Engineering Life

Every so often we change habits. Life is an ongo­ing exper­i­ment on what does and does not work. Super­sti­tion is doing some­thing that does not work and believ­ing that it does. It is not lim­ited to the reli­gious realm, it is found in busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, and fam­ily life as well. The super­sti­tious habits are the hard­est ones to break. An exam­ple of a gov­ern­men­tal super­sti­tion is that they can leg­is­late moral­ity. All of the hate crimes bills in the world can be passed, but peo­ple can still hate and despise in their hearts. Jesus addressed the heart, the state addresses super­fi­cial words and actions. The state can do many things, but for some rea­son it has never been able to deal with the human heart. That “art” still belongs to reli­gion and the arts them­selves.

I like to re-engineer eat­ing habits to see how I might feel. There is a direct cor­re­la­tion between what I eat and how I feel. I dropped diet and other soft drinks a long time ago. I found that they make my joints sore. Sugar is pro­gres­sively a thing of the past (our cells become glu­cose resis­tant as we age). Candy on an empty stom­ach turns me into a real grouch. Sit­ting behind the com­puter too much lim­its the cir­cu­la­tion to my feet, so I walk more (which is why the Lord gave me a very demand­ing dog). I dress sim­ply. I have not had to tie a tie for a long time. Talk about get­ting stuck in a style — the basic man’s suit has not changed sig­nif­i­cantly for well over a hun­dred years. Hey folks, how about engi­neer­ing some­thing cre­ative here!

Time man­age­ment is not just about how to get more done, it is also about how to quit doing things that are not all that impor­tant. I do not wash my car as much as I used to. House clean­ing is now on an emer­gency basis only. I mow the lawn when I notice lions and tigers bed­ding down in the front yard. When it looks like the Serengeti, it is time to crank up the mower.

Sys­tems are a great way to get things done with­out hav­ing to “rein­vent the wheel” each time you face a task. From your bathing rou­tine to wash­ing the dishes, it pays to have an uncon­scious rou­tine. “Git er done” (as Larry the Cable Guy says) and don’t worry about domes­tic pro­to­col. Life has other demands that are more impor­tant — like peo­ple. Focus on your­self and oth­ers. There is some­thing ulti­mate about that. In the mean time, engi­neer some sys­tems that expe­dite the mun­dane. Just do it!