Happy Foodie Friday! I was menu-planning the other day (an absolute must before the weekly trip to the grocery store) and I came across a dish that I know to be pretty easy to make yet which appears way more difficult. I’ve served it before and people are always all “oh, that must have taken hours” about it when it’s really about a 15-minute prep. As an aside, there are many other dishes I know – really good Bolognese sauce, for example – that take way more time than you’d think even using a pressure cooker to speed things up.
Seeing that dish got me to thinking, in a roundabout way, that we humans have a tendency to think things are way more difficult than they are in many cases. In fact, I think some of us go to great lengths to make it that way. I’m not talking about a particular type of person I’d run across in business every so often. You know the one – they create problems so that they can solve them and be the hero. No, what I’m talking about is that we love to make things harder than they actually are.
Think about it. What things did you do today that purposefully made your life more difficult ? It was probably so small a thing, or something so ingrained in you, that you didn’t even notice that you did it. Maybe you didn’t set your alarm to allow for enough time to be someplace. Maybe you sat on a task until right before a deadline and you couldn’t get it done on time because something unforeseen happened. Or maybe you just enjoy the drama. It’s sort of the same thrill as riding a roller-coaster, right? You put yourself in danger and when you survive, you feel a thrill.
Here’s my take. Life can be like some seemingly-fancy dishes – much easier to pull together than meets the eye IF – and it’s a big if – you have the skills required, leave adequate time to complete the task, and don’t make it harder than it has to be. All of us make our lives both in and out of business harder than they have to be at times and unless and until we recognize the times that we’re doing it, nothing much will change.
Consult Keith 