The Art of Manliness - #658： In Praise of Maintenance in a World Obsessed With Innovation

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.940 humans like starting new things much more than taking care of older things this is true on both

00:00:15.600 an institutional and individual level it's more exciting to build a new road than to maintain an

00:00:19.580 old one more exciting to lose weight than to keep it off there's plenty of short-term pleasure and

00:00:23.680 intrinsic motivation when it comes pursuing something novel but the effort to keep up

00:00:27.300 unsexy maintenance on what we've already got takes real intent my guest day says we've lost that

00:00:32.100 intent and need to revive it his name is lee vinsel he's professor of science technology and society

00:00:36.600 the co-founder of the maintainers which is a research network dedicated to study of maintenance

00:00:40.940 repair upkeep and ordinary work and the co-author of the innovation delusion how our obsession with

00:00:45.600 the new has disrupted the work that matters most lee and i began our conversation with how our

00:00:49.920 cultural focus on innovation has come at the expense of attention paid to maintenance repair

00:00:53.980 and yet how talking more about innovation hasn't really led to greater progress we then get into

00:00:58.640 the way the necessity of maintenance repair and caretaking has been neglected in business and

00:01:02.320 government creating a situation where we keep building new things without investing the upkeep of

00:01:06.600 our current infrastructure from there we turn to the way our all too common neglect of maintenance

00:01:10.720 applies not only to big institutions but also our personal lives as in the areas of home ownership

00:01:15.200 and health we discuss how there's less incentive these days repair things in our disposable society

00:01:19.300 where everything is cheap and stuff is harder to fix even if we want to fix that stuff we

00:01:23.740 end our conversation with how we can revive a maintenance mindset in our culture and individual

00:01:26.540 lives after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash maintenance

00:01:30.880 lee vinsel welcome to the show thanks for having me all right so you've co-authored a book dedicated

00:01:46.020 the idea that we need to revive our sense of the importance of maintenance and repair but you spend the

00:01:50.500 first half of the book arguing that one of the reasons that maintenance has been neglected is

00:01:54.580 that we started spending all of our time thinking about innovation even though all that emphasis on

00:01:59.680 innovation ironically doesn't actually result in more real innovation we'll talk about what this

00:02:04.700 modern over emphasis on innovation looks like here in a minute but to start when did you first

00:02:09.980 realize that maybe our focus on innovation isn't all it's cracked up to be um it really came from

00:02:16.740 like a frustration with the way people were talking about innovation you know i work in universities and

00:02:23.340 university administrators just talk about innovation innovation innovation all the time um and you also

00:02:30.220 hear in the business world especially in the kind of silicon valley tech sector so for us it started with

00:02:36.280 just a frustration with how empty the word had become and then only later um my buddy made a joke so

00:02:44.540 walter isaacson's book the it was called the innovators how a group of hackers geniuses and

00:02:50.200 geeks created the digital revolution um that book came out my buddy andy who i wrote the book with said

00:02:56.200 we should write like a counter volume which would be called the maintainers how bureaucrats standards

00:03:01.980 engineers and introverts create technologies that kind of work most of the time and we played with

00:03:07.420 that online like on twitter and blog posts and stuff and it just kind of took on a life of its own

00:03:11.920 and then it was through kind of exploring that um that like that you know that dichotomy between

00:03:18.280 the way people are talking about innovation and you know maintenance repair that we started to see

00:03:23.800 that you know the may that the way we talk about innovation has these dark sides so i wouldn't say it

00:03:29.240 was like a like immediate insight it would really kind of came over time from thinking about these issues

00:03:34.260 well let's talk about this idea about the way we talk about innovation uh at universities and

00:03:39.360 businesses even in the government in the book you make you make this point it's important to

00:03:43.600 distinguish between actual innovation and innovation speak what's the difference between the two yeah

00:03:49.340 so actual innovation is the process of introducing new things or new processes new business models things

00:03:55.780 like that um and one of the reasons we want to make you know this distinction is because we think

00:04:01.480 innovation is really important you know human life has really changed over the last 150 or 200 years

00:04:07.420 with you know the rise of all these technologies like electricity and computing and you know we can go on

00:04:12.760 and on um but innovation speak though even the our use of the word innovation didn't really start until

00:04:20.320 after world war ii um and not only that so we wanted to say like this way we've we've talked about

00:04:29.340 innovation has a history and if you if you look at like some people argue that actual innovation

