We have entered the cell, the Mansion of our birth, and started the inventory of our acquired wealth.
As an intern for Vice President Walter Mondale, I arrived the first day ready to write policy memos and change the world... but my assignment was doing an inventory of the furniture.
Maps help us in tracking our cabs - if they're idle, headed for a booking, or in the midst of a trip. With custom systems built atop maps using available APIs, we are able to manage our inventory extremely well, predict ETAs for customers, and optimally allocate the nearest cab to a booking request.
If you sell a physical product, you have a lot of Q4 upside and unpredictability, but now you have to manage your cash to get to Q4 so that you can invest in building inventory to over-perform.
I have learned a ton about inventory, co-packing, wholesaling, end caps. All these concepts are easy to breeze by in what I do for a living or assume that there is a marketing manager or specialist in one of our companies that handles that.
Well, Mr Obama inherited probably the biggest inventory of problems, certainly foreign policy problems, than any American president ever has. I think the entire inventory of problems that he inherited is probably as big overall as any president, certainly since Franklin Roosevelt and maybe, in some cases, worse.
The inventory process and stepping back in your life can sometimes be a very dark process. But it also can be extremely funny and surprising.
You constantly have to take inventory, not get on someone else's agenda. You want to write something that's poignant and moves people.