How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the "2-Minute Rule"

By James Clear    |    Decision Making, Goal Setting, Procrastination, Productivity

Recently, I've been following a simple rule that is helping me crush procrastination and making it easier for me to stick to good habits at the same time.

I want to share it with you today so that you can try it out and see how it works in your life.

The best part? It's a simple strategy that couldn't be easier to use. 

Here's what you need to know…

How to Stop Procrastinating With the "2–Minute Rule"

I call this little strategy the "2–Minute Rule" and the goal is to make it easier for you to get started on the things you should be doing.

Here's the deal… 

Most of the tasks that you procrastinate on aren't actually difficult to do — you have the talent and skills to accomplish them — you just avoid starting them for one reason or another.

The 2–Minute Rule overcomes procrastination and laziness by making it so easy to start taking action that you can't say no.

There are two parts to the 2–Minute Rule…

Part 1 — If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.

Part I comes from David Allen's bestselling book, Getting Things Done.

It's surprising how many things we put off that we could get done in two minutes or less. For example, washing your dishes immediately after your meal, tossing the laundry in the washing machine, taking out the garbage, cleaning up clutter, sending that email, and so on.

If a task takes less than two minutes to complete, then follow the rule and do it right now.

Part 2 — When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.

Can all of your goals be accomplished in less than two minutes? Obviously not. 

But, every goal can be started in 2 minutes or less. And that's the purpose behind this little rule.

It might sound like this strategy is too basic for your grand life goals, but I beg to differ. It works for any goal because of one simple reason: the physics of real life.

The Physics of Real Life

As Sir Isaac Newton taught us a long time ago, objects at rest tend to stay at rest and objects in motion tend to stay in motion. This is just as true for humans as it is for falling apples. 

The 2–Minute Rule works for big goals as well as small goals because of the inertia of life. Once you start doing something, it's easier to continue doing it. I love the 2–Minute Rule because it embraces the idea that all sorts of good things happen once you get started.

Want to become a better writer? Just write one sentence (2–Minute Rule), and you'll often find yourself writing for an hour.

Want to eat healthier? Just eat one piece of fruit (2–Minute Rule), and you'll often find yourself inspired to make a healthy salad as well.

Want to make reading a habit? Just read the first page of a new book (2–Minute Rule), and before you know it, the first three chapters have flown by.

Want to run three times a week? Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, just get your running shoes on and get out the door (2–Minute Rule), and you'll end up putting mileage on your legs instead of popcorn in your stomach.

The most important part of any new habit is getting started — not just the first time, but each time. It's not about performance, it's about consistently taking action. In many ways, getting started is more important than succeeding. This is especially true in the beginning because there will be plenty of time to improve your performance later on.

The 2–Minute Rule isn't about the results you achieve, but rather about the process of actually doing the work. It works really well for people who believe that the system is more important than the goal. The focus is on taking action and letting things flow from there.

Try It Now

I can't guarantee whether or not the 2–Minute Rule will work for you. But, I can guarantee that it will never work if you never try it. 

The problem with most articles you read, podcasts you listen to, or videos you watch is that you consume the information but never put it into practice. 

I want this article to be different. I want you to actually use this information, right now.

What's something you can do that will take you less than two minutes? Do it right now.

Anyone can spare the next 120 seconds. Use this time to get one thing done. Go.

Super good advice for life (zz)

1. Believe in yourself 100%.
2. Learn to listen to others effectively.
3. Handle criticism constructively, take the best from it and chuck the rest away.
4. Always give the best of yourself you're capable of on that day.
5. Learn to love and accept yourself first, and then learn to love and accept others.

How can I motivate myself to work hard?

Six years ago I was so depressed I thought I would kill myself. 

I had nothing going on in my life. And the girl I was dating kept calling me "crazy", would break up with me every day, and refuse to introduce me to her friends. 

I had three failed businesses that year and the year before. And I was going to go broke with two kids to support. 

