Guest post from Heather Ishikawa, co-author of Now You’re Thinking!
There is no wrong way to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…or is there?
This morning I was showing my son how to make a PB&J so that he could make and take his own sandwich to summer camp. I told him, “It’s easy, just spread peanut butter on one side, and jelly on the other.” This is how my mom made my sandwiches and my guess is that you’d find an entire line of generations making sandwiches in this fashion. However, my husband walks in and tells my son, “Make sure that you spread peanut butter on both sides first and then jelly in the middle so that the bread doesn’t get soggy”. I had never thought that there could be a different way to make a PB&J but now that you mention it, ½ of the sandwich does get a little soggy by lunch time! It made me think about all of the things that I do in autopilot on a daily basis. So many of my actions are built on assumptions created before I knew what an assumption was.
Today I’m going to take a moment to think about some of the things that I do in autopilot and think about the assumptions that are driving my actions. If it’s important then I’ll work on changing it. I can tell you that I’m looking forward to a non-soggy PB&J for lunch.
How do you make your PB&J?
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Interesting thought!!
When I’m teaching someone something, I like to be able to end each step of the process with an explanation of why we are doing it that way. “We do this so that…”/”This is the preferred method because…” It’s hard sometimes, because, as you said, we do many tasks on autopilot.
As for PB&J, well, when I was little, my mom would always put the peanut butter and jelly in a bowl together and mix them up, then she’d spread the mixture on the bread. The peanut butter usually turned an interesting purple-y or pinkish color, and it tasted great. Oh, and of course, the sandwiches never got soggy. =)
I learned the PB&J trick from watching Ice Road Truckers. Go Lisa!