00:04:35.240 slow down since about 1970 or so um and yet we've been talking about innovation more and more uh and

00:04:43.800 so it's not clear that talking about innovation is actually getting us innovation and so that's one

00:04:48.760 reason why this distinction is really important is to be clear that you know the kind of talk and hype

00:04:54.680 is different from the thing and and just to be very clear about that well in some of the the stuff you

00:05:00.820 hear today about innovation speak it's like we're going to innovate or we're going to disrupt that

00:05:05.980 that's the kind of stuff you hear and you're like what exactly does that what does that what does that

00:05:09.600 actually mean yeah disruption is one of these things that started off with a very narrow precise

00:05:14.780 meeting in the early 1990s and then it just becomes you know this hot buzzword uh that people

00:05:21.500 throw around that has no meaning basically you know um and there's lots of other ones like agile and lean

00:05:27.780 um you know uh all kinds of innovation social innovation social entrepreneurship there's just

00:05:35.960 this huge like bag of buzzwords design thinking of course design thinking yeah design thinking

00:05:42.960 yeah that's another one well i think you make this interesting point sort of the history of this

00:05:47.680 innovation speak the way we talk about innovation before world war ii people didn't use the word

00:05:53.080 innovate and when they talked about technology they use the word progress and when when you hear

00:05:58.600 progress you think okay things get better like our life gets better and you you and your co-author

00:06:03.260 make this case that yeah like before world war ii like the technological advancements that we made

00:06:09.800 a lot of them like they brought progress like they brought us out of poverty and increased health etc

00:06:15.540 well i mean so you could there's a tool that your your listeners can play around with called google

00:06:20.760 ngram it's n-g-r-a-m and it allows you to track word use over time it's just fun to throw in there like

00:06:27.420 peanut butter and jelly or whatever and see when people started talking about that but if you throw

00:06:31.840 in progress in there you can see that our use of the word progress actually starts going down in the

00:06:37.520 late 1960s you know i mean that's the time of like nixon and the vietnam war and there's all these

00:06:44.760 environmental problems and the economies like in the garbage and people started kind of lost faith

00:06:50.940 in progress moral progress that our society was getting better and better and innovation almost

00:06:56.640 becomes a substitution word it's not saying you know it's not saying that society is going to progress

00:07:03.440 necessarily it's like technology is going to get better and somehow that's going to save us right so

00:07:08.920 there's there was like a there's been a decoupling between like innovate like actual innovation and

00:07:13.960 human progress before like you know you get electricity that changes people's lives or indoor

00:07:18.040 plumbing or antibiotics that that's a game changer but now it's like okay you have a new app on your

00:07:23.320 smartphone does it really make that much of a difference totally yeah and you see all these firms

00:07:28.580 like uber and peloton and we work and there's so many firms right now that are struggling to be

00:07:34.300 profitable right and they're like app driven often app driven things and they're just not that big of

00:07:40.560 a benefit to human life you know they smooth out some things that make some things more convenient

00:07:45.300 but it's not electricity it's not the automobile um it's not you know modern chemicals or whatever

00:07:52.360 right it's not that big but what happened like why was there a decoupling like you right around the

00:07:57.160 1960s of like technological innovation and and what we call progress like our lives getting better

00:08:03.740 what do you think happened so it's a really there's huge debates in economics and history about this

00:08:09.540 issue right now um my take is that you know one way to put it is that we we kind of plucked all the

00:08:17.180 low-hanging fruit in technology and some of the biggest changes in technology were and this is like

00:08:24.560 the economist robert gordon argues they came between 1870 and 1970 so you're talking about the car

00:08:30.180 electricity the airlines chemicals uh electronics industries early computing all these things right

00:08:37.720 and then you know after 1970 or 1980 those things are not improving that rapidly so when we talk about

00:08:46.260 innovation a lot of times we're talking about cell phones and the internet right and i would never say

00:08:52.180 that though i mean right now you and i are talking over skype and doing this interview remotely and you know

00:08:57.780 in higher ed today because of covid we're running our classes over zoom or whatever i would never say

00:09:03.520 that those things have not had some effect but it's a very narrow band of human life and then you know

00:09:10.040 your toilet hasn't improved that much over the last 50 years or whatever right like there's a lot of areas

00:09:15.800 in human life where things are pretty set and mature and i think that's the issue is that there's a lot of

00:09:21.520 parts of our lives that just haven't been changing that rapidly yeah i've heard like this thought

