Realization

Not a quote, but a sudden realization and self-caution, goal for improving how I use words. Was watching a video that was CS Lewis narrating how we should “never tell people what we do”, and he immediately went to Bible verses about how ‘life and death start w/ the tongue (our words)’, and I had the flash of wisdom about the mistake I continue to make, w/ my words, to my family, my peers, my employees, which is:
I constantly remind people to not make mistakes. To not do so badly. To avoid my wrath. To avoid the consequences of their poor performance. Etc.
What I just realized: This focuses their gaze downward…don’t fall in the hole.
The result of this: If all you ever do is avoid going lower…how do you strive to go HIGHER?!
There must always be a blend of punishment and reward, rebuke/admonishing w/ praise/encouragement.
I do far too much of the punish and not nearly enough of the encouragement.
Please God grant me the wisdom to remember this spark from Your Spirit today and to turn away from my bent and work to go higher myself, so that I may elevate others, instead of simply warning them not to fall. Amen.

This is what is being done to us right now...simultaneously, globally.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

-C.S. Lewis

The problem is that the various (obvious) global-grifts are NOT for our own good. It’s so ‘they’ can make money and be “powerful” (all while trembling about their fake power being taken away). Fake wars (not that the fighting and death is fake, rather the reasons we’re given are BS). Fake “crises” (health, safety, “equity”). Fake enemies (guess what happens if China blows us up? They lose their #1 customer). Fake divisions (race war a-comin any minute now). Fake polar bear deaths (there are now more than ever recorded). All of it fake. All of it meant by the Uniparty to distract and confuse.

Think that polar bear bit is fake? Guess again.

Figure 1. Global polar bear population. Source: Susan J. Crockford, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened, Chapter 10 (London, U.K.: The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2019).
As found in: https://climateataglance.com/climate-at-a-glance-polar-bears-and-climate/



Done = good enough

Not really a quote this time, but a thought, related to engrs knowing how to make stuff.

I’ve encouraged all the engrs I’ve worked w/ (mech or not) to go learn how to make the stuff they’re designing. Perhaps you’d be surprised to know how often this is NOT the case. Happens all the time. I don’t mean that rocket nozzle engrs know how to, w/ their own hands, make a rocket nozzle. That’s a bit ‘bridge too far’. However, if you’re designing a bike frame, you SHOULD know how to build one, as the tools/processes/materials are readily available and cheap enough, that if you have a job designing bikes, you can definitely afford it. An apartment porch is plenty of room to do it (so not having a shop is no excuse). So go learn how to make stuff, even if it’s not the same as your day job. Rocket nozzle engrs can make 3D printed nozzles for model rockets…that’s a start!

Why is this important?

It teaches you to know when to be DONE. If you’re not done w/ the design, of course you cannot make the thing. When are you done? When YOU can make it. Because if you can make it, a professional can definitely make it (far better). Then you can go test. And you can’t learn the good stuff w/o tests.

Alternatively, we’ve all met multiple engrs who will forever tweak dimensions on a chamfer until it’s juuuuust right. Problem is, that when that chamfer is just right, it makes something else look wonky, so they gotta go screw w/ that thing too. Rinse/repeat/over budget/bad performance review/fired/have to update resume/interviews/new job…you get the drift.

You know you've seen this

They spent money to make it shitty.

-My wife

I’m an ardent believer in ‘credit where due’, and she literally said this. It came years ago, but every couple months, it’s relevant again. Like this last week, when my neighborhood “HOA” (quotes, on purpose, because it is, based on objective evidence, ceremonial (at best)), had strewn large rocks along part of the entryway road, in the name of “safety”, to prevent people turning around and…wait for it…damaging the grass. But they did so in such a haphazard way, to make it look like a dump truck full of rocks had overturned in slow motion. Oh, and the rocks are 15ft out in the midst of that same grass which still allows all the cars to turn around, which is very “unsafe” for said grass. What about the safety of the grass under those rocks?! The HOA’s results betray their stated objectives.

The point: You’ll see this from time to time, where someone spent a non-trivial amount of money to make something demonstrably worse…which is pretty shitty.