This past year, one of my investments sold for 4000% of my initial investment. A business I started went from $0 in revenues to $12,000,000 in eight months. I published two books and wrote 100s of articles and do 12 podcasts a week. 

But I don't work hard. I'm about to go get a sandwich. I slept late today. 

I don't say this because it's so great. I'd like to be a little more effective in my work. It's a practice and not a formula. Every day I practice. 

Here's what I do. If you don't like it, that's fine. I think each person has to find what works for them. 

I used to not do these things. And when I didn't do these things, nothing would happen. Life doesn't stand still: it either gets worse or better. 

Eventually it gets a lot worse. We die. That's the only real truth. 

But in the meantime, here's what I try to do to be successful and work harder. 

- NOTHING

I don't read the News. I used to work for the news. I know what happens there. The more you read news, the less informed you are, the more time you just wasted.  

Since I stopped reading news, I read more books. i get more info. I feel more alive. I get less scared. 

I also don't talk to people who want to gossip. Gossip never made anyone a success. 

And I don't say "yes" to things I don't want to do. Else I resent the person who asked me, I hate myself for saying yes, and I'm bad at whatever it is I said "yes" to. 

So, in order to work harder, I try to find as much NOTHING in my life as possible. 

- EAT WELL

It's a simple diet but I try to follow it. No snacks. No eating after 6pm (so my liver isn't on overdrive when I am trying to sleep). 

Plates at 10 inches. (Studies show when you reduce plate size from 15 inches to 10 inches, you eat 30% less calories). Note! If your plate size is 8.5 inches, you eat more - your body is not stupid. It knows you are tricking it. 

And that's it. The Plate Diet. Or the - not after 6pm Diet

- MOVE 

A little exercise every day is known to have just as much effect on your mood as a full dosage of anti-depressants. 

- SLEEP

In the morning, you have energy. At the end of the day, you don't. Which is why you need sleep. 

The average person needs eight hours of sleep. For instance, they took some famous orchestra and determined that the professional violinists in the orchestra were sleeping 8.6 hours a day. 

Don't think that less sleep makes you more productive. Whenever I get only six hours of sleep, I know the day is going to be useless. Preparation is how you win the game, and lack of sleep means you didn't prepare well. 

- GRATITUDE

Worry never solves tomorrow's problems, and only takes energy away from today. 

Worry and Gratitude can't exist in the mind at the same time. 
Regret and Gratitude can't exist in the mind at the same time. 
Anger and Gratitude can't exist in the mind at the same time. 

Whenever I notice these things happening in my head, I try to replace with gratitude. 

Now I can continue my day 

- LAUGHTER

The average child laughs 300 times a day. 

The average adult...five. 

Dr. Norman Cousins did a series of studies on the benefits of laughter. It improves health, cures disease, improves productivity, and of course, makes you happier. 

So I try to watch standup comedy when I'm low. Or thing of funny things. Laughter heals the soul. 

- SURRENDER

Too often I would try to control things that were outside of my control. 

For instance, when a boss is yelling at me, it's his problem. I can't control him. So that's when I try to find a better job rather than put up with abuse. 

The same in relationships. 

One of the most important decisions you can make in life is who you spend your time with. 

It's like falling into an sea of hands and hoping they catch you. When you surround your self with good people, you can surrender that they will catch you. 

When you are creative, you can surrender to the fact that your ideas will always catch you.

When you sleep well and are grateful, you can surrender to the fact that your good health and spiritual attitude, will guide you through the difficult moments. 

Whenever I'm scared, I surrender. I do my best. I'm honest. I know good things will happen. 

IDEAS

I write down ten ideas every day. 

The Idea Muscle always needs to be exercised. It atrophies after about two weeks of no use. like any other muscle. 

People think that ideas are nothing and execution is everything. 

Execution is just a subset of ideas. You still have to have the ideas in order to execute. And the only way to have good ideas is to exercise the idea muscle. 

Every day. The result: your life will look completely different in six months. 

You will be an idea machine. You can be stuck on a highway in the desert with no gas and you will have 100 ideas to save you in no time. The idea machine is magic. 

