Quite a few years ago, I bought my son a fish. It was a black fish with bubbled out eyes and a fancy tail who was appropriately named Bubble-eye Guy.
Bubble-eye Guy happily swam around in his little tank until one day I noticed a spot or two on his back. After some searching for possible fish illnesses on the internet, I promoted myself to fish expert/veterinarian and diagnosed him with ick.
Icky.
Not wanting my son’s fish to die, I rushed to the store to buy some kind of ick cure, bacterial drops for the water and a few other things to save the ailing fish.
I arrived at home.
- Changed the water.
- Applied the ick boo-boo cream.
- Added the bacterial drops to the new water.
- Hooked Bubble-eye Guy up to an IV drip
- and monitored him closely.
By the end of the day, he was swimmin’ with the fishes.
The dead ones.
What could have possibly gone wrong? I mean, I did everything under the sun to save this swimmy little guy and he died anyway.
What went wrong was that I did everything under the sun.
I should have changed just one thing, looked for a difference, tried one more thing, looked for a difference and so on.
Or consulted a real fish vet…
Instead, I threw everything in but the kitchen sink because I panicked and shocked the poor fella (who would have died anyway) sending him to a watery grave a few days early.
The point, you ask?
The point is I learned something that day. I learned that when you have a problem, no matter what it is, don’t panic and throw the works at it. Try changing one thing, just one, and see how it works.
Like it? Great.
Need a different result? Try one more change and see if you get what you’re looking for.
Repeat, as needed.
Change everything at once and you may find yourself with a dead fish. Change a little at a time and you may give that little fishy a few more swimming days.
How do you approach a problem? Do you throw everything at it or do you change things little by little?
That’s one of the biggest lessons from my day job. If you change too many things at once, you won’t know for sure which one the baby liked…or didn’t like. So yeah, it’s a process of assessment and change, followed by reassessment and more change, all liberally swathed with patience.
Bummer about Bubble Eyed Guy…
Yes, I would imagine that patience would come in handy at the NICU. For sure..
And some times it’s just the pet’s time. Accepting that I can’t always “fix” what’s wrong with one of my pets is something I constantly struggle with.
Right? You just wanna fix it. Why can’t they just live as long as us? I often wonder..
It all comes down to patience, doesn’t it? I’m one to want to try everything at once just to “make it better” and that rarely works or is helpful because you don’t know what worked what didn’t. Sorry about Bubble-eye Guy. We have a Gourami (kissing fish) named Smoochie who has outlived every other fish in the tank. Or so we thought. It seemed like poor Smoochie was getting lonely so we bought him some new fish buddies to keep him company. Turns out the bigger Smoochie gets, the hungrier he gets. Yes, he’s been eating the other smaller fish. Lesson learner? Patience and observation could have save many a fishy life.
It does come down to patience. I have loads of it when it comes to most things, but when it comes to some problems I have none at all.
Oh no! Smoochie thought you were giving him the King’s treatment. Poor fishies..
When I worked in the video game industry, I learned a lot about problem-solving. It always seemed to involve isolating individual factors and examining each of them so you can see which of them is making it so that giant monster no longer busts through the brick wall to eat the player’s face
I think it’s a strategy I can apply to problems outside of video game development too.
Good point. If the giant monster doesn’t burst through that wall ~ well, you need to figure that out! I can see that strategy being very useful for anything computer related, actually!
Poor fishy
I think my natural inclination is to be cautious and methodical — ie change one thing at a time. (I am an engineer after all.) But sometimes I do get impatient and change a few things at a time. It depends how well I think I know what I’m doing.
For me, it happens when I don’t know what I’m doing at all!
I didn’t know you were an engineer. Cool!