The
mind works in mysterious ways, especially my mind. One minute I was
wondering why anyone would fall for the 'flaming bag of poo' prank and
then suddenly, my life made sense. But
let me start from the beginning. When there's a flaming bag of poo on
your porch, the thing that initially gets your attention is the fire.
That's what makes this prank such an enduring and popular one. Almost
by pure instinct, you act to put the fire out as quickly as possible.
You're in 'crisis mode' and you respond. Who could blame you? Once the
fire is out, well, hopefully you have another pair of shoes and the
name and address of the person who did this to you. That
being said, a lot of us live our lives in 'crisis mode.' Having the
occasional crisis can make you think that you should devote a LOT of
time to 'getting organized' or 'being productive.' Basically, it's perfectionist overcompensation, which brings me to one of my favorite
laws: the Law of Diminishing Returns. It's the point at which the
benefits fail to increase proportionately with added effort. Here we
have a LAW that says, "At a certain point you would be better off
taking a nap." That's
why, when it comes to certain things, I'm all for mediocrity. Most
people are really down on mediocrity, but I don't know why. In my
dictionary, mediocre means "moderate to inferior in quality; ordinary.
See synonyms at "average." What's so bad about that? There
is saying about mediocrity that I feel I must repeat here: It takes a
lot less time, and most people won't notice the difference until it's
too late. Leave
off the "until it's too late" part, and you have a really inspirational
quote, at least from where I stand. Did you know that it takes just as
much time to get a B+ as it does to increase your grade from B+ to an
A? I just made that up, by the way. It took a lot less time than it
would have to find a real statistic. When
the effort exceeds the benefit in areas of difficulty (or things simply
don't get done), you may even decide to pay someone else to do some of
those things for you. And if you're bent on 'being productive', think
of it this way: when you spend most of your time doing stuff that
you're GOOD at, it's a much more productive use of your time. Which is why, after spending about 30 minutes trying to find a good statistic online, I finally just made one up. It's
great when the Law of Diminishing Returns is on your side. This doesn't
mean we shouldn't try to do well, but as what cost? If you never stop
to question what is worth doing (or worth doing well, as the case may
be), you might never consciously decide what's important enough to cut
into nap time. The
difference between 'good enough' and 'perfect' when working on
something you don't have an aptitude for involves huge amounts of time,
usually at the expense of other things that you enjoy and do well. And
who says that doing things you enjoy and do well can't be productive? |
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Flaming Bags of Poo: Are You In Crisis Mode? |