whatareyouthinking

When Tripp was younger, his grandmother gave him a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, saying, “This makes really good cookies!”

Tripp looked it over and decided it was a good recipe for making good cookies.  Now Tripp was young and couldn’t find or understand all of the ingredients to make the cookies himself.  But since his grandmother told him the recipe—and she made good cookies—Tripp concluded the recipe was also good.

One day, Tripp’s wife wanted to make some cookies for their guests.  Tripp said, “I have a great cookie recipe.”  So he shared his grandmother’s recipe with his wife.  Tripp’s wife thought that it sounded like a good recipe, but she ran out of time and had to go to the store instead in order to have cookies for that evening. 

Their guests liked the store-bought cookies and complemented Tripp’s wife on her choice.  But Tripp’s wife said, “I know a recipe for even better cookies!”  Then she shared Tripp’s grandmother’s cookie recipe with all of the guests.

A few days later, one of the guests saw her daughter about to make cookies and said, “This is the recipe you want to use to make cookies.  I understand this makes the best cookies.”  Since her daughter had already started her own batch of cookies, she set the recipe aside.  But she figured it must have been a good recipe—otherwise her mother would not have said so.

Although Tripp’s wife’s guest’s daughter did not have an opportunity to make the recipe herself, she entered it into a recipe contest.  The judges of the contest did not have time to actually prepare all of the recipes that were submitted, so they had to judge many of them on spelling and grammar alone.  As a result, Tripp’s wife’s guest’s daughter won first prize and her recipe was published in a major food magazine.  Many of the magazine’s subscribers liked the looks of the recipe and passed it on to their friends (though they themselves did not yet get a chance to try the recipe).

Some of the readers of the magazine wanted to make some cookies and actually followed through with the recipe. They prepared the ingredients as indicated by the recipe.  The cookies turned out terrible and many were embarrassed before their guests!  Some of them wrote to the editors of the magazine and to the judges expressing their disgust. 

To this the editor and the judges defended, “It was a good recipe—you must not have followed it correctly!”             

Tripp was physically fit throughout his early years.  His favorite workout was the bench press.  Before he got too busy with the demands of work and family life, he was able to bench an impressive 235 pounds—not too bad for a young athlete.

Shortly after he married, he told his wife about how he needed to get back to the gym.  He said, “I used to bench close to 250 pounds you know!”  But children shortly followed and Tripp was unable to resume working out at that time. 

Eventually, his son became of age and was looking for some workout tips from his father.  Finally he asked, “How much weight did you bench when you were working out, Dad?”

“Somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds,” Tripp replied.  So proud of his father, Tripp’s son helped spread the news around school of how his dad could once bench up to 350 pounds.

After all this inspiration, Tripp knew he must somehow find time to return to the gym.  He purchased himself a membership and devised a workout plan.  He pressed on for two weeks but rapidly grew weary and frustrated at his lack of progress. 

“I’ll never be able to bench 400 pounds again at this rate,” Tripp thought to himself.

Tripp and his four co-workers were laboring long hours at the office and — after much persistence — were getting little accomplished.  Then they learned of a study where employees who took quick 30-minute naps during the day were more productive.  For the next week they all decided to sleep in and not go to work at all.  And the recruiter’s productivity increased by five hundred percent.