Absolute Citrin
by Richard Citrin
June 13, 2018
Resilience Overdone
When I opened my door to walk Cody the other morning, there was the annual surprise that I don’t ask for waiting on my porch…the 2018 edition of the Yellow Pages or as they refer to themselves, “The Original Search Engine.”
This year’s soft covered, thin-paged edition is loaded with ads by attorney looking for medical malpractice cases, home repair companies looking to fix roofs, and restaurants with B ratings from the health department offering discount coupons. Oh and did I mention that the attorneys are looking for medical malpractice cases?
Obviously there must some economic value to the Yellow Pages for Verizon who is selling all those ads and hopefully for those few folks who reference those pages and probably consider themselves “originalists.”
For me, however, this is a prime example of resilience run amuck. There are, no doubt, any number of people (presumably older or those without a computer or smart device) who continue to use this low-tech solution to finding services. The publisher keeps pumping out these annual editions, albeit smaller and perhaps more targeted to their prime audience.
Holding onto something that’s worked in the past in the hope that it will keep working in the future is flawed thinking. It might work for a while but the law of diminishing returns will eventually win out.
My copy of this year’s Yellow Pages will be going right into the recycling bin this week with some appreciation for pointing out how a resilient mindset can be overdone.
Consider what is returning marginal value for you that you’ve held onto for too long in the hope that it will return to its former glory for you. Then let it go.
© Richard Citrin, All rights reserved, 2018
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Rich, sadly for some of us who live in rural areas of this country, as well as those in densely wooded areas and rugged mountainous areas, do not have access to cell phone coverage, let alone reliable internet access. Students, even, are being assigned homework online to students without computer access at home. Elections are often determined by votes of people with limited access to information because older means of communication are being abandoned and the only “news” is from the monopoly of rural radio and tv stations controlled by big corporations. For us, resilience requires whatever means we still can access. As I am pushing 80 this year, I am grateful for any and all who support increasing access to those services you rightly endorse. I’d love to grab my cell phone to find a phone number; sadly it does not work where I live and is only useful when I drive to a neighboring city. So, for emergencies, I still grab the old phone book yellow page. I love your blog. Thanks for your continued service to all of us.
Thanks Glenda. Your perspective is important and I did go through the YP to see if it was worth keeping. We use to have several editions of these around the house!