Zen and the Art of Deferred Maintenance
Went and saw those dinosaurs about ten days ago.
A lot has happened since then. I have been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's a good book.
Maintenance has never been something I've been too concerned with until more recently. I come from a background where maintenance is not the default modus operandi.
Oil change? Pay for it. Something breaks or is getting old? Replace it don't worry about fixing it (or get used to not having it). Hurt yourself? Play through it. Traumatized? Get over it.
Now that I have less access to funds and more access to time, maintenance all of a sudden makes a lot of sense. Deferred maintenance racks up costs quick when you don't have the ability to refinance or roll over to new equipment.
The idea is that sometimes a person thinks they are being savvy saving some money or increasing efficiency but what they are really doing is shedding the load of the task onto an unseen third party.
For example, a person doesn't change the oil in their car when the light comes on indicating it's time (or you drive more miles/kms than the service sticker says). In the present when that decision is made the person saves the time and money it would take to change the oil. Great! Doing that sucks. Whether you do it yourself (cost = time) or get it done by someone else (cost = money + awkardly turning down the guy to replace your air filter), you save yourself the time and money and headache.
But, you have paid a cost. The cost is risk. Each mile you drive past that recommended service indicator increases the probability something is going to go wrong with that car. Not that it will, but it might. You enter into a lottery of sorts. Chances are you will be fine but if you do it enough times and deffer for too long. Your future self will pay the price. Or, you could sell the car and get a new one (or a new-to-you one) and shift that deferred maintenance onto the guy you sold it to.
That's the real win; if you can pull it off. But this might make the guy you sold it to resentful if it breaks down. He might come back for a refund. Or he might bad mouth you online or to your friends. Or he might be really pissed and buy a gun and kill you (rare but a non-zero chance). So you must also weigh this cost in your equation of whether to deffer the maintenance or not.
In business this is not properly doing the routine checks and repairs on equipment and property, so eventually when you need it, the equipment fails and you lose business or have to pay an even larger cost to repair or replace the equipment/property.
In health it is not properly doing the routine checks and repairs on your body and mind, so eventually when you need it, the body breaks or the mind fractures and you get hurt and you have to pay with time or money in going to the doctor or therapist to heal or accept a lower quality of life or die.
In government and "Big Business" this is called normal operations.
I'm being a bit funny but also serious. It's a bit different than deferred maintenance but it's analogous.
They call it Externality. When you have a system, operation, organization, company, project, etc. that puts some sort of cost or benefit, intentional or unintentional, onto another party. Could be the employees, another entity, the government, the environment, other people, or your future self.
Anyways, that's for a different time and also relates to something called moral hazard.
I guess, it all depends on how you slice it.
That is a main theme in the book. Slicing. Looking at the fabric in-between what makes up "this" and what makes up "that". Could be a motorcycle, a person, a family, a rock, a river, a forest.
A quote comes to mind, "missing the forest for the trees".
That's what the book is about. What makes a forest a forest and a tree a tree. What makes a forest different from a group of trees and what makes a group of trees different from a forest.
What is the difference between deferring maintenance and deferred maintenance.
Very metaphysical. Very based. Very Demure, Very Mindful.
send me an email with what you think.
Gang gang.
Bye.