Unintended consequences from COVID-19 response

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covid-19 second order effects unintended consequences

A recent book I read, Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman, talked about second-order effects. It states: “Every action has a consequence, and each consequence has another consequence. These are called Second-Order Effects. Every change you make to a system will have Second-Order Effects, which may affect the system’s functionality. Be careful when making changes, they may have the opposite effect of what you aimed for.” I’ve tried to apply that thought process to every change I’ve made since I read that book. For example, I have a dodgy knee. My initial solution was to rest it, or not use it as much. Makes sense right? If something is hurting, let it heal. But I went and saw a professional about it. Turns out that I need to do a different type of exercise to strengthen the knee. If I had … Read More

Highlights from the weekly Kurt bulletin

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Kurt.nz-bulletin-weekly-newsletter

Here are a few excerpts from the bulletin I send every Friday. The bulletin is a collection of 5 things you may find helpful. If you’d like to see more, sign up! Thought of the week “In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”-Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut, computer scientist What are you theorising about that you just need to put into practice to test? Turning an old laptop into a Chromebook Another project I’ve completed is converting an old Dell Inspiron Mini laptop into a Chromebook for the kids. I’ve had this laptop for about 10 years and eventually the Windows 7 starter edition it came with just wouldn’t boot up. So I erased it all and made it a simple Chromebook. You can surf the net, watch movies and do basic … Read More