When It Absolutely, Positively Has to Be There Overnight
I ordered a meat thermometer from Amazon this morning. It’s coming this afternoon. Prime has gone from 2-day to 1-day, to today. What a marvelous convenience! Free shipping plus the $139 subscription fee! In the olden days I would have had to go to the library and sort through stacks of Consumer Reports until I finally found one that had reviewed meat thermometers. Once selected, I’d have to drive to the Livingston Mall and possibly a few other places until I found a store that had one. Elapsed time, about a week to ten days between identifying my need for such a thermometer, and a perfectly cooked roast. Plus gas. Now it’s a half day without leaving my room, leaving me time to munch through a bag of corn chips, scroll and remain introverted. Amazon is truly a wonder, one of the seven. #blessed! All at almost no cost to me.
Unless you work at Amazon or the Washington Post, where the cost is likely to be your job.
Dear, Paul. Remember when yesterday, all our troubles were so far away? I can trace a lot of our troubles to when FedEx began delivering stuff overnight, and did an incredible job convincing us that this was a good thing. FedEx. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. What on earth did we do prior? Oh, I know. We planned ahead and did something else while we waited.
How often is the case when we truly need something overnight? If it’s a kidney, we need it sooner. If you’re stuck in Tulsa waiting on a car part, overnight is a huge advantage because the sooner you can get out of Tulsa the better. But otherwise, not really. One can make the case that FedEx’s $90 billion business is built more on satisfying an urge than satisfying an actual need. Amazon is 7x bigger. I mean, it’s nice to get shit quickly. But do we honestly need it that fast? Currently my 2 ½ year old grandson is learning the difference between I need, and I want.
When we go to the supermarket or Costco, my inclination is to assess which is the shortest line, get in it, and accept the flow. I read somewhere that most people will gravitate to the right, so I typically look to the left. Sometimes I win, and sometimes I lose. But once I’m in a line, I stick with it. For my wife, getting in the shortest line is a blood sport. She’ll pick what she feels is a winner but have me hold her place while she scouts for something better. She will race old people and children to get in front. Gas line at Costco. Must win, must get gas first. Oh, how she loved Clear at the airport, but I never thought it was worth paying for. She loved being escorted to the front of the line by one of the checkered shirts. But so many people have signed up for Clear that now it’s usually faster to go through the plain ol’ TSA line. What’s the rush anyway? She makes me leave for the airport so early that saving a few minutes has no impact.
The information age has morphed into the optimization age.
We are pressured at work and in our daily lives to optimize everything. We live in a new era of manifest destiny where the ideology isn’t longitude and latitude. It’s being the best, being the winner, getting the most, getting it cheaper, getting it faster, selling it for more, increasing market share, increasing revenue, increasing profits, fast lane, fast pass, fast track, and always, always, always exceeding expectations. Gooder, faster, cheaper. And once we reach the top, we’re meant to keep striving for more. Every goal achieved this year must be surpassed next year. Keep reaching, never satisfied. There’s no more marching to the beat of your own drum, unless your drum is the shiniest, loudest, most perfectly tuned drum that ever was. Which my drum is. And I’m sure I paid less than you.
Consultants have created a billion-dollar industry, advising clients how to go about it. These days, the typical sage advice is AI, young man. In The Graduate it was simply plastics. Tactical information about how to leverage AI to achieve measurable impact is lacking (I know that because I asked Gemini), but when you sift through all the bullshit surrounding it, there’s plenty of tasty morsels to be extracted. Including this one. Clients, you can now tell McKinsey to fuck off. Just ask ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude. AI is particularly useful when you query it about how to use itself. Talk about decreasing costs! The results are in. Layoff both your employees and McKinsey! Claude will take the wheel. Now that’s the ticket to a stellar bonus. Make sure to take time to celebrate with a Cohiba and a survey of your award-winning roses with your ex Chief Strategy Officer, who is now your gardener.
None of us are immune. Everyone likes a deal. Everyone wants to come out on top. Perhaps it’s the definition of “on top” that’s changed? Or maybe it’s just that we’re exposed to things in a way that we weren’t before? It’s one thing to see pictures of over the water huts in Bora Bora in a magazine and wistfully dream of being there. And quite another to have it pop up hourly on my Insta feed along with super attractive people smiling around their plunge pool, complete with links to where they got their hat, sunglasses and sunscreen. And the Points Guy telling you how to fly there in style on the cheap. It was kind of OK when it seemed more of something to dream about rather than actualize. It’s quite another when it’s the neighbor’s entitled kid under a beach umbrella at the White Lotus.
The unrelenting need to optimize everything we do, is raising our collective blood pressure and making our collective hearts pound. No one is ever satisfied. Our entire existence seems to be run by a feverish Tiger Mom overlord.
“You only got a 95, why not a 96? Work harder.”
“I’ll do better next week, mom.”
“Why not tomorrow?”
FedEx accelerated a culture fueled by impatience and the dopamine hits that come from instant gratification, but we’ve been running the ball downfield ever since. Only we could take a social media platform that was originally devised to snark about who on campus was hot, to become a marketing juggernaut. Fuck having a relationship with that girl in English Lit. Brands have shoved her aside to have a relationship with all of us at once. Marketing has become the ticket to the ultimate polyamorous grouping. And if you get the tiniest bit jealous over whatever they’re wearing, the resolve is only a click away.
Commerce was chugging along beautifully, until we had just a little hiccup courtesy of a microscopic virus that looks like an orange studded with cloves, sold as air fresheners on Etsy. So pretty and so deadly.
The Pandemic caused us to slam on the brakes. The Great Pause gave us a two plus year hiatus and forced us to slow down to reconsider our actions and interactions. And after considerable time to examine our humanity and reflect we have all decided, pedal to the metal, and no problem paying $1000/night for the hotel that was overpriced at $500/night just two years ago. Five stars for everyone!
As we emerged from our shell-shocked caves, AI slithered out alongside us to remind us of what slackers we’d been and consume everything in its path starting with our employment. If it didn’t eat your job, horrors, you must learn to work with it, learn new context around familiar words like generative and agent, and convince leadership that you like it. Our worlds have become so turbocharged that the human brain can no longer keep up. All that matters is the end result.
Simon Sinek has been criticized for a lack of evidenced based opinions, but he said something interesting about AI that caught my attention. I’m paraphrasing - life is about the journey, not the destination, and AI is only about the destination.
I used to show up to a European city with no idea where to eat dinner. Now I’ve made a reservation and reviewed the menu. I just show up and eat, but the discovery has no longer been left to chance. Chances are my choice was already curated by Travel and Leisure, Conde Naste or The Telegraph. In the olden days, the sheer act of figuring out how to get from point A to point B was an important part of the experience and half the fun. Bonus points for stumbling on a great souvlaki stand.
Today we seem to be so hyper focused on outcomes that it matters less and less how we achieve them. I’m not sure of what that means for all of us, but it leaves me feeling cold. Just scoring baskets without playing the game serves no purpose. Unless we can set the whole thing on autopilot, collect a paycheck, and do whatever we like. Which currently seems to be enjoying the very best of the best, whatever you fancy.
I’ll tell you what I fancy. It’s the end of black truffle season in France and I need to book a flight. I’ve read that the Poularde en Vessie at L’Assiette in Paris is divine. I suppose I could make it myself, but I’m waiting on a meat thermometer.