the anonymous senator

But it also makes the point that, whereas Australian cyclists have not necessarily benefitted from helmet laws, people in Europe who don't wear helmets remain happier and thinner and better-looking and generally superior to everyone else in the world (as any devotee "cycle chic" will happily tell you) because their governments put the safety all around cyclists in the form of a bicycle infrastructure instead of concentrating it in tiny pieces of styrofoam and forcing riders to put it on their heads. In this sense, the message mandatory helmet use sends to cyclists is, "Cycling is really dangerous, but your safety is your problem. Good luck!"

But perhaps the most significant short-term factor in ensuring consistent decision-making is increasing your discomfort with not doing it. If you raise the bar internally with how much ambiguity and lack of clarity you are willing to tolerate, you'll find it much easier (necessary, actually) to just get on with it. We spend thousands of hours holding a focus for our clients to make hundreds of thousands of decisions that have been pending in their psyche and their world—from random papers on their desk to key issues distracting their consciousness. They would not have allowed those to linger had their comfort zone not tolerated them.

I've come to think of us as living in a post-GTD era. David Allen's ideas have reached their maximum cultural spread and are decreasing in relevance as lifehackers move on to simpler, lighter (and messier) task management and productivity approaches. But this excerpt from his Productive Living newsletter shows that he's still got that intuitive understanding of the work mind.

So much of what holds me back from "getting things done" is avoiding decisions. That's why when I get stuck I think of my mantra - destroy ambiguity. I've been meaning to think of a way to explain it, but David's done a great job of explaining it for me.

Fix a traffic island in your city and we’ll send you to an island in the Caribbean.

For this project we’re asking you to pick an ugly traffic island in your city and spruce it up—either in Photoshop or in reality. Add a bench or a sculpture, plant some flowers, whatever you can think of to make that neglected pedestrian junkspace more hospitable.

The winner will get a vacation to the Caribbean island of Dominica. Read on for the details.

So strange that what was once part of my job can now win someone a vacation.

The company from which Wenger emerged had been a supplier to the Swiss Army as early as 1893, and its sister-company, Victorinox, since 1890. Wenger is in the French-speaking Jura region and its competitor is in the German-speaking canton of Schwyz. To avoid friction between the two cantons, the Swiss Government decided in 1908 to use each supplier for half of its requirements. So Victorinox can lay claim to being the “original”, Wenger can state its Swiss Army Knives are “genuine”. In any case, both have been manufacturing Swiss Army Knives for over 100 years and both must meet identical specifications defined by the Swiss Army.

Ever wonder how Victorinox and Wenger can both lay claim to making the historic Swiss army knife? Wenger lays it out in their company history page.