Running Water and Same-Day Delivery

One beautiful morning not long ago, I was sitting and enjoying a cup of coffee with my wife on our front porch.  She was having a granola bar with her expresso, and I wanted one, but I try not to eat gluten for health.  I pulled out my iPhone and opened my Amazon app.  With a quick type and a couple of clicks, I was utterly amazed when, less than two hours later (my coffee was done) a Honda Accord pulled in front of my house, and a dude in a blue vest got out and dropped a box of gluten-free granola bars on my front porch.  I spent less than five dollars on the box, and it was dropped on my front porch in a crazy short amount of time.  This week, I had a conversation with a friend about Amazon.  He side hustles as a dude in a blue vest dropping packages on porches.  He described the process to me and we wondered aloud how Amazon decides what goes on trucks and what goes into Honda Accords for dudes in blue vests to drop on porches.  It’s wild to think about a system that allows me to get an iPhone charger today or tomorrow on my porch for less than going to a store and buying it. 

This morning, I was filling my expresso machine with water from my water filter and looked up on my phone that running water in homes has been common for less than a hundred years.  I met my dad for breakfast this morning, and I was sharing with him how weird our technological advances are, and I wondered about what they are actually doing to us as people.  My dad told me his aunt and uncle had a pump in their kitchen and had to pump well water into their home. 

100 years ago this would need a bucket and a well.

While grocery shopping today (in a store…not on Amazon..I know, Old School), it’s apparent that we aren’t getting healthier or living better lives despite the convenience added to “normal life” in the last hundred years.  A Mental health crisis is expected, and thriving physical fitness seems less typical.  In Outlive, Dr. Attia explains that despite many medical advancements, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and cognitive decline are still wrecking and, in some instances, increasing their wrecking power on us as a society. 

A hundred years ago, much of life was spent working to care for basic needs like food and water.  Now we can click and turn and have excess that doesn’t seem to be helping us.  Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explain a concept of fragility in their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, which explains that protecting us from discomfort can make us more fragile and less resilient.  I’m so curious about the effect of this on us over time, and I can’t help but wonder, as a leader, how I can help my people not be hurt by such convenience.  

Leaders, is comfort and convenience stealing your potential or the potential of your people?

What can we do?