Here’s a quick look at some of the things I’ve been thinking about lately:
- Experts say that we need eight hours of sleep every night. At least they did until last week when they came out and said that we really may only need seven hours of sleep. The truth is that nobody knows for sure and even if they did it’s entirely plausible that the exact length of time needed may vary from person to person. Wouldn’t it be great then if we could be tested to find out our optimal sleeping times? Perhaps it is exactly eight hours. Or maybe it’s seven hours and forty five minutes for one person and eight hours and ten minutes for another. If we knew what our number was we could plan accordingly and optimize our productivity every day.
- I find it really annoying when I’m watching a football game and I can hear the stadium public address announcer in the background say the exact same thing the play by play announcer just said. Obviously the people in the stadium can’t hear the play by play announcer so you need to have a public address announcer for their benefit. But why should the television viewers have to hear both? Having to listen to most play by play announcers and color commentators is annoying enough as it is. Having to hear everything they say twice makes it even more annoying. I wish there was a way to mute the stadium noise on the telecasts. Same thing goes for watching highlights on SportsCenter. When you’re playing the video of a clip you don’t necessarily also want to hear the audio. Some things bear repeating. Play by play calls do not.
- Speaking of things that I wish they had I wish there was a finance app that sent you push notifications for important events. Say when a company is about to report their earnings or when you’ve held a stock in your account for one year letting you know that if you want to sell now you can do so without significant tax consequences. I’m sure there may be some finance apps that do these things for people that follow the markets closely. But what I’m talking about is a way to notify the casual investor who isn’t following closely but who wants to know about milestones only.
- As for the office place, I wish that we had metal detector copy machines that notify you that there is a staple in your pile of papers before you start your copy job. That way you can avoid the inevitable paper jam that occurs when two or more pages get sucked into the feeder at the same time. I’d also like to see an adjustable filing cabinet so that you never have to bend down to reach the bottom row of a filing cabinet. Just hit a button or pull a level and the rows of the cabinet rearrange themselves until the one you want is at the optimal level for your height.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could figure out precisely how much sleep an individual needed?
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