Mind Blowing Email I received

[*MAD DOG*]

This is not my work, nor about me. I received this on the email and thought i'd give you all the opportunity to read it. It is worth the read. Enjoy :thumbsup:

Slow down please- "Life is lived in an instant"

It's been 18 years since I joined Volvo, a Swedish company. Working for them has proven to be an interesting experience. Any project here takes 2 years to be finalized, even if the idea is simple and brilliant. It's a rule.

Globalized processes have caused in us (all over the world) a general sense of searching for immediate results.. Therefore, we have come to possess a need to see immediate results. This contrasts greatly with the slow movements of the Swedish. They, on the other hand, debate, debate, debate, hold x quantity of meetings and work with a slowdown scheme. At the end, this always yields better results.

1. Sweden has 8 million inhabitants.
2. Stockholm has 500,000 people.
3. Volvo, Escania, Ericsson, Electrolux, are some of its renowned companies. Volvo even supplies NASA.

The first time I was in Sweden , one of my colleagues picked me up at the hotel every morning. It was September, bit cold and snowy. We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work).

The first day, I didn't say anything, neither the second or third days. One morning I asked him, "Do you have a fixed parking space?

I've noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot."

To which he replied, "Since we're here early we'll have time to walk, don't you think that whoever gets in late will need a place closer to the door?" Imagine my face.

Nowadays, there's a movement in Europe named Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing. Slow Food is against its counterpart, Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week.

Basically, the movement questions the sense of "hurry" and "craziness" generated by globalization, fuelled by the desire of "having in quantity" (life status) versus "having with quality", "life quality" or the "quality of being".

French people, even though they work 35 hours per week, are more productive than Americans or British. Germans have established 28.8 hour workweeks and have seen their productivity driven up by 20%..

This slow attitude has come to the notice of USA , the pupils of the fast and "do it now" brigade.

This no-rush attitude doesn't represent doing less or having a lower productivity.
It means working and doing things with greater quality, productivity, perfection, with attention to detail and less stress.
It means re-establishing family values, friends, free and leisure time.. Taking the "now", present and concrete, versus the "global", undefined and anonymous.
It means taking humans' essential values, the simplicity of living.
It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive work place where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do.

It's time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence.

In the movie, 'Scent of a Woman', there's a scene where Al Pacino asks a girl to dance and she replies, "I can't, my boyfriend will be here any minute now". To which Al Pacino responds, "A life is lived in an instant" . Then they dance the tango!

Many of us live our lives running behind time, but we only reach it when we die of a heart attack or in a car accident rushing to be on time. Others are so anxious to live for the future that they forget to live the present, which is the only time that truly exists.

We all have equal time throughout the world. No one has more or less. The difference lies in how each one of us does with our time. We need to live each moment. As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".


Congratulations for reading this email till the end of this message.
There are many who will have stopped in the middle so as not to waste time in this "Globalized" world..

[TLyttle]

Amen to that!! We had a large sign in our shop that read, "There is never enough time to do it right, but there is always enough time to do it twice." When a mistake was made or a poor piece of work on a project, we would lead the perpetrator of the misdemeanor to the sign and make him read it out loud. We ended up with a very productive shop, products with excellent quality, and a very happy work crew. Why do companies find this such a hard lesson to learn???

[Shroomster]

Ok....why did you post it twice?

[H3LlIoN]

I'm surprised noone has said this yet....Volvo Car Division was bought by Ford (a US company) in '99, and was most recently (this year) sold to a Chinese company.


That being said, my last car was a "Ford-Volvo." I hated it, in every since of the word. It was the biggest piece I've ever owned in my life. I've always heard nothing but amazing stories though about "Volvo-Volvos," including multiple tales of 600K+ miles with nothing but tune ups and oil changes.

[djct_watt]

Man that article was as concise as 50 page essay on tube steak. . .

. . . main points, quality is more important than speed, and people need to slow down and not rush things so much. They use Volvo as a quasi-example, a company that has neither quality nor speed in it's production. I fail to see their point. . .

Is it too much to ask for both fast production and good quality? Most automotive production is automated by machines now, which ensures high quality and high speed. Sure, they can take as long as they want during QC checks, but there ARE ways to speed up processes and make things efficient.

We all know we hate waiting in line at a grocery store. There's not much quality to gain if it takes 1 hour to purchase a stick of gum.

[djct_watt]

Volvo, Escania, Ericsson, Electrolux, are some of its renowned companies. Volvo even supplies NASA.

