I have been an Engineer, and then I ran factories, some of them large factories. And then I also was in business trying to fix Profit and Loss and in some cases, and also doing the Profit and Loss statements and Balance Sheets myself in some other cases. The oddity I noticed is that the main ingredient to be good in each of these fields, except for some rudimentary learning, was common sense logic. And therein lies the problem.

If a person were to put down on their resume that they are good at logic which I consider the school subject name for common sense, they would be ignored and laughed at. That is because it seems everyone thinks that they are good at common sense logic. Nope. Not at all. But how does one change world opinion? We cannot. And so we have a problem here that the biggest talent needed to be a success at a number of fields, common sense logic, cannot even be talked about in a rational manner.

How did common sense logic make for a good engineer? Even I did not understand this at first. We learn thousands of things in school. But for a given project, which 5 of those things are the most important for the project at hand and which others may be ignored as having little impact? That is logic. And those with logic can take an engineering education and apply it. Business is not so different. If you have a hot dog store, how many hot dogs must you sell each day in order to pay your bills and stay afloat? Logic. Simple logic for goal setting.

And on a personal note, if a person can also become open minded, which everyone thinks they are but almost no one really is, then a person could become a student for life and seek wisdom. They can do that if they are open minded and let all information into their brains, but then use logic to determine which items are true, which items are not, and how they fit together. And after finding wisdom, the whole world itself begins to look different.

Ronald J. Plachno

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