The first bucket story is set in the old style soviet union where the manager of a factory was praised by local officials because of worker productivity. The factory made metal buckets in huge quantities. The warehouse was piled high and the machinery for making buckets never stopped. Which is all well and good but nobody needed the buckets. In fact, there's a bit of a bucket glut and many of the buckets were melted down to be made into buckets all over again.

The fact that the factory seemed busy and successful was because the shrewd manager had chosen to make something small and simple even though there was no real need. How many of us, I wonder, are spending February making buckets?

There's more on buckets in our Kick Start your Motivation article.