Because these companies are known for the absolutely mind blowing quality? HAHAHHAAH! Even Nasa. . . there are millions of suppliers for Nasa. I'm sure even China supplies parts to Nasa. Is that supposed to be impressive? Don't their shuttles keep blowing up for no good reason? I'm I to understand if I supply parts to vehicle that kills people non-stop, I should follow their fantastic example? Then there is a failed car company bailed our by Ford and ready to be dumped again. There is a failed cell phone company, eaten alive by Motorola and Nokia, bailed out by Sony, only to be completely uncompetitive once again. An OK appliances company, eaten alive by Korean, Japanese, and American competition. Oh and Scania. . . Sweden should be embarrassed about Scania. . . I mean who would even bother to mention that.

Whoever wrote this email should have slowed down and spent more time looking at what companies are successful BEFORE writing this thing up.

I would look to companies like...
Ford/Toyota/Hyundai for the automotive role model.
Niche car. . . maybe look at Lotus or Spyker.
Appliances, look at GE, LG, Bosch
Cell Phones: they're all junk imo. No such thing as a quality phone anymore. . . maybe Nokia, maybe the iPhone (don't flame me for it, but my iPhones have been impeccable and my blackberries and HTC's have all broken).

[H3LlIoN]

Contrary to your first post, Volvo USED to have very high quality. Dropped off in '99 though. And I agree...NASA is a poor example of an entity that is known for failure and is merely being kept alive by our [US] gov't's insistence on cornering the market on space exploration.

[djct_watt]

I had an '84 Volvo 760 Turbo Intercooler model, bought from family. It was a heap o' junk and continued to be a heap o' junk. Great motor, great turbo, car was junk. Everything fell apart. And it was common for other Volvo's we owned (had 4 in the family, 2 wagons (and 850 and a 9 something or other), the 760 and a 740. All garbage, but again, some of the sweetest engines, period. Panels falling off, glues melting, gloveboxes falling off, headliner falling off, bumpers falling off, lights, etc. . . anyone with a 7 series older volvo will tell you the nightmares of that stupid plastic bumper just falling off. The whole family switched to Toyota around 1989, and haven't looked back since (our immediate household) has between 8-9 cars spread between two countries. Our Toyota's have to proved to have the best ratio of low cost of ownership and reliability.

But back to the point, Volvo and quality aren't the images that come to mind. . . even in their heyday.

[H3LlIoN]

I would argue that either your family was hard on your cars, or perhaps your countries standards are different, as I can relate the almost exact opposite experience that my family has had with numerous volvos over the years, both USDM and whatever you would buy when in Germany, including the 8 and 7 series wagons. Again though, my last one was an 02 S80 T6, and it got traded on my 'yota.

[djct_watt]

I lived in the USA for all my life. . . i just moved to Thailand about a year ago. We had a Lexus LS400 get well over 300,000 miles. . . without any major issues. And all of our Toyota's are following suit. I'm the worst driver in my family and never really messed with the Volvo's myself. I beat the living hell out of the Lexus without any problems. In fact, it was traded in for a few bucks as it failed to die, despite being over 15 years old. On the Volvo's all had massive problems surface around 60k miles or so.

We never owned an S80, but it was a good car. But if I remember correctly, that should be a Ford Volvo, yes?

[*MAD DOG*]

Ok....why did you post it twice?

It was a test to see read the whole thing and notice. You passed. :clap:

[127.0.0.1]

tl;dr

[sqcomp]

Funny, some of you complain that it isn't concise enough...hello! That's point! You're in too much of a hurry! Who cares if it's long. It has a very important message.

[djct_watt]

No. . . you missed his point. His point is about maintaining quality and that quality is lost when things are rushed. But something the author fails to realize is that being efficient (ie concise) and having good quality are not mutually exclusive.

Under his logic, he should have written a 50 page article, rambling on for 49.8 pages. And under his logic, they should spend 50 years to build 1 car. But you know what? You can spend an entire lifetime doing something and it can still suck. . . and likewise you can publish an encyclopedia and still be waaaay off base. Rushing and being efficient are two completely different concepts, and this author has NO IDEA WHATSOEVER about efficiency or quality. His examples of "quality" prove my point.

[djct_watt]

Efficiency = eliminating waste
Rushing = skipping critical and important elements.

[TLyttle]

I was a lead hand in a truck shop for awhile, and I made sure my crew followed my advice. We took 10 hours longer to build a truck, but none of the trucks spent any time in test & delivery, unlike vehicles built by the other crews. The trucks we built had the lowest warranty work, by a substantial amount of time. We built the trucks right, first time, and the company made money on them.

