Are you playing to be a sheep?


People accept atrocious conditions, or simply stupidities without questioning.

I’m not going to talk about giving around 50% of what you make in your salary to the government in taxes.

Let’s keep that for another day.

Let’s talk about “changing the hour” or the Daily Saving Time thing.

When was the last time that you voted for such a change?

Have you been every asked?

People think that they live in democracies and have right to vote or at least have an opinion.

Well… the idea of changing the hour is old. Very old.

Benjamin Franklin, as soon as in 1784, suggested that people could save candles by getting up earlier in the summer. He said it as a joke.

But then, a New Zealander, George Hudson, an entomologist, in 1895, suggested shifting clocks to gain more daylight in the evening so that he could have more daylight after work for collecting insects.

Con dos cojones! Or “with two balls”... Things like this is why I love NZ…

But well… reality is that Germany was “jodida” during WWI and thought that playing with the hours could be a good idea to save energy… the guys were starving.

The allies did the same, because if Germany is doing it, of course, it must be good.

After the ward, the measure was abandoned... until WWII, where leaders thought that if bullets are still effective to kill people, “changing the hour” must still be good for saving energy…

After the war, everyone forgot the idea… too much trouble, no real benefits.

But then, the energy crisis in the 70s made that the U.S. passed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act in 1973.

Then, countries started to copy Uncle Sam, until today.

Today, plenty of studies have shown that the savings in energy are negligible… although that’s not the case for the effect on the health of hundreds of millions of people around the world exposed to a change in habits that they didn’t ask for…

We don’t work, eat, sleep or consume energy like 100 or 50 years ago… but here we are.

Absurd conventions perpetuate themselves without questioning.

Lazy leaders. Customs. Playing to be a sheep.

Things that you do at your company…

Ideas that you have in your mind about money, your career or your personal growth…

Many are just conventions imposed by someone else that probably have more negative effects than good ones.

Questioning why is a superpower.

This one and many others are explained in the link below.

​Join my mentorship - Only $24.90 - LAUNCHING PRICE​

By the way... There is an AI machine that says that you may like what's below.

PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day.

PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com

PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below.

Vicente Valencia

Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇

Read more from Vicente Valencia

A train fails its final test. Normally, you fix the train. In Ottawa, they found another option. They changed the test. Just as Margaret Thatcher when she didn’t like her unemployment numbers… The context. In 2019, the city’s new light rail system was approaching opening day. The final trial was supposed to show it could run reliably before passengers got on board. The first three days exposed serious problems. Testing was paused. This is the point where a sensible person says: “Perhaps we...

The meeting had everything. An agenda. A board pack. Senior people. Weather conversations. Possibly biscuits. Coffee and tea. Potable sandwiches during the break. But… What it didn’t have… For years… … was the person appointed to protect the public interest. A chair. Welcome to one of my favourite PPP horror movies. Metronet. The company responsible for upgrading and maintaining large parts of the London Underground under a PPP. The issue is that Transport for London appointed a Partnership...

There you are in front of the guys from the government. Ten projects. Billions in investment. A slide deck so polished it should have its own LinkedIn account. Across the table, an experience contractor smiles. “Very exciting.” And then… back to his mobile phone… He checks the calendar. The team needed to bid your PPP is also wanted on a data centre, an energy project and a private industrial development. Tight schedule. Limited resources. All four projects will have problems. That is one of...