ONE DEGREE OFF

If we start together, and walk a mile one degree off from each other, one of us is lost.

-me

The point of this post…there are three points in fact (which is a triangular shaped pun):
Walking thru our life, if our job, from the Biblical perspective, is to follow Christ…what if we were only ONE degree off?
How far apart would we be, in terms of physical distance, if Christ and myself walked one mile, but I was one degree off?
How long would it take to walk one mile?
What if we walked 100 miles?
Let’s do some math and find out. Turns out that just “one degree off” is subtle…except for how fatal it is.

First, some basics:
How fast does a typical human walk?
The internet says “3mph”. Fine, I’ll use that.
The starting conditions:
Let’s pretend you and I set out for a long walk outside. We start shoulder to shoulder, literally touching each other. We both walk exact same speed, both go exact same distance…
What type of math will we use?
An isosceles and right triangles of course.
This allows me to calculate the ‘as the crow files’ distance to you after our walk…because one of us is going to get lost… That’s a literary technique called “foreshadowing”.
A picture:

Alpha: 1 deg
V: Walking speed
d1: Distance walked
t: Time spent walking
d2: How far apart we are…the important part

Let’s assume:
V = 3mph
d1 = 1mi = 5280ft
t —> d1 = Vt —> t = d1/V —> (1mi)/(3mph) —> 1mi will take 1/3 of an hour, so t = 20min
How far apart are we?
Let’s split this isosceles into two right triangles, makes the math a bit easier:

You can do the math yourself here if you wanna:
https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/right-triangle-side-angle

But, for reference, here is the formula:
d2/2 = (d1)(sin(radians(alpha/2*deg))) —> (5280ft)(sin(radians(0.5deg))) = 46ft
…but that is only half the original isosceles triangle…so have to double that, so d2 = 92ft
If you and I start walking a mile shoulder-to-shoulder, one degree off:
We will end up 100ft apart.
This is a linear relationship, “for every 1 mile walked, we’re ~100ft apart”.
10 miles, we’d be ~1000ft apart.
10 miles of walking only takes (10)(20min) = ~3hrs 20min, we’d still be able to see each other, but there’s no way we can hear each other.
Go 100mi, which would take 33.3hrs (only a day and a half!), and now we’re 1.75 mile apart.
You’re lost.

If I’m one degree off from Christ my whole life, I’m lost. Also known as dead.

how and when to delegate

Not really quotes, but some info from older sages that guided me thru ‘taking it all on myself’, despite the fact that I had employees to help carry the load. These lessons below are a quick litmus tests for when to give things away:

HOW to delegate tasks to an employee:

  1. Explain why the task is useful and needed.

  2. Explain why they're a good fit.

  3. Clarify expectations and deliverables, especially the timeline.

  4. Adding expectations of ‘update me along the way every X days’ (as example) is critical, especially for less experienced employees. They have to know they cannot simply disappear for weeks and come back when it’s done…as this eliminates opportunity for you to course-correct until after it’s too late.

  5. Ask them to say it back to you (active listening).

WHEN to delegate a task to an employee:

  1. If you've done it before and/or you won't learn anything additional by doing it.

  2. If the employee needs the growth opportunity.

  3. If an employee is better suited to do it, has more experience than you in that area.

  4. If the task is frequent/recurring, and each employee should be able to do it.

  5. If the task is low priority, and you're busy w/ high priority/immediate items.

  6. If you need to build a depth chart, to create backup for yourself.

Onions

People used to describe me as “stoic”, which took me a bit to realize wasn’t a compliment. But combine that w/ my love of sarcasm (it is, after all, the easiest form of humor), and somehow I found this gem on the internet. Considering the internet is effectively a giant landfill, this is like finding buried treasure.

On the outside I may appear like an emotionless, sarcastic, piece of shit, but just like an onion when you peel off more layers you find the exact same thing and it usually makes people cry.