FRIENDS

The people in your life are like a bonsai tree. 

It's always growing. And every day you prune the bad branches and keep the good branches. 

Do that every day and you get more productive. 

Every entrepreneurial movement, every artistic movement, every leap in science, was done by a group of people. There are no lone geniuses. 

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had the HomeBrew Club. 

Jack Kerouac had the Beats

Andy Warhol had his community of Pop artists. 

Even Larry Page had the thriving entrepreneurial cultures of both Stanford and Silicon Valley and all the search engines before him that he was able to stand on the shoulders of. 

You can't be productive without shoulders to stand on. 

MESSAGE OVER MONEY

I think people are scared. I know this. I am often scared. We live in a hard world. 

It's a sentence of frightening nightmare punctuated by periods of intense joy. 

The message I like to convey is that these ideas help you not only be more productive, but more creative...happier. 

At least for me, this has worked and transformed me from someone crying on the ground in a pool of vomit, to someone who wakes up and (some of the time) feels the full beauty of the day. 

I do the above. 

I surrender to it. And hope for the best.

What are the best-kept secrets of great programmers? from Quora

If I told you then I would have to kill you.

More seriously:

0. Everything can be done with Hashmaps.

1. Managers always lie. That important system that needed to be ready yesterday, when delivered, will not be taken a look in 2 months.

2. It is much better to write something "right" than make it fast and buggy. Whenever you have to hurry, simply don't, you always have all the time in the world. Always do the right thing. The system will take a lot less time to write and you will feel a lot better about the code.

3. If they say "we don't have more money, hurry up", then reduce the scope, remove features, do less, use agile methodologies. Never hurry up.

4. The GIGO effect: Garbage in, garbage out. Make sure the requirements are right.

5. There are no undocumented features. Either they are documented or nobody will know they exist.

6. RTFM is bad manners. Hallway usability is much better. If you think this contradicts number 5, maybe. Maybe not.

7. You learn a lot more when you see how people use your system. Monitor usage and fix accordingly.

8. Unit testing is a lot more effective than traditional QA. Use both at the beginning.

9. Functional programming is the wave of the future. Learn Haskell.

10. For estimation, use past projects estimates corrected by actual data. You need hard data for this: use the number of screens, database tables, use cases, etc.

11. Version control is your friend.

12. Code should be DRY instead of WET.

13. Cache oblivious algorithms.

14. Technical risks are controlled using prototypes.

15. Since all technical problems can be handled, all the projects problems reduce to organizational problems. That is why all the agile methodologies exist: to handle organizational problems. The key for success is "fail fast".

16. Write down the iteration retrospective and act upon it.

17. Write down and number all requirements. Use DSDM requirement scrubbing. Write down and number all design decisions used to solve conceptually all requirements. Create prototypes for each design decision.

18 Get into a gym and go every day. Even 10 minutes of light exercise will make you feel better.

19. Make sure your code runs on different operating systems and on different databases. Use continuous integration for that.

20. You are not being paid to write code, you are paid to write functionality. Code is just cost. There is cost for creating it, cost for debugging it, cost for auditing it, cost for storing it, cost for maintaining it, etc.

20 Python libraries you can’t live without

from http://pythontips.com/2013/07/30/20-python-libraries-you-cant-live-without/

1. Requests. The most famous http library written by kenneth reitz. It's a must have for every python developer.

2. Scrapy. If you are involved in webscraping then this is a must have library for you. After using this library you won't use any other.

3. wxPython. A gui toolkit for python. I have primarily used it in place of tkinter. You will really love it.

4. Pillow. A friendly fork of PIL (Python Imaging Library). It is more user friendly than PIL and is a must have for anyone who works with images.

5. SQLAlchemy. A database library. Many love it and many hate it. The choice is yours.

6. BeautifulSoup. I know it's slow but this xml and html parsing library is very useful for beginners.

7. Twisted. The most important tool for any network application developer. It has a very beautiful api and is used by a lot of famous python developers.

