I had the honor of speaking at my Dad’s funeral. I said having him for a Dad was like having the answers in the back of the book. He was known for his wisdom and being able to figure out just about anything. Being an orthodontist in a small town, lots of people called him Doc, including my friends. He had several sayings he lived by. My friends called them Docizms.
His most popular Docizm was “Why take a chance when you have a cinch?” I heard it a lot while he was alive. I still hear it in my head, usually several times a day. On the surface it sounds like he’s saying don’t take risks, but that wasn’t it. I’ll tell you a story that illustrates the point.
One day we had a lot of wet, smelly, heavy trash in the kitchen. I was going to take it to the big garbage can in the garage. I thought about double bagging it so it wouldn’t break. I just used the last trash bag and didn’t want to go to the trouble of finding more. I thought, “it will be ok”, and moved the trash. A couple days later I smelled something from the can in the garage, the bag had broken. I thought my problem would be over when they picked up the garbage at the street. No such luck. The bag and stinky trash stuck to the bottom and didn’t get emptied. I had to clean and wash the can by hand and re-bag the trash for the next pickup.
Instead of doing things right the first time, I took a shortcut and did it the easy way, assuming it would be ok. I paid for my laziness many times over in a most unpleasant way.
This is just a lesser example of a bigger issue. What my Dad was really saying was, no short cuts; get it right the first time. Every day I’m tempted to cut corners in something I’m doing. It’s usually out of laziness, greed or assuming. Extra effort takes just that, effort, and of course time. It’s so easy to think “it will be ok. I’ll just get by.” Sometimes it might be ok, but details matter. For every time it would be ok, there are other times it won’t be, like the mess with the trash.
Quality is not a one-time thing. It’s taking care of details over and over again in so many little ways. It starts with preparation. I heard one of the all-time great basketball coaches say, “It’s not the will to win that counts. Everybody has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that makes the difference.” Preparation is often the separation between being successful in a situation and falling short.
It really goes back to not assuming, “it will be ok. I don’t have to put in the extra effort”. I talked a lot about assuming in my CYA post, “check your assumptions” and how harmful they can be. The more important something is to me the more important to be thorough and eliminate assumptions the best I can. I continue to examine my core beliefs for assumptions so I won’t have even a bigger mess on my hands than the trash. I find it to be time well spent. Here’s a quote from a letter my daughter gave me on Father’s day 2015.
“One major thing you have taught me is how important it is to go out of your way to do things the right way.”
Reading that has made it all worthwhile. I found out she was watching me more closely than I ever imagined. I’m glad to pass on this valuable lesson from my dad to the next generation. He continues to help me even though he died in 2002. Tomorrow I’ll be tempted to take a short cut again. Then I’ll hear him say in my mind, “Why take a chance when you have a cinch?”
May you have enough today, one moment at a time.
THIS HELPED ME 