I’ve turned 40. Quite uneventfully. I did get an awesome gift, however: participation in a 24 hour Survival Challenge – in November, with no equipment except a flimsy rescue blanket.
In the mid of November (8 °C rainy weather), we were released into the wild to fend for our own using a map and a compass. Which posed no trouble whatsoever, except when we went off path and through the woods. Part of the challenge was also crossing a stream – a very muddy stream. ~40 cm water plus another ~40 cm of mud made for a cold experience up to the belt line. But worry not, at least we got quite dirty as well! And no towels, of course.
Anyway, onwards to find a camping spot and build a shelter – an incredibly impressive shelter, if I say so myself. We built lean-to shelters with our rescue blankets, put them close to a long log fire (6 meters in length) and spent a comfy night with a clear sky at 3 °C. And I slept like a baby – meaning in stints of one hour or so.
Well rested, we had to rescue one of our own who had imagined a broken leg. We built a carry system and carried the dude 2 kilometers (navigating with map and compass again) to the extraction point. That was actually the hardest part – wooden beams are hard on the shoulders.
What surprised me first was the mindset of everyone. With the right skills, this Survival Challenge became a comfortable holiday. But secondly, being this close to the elements, sleeping in the forest, is a deep experience for me. Every single time.
Sleeping and waking up within nature provides more motivation to protect it than my rational brain could ever come up with. If you live within nature, you care for nature. Contrary, if you live in the city, it’s harder for the brain to understand the reality of nature – and to understand the need to protect it.
I hope y’all also sleep outdoors once in a while!
Tonight I found my cosmic perspective again. I must have misplaced it.
I lay on my back at night and just looked up at the sky. It’s a good time for that, as you can see the Perseids in the form of shooting stars.
The cosmic perspective allows us to place what is happening on our planet in the larger context of the cosmos. And everything becomes smaller, less important. Problems suddenly no longer seem so big on a cosmic scale – after all, they only affect one planet at most.
But we really do have the biggest problems for us right now – the climate crisis affects the entire Earth and everyone who lives on it. So one thought has become firmly entrenched: we as humanity are – from a cosmic perspective – currently in a probationary period. Will we manage to look after our planet responsibly so that we can survive in the long term? We shall see!
We humans enjoy a weird bunch of stuff. Beer. Modern Art. Blue Cheese. Hiking. Opera. Especially Opera – that has to be the craziest art form anyone can enjoy, right?
But these things grow on us over time. The more we spend time with something weird, the more we enjoy it, even if, at first, we didn’t like it. Acquired tastes are all around us. I’m pretty sure everyone of us has acquired a taste for something that others find weird or off-putting.
To ever get to the actual enjoyment of an acquired taste, we have to suspend our initial rejection of the new thing. We have to be curious and give it time. And we’ll usually be rewarded by the awesomeness of something new we’ve learned to enjoy.
But what if we just stay on the defensive and never try something new? We’ll be poorer for it. If we stay in tribes that reject each other’s tastes outright, our experience will be limited forever.
With society more polarized, I find it harder these days to be open to new tastes – in all meanings of the word. That includes new thoughts & concepts. For me, that makes it even more important now to suspend our immediate and total rejection and give other humans some time.
And while I’ll always reject some concepts (intolerance, for example), I also learned quite a bit by suspending my defensiveness and open my ears to the worries of the currently protesting farmers (here in Germany).
Also, I’ll probably never learn to enjoy Opera … it’s not for me.
Why are believers so bad at dealing with death? All Christian believers I know don’t really believe in the afterlife. When it comes to the (potential) death of their loved ones, they truly believe that death is the end.
I’m deeply confused. Believers often spend countless hours in churches, listening to priests discuss life’s big topics or whatever. But what does that accomplish, if it doesn’t even prepare them for the difficult situations in life?! Dealing with death is often a challenging situation for people – understandibly so. Why don’t religions manage to do prepare their believers at all?
Contrary, all atheists I know are well-prepared to deal with death. They’ve read some basic philosphy, maybe – and in my experience, even children’s books about philosophy give good advice on dealing with death.
So, what’s religion good for, if it doesn’t even give comfort when it matters?
„Don’t bullshit, just think.“ – That’s been my motto for a while, and it’s one that I try to live every day.
As a self-identified scientific skeptic, critical thinking is a huge part of my identity. That doesn’t make it easy, though. Every new challenge, every new project is also an exercise in critical thinking.
Are we making too many unfounded assumptions? Are we just following our own biases? How can we check if we’re really making progress?
