If you have a problem, tear it apart!
It’s too hard, I can’t do it! Or maybe yes?
Serious (more or less) story about a plate of “spaghetti”
Have you ever been faced with obstacles that seemed insurmountable or maybe so difficult to overcome that you said to yourself internally ‘I’ll never make it!’?
It has often happened to me in the past to find myself in such situations, and I’m not ashamed of it, I’ve never thought I was invincible… quite the contrary.
The good thing about me is that despite the difficulties I encounter, I generally always, and I mean always, strive to look at the glass “half full”… in short, the positive sides, the good things that the current situation, or life in general, has to offer.
I think that saying to ourselves that we are not able to do something is more of a palliative. Most of the time it serves more as an excuse than anything else, a sort of easy justification which we convince ourselves of in order not to really put ourselves out there, as if judging a task to be beyond our possibilities could exempt us from just trying and challenging fate.
The reality is that if you never try to exceed your limits, you will never improve.
Mind you, I’m not saying to put yourself at risk or anything like that, but once we encounter a difficulty, let’s not immediately justify it by backing down, let’s analyse the problem in front of us and try to break it down into many small pieces, the resulting point of view might surprise you.
Let’s try an example, do you know the famous Italian pasta dish called “Spaghetti alla Carbonara”? That’s right, the pasta dish with egg and bacon… and here comes my first mistake that if someone who is obsessed with Italian cuisine reads it, I’ll get an earful right away…
In fact, if you follow the original recipe bacon should not be used, but the “Guanciale”, a very different cut of pork… more exactly the cheek of the pork.
Anyway, this is not a culinary post, my aim is not to share a recipe with you so I’ll spare you the gastronomic details.
I apologise, I realise that at this point with all this food talk I have whetted your appetite, unfortunately, I’m not a chef and also if I usually cook with pleasure and sometimes with good results I always have a very computer-engineered approach to all the recipes.
My aim was only to share through this article my thoughts on how to break a complex problem into the smallest pieces in order to tackle many micro-problems that are completely within our reach, and to do this I decide to use, let’s say, a culinary “metaphor”.
So getting back to our problem, if I asked you to cook a real dish of pasta carbonara in his real classic Italian-style recipe, what would you say?
I don’t want to get lost in statistics and percentages, of course, the point as you may have understood is that many, even Italian people, would find the task very very difficult if not impossible.
So what to do? Let’s try to segment instead of the problem into smaller and more accessible tasks:
- Find the ingredients (each recipe usually has a detailed list).
- Get a deep enough pot so that once it is two-thirds full of water the straight uncooked spaghetti can be almost completely submerged (at least 4/5 of their length).
- Put the pot under the water tap (this is really an easy task, do you agree?)
- Turn on the water… (well, that too)
- Fill the pot up to 2/3 full with water (there are a bit of maths involved but even this is really not difficult at all)
- Move the pot to the cooker (I definitely can do this)
- Turn on the gas
- Turn on the cooker
….
NO, I’m not joking and definitely I don’t make fun of you and as I said before it’s not my intention in this article to explain the recipe … the point is that I have reduced the initial huge problem in such minimal tasks and within everyone’s reach that consequently also the main problem in our mind is getting smaller and smaller.
It is one thing to say to you: “Prepare a dish of Spaghetti Carbonara”, but it is quite another to ask you to do any of the points I have just written down… and the great thing is that this method works with practically every subject.
The action of completing small tasks also has a wonderful side effect, a real feeling of progression and completion through the small tasks of the main task, which results in an indirect sense of fulfilment and happiness.
The small tasks can also be considered, if you like, as milestones of the main project and as such help us to measure the progress of the project itself.
It is just as if in our mind all the boxes of a hypothetical mental checklist were ticked one by one with a firm stroke of the pen while we hear our inner voice repeating: “Done!”… “Done!”…
It is clear that in order to obtain a good dish of Spaghetti alla Carbonara it will be necessary to try and try again and refine the technique. The important thing is to never lose heart and try again if you fail the first time.
If it succeeds the first time, OK, if it doesn’t… well, patience! But surely no one can say: “it’s too difficult, I can’t do it”.
p.s. I’ve been a naughty boy, I’ve put a picture of a nice plate of pasta but I haven’t told you how to make it, and in the meantime, I imagine you’re now hungry and would really like to follow a recipe and try to make your own plate of Spaghetti Carbonara.
Well, I won’t be the one to tell you how to do it, but among the many that are on the net, I found this very nice Chef. I would like to point out that I am NOT the one in the video, I don’t know the cook and I am NOT directly involved in the video channel or in anything else related to the proposed brand. It’s just one of the recipes that I liked the most, available on the net and I’m glad to share it with you.
I hope you like it, buon appetito!
Gianfranco Vigneri © 2021
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or some of the lyrics I write for my songs