8. NumPy. How can we leave this very important library ? It provides some advance math functionalities to python.

9. SciPy. When we talk about NumPy then we have to talk about scipy. It is a library of algorithms and mathematical tools for python and has caused many scientists to switch from ruby to python.

10. matplotlib. A numerical plotting library. It is very useful for any data scientist or any data analyzer.

11. Pygame. Which developer does not like to play games and develop them ? This library will help you achieve your goal of 2d game development.

12. Pyglet. A 3d animation and game creation engine. This is the engine in which the famous python port of minecraft was made

13. pyQT. A GUI toolkit for python. It is my second choice after wxpython for developing GUI's for my python scripts.

14. pyGtk. Another python GUI library. It is the same library in which the famous Bittorrent client is created.

15. Scapy. A packet sniffer and analyzer for python made in python.

16. pywin32. A python library which provides some useful methods and classes for interacting with windows.

17. nltk. Natural Language Toolkit – I realize most people won't be using this one, but it's generic enough. It is a very useful library if you want to manipulate strings. But it's capacity is beyond that. Do check it out.

18. nose. A testing framework for python. It is used by millions of python developers. It is a must have if you do test driven development.

19. SymPy. SymPy can do algebraic evaluation, differentiation, expansion, complex numbers, etc. It is contained in a pure Python distribution.

20. IPython. I just can't stress enough how useful this tool is. It is a python prompt on steroids. It has completion, history, shell capabilities, and a lot more. Make sure that you take a look at it.

10 Behaviors of Real Leaders zz

Entrepreneur and CultureIQ are searching for the top high-performing cultures to be featured on our annual list. Think your company has what it takes? Click here to get started.

There's usually a pecking order in the animal kingdom. There are queen bees, alpha gorillas, and male-female wolf pairs that dominate the pack. Humans are no different.

This may come as a shock, but organizational constructs like tribes, societies, and companies are not the result of high-level intelligence but of primitive survival impulses reinforced by neurotransmitters in the brain's ancient limbic system.

To say that leadership and organizational behavior has been successful in the animal kingdom is a gross understatement. The planet is fully populated by millions of animal species that all exhibit the same sort of behavior.

The point is, leadership is not so much a thought process as it is instinctive behavior. It's evolutionary. It's to a great extent responsible for our survival on earth. And that's why we do it. As survival imperatives go, it's right up there with eating and breeding. No kidding.

So when I say, "Leaders lead. Followers follow. You can't do both," in my upcoming book, Real Leaders Don't Follow, I'm not making this stuff up. It's biology. Granted, you can behave any way you like by overriding your survival instincts, but neither you nor I get to change how the species behaves. Evolution's got that covered.

I know you didn't click on the headline to get a biology lesson, but it's important to understand that leadership is not really about traits or habits. It's primarily a behavioral phenomenon. So let's be practical for a moment and discuss the sort of behavior we consistently value in our most cherished leaders.    

They teach.

Apple CEO Tim Cook credits the company's success in no small part to Steve Jobs's role as a teacher. The way Apple's unique culture continues to flourish and scale, even as the company grows to enormous size and valuation, is a testament to the way Jobs taught his team what matters most, so they could teach their teams, and so on.   

Related: Nobody Leads a Charmed Life. Get Over It.

If they hear you, they will listen.

Whether it's politics, business, or non-profit, there are great demands on leaders' time. That comes with the territory. So there are physical, organizational, and mental barriers they put up to block out the noise. Nevertheless, their success depends on being open to new and different perspectives. So, if they hear you, they will listen.

They challenge themselves.

Great leaders are never satisfied with the status quo and that goes for their own status quo, as well. They may recognize the success of the team, especially after a long hard effort, but you'll rarely see them patting themselves on the back. Their own accomplishments don't excite them; the next challenge does.

They don't follow.

All leaders learn from experience and mentors. All leaders serve their stakeholders. But learning and serving are not the same as following. Real leaders serve and learn from others, but they still carve their own path. They have their own unique ways of doing things. And, when it comes to key decisions, they trust only their own judgment and their own gut.

