Tag Archives: progress

The luxury of convenience

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I had a chuckle today in the grocery store. A woman rushed by me, grabbed an item of of the shelf and keep going almost in a single motion. She was obviously in a hurry. She was also on her cell phone and the part of the conversation I caught was, …”Seriously, I wish our damn phones were still connected to our walls with a wire.” The irony of her saying this on a very portable phone wasn’t lost on me.

I then went to Starbucks and sat for a few minutes having a breakfast sandwich. Our local store is newly renovated and it both looks and feels really nice. They expanded the serving area without taking much seating away, and the order pickup area has a large section with the alphabet in 3 rows to help people find their order by name much faster. However, when I went to dispense my garbage I realized that the only recycling and disposal bins were at the back of the store next to the washrooms. This is not remotely convenient.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, when we were doing our main floor renovation last year, we knew we wanted a coffee station on the small counter next to our fridge. It wasn’t part of the original plan, but I requested a sink be added to the counter. I thought about how after the coffee has been pressed on our espresso machine, we would want to rinse out the portafilter, and it would be really inconvenient to walk this over to our kitchen sink about 15 feet away, while it dripped coffee. Between making coffees and rinsing out the wet cat food containers for our cat, there are days I use this sink more than the main kitchen sink.

 On a completely different topic, Zoom calls can be great to bring people together, when geography can be challenging, but it can also be a complete time suck with added opportunities for meetings to happen, when a memo or email would be faster. A memo instead of a Zoom call can free up a lot of time that a meeting can steal from the efficiency of a more productive day.

There’s no doubt that having a mobile phone provides considerable convenience compared to phones with a spiral cord connected to it, in a fixed location. But we can’t deny the distraction that these smart phones have created, taking time away from us. So their convenience comes with a fair bit of inconvenience as well. 

I think people often spend a lot of time thinking about how one thing can be convenient and through a lack of design thinking forget about how other things also need to be convenient. It is true that sometimes one convenience needs to be a sacrificed, and not everything can be equally as convenient. The new Starbucks layout is definitely more convenient for the employees, but they really missed the mark, making it less convenient for customers. That’s a luxury that shouldn’t be missed. 

Slowly by slowly

In an email correspondence, my cousin, Lee, reminded me of a post I wrote in China, Slowly by Slowly. In the post, I quoted Rob Giebitz who “first heard this phrase from our Chinese production manager“. Rob went on to say:

“Those odd sounding phrases that often amuse the native English speaker, those Chinglish phrases, may offer a key to understanding our host culture. “Slowly by slowly” may carry some meaning absent from the more familiar “little by little” or “step by step” that a native English speaker would use. “Little” indicates size or quantity, “step” implies distance; “slowly” brings our attention to the element of time.”

As I mentioned Tuesday, I broke my patella. I got in to see an orthopaedic surgeon and he gave me good news. Luckily, the break was the ‘right way’ (vertically on the bone) and I can start putting weight on my leg right away. It’s still very swollen, sore, and stiff, but it could have been a lot worse.

So now comes a 4-6 week recovery. It will go slowly by slowly. This will be tough. I’ve been doing 5 or more cardio workouts a week since the start of the year, but now I can’t run or ride for a while. I’m also still doing Physio exercises to strengthen an injured shoulder that’s recovering well. So, I have to be careful with upper body workouts too.

What will my fitness regimen look like? I’m not sure? I was too achy this morning and still want to get into work today, so icing and elevating is my workout after an unsettled sleep. But I’ll be up early tomorrow, I’ll hobble down the stairs and figure it out. Sometimes we have to accept that slowly by slowly is the best approach, and save the sprints for another time.