Tanking Up

Reducing fuel costs is a summer tradition for many Americans. Air conditioners go on and gas prices go up. Articles abound in every form of mass media with suggestions about how to ratchet up the number of miles you can squeeze out of a full tank of gas. Using this gold standard to measure performance however overlooks some big opportunities to reduce your monthly spending.

Miles per gallon improvements are really minimal once you have already purchased a vehicle. The opportunities for reducing costs however are increased significantly if you shift your perspective away from MPG thinking. One of the biggest opportunities to reduce your fuel costs is getting beyond the assumptions that both your starting and end points for travel are fixed.

When I changed jobs recently I made an effort to find us housing as close to my new employer as possible while still meeting all of our other requirements. The result was a four mile one way drive that replaced my previous fifteen mile trip. It seems like a small thing, but the results are significant. I achieved a 73% reduction in fuel cost and a 40% reduction in travel time. To achieve this same fuel cost reduction I would have needed a 2010 Prius (50 MPG) and all of the costs that go along with it.

Since this first step I have upped the ante again and begun riding my bike to work. This has cut my fuel costs to zero (or very close, I am still driving in once every two weeks or so) and has still resulted in a time savings over my previous commute of 14%. In addition I have eliminated nearly five hours per week of gym time by getting my daily exercise during my ride to work.

Telecommuting is another good way to achieve the same or even better results, but good discipline and a career that does not demand your physical presence are required.

Living Lean

I mentioned a while back that my family was downsizing our life to a small apartment. The results so far are great! Not only do we have less junk and more free time, but we are currently able to make both the rent and house payment without having to cut back on things that we enjoy. More walking, due to living near almost everything that we enjoy and elimination of some of the services that we never used have cut our costs more than we realized was possible. My truck has sat in the parking lot for all but three days in the past month, and I have ridden my bike to work. We get all of our entertainment through netflix on demand and the Wi-fi connection that is included with our lease. We have been eating a lot more fresh foods and have not "stocked up" once due to the limited space we have for storage. We seem as a family to be even more dedicated to continuing to eliminate the unnecessary. Our son does not quite have the philosophy down yet, he is only four, but my wife has truly embraced the concept and we have been making regular trip to donate things that we do not need. We truly use all of the space we have, and when the walls close in a bit we go outside and enjoy the sunshine and the grass and the sky. I almost wonder where this process will end. My wife told me about a story she read recently where someone eliminated theri life down to one north face backpack and wandered off into the world....sounds good to me!

Time Blindness

The following is from a converstation I overheard two days ago:

(Some specifics have been modified to protect the guilty)

"Hey you know what we need is a thingamabob that can turn widgets into ultra widgets by changing the angle of the doohicky!"

"Yeah that would be great, but I tried that three years ago and they don't make it anywhere. Don't waste your time. You have a lot more important things to do."

"But it could increase our profit 200%? I know I can find it."

"I'm telling you its not out there. I would have found it. Forget about it."

You have probably been in this same situation when you have moved into a new situation and worked in close proximity with someone who has been doing similar work for a long time. Now if you do whatever it is anyway and it works you will have embarassed someone senior to you (read this as "made an enemy"), and if you don't you have taken the first step into the rut that everyone else has dug. The logic error that is inherent in this story is time blindness.

All things change over time. There is nothing static in the world. Everything from technology to the location of land masses to the words in a dictionary always have and always will be in flux. Forgetting this fact can lead to serious errors in judgement. Often elaborate structures of belief are built on the fragile evidence of one attempt far in the past. Simply questioning whether things might have changed over time can collapse the whole, and open new worlds of possibility and inquiry. Give it a try sometime and let me know how it works out.