I was scanning my RSS this morning, and ran across this from Jason at Signal vs. Noise. In a nutshell, an auto research group spent two years collecting data and calculating the true energy cost of a car — from planning, building and selling it to ultimately scrapping it — the “dust-to-dust” analysis of the environmental impact of a car. Car & Driver did an article on it.

The answers will surprise you.

But can we relate this seemingly unrelated-to-personal-development information tidbit to our purposes? I think so.

The number one lesson I took from this is that things are not always as they seem. The initial impression can be misleading.

Number two is that society’s paradigms (in this case, fuel economy figures) are not necessarily what you should be basing your decisions on.

Measuring your life on any criteria other than your own is a sure recipe for turning yourself into a human pinball with other people slapping the handles that bat you around.