In my house, we have a game.
I call it, “Where will I find X today?”
X could be a spoon, a dish towel, a spare roll of TP, maybe a light bulb.
No matter where it is, it will definitely NOT be in the last place I saw it.
And I am actually neither the creator of this game, nor am I a willing participant.
It was created by my boyfriend Andrew, who’s an engineer. And I don’t know if this is true of all engineers, but it’s certainly true of MY engineer…
He’s always looking for a better way to do things.
“Slightly more efficient” is the name of his game.
And the game is afoot x10 now that we’ve both been working from home for the better part of six months.
Usually it starts when I’ve convinced myself making dinner is a thing I should do.
(In my defense, nobody told me adulthood would essentially be asking your partner what they want to eat every day until one of you dies… and then you still gotta actually MAKE the food. If it were up to me, the answer would be pizza. All day, every day.)
The conversation goes something like:
ME: hey babe, where is the pizza cutter?
HIM: oh, right. I moved that to the drawer over by the fridge because we keep the pot holders in there and it’s one less step for you when the pizza is done.
ME: k… but I just took like 20 steps trying to find the thing so on balance maybe things don’t need to move every time you clean…
And then we both laugh because we both know he’ll move something else tomorrow as part of his neverending quest for White Claw and Order.
And I’ll be temporarily annoyed/unable to stop rolling my eyes when I discover THE SPOONS AREN’T WHERE I LEFT THEM?!
I’ve noticed a similar trend in business…
There are some folks (like me) who are more laid-back, who prefer a “set it and forget it” approach. Or maybe “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
I’m pro-hustle, anti-grind.
Having worked in Silicon Valley for years, I don’t believe in working around the clock, tweaking things just to have something new to show.
That may bite me in the ass at some point as technology becomes even more ever-present in our lives, but to date… regardless of the changes that are constantly happening in the world, the fundamentals of human connection and good business still work, even as the platforms change.
Once something works, I’m content to let it run until it doesn’t. Because once it’s running and working, my attention will be on building other sources of revenue. Diversifying = power.
But there are other folks like Andrew, who are always tweaking, iterating, and perfecting. They obsess over the details, and aren’t satisfied with “good enough”.
And the cool thing about that is – we balance each other out very well. Sometimes he can get me to make incremental improvements, and sometimes I can get him to not relocate the pizza cutter for the 27th time.
But it’s critical to know who you are and how you operate/want your business to run – and who your people/partners/contractors are and how they operate.
Are you working together, or working against one another because you’ve got different styles.
One thing I know for sure, the party’s over the moment I throw the pizza cutter instead of rolling my eyes at him and laughing.
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P.S. I read this draft to him out loud and we both laughed. I told him, “Hey I’m making you look like an engineering genius and a hero!” He said, “I AM an engineering genius. And make sure you tell them I’m humble too.”
Good stuff!