I was talking to my friend Vincent yesterday for a while and he was telling me about the guy that founded Netscape, Marc Andeessen, and VIncent told me about Marc’s views to stay happy, productive and happy was to avoid structure.  The guy is very productive, he founded Netscape and now Mosaic.  He is on the board of directors of Facebook, eBay and Hewlett-Packard.

Actually, it wasn’t structure, but schedules.  He says to avoid schedules, refuse to commit to meetings or appointments at any set time in the current day.  His view is that you can work on whatever is the most important, or interesting, at any time.

The guy has lots of other ideas to stay productive.  Check email only twice a day, Structured procrastination, etc.  Here is a link to his article.

It is interesting.  I know a lot of you think that being rich and powerful allows less structure, but that isn’t my observation.  The wealthier people I know seem to have much more structure in their lives, seem to be in less control.  This guy is saying that doing what is most important at each and every moment will make you more productive.

Anyway, yesterday I went for a short ride around Topeka.  I had intended to go for a real ride, but had done a bunch of physical, plus mental stuff and was just done.  The ride woke me back up and I went back to work.  I guess the bike ride turned out to be structured procrastination.

During the ride, I rode right through one of the worst neighborhoods in Central Topeka.  It isn’t like South Chicago, but it isn’t good.  It was a close to 5, so school was out.  What surprised me what how many children were out playing.  There were kids by a small pond, a few out riding bikes, plus guys just hanging out talking.  They all seemed to be having a great time.

I also rode through a couple nice neighborhoods.  There were no kids out.  Didn’t see one. I sort of understand the reason behind this occurrence, but I don’t truly get it.

Nearly everything I did when I was a kid that was memorable was self motivated.  Self motivated and most of the time spur of the moment.  I very much doubt I would have been a bicycle racer in today’s society of supervision.  I don’t think our society is allowing this type of activity so much anymore.

Lots of people use organized sports and activities to babysit their children.  What they really need to be doing is let their children babysit each other.  That is where the great stuff begins. And these children need to be able to do this pretty autonomous for adult supervision.

I know that many of you think I’m full of shit.  I don’t have any kids, so shouldn’t be giving my views on raising kids.  But I don’t think you have to be a parent to realize our society is going a little astray in this process.

Having to line up with numbers on our cars to pick up our children at school is ridiculous.   Arresting parents for allowing their children to walk a mile home from a park is beyond ridiculous, it is terrible.  Our super parenting is ruining the adults freedom, but worse, has stifled the freedom of our children.

Yesterday was a 70 degree early March day.  Those were the days I lived for after school when I was young. I think that all the structure that our society has built into a child’s upbringing is actually bad for productivity.  And by productivity here, I mean a child’s learning process.   If our children’s lives are so structured that they can’t take advantage of a beautiful day in March, then something is wrong.

My productivity as a child was definitely best when I was unstructured.  Maybe we should trust our children more and give them a chance to find their own passions and quit trying to appease our minds by having them observed at all times? Letting kids explore is what being a kid is all about.

You don’t see this much anymore. I did this all the time. Would sit at the top of a fence , or in a tree, with my friends and talk about our thoughts and dreams.  I haven’t seen a kid in a tree forever.

Tucker is still waiting and checking up on us out in the woods. I doubt that will last much longer.

Trudi is scheduled to fly to Europe this Tuesday for her job with BMC.  She is, by chance, supposed to be flying into Brussels, Belgium.  So, obviously, she is concerned about the terrorist act at that airport, but probably more so, what she needs to do personally to not allow the act of terrorism become just that, potential terror.

I’ve been talking to her a lot about it and intellectually, it is an easy thing.  But, emotionally, it is a harder think.

Everywhere, well virtually everywhere, is a potential site of an act of terror.  It is impossible to protect yourself from exposure, there are way too many potential targets.  You can’t avoid all the airports, federal buildings, college campuses, etc. your whole life.   Let alone not going to professional bike races in Europe, when that is your job.

Trying to not think this is the case is hard for some.  It’s not hard for me, but I’ve never experienced anything related to this in a personal sense.  It happens very rarely here in the United States, which somewhat allows us to acknowledge it, then go on with our daily activities.  If it was happening on a constant basis, then most of us would be pretty concerned.

I read somewhere that most terrorism is done by people that consider their homeland to be under siege.  That is understandable.  People who choose terrorist tactics are also persuaded that violence, or the threat of violence, is effective.  And I believe it is.  It disrupts societies function.  Whatever the reasons, it is impossible to police.

The media or the government tells us who we need to be afraid of.  Initially it was the Taliban, then al-Qaeda, now it’s ISIS.  Honestly, I don’t know the difference between these groups.  It seems I should know the difference, but I just lump all of these guys together as terrorists.  That is probably wrong way more than I know.  But, I think many of us do this.

Like I said above, I don’t think society can protect itself from terrorism.  What we need to do is to try to alleviate the causes that drive them.  When people feel like they have no other choice than to strap a bunch of explosives to themselves and blow a bunch of strangers up, then that is what they most likely will do.  It isn’t that hard of a thing to accomplish.

I don’t have any answers for this problem.  We have a bunch of people around the world pretty mad at us right now.  There are a bunch of complicated reasons for this, way too many for me to begin to understand.  But the fact that there are very unhappy people who feel that their choices are getting very limited, close to that of no choice at all, is not a good thing for us.  We should probably try to piss fewer people off.  It doesn’t work out that well for anybody involved.

Brad Huff was sleeping right here just a few hours before the airport was attacked. I bet he has been thinking about this a lot.

Tucker has a real lot of toys.