Every generation thinks that the next generation has it easier than they had it. And they are often right. Technology does make things easier. Very few of us spend hours washing our clothes with a washing board in a stream. (Although between load-shedding and water-shedding, that might just become a thing again.)
So many chores have become easier. Many things have become faster. Talk face to face with someone on the other side of the world. Get your groceries delivered to your door in 60 minutes. It’s not only millennials who want things now. We’ve all fallen into the trap of instant gratification.
Instant fulfilment
I found a useful definition of instant gratification on helpfulprofessor.com:
“Instant gratification is the desire to experience pleasure or fulfilment without delay. It generally involves seeking a quick and easy solution, rather than one that requires effort or is delayed.”
I like the term “instant fulfilment”. Because we don’t just want our groceries in 60 minutes. We want answers and skills and progress and promotion in 60 minutes too. I shared my opinion about the “quick solution” last week. This week I’ve been thinking about the “easy solution” part of that definition.
Beware of easy
We all sometimes choose the easy way.
For example, I don’t like cooking or grocery shopping. So I often search for quick and easy recipes that only need the ingredients I have in the fridge. I’ve learned that any recipe that only needs 3 ingredients, is going to taste like it only had 3 ingredients. Not good. (Unless 2 of those ingredients are chocolate and caramel.)
It’s easier to send an email or message than phone someone. But it’s far less effective at building the relationship, or solving the problem.
And that’s the problem with easy: it doesn’t produce great results.
Sometimes easy is just wrong
There’s a triangle called the “Cone of Learning”. You may have seen it. It claims we learn 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, etc. If you google it, you’ll find lots of colourful variations.
The problem with this diagram is that it is 100% wrong. It is bogus in so many ways. (You can read the article at https://www.worklearning.com/2006/05/01/people_remember/ and more recent research about this at https://www.worklearning.com/2015/01/05/mythical-retention-data-the-corrupted-cone/).
And yet you will see this time and time again. Why? Because most L&D people find it easier to copy and paste a pretty diagram, than do detailed research and critically think through the claims. I see this over and over again on LinkedIn. Splashy diagrams with meaningless – or inaccurate – statements. (Please be impressed with my restraint: I can rant about L&D myths for quite a while.)
In the age of information, it’s easy to reuse anything you find on the Internet. Checking that it is accurate and meaningful, on the other hand, is not easy.
There’s no easy without effort
“You make it look so easy.”
That’s what we say to people who demonstrate real skill at something. But they will be the first to tell you that it took time and effort to develop those skills.
Think about most of the things that you now find easy. Were they easy to do when you started doing them? Probably not.
We need a 7th sense
You know about the 5 senses: vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. The 6th sense is proprioception – our ability to sense where our body is in space. (I love fantasy fiction, but I am not prepared to count any alleged abilities to sense ghosts or bend spoons with your mind.)
In the age of (dis)information, we need to develop another sense. Let’s call it a “fake news sense”. We need to learn to recognise when something sounds wrong enough to need fact-checking. This is critical thinking at work, with the emphasis on “don’t believe everything you find on the internet”.
There’s an old idiom that we should remember: “If it sounds too good (or to easy) to be true, it probably isn’t”.
What do you think? Do you believe there’s always an easy way? Please share your thoughts