They solve big problems.

Real leaders don't play small ball. Whether it's a customer problem, a constituent problem, or a societal problem, they live to come up with innovative solutions to big, tough problems. Real leaders are great troubleshooters.

Related: Twitter: What Went Wrong

Their vision inspires others to act.

I'll never understand the endless debates over what leadership is and isn't. It's simple, really. Leaders are those who others follow. And leadership behavior causes others to act. Whether they have a vision for a product, an organization, a people, or a future, that's what inspires them to lead and their followers to action.

They don't whine.

Most great leaders grew up with adversity, so they learned at an early age that complaining gets them nowhere. Instead, they set out to prove something to themselves and others – that they're special, unique, worthy, capable – and that's often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They don't overindulge their egos.

Even if it's not self-evident, most successful leaders have healthy egos – a strong sense of self. There are exceptions, but they're rare. In any case, when our egos write checks that reality can't cash, that's self-limiting behavior. Some leaders learn from those mistakes and gain wisdom and humility. Others don't, and that's unfortunate.

They do only what matters.

Leaders are by definition people of consequence. They're driven by their vision, their obsession, a problem they must solve, whatever, but they're usually driven by one thing and that's what matters to them. They move heaven and earth to make it happen and ignore pretty much everything else, although there's usually an exception or two.

They're effective, not efficient.

Since they're consumed by a passion of some sort, that's what they're all about. Minutiae like optimizing, fine-tuning, efficiency, and productivity are completely off their radar screen, unless of course it just happens to be their specific focus. I suppose there have been leaders of the Toyoda (yes, that's how it's spelled, not Toyota) family obsessed with Kaizen – continuous improvement – but that's an unusual circumstance.

The important thing to keep in mind is that leaders are defined by their behavior. What they do and don't do. How they act and don't act. They come in all shapes and sizes. They are extraverts and introverts. They're morning people and night owls. They're healthy and completely out of shape. They have neat desks and workspaces that look like a tornado ripped through it.

One thing's for certain. Real leaders don't follow. It's biology.

如何激活windows和office z

http://www.doudouxitong.com/tools/win7jihuo/2015/0113/5846.html

微软绝大部分windows系统都是要收费的，平常购买产品密钥来激活系统后也会过期，或者系统也会出现未激活状态，此时很多系统功能都会受到一定限制，使用小马OEM8激活工具可以轻松的激活win7、win8、win8.1、win10系统，而且还可以免费激活Office办公软件，小马OEM8工具使用方便、下载解压后即可一键免费永久激活windows系统。

　　小马OEM8激活工具(一键免费永久激活windows和Office)功能特点：

　　1.精准识别电脑上安装的所有Office版本和Windows系统;

　　2.不需要输入任何路径;

　　3.不需要手动选择软件版本;。

　　4.不占用系统任何资源。

　　支持版本：支持所有32位/64位的Windows系统和Office2010/2013办公软件。

　　小马OEM8激活工具(一键免费永久激活windows和Office)V2015.01.12升级说明：

　　1、优化了Office和Windows系统所有版本的激活

　　2、优化程序，减少系统资源占用

　　3、其他一些细节修改

已经下载了，可以直接用。

How can a person learn to say "no"?

Saying "no" unskillfully nearly cost me my life.  I was trained to be firm and calm; to repeat "no" as many times as necessary until the boundary was made clear.  "No," they said, "is a complete sentence."  

One of the things we teach, in my job with court-mandated clients, is discipline, and one of the ways we do this is by enforcing punctuality.  On a summer afternoon, 15 minutes into a process group, a young stranger threw open the door and walked in.  

He was short, maybe 5' 1, and pale.  His pants hung low on his hips and, looking back, he was too confident for someone wearing a plaid golf cap too big for his head.  

I asked him to step outside with me - as was company policy - to explain how to attend a make-up activity and send him on his way.  I was half standing when he said, "No. I'm staying."  He was physically in front of the closed door.