00:09:25.780 experiment people ask like a hypotheticals like would you rather give up like your ipad and your

00:09:30.440 internet connected devices or indoor plumbing electricity and antibiotics concrete right you're

00:09:36.980 like yeah i could i would be fine without all this like pretty much all the tech inventions from

00:09:41.980 2000 on i'd be okay if i didn't have it i mean like slack is nice to do business work over with and

00:09:48.460 even though you know we can also talk about how a lot of these things are also distractions and

00:09:52.440 actually interrupt our work too right so they're not always wins but it's not that big of an

00:09:58.180 improvement over email or the kinds of things we had in the 90s another point you you guys make is

00:10:02.760 that well so we we want innovation like because we have this idea that new is better um but not

00:10:08.620 necessarily and so as a result there's been these like industries that have built up they're like

00:10:13.040 innovation industries where they sell you the idea of innovation like walk us through some of these

00:10:18.040 businesses that have grown up to sell us the idea of innovation yeah so we highlight three in the in

00:10:23.740 the book um i'll start with clayton christensen he was a harvard business school uh professor he died

00:10:32.380 a year or two ago now and he's the guy who came up with the idea of disruptive innovation or at least

00:10:38.160 the term he was actually borrowed the idea from an earlier economist um and you know the idea of

00:10:44.680 disruption is that is that some new innovation is going to like blow um an existing industry or

00:10:51.820 technology out of the water like now we have netflix and you know the only remaining blockbuster you can

00:10:57.460 like rent from airbnb and sleep in it or something like that right um and so christensen had a consulting

00:11:04.940 firm called innocyte or i guess they like put innovation goggles on you um that you could hire in to

00:11:11.780 either teach you to be a disruptor or teach you to avoid being disrupted i guess um and he made a lot

00:11:17.920 of money off of off of that consulting group and then you know we also talk about richard florida who's

00:11:25.400 the guy who created the notion of creative class he's made a lot of money off of basically cities uh hiring

00:11:31.920 him and his firm to come in and make their you know their places more appealing to hipsters and creative

00:11:39.040 types who are supposed to create economic growth and you know then there's like the design thinking

00:11:43.380 ideo stanford d school folks um who promise to make you more innovative but don't really have any

00:11:49.500 evidence for it and i should say that part of the issues is christensen's ideas actually don't hold up to

00:11:55.560 like uh you know social scientific analysis this notion of disruption just doesn't hold any water

00:12:01.600 but part of you know so part of the part of what we're trying to argue is that because we want

00:12:07.580 innovation and because it makes profit for companies and because it makes growth for nations and

00:12:13.980 governments you know it creates this space for people to like claim their experts to that could

00:12:20.340 give you some solution that could come and make you more innovative or you know make us all you know

00:12:26.480 create more innovations and and you know that's the so it creates a consulting space you know and they

00:12:33.060 have like incentives to not really be honest with us about their ideas and how effective they are

00:12:39.660 and a lot of this uh uh innovations like well that's interesting but you talk about the point

00:12:44.660 that like innovation actually happens but when it does happen it usually happens like slowly and often

00:12:50.260 accidentally like serendipitously you can't like plan for innovation it's hard to

00:12:54.340 yeah i mean i'm i'm like enough of a you know a progressive professor like you know stereotypical

00:13:01.220 in that way where i'd like i want the government to spend money on like scientific research because

00:13:06.780 i think that leads downstream to actual innovations that benefit our life but you know like this is a

00:13:14.420 place where i actually think there's something to like conservative and libertarian arguments where you

00:13:18.880 can't really steer this stuff right it's like you can't plan it in a way

00:13:23.620 uh and i think that's part of the problem with these innovation consultants is they want to give

00:13:29.480 you a recipe for how to produce innovation and it just doesn't work that way so all this time while

00:13:35.200 we've been spending money on and time and energy on thinking about how to be more innovative and like

00:13:40.080 there's innovations that we come up with i mean they're not that great like at best we get email

00:13:44.840 slack which can help things a little bit emails helped a lot slack not so much then you have things

00:13:49.220 like the juicero which you talk about right i just said there's new juiceros there's one now for

00:13:55.120 tortillas like homemade tortillas and there's one there's like a cocktail juicero so instead of making

00:14:01.360 your own cocktails uh which i think is a manly thing to do you're you're supposed to use this uh

