Month: August 2015

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Is it a waste of time to…

 

no sun, only its rays
Even though I could not see the sun, evidence was all around.

 

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

-John Lubbock

I was thinking about all the many times that I have been told I am wasting time.  What does that even mean?  Is it possible to waste something that doesn’t really exist? What is time anyway?

Time:  The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, the present, and the future regarded as a whole. (Thanks google)

So if time is indefinite, how can we waste it?  Yet people have a keen sense of when they are wasting time.

Is it a waste of time to…

Stare at a starry sky and ponder the universe?

Is it a waste of time to…

Enjoy the crisp clean air of a mountain top conquered?

Is it a waste of time to…

Sit in a cubicle and stare at a computer screen as you mindlessly work and attempt to not fall asleep?

Is it a waste of time to…

Watch hilarious cat videos on YouTube through your Apple TV?

The more I think about it the less I believe that there is wasted time.  Every single action, every single inaction, and every single choice is a measure of time being used.  Those who “waste” their time, are really learning the value of time, which is invaluable.

Those who “waste” time will eventually regret it.  Why is this so?

The human race is a creative force that must act or be acted upon.  To create is to use time to our best advantage.  To create is to use time to help others. To create is to oppose destruction.  There is a saying I found on Brainy Quote that I find profound:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke

In my opinion this quote defines “wasting” time.  How can a person do nothing though?

Going out in the hills and sitting – contemplating creation… You are doing something.

Looking at the immense vastness of a starry sky – contemplating creation… You are doing something.

This may be considered a waste of time by shallow minded folk, but it is not.  By contemplating you are creating questions and connecting dots.  Contemplation is a necessary force of creation.   This force is wasted in abundance in our society of noise filled everything.  Our phones interupt it, radios interupt it, social media noise interiors it.  I am sitting in my living room at four in the morning – and my clock on the wall is ticking so loudly, that it has interrupted it.  Just a simple click, click, click.  Passage of time measured, click, click, click.  Forever telling me that infinite time is passing to history.

I have been reading Henry David Thoreau recently and he has some very interesting ideas of time.  In his book Walden, Thoreau expresses how we in the present rest between two eternities.  The eternal future and the eternal past.  I love this concept.  It really places emphasis on now, the present.

Our choice of how to use our time is exactly that.  Our choice.  Since we stand in the middle of two eternities, those choices are very important.  The present if not acted upon goes into the eternity of the past and cannot be attained again.  Looking to the future eternity you can realize potential only when we act.

Inaction is a “waste” of time.  When you see evil progressing in the world, you can matter-of-factory know that there are good men doing nothing.  Sitting on the stage of the present and doing nothing. Not progressing, not doing, not creating.  To paraphrase the wise turtle in Kung Fu Panda: Do not waste the gift of the present that you have been.

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Want more Time and Money? Do this…

Hot Dog Suit Guy lego vacation
Hot Dog Suit Guy enjoys his time chillaxing by the pool!

What is the definition of Time?  This seems silly because everyone knows what time is but when you really come down to define it… What is Time?   Google it and you get this:

  1. the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.
  2. a point of time as measured in hours and minutes past midnight or noon.

Both of these definitions are quite vague.  The meaning that I will use for time is the value of our experiences and efforts and how it relates to progress and potential.  When you look at time this way it becomes more personalized.  It becomes my time and your time – each understood in only our own unique way.  What kind of value can you place on your experiences and effort?  What kind of value can you place on your progress and potential?

Lets define money.  What is it?  Put simply it is:

  1. any circulating medium of exchange

This is very simple.  So let’s think about this.  What value does money hold?

None.

It is the medium of exchange not the item exchanged for.  Sometimes it is the simple things that are difficult to understand.  When you start trading your time for money you are actually trading something of infinite worth – one’s potential – for something that has no value in and of itself.  This does not make sense.  So why do we all have that goal to make tons of money and trade all our time doing it?

Think about it this way.

If it is money you are going after then you will find it.  Once you have tons of money it does not bring happiness.  How many stars and professional athletes have died from drug overdose?  Why would they do that? They have all the money one could ever want…

Money represents our time, but if our time is spent in the pursuit of money, then what does our time represent?  Lost time is a sad story.  Lost time can never be bought or brought back.  Lost time is regret.  Trading time for money may seem like a good idea at the time but when you look back with a clear vision through the lens of time, money is no replacement for a life lived.

Wealth is measured in time not money.  When you start to value your time more than money – that is when you will start to make more of both.  You will stop accepting peanuts and kids wages for your time because you value it more than that.  When you value your time, you use it wisely to gain understanding and wisdom and knowledge wherever it is found.  When you value your time, you use it in ways that make you and others happy.  When you value your time you tend to put a higher value on yourself.

