state of the jungle

Hmm. Something tells me Bill Mollison didn’t have as much organizational stress. He set things up so that he died, and permies all over the world said “Rest In Peace”, and then went about business as usual. He created self-replicating self-maintaining people systems that didn’t require his involvement at all. Another effect of this was that he had little to no control of how these systems evolved. Maybe Paul is making a different trade-off: more directional control for more stress. But maybe he can strategically optimize for specific points of influence that maximize leverage and minimize stress.

Said by someone who has little actual experience in this area.

I think one of the powers of people/groups who've worked really hard, is that they make it look easy. Every time we get a new moderator on staff, they are amazed at JUST HOW MUCH goes on behind the scenes. We have over 50 active staff, and lots more that come and go as life allows. And even still, we stay really busy just keeping permies awesome. Paul doesn't put much of his time into managing us volunteers. I'd say maybe 3 hours a week--less on some weeks when there's nothing we have to ask him about. BUT, that's just the forum volunteers. That's not the programming for the forum. That's not the youtube, podcasts, kickstarters, events, managing Wheaton Labs, or all the other stuff he does. The more I know about what Paul's up to, the more I realize just how many little things take up his time. And he delegates a lot, and is very hands off on most things. And yet, there's still a ton.

Knowing how much Paul does, I can only imagine that Bill Molison was likely just as busy, though perhaps in different ways. When you want to change the world, even when you're creating systems to make that change, it still takes a lot of time and brain power to find those systems, hone those systems, and train those systems, and put in enough effort to get those systems cranking along.

I ain't been on Permies very long and I've been impressed with just about everything. I know it takes a lot of work and time to process, review and respond to emails and posts. Even longer to review ridiculous demands.
I don't understand people sometimes, well, usually...hmmm how about normally? I just can't wrap my head around some of the demands I've read. My wife is a do-it-my-way-cause-its-the -best-way type. Drives me nuts. I can't imagine this on a massive scale. Paul has been doing this for years, too!
Bravo Zulu, Paul! Good on ya, brother!

I got a PM on kickstarter today.  I can't forward it to an assistant, i have to process it myself.  I log in and read it.  Good, it's quick.  

HI dear friends of permies! when I can expect to receive the physical book here in italy? Have a great 2022!

There is the US printing stuff, and the quite different non-US stuff.  Mike is handling all the non-US stuff.  

We've been sharing timelines about this in the kickstarter support forum.   I've reminded the backers to ask questions in the support forum about a dozen times.  But no biggie.  Pull up the forum, grab the url, copy and paste and ...

Ask in the support forum and we will make sure you get excellent answers to all your questions! https://permies.com/f/441/skip-kickstarter

And the response is

Paul, not even a greeting, neither at the beginning nor at the end of your answer, just a copy and paste without soul.. In any case it would have taken you 1 second to answer my question instead of having me go to your site, log in, and then rephrase the same question waiting for a new answer ... don't you think? I asked you a question on kickstarter I would rather have an answer on kickstarter. My greetings,

I guess I am a cold fish - maybe because I am an engineer?  Or maybe I am just not italian?  Clearly, I am not the sort of person that this person needs me to be.  I definitely need an assistant that can communicate with people on kickstarter somehow and be the sort of person that this person wants.

...  back to work ...  i have a lot of emails to process before the permies.com staff meeting in a few minutes.  Then another meeting.  Then I'm gonna see if I can solve a VAT problem for the live stream stuff before noon and send out a monthlyish.  

I must apologize to a few hundred people.  I am so very far behind in emails.  Sorry, sorry, sorry ...

Yesterday started off with way too many emails.  And then I needed to take 20 cases of books to the shipper.  And before I could go, good and decent people needed a few minutes of my time ...   and when I got back ...     and i ended up not looking at emails until after my bedtime ...   so now I have a late start on the day and I think I am setting new records in "behind on emails" ----  and I can see some super important stuff in there.

I cancelled a meeting this morning so I can try to get caught up.

I just wanted to post this in case there are people waiting for an email response that might read this and be a little more patient with me.

Getting super flooded again.  Everybody who is sending me an email ...  maybe post to the tinkering forum and you will get answers a thousand times faster.

I suspect that there will be 50 emails today that i will simply never get to.