00:14:06.860 you know use this gadget to just have it do it for you right well for those who don't know the

00:14:11.720 juicero it's just it's it's a it's a smart juicing thing where you you have to buy these pouches

00:14:16.220 with juicing we're basically kind of pulpy juice and then the juicero squeezes it because you push

00:14:21.320 a button your smartphone i guess people realize you could just squeeze the stuff out with your

00:14:25.280 hands out of the pouch yeah you could just cut it cut the thing open with scissors and squeeze it out

00:14:29.560 and there was the machine wasn't doing that much so so yeah we that innovation speaks can get you

00:14:34.800 innovations like that which aren't very useful so all this time we've been thinking about how to be

00:14:39.060 innovative we've you make the case we've been neglecting maintenance what do you think is going on

00:14:45.240 there like why let's talk about maintenance in the first place you make the case in the book that

00:14:51.220 maintenance is it's necessary but it's often neglected and this isn't new this has been a

00:14:57.420 problem for most of human history like how far back do we know that people have had problems with

00:15:01.440 maintenance oh all the way back you know we talked to the historian pam long uh and uh she's a

00:15:09.700 historian of like the middle ages and in the ancient world and she says that in rome and like

00:15:16.640 the 14th or 15th century like it's just absolutely awful there was no maintenance going on um and so

00:15:24.300 you know there's and there's lots of other examples of like failing sewer systems in ancient rome and

00:15:29.500 stuff so maintenance has always been a problem as you say and how has it become more of a problem in

00:15:34.740 the 20th and 21st centuries there's a number of areas of life we can talk about i mean i think the

00:15:41.280 the kind of high theme here is that there's a lot of incentives these days for short-term thinking

00:15:48.620 so in the corporate sector for instance uh there's a lot of emphasis put on the quarterly report

00:15:55.980 and for producing short-term growth and you know to boost stock prices and such well that is going to

00:16:04.160 lead you to put a lot of emphasis on you know creating the new thing that's going to get that

00:16:10.960 that extra boost and distract you from keeping going you know the things that are already there

00:16:18.180 and we see the same thing in government so our our federal infrastructure programs are aimed to get money

00:16:25.900 to localities uh to build roads and such but then there's no federal money for maintenance and what

00:16:34.380 the localities are doing is signing on to maintain those things forever right or until they want to

00:16:41.300 put the road to bed and and they don't have the tax money to do that so they have the short-term incentive

00:16:47.460 to take the federal money to build the thing that's awesome and everyone can stand in front of it and

00:16:52.760 take a pretty picture and you know cut a ribbon or whatever um but then you know they're not

00:16:58.040 considering the downturn the downroad costs of it well it was so i thought an interesting point you

00:17:03.300 made in the book was like at the 19th century like the railroad tycoons they actually kind of figured

00:17:08.900 out that maintenance was an important part of their business operation and they had to invest a lot

00:17:12.860 and they actually built up an infrastructure for maintenance and they actually um like maintainers

00:17:18.000 people who'd maintain that like that that was a not a high status but it came with it was well paid

00:17:23.580 and was it was it was well regarded but then like slowly into the 20th century like maintenance or

00:17:30.820 the maintenance professions kind of were seen as dead-end dead-end work what do you think happened

00:17:35.360 there like from the 19th century to the 20th century where maintenance or being involved in

00:17:39.900 maintenance work was seen as uh you know like just not something not not something to aspire to

00:17:44.820 yeah well part of it is that we look at like the status that is associated with work is part of our

00:17:51.700 argument um and something that happens is as technologies age they they go down in terms of

00:17:58.740 social status so in the 19th century it was high status to be a mechanic or an electrician those were

00:18:06.340 both things that you would do as a aspiring young person who wanted to move up in the world well

00:18:11.660 obviously that's not how we talk about those trades now that's not i'm not saying you know like

00:18:15.860 socially we judge those as like the trades right and they're for people you know in quotation marks who

00:18:22.420 aren't you know college material or whatever this is not how i think about it that's how people talk

00:18:26.860 about it and so as technologies age the status of working on them tends to go down and we see that

00:18:34.260 actually happening with coding and um computer work right now um so they're becoming more blue collar

00:18:41.400 like um and eventually you might not even need to go to college to do them so i think that this is

00:18:47.020 one dynamic and answer your question is as the things get older the the status of working on them

00:18:53.160 uh declines we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:18:57.180 and now back to the show let's go back to this idea of where we're having problems with maintenance