As I’ve dug deeper into positive impact and moving the UN SDGs forward, I’ve noticed – again – how critical the skill of critical thinking is. Many teams & individuals are absolutely convinved they’re contributing to a better future by fighting gene technologies, for example. Others create digital tools based on unvalidated assumptions and build the wrong features. Others again propagate biodynamic farming. What a waste of time, potential and motivation! The opportunity cost is huge.
Think how much more progress we could make if we focused our energy on moving forward only the initiatives that really work.
I’m very thankful to have guides in this mess, for example the Project Drawdown or the Science Based Targets initiative – they provide information that helps me focus on what really matters to solve the problems of our time.
I love cross-domain ideas. This time, I’ve brought one from classic menswear. Yeah, really!
For the longest time, I’ve not cared much about clothing – I just bought what I needed. But fashion is a hugely inefficient & wasteful industry – with ~10% of global emissions.
It “clicked” for me once I head a menswear expert talk about the concept of “cost per wear”. Thinking about the cost of clothing not in terms of the cost for a piece, but the cost per wear, corrects my incentives. No longer will I look for the cheapest deal, but I will look for a long-lasting – potentially expensive – piece, because the cost per wear will be lower that for a cheap piece. And I realised, for example, that I own a couple of wool 🐑 sweaters for more than 10 years, but none of my cotton pieces have lasted that long.
This concept transfers quite well to other domains, I think. For sports or kitchen equipment, it might be “cost per use”. For entertainment, I experimented with comparing “cost per hour”.
But what about my work? What should my clients consider about my cost?
Here are some ideas:
- Cost per impact (e. g. ton of plastic recycled, ton of CO2e reduced)
- Cost per active user
- Cost per time/money saved (e. g. through more efficient processes)
- Cost per reduced risk
- Cost per reduced downtime
- Cost per improved NPS/CSAT score point
Isn’t that an interesting consideration? For those of us who want to provide real, lasting value to our clients & partners, I simply love this idea.
I’m pissed with vegan & vegetarian food. Ok, maybe it’s mostly salt-reduced, fat-reduced, flavor-reduced vegan restaurants that pissed me off. Vegetarian & vegan cooking is one of the big ways that people try to eat more sustainably. I think it’s not the best way. Here are my principles for planet-friendly cooking that also help make things taste good.
1. No cow, no sheep, no goat, little milk
The biggest climate impact of our food usually comes from cows, sheep and goats. And their milk. That’s why I never cook these types of meat, and try to reduce using dairy products to an absolute minimum. Vegan dairy products taste really good these days.
2. Use meat for flavor, not as the main component
Products like Guanciale, Pancetta or bacon provide a lot of flavor per weight. Ground meat can also help distribute tons of flavor in a dish, even if only little is used. I prefer those instead of the nearly flavorless lean meat (that is also more expensive for some reason). Similarly, products like dashi or fish sauce maximise flavor without having a strong climate impact (because so little is used for each dish).
3. Game is game
Local game is just awesomely sustainable. I love boar or deer, and it’s pretty easy to get here in Germany. Wild boar are pest here, so they need to be killed anyway – of course we should then also eat them. Same goes for local fish, which is common in Germany, even though it’s usually farmed, not wild.
4. Legumes rock!
Lentils, beans, chickpeas … all make great bases for awesome dishes. Most people have never eaten bean burgers, but those are the best burgers that there are. Falafel is another great example – it’s one of the best dishes one can make (also nutritionally), and it has an extremely low climate impact.
5. Cultivate Umami & Fat
Most vegan foods lack flavor. Sorry, but it’s true. There’s also an easy fix: add enough fat and umami. Fat is easy, high quality olive oil is just the start here. You have to work for your umami, though. Learning from the Japanese cuisine has helped me the most: miso and soy sauce are umami bombs! Fish sauce and tomato paste are also great contributors, and of course alliums (onions, garlic, …). Browning is also a big win – a hot wok is a vegetables best friend! Using sweeteners and sufficient salt neatly rounds out the flavor of any dish.
6. Minimize food waste
The key to reduce food waste for me was to think about cooking in components, not in dishes. I might roast some veggies or cook some legumes one day, and used it over the next couple of days in multiple meals. Roasted broccoli might be a tortilla topping on day 1, pasta sauce ingredient on day 2 and a bowl topping on day 3. Preparing components ahead of time also speeds up cooking, and can even prevent ingredients from spoiling. Components are also easier to freeze than full meals are. With meals, thinking about the best way to reheat them while maintaining texture & flavor also helped me reduce waste. Pasta & pizza reheat best in a pan (where they don’t get soggy), for example.