Start today to look at what you would do if money were not needed.  What are you truly passionate about?  What are your dreams?  What would you trade your time for even if it did not bring you money?

Focus your energy on that instead of making money and you will find that you will eventually have true wealth – both time and money separated.  Want more time and money?  Do this.

 

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Hotwheels Millennium Falcon

millenium falcon toy hotwheel star wars

I went to the store the other day and brought my second oldest son Tyler with me.  My kiddos expect to get something almost every time they go to the store because both grandmas spoil them.

As a toy designer myself I enjoy to navigate the toy sections.  This is especially fun when I’m shopping with one of the kids.  I like to see how they react to different toys and what they like.  We went to the hotwheels section because Tyler likes anything that has wheels.  We dug through the hotwheels and found some good designs but then we found the new section of hotwheels that are licensed with Star Wars and Lucas Film (now Disney).

It suddenly hit me how many toys are based off of movies and license.  Almost everything popular at the store is based on some sort of movie or TV show.  I got to thinking why?

I think the reason that toys and other products tied to movies or other shows are because they tell a story.  A toy without a story is what?  Exactly.  A toy without a story seems to be boring in our day in age.  This saddens me a bit because I feel every toy has a story – some that are not made up yet.  That makes toy design fascinating to me.  I look at the simple Millennium Falcon Hotwheels ship that I bought for myself that day and think about all that went into it.

The story of Star Wars, the designer of the original ship, the particulars in product development.  Millions of different interactions and decisions went into making that simple toy a reality.  Hundreds of people, thousands of hours, a bunch can of different materials…

That simple toy had a die cast top, an injection molded plastic bottom that consisted of more than one piece.  It came with a clear plastic stand that also allows one to “fly” the Millennium falcon by attaching it to your finger.  My fingers are too big for it but it’s a good concept – a good design.

After work a couple days later I went out to the desert and got multiple crash scenes of Han Solo landing the Millennium falcon in the west desert of Utah.  I sure do enjoy toys and have found my niche in product design.

I give a thumbs up to Mattel and Hotwheels for creating a quality design with the Millennium Falcon Hotwheels model.  A design that both kids and their parents can enjoy.  Thank you!

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Why is choice so important?

custom swirl wowflute
Custom Swirl Wowflute

I have been thinking a lot about choices lately.  I always like to define a word to get a clear meaning.  Choice: the right, power, or opportunity to choose.

This definition is pretty straight forward.  But why is it sometimes such a difficult proposition? To choose?  Especially between two good things that we want.  So much goes into a choice.  Our background experiences, nuances, feeling, outward physical sense, desire, disgust.  Everyone is faced with thousands of choices everyday.  Mundane choices – complex choices.

Why is choice so important?

Let us imagine a world without choice.  What would it look like?  Who would be there? Why would they be there? Would you ever choose to be there? Then if you choose to be there, there’s a choice which would not exist… Wow, guess that’s kind of deep.

Let’s come back to the surface.  Choice is about you and choice is personal and choice effects others deeply.  If I make a wrong choice, it can have lasting ripples into many futures.  The same goes for making a right choice.  I’m sure nearly everyone has taken a flat stone and attempted to skip it on a lake.  One time I got hundreds of skips – it was a very flat, smooth stone.  Just like the ripples of those splashes go on sometimes imperceptively, they still move forward into the future with a momentum that we may not even recognize.

Even small choices ripple.  The splash may not be that noticeable but it still effects more than just the stone.  A big splash can generate large waves that come in contact with sides or shores and erodes and builds by depositing the sands.

red sunset swirl wowflutes
Red Sunset Swirl Wowflutes

Choice is the reason we are here on earth – to learn to make the correct choice and to learn from wrong choice. The whole reason of existence is to choose.

So choose carefully your color of wowflute – each color is more or less important to you. Each color for me is based on my photography and my love of color in general. I hope you find the right one to enjoy.

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Return and Discern – the EPA disaster

Joshua Tree in I-15 freeway median. Redcliffs State Park in the background. Copyright Joseph Cowlishaw 2015
Joshua Tree in I-15 freeway median near Leeds, UT.  Redcliffs State Park in the background.  Joseph Cowlishaw Copyright 2015

Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.

– The Book of Mormon – 3 Nephi 24:18

As a family we like to read the scriptures each morning, especially from the Book of Mormon.  We came across a verse this morning that I found quite profound.  When trying to understand something I like to take into context and look up the meaning of words that most people generally know the meaning of.  I find this brings added insight and meaning.  Dictionary.com comes in handy!