00:19:03.720 you mentioned roads and i thought this was really interesting because in the u.s we're always talking

00:19:07.580 about the poor state of of our infrastructure and it's always it's always sort of like a platform for

00:19:11.440 both whatever partition whatever side of the spectrum they're on roads are bad bridges are

00:19:16.440 crumbling and i mean i really don't understand like what's going on there and you as you said before

00:19:22.180 like what happened is like the federal government subsidizes federal highways but then passes it on

00:19:26.900 to the states and the local municipalities to maintain the roads i guess the problem is like

00:19:33.400 when these local governments decide to take on these these new roads or new bridges like why don't

00:19:38.420 they think about the maintenance costs like why don't they think about oh we're gonna get this free

00:19:42.320 bridge basically but they don't think about and then we're gonna have to pay for it 30 40 years down

00:19:47.260 the line i think because they're not required to you know i mean it's it's basically free money

00:19:53.980 they're getting from the federal government or very very low interest loans um and they're not

00:20:00.140 required to show that you know that they they can handle the cost down the line so the incentives

00:20:06.540 are like directly aligned for them taking the money and then dealing with it later and they won't even be

00:20:12.540 in office when or around when when it becomes a problem like 20 or 30 years down the road

00:20:18.400 um so i think it's about incentives ultimately and the other problem too is that you know maybe they

00:20:24.080 accepted the money when things were were great but then they're like tax base has been decimated

00:20:29.540 because they've lost an industry so i'm thinking like rust belt type places where they had all the

00:20:34.880 car industry and they thought yeah maybe in 50 years we'll be able to maintain it but now that the

00:20:39.660 industry's gone they don't have the tax base to support the maintenance of the road anymore

00:20:42.800 yeah i mean this guy chuck marone at strong towns who's really a good person to follow on these

00:20:48.500 issues i mean he he's shown and argues that this issue of like taking on too much you know too much

00:20:56.500 infrastructural debt and not being able to maintain it is a problem in like normal healthy communities

00:21:02.420 but obviously there's lots of part of lots of parts of our country that have depopulated over the last

00:21:07.960 30 or 40 years so that becomes an even bigger problem right you just don't even have the

00:21:12.640 tax base to keep going uh then then you face really tough questions about like how to handle

00:21:19.280 handle repair water systems for a municipality when there's no money right uh those are those

00:21:25.880 are huge questions for our society well are there places in the world that you found where they've

00:21:30.600 been able to crack this maintenance not like were they able to keep their infrastructure it's it's

00:21:34.460 stable it's good it's in good working order you know it's funny uh we do look at a couple places

00:21:39.560 in the book so first of all you can look like at japanese high-speed rail systems they have amazing

00:21:45.740 maintenance um they've never had a deadly accident and uh you know like their average annual delay

00:21:54.720 is like by a minute the average delay over time is is a is a minute and you tell that to people on like

00:22:00.900 the northeastern corridor uh where you know they use the train to get from new york to washington dc

00:22:07.620 or whatever they're gonna cry um and then we also looked at look at like water maintenance

00:22:14.360 water management systems in the netherlands that are pretty amazing and they do a good job

00:22:20.680 maintaining um this is how they deal with ocean water but you know since the book came out there's

00:22:26.340 been a series of articles about the canal systems in amsterdam and how they're collapsing so it's just

00:22:33.020 like i think you can find some cultures that are better at it in general but there's always exceptions

00:22:38.700 you know apparently even the dutch aren't good at maintaining some things well so one point you make

00:22:44.240 in the book is that in order to solve these maintenance issues like when stuff's falling apart

00:22:48.220 governments even universities businesses the typical solution is okay we're going to grow our

00:22:53.840 way out of it right we don't have the money now maybe if you throw more money at it right now get

00:22:58.620 bigger that'll solve the problem but then you guys make this case that well growth yeah it can solve

00:23:04.460 the problem but then it just perpetuates the problems you already had before like how so what's

00:23:09.400 going on there well i think there's two sides of it the first side is that in a sense our infrastructural

00:23:16.780 problem comes from growth right or the the way we use federal money to build infrastructure is a post

00:23:23.600 world war ii thing and during that time we've grown out the suburbs in our country at an amazing rate

00:23:30.260 and so we've we've used federal it's almost like a bubble of sorts you know we've used federal money

00:23:35.980 to blow build up all this infrastructure now we're stuck with it um so growth becomes a liability down

