Follow the Recipe
In college I had to take a calculus class. I was pretty good in the earlier sections of math, but I was pretty nervous about taking calculus. The more I got into the math field, the more I felt over my head. The abstractions didn’t make sense to me. It was like learning a different language.
So, it was with some trepidation I arrived at my first day of class dreading the thought of launching into memorizing equations and struggling to have it all make sense. The teacher stood at the front of the class and pulled a 3X5 card out of his shirt pocket and announced, “To begin I’d like to give you a recipe for lemon meringue pie.”
We all stared at each other. “Let me explain,” he said. “Many of you are fearful about math.” That struck a chord. “Math is like following a recipe. If you put in the correct ingredients and follow the prescribed procedure, you always get the right result. Don’t think too hard while you’re doing math. Let the paper and pencil do the work, and concentrate instead on following the recipe. If you do, you’ll always end up where you want to be.”
From that first day a light went on in my head. He was right. As long as I followed the correct procedure in the calculations, and put in the right ingredients (numbers), and didn’t try to skip steps in my head, I always came out with the right answer.
From that first day, the professor always began by pulling out a 3X5 card, reminding us that to be successful you simply have to follow the recipe.
I’ve found this is true in everything. If you want to be successful in a certain area, get the recipe and follow it. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. Concentrate on following the recipe and you’re guaranteed to get where you want to be.
By the way, I got an ‘A’ in the class. It was the easiest math class I’d ever taken. And what I learned had dramatic application in all areas of my life. Not much of it had to do with math theory. It had everything to do with learning to follow a recipe.
Recommended:
Making a Living Without a Job, revised edition: Winning Ways for Creating Work That You Love
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