-Unknown

A horrible quote, from an odd source

This quote I deem horrible, because of it’s heart wrenching (and blinding) truth. I’ve lived it before, I know a lot of you have as well. The source is about as random as it gets. I seriously doubt this is the original source, and I’m not going to go dig for it. He has a lot of cool videos, if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s from his ‘gold MAC 11’ video…check it out…interesting video.

Nobody’s going to remember that you stayed late for work, except your kids.
-Garand Thumb

Musings of a battle worn mech engr

Hyperbole is the best thing in the world.

-me

This includes, by the way, when people use phrases like “battle worn”, when the closest thing they’ve seen to battle is a shooting the 37th hole in the same paper target from 7yds…that’s me, I’m talking about me.

These are presented without order of priority. Some are vastly more important than others, you decide which ones.

  1. If it’s two pieces, can you make it one?

  2. If it’s one piece, can you make it two?

  3. Are people supposed to touch [the product] with their fingers (or face or butt)? If yes, does it have sharp edges? If yes, fix the sharp edges. People don’t like paper cuts. Anywhere.

  4. If you’ve chosen a shape for your product, and that shape is hard to make in “real life”, then fix it, change the shape.

  5. If you can’t make it, you can’t market it.

  6. If you can’t market it, you can’t sell it.

  7. Is your product meant to be desired by humans? If yes, is your product ugly? If yes, fix it, make it not ugly. Pro Tip: Almost all mech engrs will make parts that end up looking like robots. Plan accordingly.

  8. Someone much smarter than myself once said: If you can’t sell it, you don’t have a product. This was probably someone like Steve Jobs or something. If so, it’s almost certain he stole the idea outright (or at least the sentiment for it) from someone in ancient Greece. Which means those dudes had lots of time to sit around and think, which probably means those dudes had some sweet products that enabled them to sit around thinking of wise musings for generations to come.

  9. The most pain in the ass employees you’ll ever have are useless, or brilliant. Fire the useless ass-pains before they piss off everyone else. This will free up your time to point your finger right in the face of the brilliant-ass-pain, and tell them you love them no matter how many ass-pains they give you, and that you’ll give them a wide berth to do what they do best, PROVIDED they FIRST stop treating you and everyone else like their doormat. Music will burst forth, birds will sing, and you and them can get back to work…while implicitly agreeing they’re going to continue being an ass-pain. Such is life, but they’ll save your ass when you need it most.

  10. This one has sometimes been hard for me, but it’s probably most important on the list:
    Put your people first. Even the useless ones. Sometimes they can turn the corner. They all deserve at least three chances (and patience). You’ll (probably) not regret giving them all the chances. You will definitely regret eating them though…much later in your life. When it’s too late to ask forgiveness. Given the prior entry, this is either irony, hypocrisy, or both. You pick.

  11. Some topics / engr disciplines / classes are difficult just because they’re difficult.
    Example: Aerodynamics is, I believe:
    [a few formulas] + [“because I said so”] + [feelings] + [“you’re stupid” (…really, you probably are)] = [mediocre results].

  12. Other topics like economics and politics are difficult, PLUS they’ve been buried under MILLENIA of human manipulation, obfuscated on PURPOSE…so do yourself a favor, hone your mech engr craft, and ignore this stuff in the office.

  13. Chemicals and electricity will kill you without warning…mechanical things always warn first…that’s why they’re better. Most other types of engr won’t accept this. Find ways to gently notify them of their error.

  14. Validation. Is. Very. Important.
    I do NOT mean “applying engr judgement”, because most engrs don’t have crystal balls…some of them have egos as fragile as if they did…I mean actually testing your products. Not the “validation” as in everyone gets a trophy. But using the product, and treating it harshly. Don’t treat it like “your baby”…treat it like a random llama in the field next to your parents house that acted like it was going to stomp your pregnant wife to death…treat it harshly. Rocks to the face. Because if you’re not willing to break your product, most likely no one else will tolerate having broken it themselves.

  15. See above, warranty replacements are very expensive. Avoid them by validating your products.

  16. See above and above that, (whispering now…)…recalls…ARE EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE!!!! Holy moly don’t use the “R” word!!! And if there ever is a … R-word, see below…and above again.

