Inventing Elephants

Next time I will confirm easily checked-on qualitative impressions.

If I have a discussion with someone about a qualitative term, such as “stringy”, and the item we’re discussing is only two rooms away, then I will have them come look at it with me, to make certain that we are both seeing the same thing, instead of agreeing that it sounds like we’ve been seeing the same thing based on the words we’re using. Maybe then I won’t have to redo a couple days worth of batches because one of the raw materials was going bad.

Next time I will write down the desired end condition.

If I put in two different sets of aging samples and they are marked exactly the same and I ask someone to remove one set, I will not assume this makes sense. Instead I will mark clearly when I expect each sample to come out of the oven.  After all, my memory fails too.

Next time I will ask why something blah-sounding excited someone.

I may not understand the context. My parents mentioned that they’d been to a butterfly exhibit that was cool. My husband chose not to go and see the pinned insects and kicked himself when he found out he could have been photographing live butterflies in a special room. If I’d expressed a little more interest in why the event was exciting the information would have come out naturally.

This is the first in what I expect to be an ongoing series of posts about those little things that happen that you wish you’d thought about differently at the time.