Return:  to go or come back, as to a former place, position, or state…

Discern:  to perceive by the sight or some other sense or by the intellect; see, recognize, or apprehend…

This saying to return and discern is not only a great rhyme, but has deep meaning.  To discern between the righteous and the wicked is becoming increasingly more blurred in our modern world of double meaning and hidden intent.  To discern is a great ability that will benefit the thoughtful mind.

This week we have heard the terrible news of the Environmental Protection Agency actually causing a massive hazardous waste dump – opposing their entire reason for existence.  Not only has this caused great alarm in the desert southwest (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona), but it has also shown to a much greater degree, the hypocrisy that is spreading within our society.  How does something like this spill happen?  Was it an accident? Who is to say? Who is to know?  I found another article that was explaining the potential of a massive hazardous spill at the same exact mine that was written before this EPA disaster happened.  The article explains how the EPA needs disasters to clean up, otherwise there is no reason for them to exist.

This is just one example of what it can mean to return and discern.  Look back, return, and from a future perspective we can discern more clearly the intentions of the past.  This is how we can learn from the past, and hope to not repeat it.

Feel free to comment below – I would like to read your thoughts on the matter!

 

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Lego WALL•E


I am stoked that this set is finally going to be produced!  It was announced as the winner of the Lego Ideas competition: WALL•E

I think the Lego ideas platform is a fine example of excellent marketing and design.  It not only involves the user base of Legos but shows that the Lego company and brand cares about its customers and puts an emphasis on interaction and feedback.  It is a way to not only bring to market what people want to see, but also to include folks in the design process.  It is a great example of a crowd-sourcing idea that works very well for all involved.  It is a win-win situation.

I recently listened to the book Brick by Brick by David Robertson and Bill Breen.  It expounds on the details of how Lego almost went bankrupt until it changed its strategy and focused on making people their primary focus.   I enjoyed the book, and it brought many good ideas to the table to learn and implement.  This is partially why I decided to focus more on what I can give my customers rather than get from them.

It is interesting to see how such an amazing company like Lego was in dire straights only about ten years ago.  They sure have made a comeback and have diversified enough to remain interesting to young and old.   I will be purchasing the Lego WALL•E when it comes out!

I am excited by this Lego design and I think it’s an awesome toy.  Many creative minds went into designing the character Walle through sketch, animation, story and now Lego building.

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What is education?

baymax in forest
Summer is winding down as we enter the coming school year.  We are getting our kiddos prepared for school by reading a bunch of books to them.  Each morning we read where they repeat us to help them with speech.  My oldest boy Craig is getting ready to start Kindergarten and boy is he excited!

I have been thinking about what education and schooling is all about.  The definition I found and agree with most is that the word educate means “from within”.  When you think about it, all education really does start within our minds, mixing with our past experiences and our talents and abilities.  In my research I also found a great article on Forbes.com.  It seems that there are many definitions depending on context.  Context here is key.  The article above talks about basically to be educated means to be smart.

Smart in what way though?  Many folks that consider themselves dumb are actually extremely smart. They have just been measured according to a set standard or measuring stick that does not apply to their personal traits. They may not be educated in the sense of schooling but their experiences have given them an education that is specific to them.

This little comic is a fantastic representation of trying to “fit” everyone into a certain mold.


The monkey here will excel on the test and will be looked at as smart. Everyone else will feel different levels of dumb, and look at themselves as not very smart. Especially that goldfish. If the test was to swim the fish, penguin, and seal would excel.

I would not write yourself off as not very smart. I am sure your experiences in life have taught you many things that others do not know. You will excel as you take what you are smart in and run with it.

Henry Ford was thought to be dumb because he only had an eighth grade education. In fact many newspapers wanted to show how dumb he was so they setup a meeting where they would interview Ford and they put together some difficult questions and asked if he would be willing to answer them. He said sure. During the interview when they asked Ford a question he did not know he called someone who did know it. His belief was why fill my mind with all this information if others already have it. He focused on what he was good at and he excelled.

Life is about finding out what talents you have been blessed with and how you can make the world a better place using them.

I have been blessed with a talent when it comes to thinking 3-dimensionally.  I enjoy 3D puzzles like Rubiks Cube, and working with clay through sculpting.  These talents have led me to make the Wowflute and have led to this blog.  I enjoy creativity and I believe it is the key to enjoying your work and education.  Learning is an ongoing process that continually happens throughout life.  I am glad for the opportunity to be a father and to see my children develop and grow in their learning and talents.