Seeing the build quality of US vehicles until recently, it was clear that production was the ONLY purpose in the factory, and that quality or accuracy simply did not count. Men were machines only, and thinking was not allowed on the floor. Things have (apparently) changed for the better, but it seems to be too late, as the US image will take awhile to recover regardless of how good they build them now. Even at that, the designs leave a LOT to be desired IMHO...

[djct_watt]

Not speaking for recently built Toyota's and their problems, but a lot of books have been written about the Toyota Production method, Kaizen, and efficiency.

Toyota knows (knew, lol) how to spend less time building a vehicle than the competition, yet had the lowest defect rates in the industry. Like I said, it IS important to build something with care and quality. But spending more time doing something does NOT always equate to doing it better. In fact, it has been proven that you can do something BOTH better AND faster. And this email is proof is a well. The point would have been just as strong had they written it one time, instead of twice. All they did, was waste time for no reason. That, my friends, if taken to a bigger picture, RAISES cost without raising quality.

[DevilGirl]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the article is only about the company Volvo.

The overall important point to take away from the article is not just about how different things are manufactured. It speaks more about the overall quality of our lives. Finding the balance between work and play. Not making the job the top priority in life.

In the end, sure we may have spent the bulk of our time working. But what about the rest of the time? What were we doing with it? We were spending time with our families or friends? Were we relaxing in any way? What was our constant stress levels at?


The vast majority of the USA lead their lives with work being the only thing on their mind. All about making the money to buy the most expensive things, and in the end, still not being satisfied. They stress over having money, having toys, needing to work overtime constantly.

Life is not about the having the most toys, but about how we spent our lives. My fiancee and I are examples of that. We work way too many hours. Most of that goes to pay off bills (such as credit cards), because we would use the credit cards to buy all the new gadgets that have come out, yet we don't have time to use them since we're working all the time to pay for them.

Whereas friends of ours, they have a small home (paying the mortgage), they don't have cable (they do have the internet though), only just recently got cell phones... While they may not have a whole lot of money left over at the end of the day, they have what a lot of us don't have: being happy with who they are, where they are.

[djct_watt]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the article is only about the company Volvo.

The overall important point to take away from the article is not just about how different things are manufactured. It speaks more about the overall quality of our lives. Finding the balance between work and play. Not making the job the top priority in life.

In the end, sure we may have spent the bulk of our time working. But what about the rest of the time? What were we doing with it? We were spending time with our families or friends? Were we relaxing in any way? What was our constant stress levels at?


The vast majority of the USA lead their lives with work being the only thing on their mind. All about making the money to buy the most expensive things, and in the end, still not being satisfied. They stress over having money, having toys, needing to work overtime constantly.

Life is not about the having the most toys, but about how we spent our lives. My fiancee and I are examples of that. We work way too many hours. Most of that goes to pay off bills (such as credit cards), because we would use the credit cards to buy all the new gadgets that have come out, yet we don't have time to use them since we're working all the time to pay for them.

Whereas friends of ours, they have a small home (paying the mortgage), they don't have cable (they do have the internet though), only just recently got cell phones... While they may not have a whole lot of money left over at the end of the day, they have what a lot of us don't have: being happy with who they are, where they are.

First things first, MY issue with the article isn't just Volvo, it's every example it brings up as evidence of good culture and philosophy. Just as I do my life, I believe in living a good quality life, and not some life that lasts forever and is mediocre.

But in terms of YOUR point, I do agree. However, the principle still stands true that eliminating waste out of one's life is critical to a good life. Sure, you SHOULD stop and smell the roses, but that in itself is not a waste of time. Sitting around wishing you could do other things and doing nothing about it IS a waste of time. And just the same, life is precious and should not be wasted. It's THE most valuable commodity you have; life, and subsequently time, especially reading some retarded article two times.

[TLyttle]

Every thing we do is a lesson if we are willing to learn it. Even reading that article twice has its own lesson, ie, pay attention the first time!

Devil Girl's post is very insightful. I have been retired for 6 years now, and I really don't know how I found the time to satisfy The Man. My house is smaller than most, my income is very small, my hobby is inexpensive, I live very well indeed, and we are just fine with our 19" tv (all the rest of the electronics are at the same level). Earlier someone said that they couldn't POSSIBLY live in a vehicle with no stereo: too bad they aren't seeing what is there to see, or to hear. There is lots more to life than what is being thrown at us, something about thinking for oneself maybe...