  17. Documentation. If you believe your memory is iron clad, and you’ll remember all the reasons why you did stuff, you’re wrong. Take GOOD notes, even if only for yourself. Especially if you’re talking w/ a manager. And whoa betide the fool that fails to take notes when talking w/ a CEO…they will change their minds literally 180deg from the day prior because they saw a scary tweet from a basement-dweller. So you have to write down enough bread crumbs to ‘know how you got to today’.

  18. See above. CEOs don’t like being held accountable to the bad (or panicky) decisions they made the month prior, and if you didn’t write it down when things changed direction, well, you deserve what happens next.
    The example that follows is a recipe for an ass-kicking if you fail to take notes when talking to a CEO.
    “You, CEO, said, on 5 Nov 2014, which was a Wednesday by the way (and I know because I took these fine-ass notes), and I’m quoting verbatim here (Pro Tip: they do NOT like the word “verbatim”), that you don’t give a damn how expensive it is, and that I need to “make the problem go away”, and that you’d give me all the resources required to do so…and that is the reason why I’ve spent $227k on OPEX in the last month…”
    Having taken notes gets you: CEO saying “Well, shucks, I do recall that…well hurry up, you never said it would take that much to fix it (but I did tell you, wrote down that I told you, just didn’t want to embarrass him, amiright?!), just tell me when you’re done harrumph harrumph bother and toil etc etc”…
    Not taking notes gets you: CEO saying “You need to go talk w/ HR”.

  19. If your 3D mate constraints suck, you suck. As a person. You probably don’t return shopping carts to the “return area” either.

  20. See above, INTERFERENCE CHECKS. It’s THE SAME AS clicking a single button for spell check for cryin out loud. Do it.

  21. See above. Spelling doesn’t really matter if you’re an engr. Just hammer away at that keyboard and hit F7. I don’t know what Google Docs wants for spell check because they just HAVE to be different, don’t they?!

  22. Check your own work. If your name is on it, you own it.

  23. If mistakes happen, as they will, and you’re name is on it, APOLOGIZE FIRST (using the words “I’m sorry”)…then say other stuff.

  24. If you made the mistake above, don’t make excuses, just go fix it as fast as possible, even if you have to work for free. Everyone has to be a grown-up at some point, now is the time. Eat it and don’t complain. Then pontificate about it on the internet years later.

  25. Ugh…I really don’t like this next one, but it’s kicked me a few times:
    You may have a huge IQ…but if you have a tiny EQ…you’ll be right a lot of times, and no one will care because you’re being a jerk. Don’t be a jerk.

  26. Learn what is good enough. Your ideas of “perfection” are usually a waste of time. “Minimum viable” is how we all got to such terrible software that constantly needs to be updated, but in the mech engr sense, it will allow you to “fail fast” (which actually means “learn fast”). Prove it works, make it fancy later.

  27. Work will expand to fill time. Especially if you’re dealing w/ younger engrs, or “artists”, or industrial engrs.

  28. Seek to understand, not just to be understood.

  29. Most people in a meeting are thinking about themselves, not you.

  30. Be patient, let others speak first and finish without interruption. Unless they very clearly don’t know what they’re talking about. Then challenge them with some of my favorite words: Sorry to interrupt, but please help me to understand…”.

  31. If you don’t know what all the buttons in your CAD program do, figure out a way to learn what they do. Go learn all the buttons.

  32. Design things for yourself. Or your family, friends, neighbors, kids, dogs, cats…whatever. Find [some stuff] to design, especially if you’ve never designed [that stuff], and go do it. Even if it never leaves 3D-land. You’ll learn so much more about ‘why’ things are the way they are than you would by looking/watching. You have to GO DO.

  33. Do not fail to start. “Failing to start” is an active decision to sit and wring your hands like a rabid raccoon…not terribly productive. Get up. Start. Even if you’re running in the wrong direction, you’ll learn that is a wrong direction. Would you have learned that sitting still foaming at the mouth? No.