00:23:43.340 the road and i also think growth is just not sustainable as a strategy it's not sustainable

00:23:48.420 environmentally uh in in for lots of production but you know you look at universities today they want

00:23:55.120 to deal with everything um in terms of growth well every university in the nation is trying to deal

00:24:02.120 with their problems via growth and you just think about the numbers of students and how there's actually

00:24:07.220 going to be declining numbers of college students over the last next decade not everyone's going to grow

00:24:12.920 you know it's just it's not realistic so i i think both how growth becomes a liability and is not like a

00:24:19.600 realistic long-term strategy those are the two sides that come to mind right now right so as you get bigger

00:24:25.340 it's just more stuff to maintain yeah and you know i mean that's part of the history of you know we can

00:24:30.480 think of like modern life is that you know we had the railroads then we had you know the telephone system

00:24:36.400 and we had the electricity system and then the highways and the road systems water systems all

00:24:43.060 these things that make modern life modern life as we've built them up over the last 150 years they

00:24:49.020 become debts and liabilities that we're accountable for so i mean that's an argument for saying we really

00:24:55.200 need to if we're going to build more we need to think about how we're going to pay for it before we do so

00:25:00.100 yeah i've heard this phrase like this term i think it's part from that guy parkinson who's like

00:25:04.820 he came with parkinson's law like time fills the space available or work fills the time available

00:25:10.660 he also had like some other things like basically if an organization gets above a thousand like

00:25:14.960 most of the work at that point just goes to maintaining the organization and not not actually

00:25:19.980 doing anything new and you can see that yeah yeah you can see that at universities i mean you look at

00:25:24.000 all the number of deans and administrators and they're not it's just i mean that's that's a problem

00:25:27.980 and there's like not much teaching going i have a friend who's a professor and it's a constant i mean

00:25:32.960 he carps about it i get it oh man it's so so true and you talk about like you know how we

00:25:37.680 saddle students with like all this debt in our country and i think there's a pretty strong

00:25:42.760 argument to be made that the reason we've been raising tuition is because we've added this enormous

00:25:46.980 layer of administration you know so we've been talking about the problems institutions have with

00:25:53.480 maintenance so governments businesses etc but we also have these same problems of maintenance on the

00:26:00.100 personal level like where in our personal lives do we do you have you seen people having problems with

00:26:05.380 with maintenance boy i mean i think at home if you're a homeowner or renter but especially if

00:26:11.520 you're a homeowner i think you know the realities of maintenance and how it's so easy to push it push it

00:26:16.900 off so one of the things i did for the book is i actually bought a bought a house here in

00:26:21.780 blacksburg virginia when we were working on the book and i i talked to a home inspector you know a guy who

00:26:28.080 does inspections for sales and he was just telling me all kinds of wild stories of like you know he

00:26:36.260 climbed on climbs on people's roofs to find if they're sound or not and he actually fell half partway

00:26:42.060 through one like a month or two before we had talked and he said you know he said that the the

00:26:48.280 scariest thing he sees is when he goes and looks at people's decks on the back of their houses and he

00:26:55.040 says so often he just has nightmares that people are going to have like a family party or something

00:27:00.200 they're just going to collapse under too many people so i mean i think that's you know we can

00:27:04.700 also talk about you know what renters experience but home ownership is a very clear example of

00:27:09.880 where we see this kind of deferred maintenance problem right owning a car same thing totally

00:27:15.100 totally but even like your like our health right there's a lot of like stuff we should be doing

00:27:19.580 we know we should be doing like sort of preventative maintenance you go get the yearly checkup

00:27:23.560 to make sure you catch things early but people are just like yeah especially men they're like yeah

00:27:28.140 i don't know right i just put that off put the beer gut on right yeah i'm okay with that i don't

00:27:32.640 have to do that but that then again you defer the cost and then like when you're 60 or 70 you have

00:27:36.820 like diabetes and all these other health issues that could have been you could have nipped it in

00:27:40.820 the bud earlier yeah like heart disease is a great example of that right but yeah i mean i mean

00:27:46.260 that's really where it touches people on the it's funny because we write about you know we write about

00:27:51.080 the nation we write about organizations we write about all these different things but it's often

00:27:55.260 like the bodily maintenance and thinking about like short-term rewards of like another cookie or

00:28:01.960 another beer or whatever it is versus exercising and all the you know the long-term thinking that's

