It's hard to live in this world if you haven't internalized your multiplication tables. When you see someone bottlenecked amid a complex task because they never invested that effort, you want to implore them to just take a couple hours and learn them. "9 x 7" is not a wheel you should be reinventing every damned time.
Same for amateur musicians who haven't made familiar friends of all 12 major scales. If they don't happily fly out from under your fingers, that just means you're lazy, and it will repeatedly drag you down. Just learn the scales! It's not rocket science! Get it over with!
I once attended a cooking class with a gaggle of local housewives who gasped at my speed and efficiency in cutting up carrots. My proper use of a knife was...magic! They approached their carrots as if their knives were hammers. Shoulders hiked up in tension and fear, they'd raise the tool and swing it down. THUNK.
If you don't have servants to cook for you and you are not an investment banker who eats out every single meal; if you periodically enter your kitchen with intent to prepare food, just, for godsakes, learn to use a knife. Get it over with! Watch a video, take a class, have a friend show you...and then practice for the 45 minutes or whatever it takes to get up to speed so it's never ever an issue. 45 minutes to spare yourself countless life hours of ineffective nonsense.
Similarly: if you spend 1/3 of your life laying down your head on a shitty, flattened-out, uncomfortable pillow, you need to not only replace it immediately with one that costs $10 more; you also need to reexamine your life and how you live it.
Like many things too, a small 1 hour investment pays massive dividends. I certainly don't have the chef-like ability to make a 2mm dice without either looking down or cutting myself, but getting from axe-throwing levels of finesse down to reasonably rapid even cuts takes very little effort, all things considered.
ReplyDeleteThis being the future that we're living in, I wonder if someone already has a list of the "price/performance" curve sweet spots of time investment into these sorts of secondary skills.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY makes a different point but I can't help being reminded of it.
The problem, of course, is that there aren’t enough hours in a lifetime for every worthwhile efficiency investment (sort of like how you can go broke buying bargains). But knife skills, multiplication tables, and comfortable pillow are far above triage for any human.
ReplyDeleteAnd, sorry to be a downer, but if there’s even a chance of cutting yourself, you’re not doing it right. Proper knifing is risk-free.
As for the not-looking part, what’s the thinking on that? It’s not like typing, where you need your visual attention elsewhere. I watch my cutting like a hawk!
To needlessly clarify, I've been able to watch professional chefs with amazing knife skills who are only vaguely looking at whatever they're cutting remain injury-free. I agree that choosing one of either not looking or not being cut is straightforward - and, like you, I also choose to watch what I'm doing.
ReplyDeleteThis entire undertaking is an effort at needless clarification. Why shouldn’t the comments be, as well?
ReplyDeleteI just don’t see what benefit there is to not watching. What else are you supposed to be looking at while dicing an onion?
I love this time of year. I always buy a package of yellow marshmallow chicks to carry around and if anyone asks me something I don't want to deal with I just point to the candy and say with great self importance "I'll have to talk to my peeps".
ReplyDeletesomeday I will meet a like minded person and then I will finally get to say "my peeps will talk to your peeps" It will happen.
ReplyDelete