  34. Make things for yourself. There are ZERO brilliant designers that can’t make anything w/ their own two hands. Zero. If you consider yourself super-awesome at design, but haven’t physically made things w/ your hands/tools/machines, you’re a fraud. Imposter syndrome is a real thing…but you don’t have that. You have actual fraud syndrome. Start fixing this right now.

  35. If you can’t make money selling it, redesign it until you can.

  36. Suppliers will, in fact, lie to you. Dates, quality, materials, coatings, corrosion test results, parts handling, packaging, the cost of all those things. If you didn’t check the hardness yourself, assume it’s shiny peanut butter and plan accordingly.

  37. If you order 3D printed parts, and they arrive damaged, even if it’s only a squirrel’s fart worth of damage, send them back…but be nice about it…they’ll almost always reprint and resend at no cost to you. Other than the GIANT HOLE it kicked in your schedule…

  38. The United States of American is truly a shiny city on the hill, the current pinnacle of human society, by almost any metric you choose to apply, like it or not, the data bears this out. But don’t take that “exceptionalism” w/ you overseas. People everywhere are the same, we all want the same things (food, shelter, freedom, opportunities, safety for our kids, etc). People of other cultures very likely work harder for less, w/ less ultimate upside, and you are not “better” than them. Honor them, subjugate your pride.

  39. Ask LOTS of questions. …and when you bump up against someone who won’t answer all your questions, there is likely a reason that is mostly related to ‘them’, not ‘you’. Be gentle, probe over time, find out why.

  40. Never, and I do mean never, hoard information. If you’re so weak as to put fences around ‘what you know’, you’re a turd. Or a baby. Or a turd-baby. Share freely, train others up in the way they should go. Or, at minimum, stop them from going down the wrong path. Sometimes your sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others. If you keep that fact to yourself, you’ll have plenty of company run aground on the rocks w/ nothing to show for it.

  41. Fatigue strength is DIFFERENT. Miner’s Rule is useful. Go learn why. I’ll tell you why: Bend a metal paperclip over and over, that’s why.

  42. Hand-made (generally, not always) = slow and crappy, but it will impart a whisper of a soul upon it. And you can tell a fully machine-made thing, and it’s usually dissatisfying in some way. Which is better? Both. It depends. What method gets you to your required amount of knowledge faster/more efficiently? Choose wisely.

  43. DFMEA and PFMEA are different. Always done either way too late, or because a manager forced it (against the team’s will). They ARE useful, if utilized correctly. Meaning, if you do them without finding anything and prescribing corrective action…you’re just making a word salad. No one actually prefers salads. Pick products apart, do it right, fix the problems before you make parts. Before customers hate those parts.

  44. It’s far easier to make a cheap product expensive than an expensive one cheap. Start from the right footing, make very deliberate choices targeting that BOM cost. Or enjoy learning about the two chapters no one likes to read: 7 and 11.

  45. This one gave me actual brain damage: Bankruptcy of an employer, and them not helping people that got fired: If faced w/ bankruptcy, do all the things you can to help others get placed at new jobs. You’ll likely be 50% successful. The other 50% will find their own way. Hopefully all of them felt supported by you through it all. Some of them will hate you for it regardless.

  46. If you ever go to work on a Monday, and put your hand on the door knob, but cannot summon the will to pull the door open, that’s your sign you should have quit years ago. This is bad advice, but I’ll give it anyway: 7yrs is about as long as you should stay at any job. 10yrs if you LOVE it. More than that, you might be coasting on past performance and not testing your own boundaries, not learning anything meaningfully new.

  47. Learn things you don’t want to learn. Wires are dumb, I really don’t like any of them. So when I finally learned how to add my own electrical outlets in my house, I felt…energized…
    Ooof, that wasn’t the best…but I had a…spark…of inspiration. I should stop, I agree.

  48. If you don’t have independent (and accountable) observers for your validation testing, you’re doing it wrong. You can’t allow only the people designing the thing to validate the thing. Foxes love watching hen houses, they’ll protect the hens, they promise.

  49. If you’re validation plan is not finding issues, you’re doing it wrong. If you can’t break it, the very first customer you hand it to WILL break it. In the first 10 seconds. Right in front of your boss.