The Wowflute is an excellent little flute that is perfect for learning music wherever you may be.  I have found that having a portable instrument I practice much more consistently.  I can currently play over 100 songs that I have memorized on any Wowflute product.  I believe that learning an instrument should be intuitive.  This is why I have designed the Wowflute in a particular fashion.  It is not designed to a standard musical notation because I feel this can impede the creative process.

So rather than the standardized ocarina fingering system I have developed a unique system based loosely on the Native American Flute.  This makes it easier to play by ear.

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View of Summer

Summer 1995 I was ten years old.  The Summer was something of a dream to look forward to.  A dream of freedom. A dream of warmth.  A dream of long lazy days laying in the grass.  A dream.

Summer was like the epitome of being alive and acting on impulse and finding fun things to fill those endless days.  Summer was a blast.  Summer was filled fixing and riding bikes. Summer was filled with exploring the world around me whether it was the university nook and crannies or the mountains or desert.

All places were familiar and new at the same time.  There were the spots that were traveled often such as the penny candy store and the swimming pool that we traded cheez-its for entry.

Summer gradually turned from neverending days of exploring and wonder to passing quickly as if in a dream.  The days suddenly were gone and school was creeping up much too fast.

As I grew the feeling of summer changed.  It turned from wonder and freedom to striving for money and a job.  It turned to less freedom than school and eventually was no longer looked at as a dream.

At this point life started to speed up.  High school ended, college started, seeking money drove many decisions. Time kept whirling by.

I look to my children and oh how I wish that their summers could be extended indefinitely.  Wonder extended.  Joy extended. Freedom extended.  The time when money means less than experience.

I strive each day to return to that wonder and awe of those dreamy summer days.  Sometimes when I leave work I head out to the desert where there is only sagebrush and dirt and long trailing power lines.  I take the moment to capture pictures of toys and pursue my hobby.  These are the moments that feel again like the summer days of boyhood.

I take my boys hiking and we search for geocaches and I see the wonder and excitement in their faces and I feel again those days of summer.  I take them to the store with me and it is wonderful to feel their little excited wiggles and happiness that can not seem to escape them.  What a joy it is to have my kiddos.  I have found my return to summer.  I have found my return to dreams.  It is through my family that the days start to slow down and become fun again.

Life is a joy and every time is a wonderful reflection of our past experience.  I want my children to find the wonder in the world and seek to keep those experiences close so that they can make good choices based on them.

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New Turquoise Tritan Wowflute

I am thoroughly enjoying the new colors that the Tritan Wowflute is now made in. This transparent turquoise is a favorite.

I designed the Tritan Wowflute over the course of two years and it is nice to finally have a product that works well and is very durable.

The Tritan Wowflute is currently made down at a place called R & R Engineering in Leeds, Utah.  The folks there are down to earth and are great to work with.  They strive for quality.  I am grateful I found them in my backyard (quite literally)!

The Tritan Wowflute was designed with the outdoors in mind.  After I sat on and broke a few of my favorite Swirl Wowflutes I wanted something that would last.  This has been a goal for me to focus on quality rather than quantity.  A few years ago I had produced a bunch of my Wowflute mugs out of water based clay and had fired them and glazed them.  I had ten Wowflute mugs ready for market.  As I was hauling them to my vendor booth I tripped and dropped the box.  Even though they were wrapped and packed well, all but one were either chipped or shattered.   This experience led me to look for a stronger material that would still have the quality without being fragile.

When hiking I use a Nalgene water bottle.  These bottles were extremely tough and would take a beating.  I could drop it on sharp lava rocks and it would be fine.  That is what I wanted my products to do.  I did some research and after much deliberation I chose Tritan copolyesther by Eastman as the base material  for the Tritan Wowflute because it is virtually indestructible.  The Tritan Wowflute can even be driven over (not that you drive over musical instruments on a regular basis).

The name Tritan Wowflute sounds tough as well.  It is currently available in Turquoise, Tangerine, and Emerald.  Listen to a sample:

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Honk if parts fall off – Engineered Obsolescence

farm truck bokeh

I was thinking today about how many products seem to be designed with an expiration date.  Engineered obsolescence.

It is good to think about the life cycle of your product when designing, and is very important when it comes down to sourcing materials and marketing the end product.

What I do not like is when a product is purposefully designed to fail when it could perfectly function for far longer if the design were modified.  Popular Mechanics has some good examples in their technology article on the subject.

Whenever something fails I think of how it could have been designed differently.  I am reminded of my first truck in high school.  It was a faded yellow ’77 Toyota Pickup.  I had created an antenna from a coat hanger and was able to pick up hundreds of messy AM stations on the built in am radio.  I had a bumper sticker on the back stating “Honk if parts fall off”.   Ironically I actually lost that half of my bumper while exploring the west desert of Utah.

