For the last two weeks, the software project I work on has been in one of those hiatuses inspired by the need for the program managers to brief successively higher levels of authority about progress before being granted permission to move on to the next phase where we get to build things instead of talk them to death. As such, most of us peons have been “on the bench,” and have little direct responsibility for a short period, other than to show up every day and occasionally make reports of our accomplishments to our direct supervisors, who have little to nothing to do with the project, to justify our existence.

Most of us have been filling this time by catching up on our “continuous learning” requirements. This means clicking through a succession of online training modules of tremendously variable quality on everything from contract law to information security to workplace safety.

Earlier this week I spent two hours taking a mostly tedious module on stress management (I needed an elective for my next level of professional certification, and this one seemed the least painful one that fit the time window I had). Amongst all the other MBA-inspired platitudes, there were a few good pieces of advice, such as breaking down particularly intimidating tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks. It’s good advice, one of those lessons that I’ve almost, but not quite, internalized during the nearly thirty-seven years I’ve spent crawling across the surface of this sad little planet. I don’t always succeed in doing so, but it’s one of those little lessons I understand as valuable and aspire to apply to my life, and work to pass on to others.

Also, for a confluence of reasons, my idle processing cycles have been filling themselves with big, cosmological issues: the nature of the universe, humanity’s place in it, how we might make things better, etc. Not the worst thing I could be investing thoughts in, but much of the time, it’s a cloudy, confused, and sometimes depressing thought space.

Interestingly, in my regular morning spin through the internets, I saw this piece of wisdom in a comment from user “froborr” over at slacktivist’s new digs that ties these two recent obsessions together nicely, which I shall repeat here:

If every person saved 23 square centimeters every day, we could save the world in a year. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Sure, it’s abstract, pithy, and I can’t quite get the math to work out right, but I like the idea. As messy as the world is, philosophically, politically, environmentally, or whatever, if everyone does something small everyday to make their corner of the world a little better, eventually, we might get somewhere in making the whole place better for everyone.

So, I ask you all – have you saved your 3.5 in² today? And if not, why not?