  50. If you ever hear one of your engrs say “do you want me to write down the tests I’m doing (because that’s a waste of time, right?!), or do you want me to do the tests (because making a plan is a waste of time, amiright?!)?”…that’s the fox asking if you like chicken dinners too.

  51. Most engrs have no idea how to write a validation plan. Or execute it. Especially the younger ones, you’ll have to teach/guide/and do some shoving of them up that hill. I started the same way…not knowing.

  52. If you walk into an ‘external meeting’ (e.g. w/ a supplier, client, whatever), and the body language of most of the people in the wrong screams “something is wrong”…then SOMETHING IS WRONG. They won’t tell you, because ‘we’re us, and you’re them’, so you ‘don’t need to know’. But ask anyway, “why is this meeting so gross and full of faces that very obviously were either forced to sit in this meeting, or don’t want to be here?”. You probably won’t like the answers, because something is definitely wrong…

Can usually find the source, but not this time

Better an honest enemy than a false friend.

-German proverb

Looked around for a few minutes for original source, google let me down, so not sure where this originates. Oh well. But it led me to recall recent readings, which prompted me to ponder:

It is worse to feign strength than to show weakness.

-Me

Again, I looked for ‘this’ to see if it exists in similar form prior to MY ALMIGHTY BRAIN thinking it up…because I doubt this is an original sentiment, didn’t find it. Brene Brown w/ her Ted Talk and book is getting a ton of mileage out of something like this over past few years, and rightly so. She didn’t invent the idea either but articulates it well enough.

Repetition of History and repeating the quote about repeating history

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement; and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.

-George Santayana

Above is the source, really just ‘one of the sources’, for the idea of ‘those that don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it’. Like most things, someone already thought/said/wrote this before he did, but that doesn’t diminish George’s version.

Surprised I didn't find someone having already said exactly this

Over time, our currency becomes worth less, and one day, it will be worthless.

-Me

A fun fact:
Inflation = currency heading towards worthless.
Disinflation = currency heading towards worthless, but at a slower pace.
Deflation = currency clawing some value back. But how many times does the chart go below zero?

Deflation would have to persist for 100 years to ‘go back to how things were’. Not saying that’s required, or ‘how it should be’. Simply pointing out that our economy is a super-tanker (is that a pun?). It means they take a looooong time to turn around.

Note: In the FRED chart, everything above zero on the Y axis is ‘heading towards worthless’.
ANY inflation amount greater than ‘zero’ reduces value. Any policy that seeks to make something less valuable usually isn’t smart…but it IS useful if you’re….leveraged to the absolute max. Meaning you owe more than you make *cough* US debt to GDP ratio *cough*.

Fun fact #2: The US Gov stopped reporting ‘as often’ on the growth of the money supply (M1 and M2). Why would they do something like that…?

Answer to “why” above: They did it to obfuscate this. Obviously. If you want to hide the horrible stuff you’re pulling, well…stupid, first things first: Stop advertising it to everyone.

They did it to obfuscate this. Obviously.
If you want to hide the horrible stuff you’re pulling, well…stupid, first things first: Stop advertising it to everyone.

Word for the day:

Obfuscate Defn.png

Is there such a thing as "truth"? Yes, of course the answer is yes.

The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

-Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
(emphasis = mine)

Apparently this guy agrees:
The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.

-Eric Arthur Blair
(This will make a lot more sense once you look him up…)

My life is terrible, or is it?

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

-Michel de Montaigne

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

-Seneca

Or maybe he actually said this…the internet is (un?)surprisingly unreliable in its accuracy of attribution:

There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is in your expecting evil before it arrives!

-Seneca

Ahh, the Stoics, some of my favorites. When being described as “stoic” myself, I prefer the word “equanimous”, which I first learned about from Dave Chappelle’s special, Equanimity & The Bird Revelation. Mr. C is an unmitigated genius.

Anyway: There are also versions pegged to Mark Twain, or Winston Churchill. Wherever it originated, the message is the same, and it’s very useful. I’d argue the Bible said it best:

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

-Matthew 6:27, ESV