"You can come back next week, but I can't allow you to attend today."

"You will let me attend today." 

"No, I can not."

After several long minutes of back and forth I finally said.  "I can't allow you to attend, but I am not going to physically force you out the door.  You will be getting no credit for today. You need to leave."  I sat back down with the group.  "What's a situation in your life when someone wouldn't take 'no' for an answer?" I asked.  

After five more minutes of being ignored he left, and the group continued.  An hour later the group was over and I was standing outside my office talking to a client.  One of the group members came running down the hall, eyes wide. 

"Diane! Don't go outside! He's waiting for you in the parking lot with a gun!"

Long story short, he didn't shoot me or anyone else.  By the time the authorities arrived he was gone.  When we realized he wasn't in my paperwork and the clients who reported him melted away at the mention of the police I started shaking so much I had to sit down.   The officer taking the report said, "People like this make a couple mortal enemies every day.  Lay low for a bit and he'll quickly forget you in his rage at the checker in the grocery store."  I found this equally distressing and comforting.

I went to visit my godparents in the mountains.  I refused the gun they offered when it was time to go home.  I got and still keep big dogs at my house.  For the next several months I scanned the faces of the hundreds of clients I passed in the halls at work.  He showed up occasionally in my dreams, or his hat did at least, because in my memory I still can't see his face.

One of my friends makes me laugh when he says the state motto of Arizona is "An armed society is a polite society."   So, all this to say, here's how I've learned to say no:

"I wish...but..."

"I wish I could let you into group late, but the state law says we can't."

"I wish I could include your ideas in my next workshop, but the curriculum is already worked out."

"I wish that I could lend you $100, but I am short this month."

When things are intense I add "and" to the mix. 

"I wish I could have you stay on my couch, but my home is my refuge and I need my quiet time."

"I wish I could just let you in this one time, but the law is really clear and I'd lose my job."

If it gets emotional or extreme, I load on validation and send them somewhere for more help.

I know, it's awful. You came a long way and the bus was late, and if I could I would SO break the rules for you.  Maybe you can head up to the front office and see about setting up a make up group right after group next week."

"No," some people say, "is a complete sentence."  It is; it's just not always the best sentence for the job.

What are useful social skills that can be picked up quickly?

1. Smile
   
2. Shake hands with confidence
   
3. Ask questions before you talk about yourself
   
4. Don't act clingy or desperate
   
5. Talk about ideas not people
   
6. Be reliable and do what you say you're going to do
   
7. Laugh, tell jokes
   
8. Be humble
   
9. Wear clothes that complement your body type, get a modern haircut, and take care of your personal hygiene
   
10. Draw connections from your own life to another person's life in a meaningful way
    

How to reinstall windows OS?

Recently I broken my hard disk of my computer. 

Here is what I have done:

1. Download the windows 7 OS img file from campus software central website (free).

2. Install a USB flash drive for windows 7 installation:

  2.1 Follow this link: http://jingyan.baidu.com/article/d3b74d64a397631f76e6096d.html on how to make a usb installation flash drive.

  2.2 You should use a flash drive more than 4GB at least. 

3. Just replace my computer hard disk with a complete new one, and then plug in flash drive and start the computer. 

The rest will be very straightfordly follow the screen tips. If you forgret the product key, just skip it. It might ask you to setup product key later, but you can search online to get one. 

Then download the automatical driver installer according your computer brand. Then that's it.

It does not cost too much time, 20 minutes should be enough. 

In my opinion, data science is finding right quesitons, anwering questions, solving problems, taking actions or making decisions based on analyzing related data. It is basically quantitivative or data-driven problem-solving discipline. That's why it is so important in our current century. 

One thing we should bear in mind is that data science not only focuses on answering a specific question as the normal analytics will do, but also focuses on finding the right question to answer. That's why we have the word "science" in this term. 

发信人: kkkuuu123 (kkk), 信区: Faculty

This is a  story talk about the funding pressure for fauculties. 