The truck was perfect for me because it worked just enough to keep me busy fixing it, but not too much of a problem that I would be eager to get rid of it.  This truck was a junker but still worked quite well.  Whenever I think of Toyota I think of a perfect model company to follow in practice and design.  They make their product useful indefinitely through sound and applied engineering.  They focus on quality as their business plan.

I think the direction where most of our economy is headed now is towards more quality and less junk.  The sharing economy has to have products that are designed well to last a lifetime and possibly generations.

There are many products that do require obsolescence – take electronics for instance.  Especially computers.  They need to be updated to match modern technology which doubles every two years.

But when all is said and done the best business plan really is quality.

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Building Lego is Work we Love


As a kid I thoroughly enjoyed building Lego.  I would work hard doing random things to try and make some extra spending money – which generally went to Lego sets.

I spent many summers traveling out to the mine with my grandfather.  We would ride the backhoe up some haphazard switchbacks he had scraped in the side of a steep colluvial fan.  Sometimes my grandfather would have us switch sides and basically use us as ballast so the backhoe would not slip.

I spent many long hours on a ladder leaned against the cliffs.  I would carry a three foot hammer drill up as high as I could get it and spend 20-45 minutes per drilled hole.  The difficult thing was the cliff was only a foot away.  In order to hold the hammer drill I would have to lean back two feet and hold that position while trying to maintain some kind of pressure.

Once we had made Swiss cheese of the cliff face we would then stuff each hole with dynamite and C4 detonation cord.  My grandfather carried a blasting cap inside his pocket – tinkling with his Wriggleys gum and prospector lens.  He really was an old-time character.  He would take a stick of dynamite and break it in half over his knee.  Then he would dig out the sawdust and nitroglycerin innards with his trusty old timer pocket knife.  He would then tape a blasting cap on the end of the detonation cord and shove it into the hole.  Electrical tape it right and use the end of a broken shovel to ram it down into the hole.

I just imagined how if the cliff blew, I would only hear a slight muffle and then there would be complete and utter blackness.

I mention mining with my grandpa because it was an adventure (We mined Alabaster).  It was a way to truly feel alive.  And that’s how I earned a lot of my spending money that went to Lego.  I loved how each set was created out of so many pieces that had the possibility to be anything I could imagine.  The possibilities were endless…  And so were the options I created to make money. From mining to selling cherries with my dog, there was always something to get me a few bucks in my pocket.

I have since looked back on my childhood and I realized that my days were full of work I enjoyed.  It was fun, creative, and hard.  But it never really felt like work.  I know have boys of my own and I have introduced them to the addiction of building Lego.  Lego is a toy I’ll gladly buy for them (and myself).  I have had many odd jobs from inventory to switch gear design over the past fifteen years but my favorite has been the hardest work that does not feel like work.

I have spent the past fifteen years designing and growing my Wowflutes until it has become my main focus.  I am passionate about making products that can be enjoyed, and ones that never get old.  Like Lego.

My goal with Wowflutes is to show that you can love what you do and be successful to.  I feel that too many folks are focused on earning money as their primary goal.  This is not a bad thing, but what they do not know is that the most successful individuals are those who are doing what they love.  The work does not feel like work but rather play, just like those long hours spent in my childhood working, playing and building Lego.

(see more of my Toy Photography)

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Do More, Be More


This morning I have been thinking about the word become.  This word is wrapped around ones potential to do and be.  It is being and embracing who we are at our core.  That is, we are children of our Father in Heaven.  This is our huge potential that we all share in this life.

There is no fear when you think about what this means.  To really be a god in adolescence.  I think this is why there is such an innate desire to create within the human race.  To create makes us feel alive and like we are actually doing something to become better.  There are those words again, do and become.

Henry David Thoreau wanted to experience life.  He wanted to truly understand what it meant to live.  He spoke of this:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

This is a good measuring stick for what you should do and become – when I am old and soon to lay down to rest in the grave what will I have accomplished?  What has life offered me, and what have I done with it?  Life is a gift and should be enjoyed everyday.  If it is not enjoyable then  something must change.  People can become what and who they want to be through effort and hard work.  They become through not giving in or settling for something mediocre from life.  Life is to live each day, and make each day a little better than the last.

M.E.
by Joseph Cowlishaw

Masterfully
Equipped
to be me
Heavenly Father
He knows me more than
I know me
He has masterfully equipped
Talents that make up me
Gifts and righteous desires
Those gifts from Him
When not used then lost
At being me
Being me is tricky
I am the only one
There is no example to follow
When the spirit guides
Me works
Me is masterfully equipped
To be
Me.