken! Cattle were initially domesticated for muscle power, and then used as food. However, they are not nearly as energy efficient as pigs and chicken. And of course, they have the highest carbon footprint because of their burp-causing methane emissions. Interestingly enough, beef consumption has gone done over the past 50 years, and chicken consumption has increased significantly.

• People in China and India were essentially vegetarian 50 years ago. That has changed drastically over the past 20 years.

Ok fine, there were some fascinating parts. And I might go back and refer to some of the data and graphs provided.

So go ahead and check it out - but just be warned that some parts will be better for treating insomnia than maintaining your attention.

Not sure where to start. I’m tearing up already. I haven’t watched Olympics ice skating so intensely in over 25 years - not since the days of Oksana, Nancy, Michelle & Tara… but I watched it all this year. Even ice dancing which I used to avoid because I found it boring that they didn’t do jumps. But it is SO GOOD. And understanding the backstories of Piper & Paul, Madison & Evan and Laurence & Guillaume (thank you Glitter and Gold!) adds a whole new dimension to the experience.

A lot has changed - music with lyrics, backflips are allowed, the insane scoring system. It’s fun to follow these evolutions, and once you do start understanding the details, you get as heated as the commentators and start yelling at the TV as those little checked boxes turn yellow or red.

But above all, it’s the almost visceral emotional experience that come from watching these athletes – these athletes that achieve incredible physical feats - but also understanding that these athletes are human and dealing with much more than physical prowess. It’s hugely mental. And emotional. Stress and pressure.

But in all forms, whether they skate flawlessly or they lose their flow and make mistake after mistake, there is still so much beauty.

Because it is human.

Thank you to all the skaters for reminding us of the beauty of humanity. <3

With the book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin brings us into the fascinating world of building video games. Zevin pulls back the curtain onto a universe that combines creativity, vulnerability and technical prowess – a universe that I realize I knew very little about. It reminded me of a board game festival I went to recently in Rennes – a festival with hundreds of game-makers and visitors coming from all over France. Another universe full of ferver and creativity and magic — one that I hardly realized existed…

The book is a fun read, the plot seems a bit contrived at times, but again, what I enjoyed the most was discovering the passion and creative process of video-game makers. And it’s also fun that a lot of the story takes place in Cambridge, MA – between MIT and Harvard, which strikes a personal chord. :)