Could this country or world do something to help them?

发信人: kkkuuu123 (kkk), 信区: Faculty
标  题: 考虑离开这个圈子了
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sun Apr 19 22:20:01 2015, 美东)

在一个公立大学工程学院AP了4年，越来越觉得想离开这个圈子。主要来自找钱的压力
，尽管对做研究还是有兴趣的。我们这里比较资源匮乏，老人们和州里的那些给钱的机
构已经有长期合作关系。虽然也不做什么研究，就靠着那点钱养一两个PHD也可以混日
子。倒是苦了我们这些小虾米们。我也不是不努力去找，而是过去一两年也见了不少人
，联系了所有都能联系的地方，但没有实质进展。越挫越勇之后，现在免得麻木无奈了
。在这里呆越久越郁闷，除了找钱之外也厌倦这里的工作和生活氛围。系里就关心你的
数目，连个seminar都没有。学校在一个什么都没有的小town，老婆找不到工作。虽然
短时间内在家带小孩没什么问题，但也不是长久之计。
心里其实很矛盾。一方面知道需要更加努力去找钱但提不起劲来,面临tenure的风险。
另一方面如果一旦tenure了，跳走的机会就更难了。看清楚了这些东东也好，跟自己当
初对于教授这个职业的期待大相径庭。也许是当初老板给自己创造了一个过于理想的状
态。今年试着跳槽，没成功。也许明年再试一次，不过已经开始申请业界工作做备胎。
觉得远离这个无止境的找钱-发文章-找钱循坏也许是好事。
在这个里发发牢骚，也看看有没有类似处境的朋友可以共勉

How Uber's Autonomous Cars Will Destroy 10 Million Jobs and Reshape the Economy by 2025

I have spent quite a bit of time lately thinking about autonomous cars, and I wanted to summarize my current thoughts and predictions. Most people – experts included – seem to think that the transition to driverless vehicles will come slowly over the coming few decades, and that large hurdles exist for widespread adoption. I believe that this is significant underestimation. Autonomous cars will be commonplace by 2025 and have a near monopoly by 2030, and the sweeping change they bring will eclipse every other innovation our society has experienced. They will cause unprecedented job loss and a fundamental restructuring of our economy, solve large portions of our environmental problems, prevent tens of thousands of deaths per year, save millions of hours with increased productivity, and create entire new industries that we cannot even imagine from our current vantage point.

The transition is already beginning to happen. Elon Musk, Tesla Motor’s CEO, says that their 2015 models will be able to self-drive 90 percent of the time.1 And the major automakers aren’t far behind – according to Bloomberg News, GM’s 2017 models will feature “technology that takes control of steering, acceleration and braking at highway speeds of 70 miles per hour or in stop-and-go congested traffic.”2 Both Google3 and Tesla4 predict that fully-autonomous cars – what Musk describes as “true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination” – will be available to the public by 2020.

How it will unfold

Industry experts think that consumers will be slow to purchase autonomous cars – while this may be true, it is a mistake to assume that this will impede the transition. Morgan Stanley’s research shows that cars are driven just 4% of the time,5 which is an astonishing waste considering that the average cost of car ownership is nearly $9,000 per year.6 Next to a house, an automobile is the second most expensive asset that most people will ever buy – it is no surprise that ride sharing services like Uber and car sharing services like Zipcar are quickly gaining popularity as an alternative to car ownership. It is now more economical to use a ride sharing service if you live in a city and drive less than 10,000 miles per year.7 The impact on private car ownership is enormous: a UC-Berkeley study showed that vehicle ownership among car sharing users was cut in half.8 The car purchasers of the future will not be you and me – cars will be purchased and operated by ride sharing and car sharing companies.

