Gumption and Gumption traps - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

I recently re-read Robert Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is a excellent book, I wish when I read it the first time in high school I would have better understood how applicable it would be to my life direction and ways of thinking.

Rereading his writing on 'gumption' and specifically 'gumption traps' was especially useful to me right now. Pirsig's definitions:

Gumption

—n. Informal.
1. initiative; aggressiveness; resourcefulness: With his gumption he'll make a success of himself.
2. courage; spunk; guts: It takes gumption to quit a high-paying job.
3. common sense; shrewdness.


Courage, also known as bravery, fortitude, will, balls, and intrepidity, is the ability to confront fear, pain, risk/danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. "Physical courage" is courage in the face of physical pain, hardship, death, or threat of death, while "moral courage" is the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, or discouragement.

Gumption is enthusiasm, our psychic gasoline, a reservoir of good spirits that can be added to or subtracted from.

If you haven't got Gumption you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away.

Gumption Traps: - anything that causes one to lose sight of quality and thus enthusiasm for what one is doing.

Setback - thrown off the quality track by conditions that arise, external circumstances.


Hangup - thrown off the quality track by conditions that are primarily within yourself.

His writing on gumption and gumption traps start on page 472 or Kindle location 4900. As Pirsig says, gumption is a wonderful old Scottish word.

'The gumption-filling process occurs when one is quiet long enough to see and hear and feel the real universe, not just one's own stale opinions about it.'

'Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going. If you haven't got it there's no way the motorcycle can possibly be fixed.'

'Therefore the thing that must be monitored at all times and preserved before anything else is the gumption.'

'Throughout the process of fixing the machine things always come up, low-quality things,… These drain off gumption, destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to forget the whole business. I call these things "gumption traps".'

'… there are two main types of gumption traps. The first type is those in which you're thrown off the Quality track by conditions that arise from external circumstances, and I call these "setbacks." The second type is traps in which you're thrown off the Quality track by conditions that are primarily within yourself.'


Do you have gumption? What gumption traps are draining you?

Google gets into the QRCode barcoding arena

Google added a feature on to their URL shorting system, Goo.gl , that will create a QRCode barcode out of a shortened URL's by added the suffix .qr to the end of the URL. For example:

Use Goog.ly to shorten the url for my first post on QRCodes:

http://www.neopawn.com/2010/03/qrcode-barcoding-as-way-to-connect-with.html

this original url becomes:

http://goo.gl/Y8kC

using goog.ly.

Then add the suffix .qr to the end of this shortened url:

http://goo.gl/Y8kC.qr

and Google will generate the follow QRCode for the shortened URL:



Here is an article about it in TechCrunch: Google Continues To Embrace QR Codes, Integrates Them Into Its URL Shortener

Currently using the Google url shorting service, Goog.ly, is not as easy as bit.ly or the others. Hopefully Google will make this easier to use in the near future.

QRCodes and others continue to look to be a useful information exchange method.

More on QRCodes and barcodes. Segment on CBS Early Show

Follow up to my earlier entry on exploring QRCodes for Tweetups.

There was a nice segment on the CBS Early Show yesterday with CNet's Natali Del Conte and CBS's Jeff Glor about QRCodes.



Watch CBS News Videos Online


Advertising with QR Codes
March 31, 2010 6:26 AM

CNET's Natali Del Conte showed how QR codes may change the future of advertising. Customers scan the codes with their cell phones to receive information.

What has happened to the customer/citizen being #1?

This quote by the acting general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power:

"Our obligation must first and foremost be the fiscal health and stability of this agency," said Raman Raj, the DWP's acting general manager.

sums up why we are in such a financial/environmental/social mess in the world. I really want to believe that statement makers like the above are intelligent enough to indirectly map these beliefs back to customers and citizens, but I think I have finally gotten the wake up call that that is believing far too much in the parties that we customers/citizens are putting in charge. Part of this painful wakeup for me is watching the group in the executive branch that I did not vote for deliver the only positive actions I can see for we customers/citizens. Kudos to Obama and his team! He does seem to be one of the few that consistently replaces the above statement with ones along the line of:

our obligation must first and foremost be the well being of the citizens......