00:28:08.800 really where it hits people it's like oh yeah like this is a an individual level problem as well

00:28:14.660 as a social society level one right and then also on the personal level you guys talk about there

00:28:19.540 was a we had it in a at a time in our culture this idea of like you know use it up wear it out

00:28:25.180 make do do without like sort of you could fix stuff right if something wore out you could

00:28:28.640 your grandma would darn her socks grandpa would fix um the tractor but now because stuff is so cheap

00:28:37.780 if something breaks just like well just go get a new one buy one on amazon i'll be here the next day

00:28:42.520 don't have to worry about fixing it yeah and i mean you know this is another part of the

00:28:46.880 technological revolution of the last couple hundred years i have a lecture um called modernity equals

00:28:52.900 cheap crap that i give most of my classes and it's you know i start the lecture with things just like

00:28:58.720 falling out of people's closets or falling out of like their uh garages about like half of american

00:29:06.220 garages are full full still full of stuff that they can't be used to put cars in and um you know i mean

00:29:14.460 what this is about is the cheapness of things in our lives we we don't we take that for granted and

00:29:20.640 we don't really realize how amazing it is but as a result it is often cheaper for you to go buy a new

00:29:27.340 toaster than it is to get your toaster fixed and of course this has big environmental ramifications

00:29:33.200 right because we're just like we become a very disposable society well the other problem too is

00:29:38.200 that companies have started to make consumer goods that they're it's harder to repair so like apple

00:29:43.720 i think is a prime example of that it's like if you want to replace the battery you can't do it

00:29:48.500 yourself anymore you have to like go somewhere and have them replace the battery for you yeah you know

00:29:53.040 i was kind of aware of this thing called the right to repair movement which is fighting companies

00:29:58.100 locking down uh repair before we wrote the book but as we wrote the book i really became a big

00:30:04.760 proponent of it um and so i look up to people like kyle wines of ifixit the repair site or nathan

00:30:11.340 proctor at us purg these guys are really fighting to pass laws to make our stuff repairable again um but

00:30:20.040 it's true it's become a corporate strategy but from you know it's john deere and some automakers and

00:30:27.240 apple and a lot of other gadget makers have like really tried to make their things not repairable so

00:30:33.020 that we have to rely on them yeah you go to them and then i mean it also brings up i like this kind

00:30:38.040 of brings up ideas and law like what does it mean to own something like do you really own the thing

00:30:41.960 if you can if you can't fix it if it breaks down are you just are you just leasing it i know it's it

00:30:48.780 gets weird like are you licensing your phone from apple um i think this really pushes in the states i

00:30:55.860 think this you know this kind of upsets really deep long-held traditions of autonomy and you know

00:31:02.880 individualism and stuff that we've kind of feel cut off from our things and that we don't have the

00:31:08.080 right to repair them that doesn't fit for us i think well uh so we there's the problem we're not

00:31:13.200 maintaining this i think part of the problem is humans are really bad at thinking about the future

00:31:17.780 like we're short-term thinkers don't think about the long terms this happens on the micro level and

00:31:22.620 then you see it happen on the macro level um you think people will get smarter uh when you start

00:31:28.020 thinking high level they actually get dumber um but then also just the our culture has changed things

00:31:34.340 have gotten cheaper things are harder to repair so we've lost this ability or this idea of uh of

00:31:40.320 maintenance so what can we do to get back the maintenance mindset like what what do you guys

00:31:45.400 propose at the maintainers yeah so we try to boil it down in the book to a couple ideas i mean i i think

00:31:51.740 first of all for organizations it really requires leadership and realizing that this stuff is

00:31:57.680 important and um and valuing it up front and then it requires a kind of cultural shift right uh we have

00:32:07.740 to get better at this together uh especially if we're talking at the organizational um level and then

00:32:13.720 you know where we can we we also need to like you know talk about innovation and maintenance like

00:32:19.760 actual innovation and maintenance so in the book we cover uh companies that are making digital apps

00:32:26.420 um and other uh software mostly to better manage maintenance whether it's through predictive analytics

00:32:34.200 and ai or remote sensing and stuff there's ways we can get better both in in infrastructural

00:32:40.920 maintenance and in organizations at maintaining things so we we don't have like a like you know we

00:32:46.660 there's a there's another genre of book like this where you end with a um uh you know a bullet list

00:32:54.100 of like policies that you'd like to see put in place whether in government or or uh businesses and