And current research confirms that we would be eager to use autonomous cars if they were available. A full 60% of US adults surveyed stated that they would ride in an autonomous car9 , and nearly 32% said they would not continue to drive once an autonomous car was available instead.10  But no one is more excited than Uber – drivers take home at least 75% of every fare.11 It came as no surprise when CEO Travis Kalanick recently stated that Uber will eventually replace all of its drivers with self-driving cars.12

A Columbia University study suggested that with a fleet of just 9,000 autonomous cars, Uber could replace every taxi cab in New York City13 – passengers would wait an average of 36 seconds for a ride that costs about $0.50 per mile.14 Such convenience and low cost will make car ownership inconceivable, and autonomous, on-demand taxis – the ‘transportation cloud’ – will quickly become dominant form of transportation – displacing far more than just car ownership, it will take the majority of users away from public transportation as well. With their $41 billion valuation,15 replacing all 171,000 taxis16  in the United States is well within the realm of feasibility – at a cost of $25,000 per car, the rollout would cost a mere $4.3 billion.

Fallout

The effects of the autonomous car movement will be staggering. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the number of vehicles on the road will be reduced by 99%, estimating that the fleet will fall from 245 million to just 2.4 million vehicles.17

Disruptive innovation does not take kindly to entrenched competitors – like Blockbuster, Barnes and Noble, Polaroid, and dozens more like them, it is unlikely that major automakers like General Motors, Ford, and Toyota will survive the leap. They are geared to produce millions of cars in dozens of different varieties to cater to individual taste and have far too much overhead to sustain such a dramatic decrease in sales. I think that most will be bankrupt by 2030, while startup automakers like Tesla will thrive on a smaller number of fleet sales to operators like Uber by offering standardized models with fewer options.

Ancillary industries such as the $198 billion automobile insurance market,18 $98 billion automotive finance market,19 $100 billion parking industry,20 and the $300 billion automotive aftermarket21 will collapse as demand for their services evaporates. We will see the obsolescence of rental car companies, public transportation systems, and, good riddance, parking and speeding tickets. But we will see the transformation of far more than just consumer transportation: self-driving semis, buses, earth movers, and delivery trucks will obviate the need for professional drivers and the support industries that surround them.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists that 884,000 people are employed in motor vehicles and parts manufacturing, and an additional 3.02 million in the dealer and maintenance network.22 Truck, bus, delivery, and taxi drivers account for nearly 6 million professional driving jobs. Virtually all of these 10 million jobs will be eliminated within 10-15 years, and this list is by no means exhaustive.

But despite the job loss and wholesale destruction of industries, eliminating the needs for car ownership will yield over $1 trillion in additional disposable income – and that is going to usher in an era of unprecedented efficiency, innovation, and job creation.

A view of the future

Morgan Stanley estimates that a 90% reduction in crashes would save nearly 30,000 lives and prevent 2.12 million injuries annually.23 Driverless cars do not need to park – vehicles cruising the street looking for parking spots account for an astounding 30% of city traffic,24 not to mention that eliminating curbside parking adds two extra lanes of capacity to many city streets. Traffic will become nonexistent, saving each US commuter 38 hours every year – nearly a full work week.25 As parking lots and garages, car dealerships, and bus stations become obsolete, tens of millions of square feet of available prime real estate will spur explosive metropolitan development.

The environmental impact of autonomous cars has the potential to reverse the trend of global warming and drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Passenger cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans account for 17.6% of greenhouse gas emissions26 – a 90% reduction of vehicles in operation would reduce our overall emissions by 15.9%. As most autonomous cars are likely to be electric, we would virtually eliminate the 134 billion of gasoline used each year in the US alone.27 And while recycling 242 million vehicles will certainly require substantial resources, the surplus of raw materials will decrease the need for mining.

But perhaps most exciting for me are the coming inventions, discoveries, and creation of entire new industries that we cannot yet imagine.

I dream of the transportation cloud: near-instantly available, point-to-point travel. Ambulances that arrive to the scene within seconds. A vehicle-to-grid distributed power system. A merging of city and suburb as commuting becomes fast and painless. Dramatically improved mobility for the disabled. On-demand rental of nearly anything you can imagine. The end of the DMV!

It is exciting to be alive, isn’t it?