Can we turn Lead to Gold?

The title of this blog stems from an age old quest by the science community to take lead and create gold. After coming to understand the atoms and what everything is made out of it seems an easy enough proposition. Lead which is represented by Pb on the periodic table has an atomic number of 82. Gold (Au) has an atomic number of 79. All that is required to create gold from lead is to remove 3 protons. The crazy part is that it actually has been accomplished by Glenn Seaborg in 1980 (according to about.com). So why is gold still valuable? It requires far to much energy to wrench those three protons from lead, making it not cost effective.

However even if chemists/physicists could turn lead into gold for near zero marginal cost over the cost of lead, so what? Gold is expensive because of it's scarcity. As the process for converting lead to gold became publicly known and practiced the price of lead would rise as the price of gold fell, and they would meet somewhere in the middle. A few market players in gold would be hurt, and a few lead producers would have some great years, but the overall net effect is near zero. Turning lead into gold cannot create long term market demand for it.

Why are we so fascinated with the quick way to fix problems. We obsesses spending hours thinking about how to change our lives, or what single action could have massive impact. The truth is that even if we get that massive promotion, close the sale, win the award, or loose all of that weight, if we do not get our thoughts and actions in place first it will be an outlier. How would you like your best achievement to be the mistake in the data of your life?

Are yo exerting far too much energy to turn your lead into gold? Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. I am enamored by the Asian people and their culture of respect for hard work and discipline. Their focus on daily improvement is a model we all could learn from.

I will leave you with this question: Are you thinking about doing that one thing that will change everything, or are you doing those five things that will change today?