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No one really saves money by shopping at a discount store.
They spend their money and use the savings to buy something else.

I joined the Air Force when I was 18. I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time but it changed my life for the better. Basic Training was something I had a hard time understanding until I was many years beyond its reach. The idea of Air Force Basic Training, is to give you too much to do and not enough time to do it. They have some very specific tasks, like folding T-shirts in 6-inch squares, making your bed so that the mattress flexes from the tight sheets pulling it into a knot, and the usual standing in line everywhere you go, toe to heal.

It’s amazing how much personal space you can give up when forced to do things like sit on the floor because you haven’t earned the right to a chair. All of this psychology plays on your mind while you are there. If you leave a pocket unbuttoned and get caught, they treat it like it’s the end of the world and you caused it. What’s more interesting is the fact that you believe you are responsible for the end of the world and wonder how you could be so careless to not button that pocket.

Their techniques are very effective in teaching you how to understand futility. A typical scenario would be to arrive at the cafeteria, aka chow hall, and side step your way through a serpentine line that reaches for a mile throughout the bowels of the building. You finally get to the table with your mandatory glasses of water and your meal. You sit in unison with the other inmates or “airman”, and begin to eat. This is the only time of day where you can talk in public and not be shot on sight. Well maybe not shot but you get the idea. About 5 minutes into your lunch, the Technical Instructor or “TI” walks over and announces that you are done eating. You stand and head to the clipper to turn your dishes in. The idea is not to starve you, it’s to push you. I learned to eat fast and talk less, this also helped prevent choking.

The rest of the day follows the same pattern. Clean this floor until it shines and then watch as the TI walks all over it. Its hallowed ground and only he can do this. Or you can scrub the shower walls until no soap scum remains. Then 50 guys take a shower and your work is erased. Mothers probably understand this best, the laundry, the next meal; everything is accomplished only to be repeated again and again. These are exercises in futility. Some things will always be this way, but automation should not be one of them. Each time we program or improve a system, we should enable it to repeat less and answer more.

How many times have you collected some figures, typed them up in a spreadsheet and then printed it back out? Oh sure the computer did some fancy calculation formulas, but was anything really saved? Did everyone gain the benefit of the information when you placed it in the computer? Usually the answer is no. We work autonomously, alone or in small groups, breaking information and facts down into recognizable parts, and then we assimilate the information with the intention of explaining what these facts mean. All the while the answers, the conclusions are known before we ever tell the computer what to do.

For example, let’s say you pay the bills for your company. If you see a high stack of bills on your desk you can assume that you will be writing a lot of checks today. The computer will never be that smart. It will only take one check at a time, and when you have typed in everything it will give you back a list, a report, a total based on information you provided. Most systems are actually very hollow in this manner. Simply repeating back to you what you just said, and when the information comes rolling out on paper, we look at it and say, very good, nice and neat. And we go on to the next project. What did you just do? Did you accomplish anything other than establishing an audit trail?

What if the computer were designed to take the bills, analyze each one and calculate the best way to pay, the cheapest postage based on weight, if any amounts are excessive or out of the ordinary? Perhaps it could evaluate quantities and establish purchasing profiles on different departments. The computer could do all of this and never get bored or loose vigilance. Allowing the accountant to do more constructive things, like project budget requirements and simplify the purchasing process. Or they could meet with other departments and assist them in planning and managing spending.

And what about auditing, couldn’t that be done by a computer? The fact that the money trail in a company is so complicated and thus requires someone to look at it and have explanations for all the things tells us that we are doing something wrong.  Accountants like to look at bottom lines. They want a sum total for two or more columns of funds and they want them to balance. Yet today, most accounting programs can’t give a simple answer like that, without asking a lot of complex questions.

This is because we are still trying to use paper based accounting methods on machines. How many forms have you filled out on your computer that looked a lot like the paper form? Was it because it needed to be printed that way? Once again, we are using the computer like a glorified typewriter, only taking advantage of its neatness, rather than it’s mathematical and tireless statistical nature.

Computers are great at the things we hate to do. Balance the checkbook, analyze charts or reports (assuming they are digital) and we find new uses for their high calculations power everyday, from gaming to medicine. What should happen as a result of this power is not the common result. The machine takes over and the employee does their work on the machine. If this were a calculator or typewriter, it would make sense. But a computer can remember even project calculations and information for us. This should free us up to do more constructive things with our time. Obviously the software and hardware need to be aligned to make this an efficient process, but who really needs to simply clock their work into a box and then spit out a report to show they did it?  If this represents the common job in a corporation, then futility is alive and well.

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