Buttered Toast
When I make toast for my daughters, I spread the butter completely over every edge of the bread. I want them to enjoy every bite, even the crust.
Contrast this to a recent experience a my local diner. My toast had just a smear of butter in the middle. I know you’ve seen this. The disinterested dinerbot drops the toast plate with a clamber, and the dry, slightly burnt bread slides to a stop at your waiting finger tips.
We barely notice this ritual because it so commonplace that we have come to expect it.
I had the good fortune of speaking at Misfit:Conf in Fargo. During my chat we talked about simple, commoditized and boring: toast, coffee, nail salons, cupcakes, mimosas, wine, webinar registration pages and much more. All things we see and consume almost daily, and we have become numb to their mediocrity.
The audience was filled with artists, tech nerds, writers and dreamers that were hell bent on changing the world and standing above the rest. Which, in reality, is really quite simple.
Next time you have toast, take the extra few seconds to make it amazing. There, you just beat out 99% of the toast slingers on God’s green Earth. It’s easy because very few people ever take the time to do it right.
We are in such a rush to ship it, that we ship crap, and then feel great because we got it out the door. Like somehow the measure of success is that we kicked it out to the curb, slammed the door and then hoped some poor sucker would drive by, pick it up and love it to pieces.
Well, the hard truth is that 100,000 other people kicked their crap to the curb 20 minutes before you, so no one is ever going to see your crap.
Be the last to curb and first in amazement and delight, and people will back up through all the crap strewn on the road, to get to your buttery goodness;)
