Emotional Fast Food

I’m glad that I helped to raise two children.  In addition to a lot of other things, it taught me how to keep calm while people scream their heads off at one another.  It’s a skill that came in really handy when dealing with little people and it comes into play more often that you would believe with big people as well.

I’m surprised how much energy and time are wasted by very busy people arguing about things which are absolutely minor in the grand scheme of things.  Today, I listened for a good 10 minutes while three people whose work and intelligence I respect went at one another over a process issue.  Lots of finger-pointing, lots of history revisited.  Not much progress made towards resolving the problem.

It’s nice to feel like you’ve “won” an argument but most of the time, the feeling is fleeting.  The lingering bad feelings, the lack of advancement toward the overall goal (which certainly wasn’t to make your self feel better – it was probably to get something done!) make those petty arguments the equivalent of emotional fast-food – satisfying but ultimately not very goo d for you.

“You did this!” “Well, you did that first” isn’t as productive as “I’ll do this and you do that.”  I’m not sure why grown-ups spend time on anything else.

You want to fight about this?