00:33:00.440 we didn't chose not to end that way we it's more of a inviting people to the realization that this is

00:33:05.760 important and then you know talking and thinking together about how we can improve yes you know ideas of

00:33:12.040 like innovation helping maintenance i know like in the oil fields they're using drones to like check

00:33:17.620 lines to make sure there aren't any leaks and it's all ai stuff so they can see like oh there's a leak

00:33:22.820 and then they go and fix it yeah we have a buddy um named varoon who works in basically predictive

00:33:29.020 analytics around uh gas leaks in you know uh natural gas heating uh type pipes and it's it's you know

00:33:38.780 they can use remote sensors and algorithms now to to watch things at a distance so there's a lot of

00:33:45.800 improvements that can happen at the same time you know i think we're skeptical that those improvements

00:33:50.900 alone are going to save us we're in such a hole right now when it comes to infrastructure in the

00:33:56.260 states that it's not going to be like through in it you know innovation alone is not going to save us

00:34:01.240 we're going to have to kind of get real about where we're at it's a mindset yeah you take on right

00:34:06.180 well another cultural shift that has to happen is we have to raise the status of maintenance work

00:34:12.440 as well like instead of thinking as okay it's a dead-end job that's where you go if you don't go

00:34:16.960 to college actually hey these people are important part of like keeping like sort of like the mike

00:34:21.280 mike roe approach these are the guys who make civil civilized life uh possible yeah and you know

00:34:27.400 you can live uh you know a pretty good middle class life in the trades you know i think we've just

00:34:33.640 really have shot ourselves in the foot by assuming that you have to go to college to to have a good

00:34:41.680 life you know we talk that's the way a lot of people talk it's not true and i work in universities

00:34:46.560 right like it's in it's in my interest to say yes come to come to school but um the trades are great i but

00:34:53.180 i think that like you're saying we have to rework how we value these jobs and realize that these people

00:34:59.800 are important and they're they're giving value to our lives in important ways i think the big takeaway

00:35:05.460 that i got this from personally from your from the book was whenever i buy something now it's like

00:35:09.980 okay not only think about the cost i had to clunk over to get the thing i got to think about what's

00:35:14.520 the cost of maintaining this thing as well um and i usually don't do that but now i've been thinking

00:35:19.080 about that and not just in terms of like monetary cost but like bandwidth cost like where am i going to

00:35:23.400 put this uh what what happens when i have to get rid of it i mean it's going to be a pain in the

00:35:28.000 butt to get rid of you buy some big thing i'm starting to think about that stuff now well that's

00:35:32.460 great the andy and i had these kind of realizations as we were working on the book too and i think

00:35:37.040 um you know that's that's where you end up is like you know i'm looking we have one of these you

00:35:43.380 know what are the the kind of dehumidifiers you plug into the wall right now in our basement

00:35:48.160 and i'm thinking about buying a built-in one because for a variety of reasons to put in the

00:35:54.320 basement but now you know i'm doing research i'm like what are the maintenance costs what am i

00:35:58.840 getting myself into here right i would have never done that before before we worked on this and also

00:36:05.240 that causes you to like just kind of shift away from the growth mindset and thinking okay more stuff

00:36:10.580 is better it's like well actually sometimes more more isn't good right right yeah more is more

00:36:16.100 costly and like you make the example like obesity like getting fat like at a certain point like fat's

00:36:22.420 good but at a certain point it becomes costly yep that's a great way to think about it so yeah

00:36:26.980 just pare down it makes maintenance a lot easier um so where can people go to learn more about the

00:36:32.640 book and your work the easiest way a place to go is the maintainers.org um and we have a email list

00:36:39.980 serve people can join there it's a it's not too many emails and it's a fun group and then they can

00:36:46.260 also just reach out to me i'm lee at the maintainers.org uh or andy's andy at the maintainers.org

00:36:52.620 i'm also on twitter at sts uh underscore news fantastic well lee vinsel thanks for your time

00:36:59.260 it's been a pleasure thanks man this was fun my guest today was lee vinsel he's the co-author of

00:37:04.340 the book the innovation delusion it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere find out

00:37:08.360 more information about his work at the website the maintainers.org also check out our show notes at

00:37:12.620 aom.is slash maintenance where we find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic

00:37:16.620 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at art of manliness.com

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00:38:00.740 into action

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#658： In Praise of Maintenance in a World Obsessed With Innovation

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