In life and at work, 95% of the time, even if you are working on research, or operations, or software engineering, are common things you do to keep at your work. Build this widget, solve that business requirement, make this odd unclear and uncertain idea a reality. Whether it is an innovative solution, or just thinking differently to solve a day-to-day problem, these are but your 95%.
Then once in a while, a curveball that is so darn curved is thrown your way. You’ve never seen this situation or scenario before. You don’t know what to do, your team is stumped, and your boss says, “I trust in your call.”
Or it could happen in your personal life, something that stumps you and your significant other. It could be a health or personal crisis that is difficult to maneuver through. A gigantic trailer changed lanes right into your lane in front of you. A rare career opportunity that presents itself. The kind of decision that makes you lie awake at night, wondering if you made the right call.
These are moments of truth. Where years of preparation and training culminate into 5 seconds of thought and decision making.
It is easy to forget and think that the 95% is what life or work is about. But really the way that you manage that 5% in life and work determines whether you are limited by your current role or whether your life goes up or down. These sudden jolts that send chills down your spine are what matter the most on how others view you, or most importantly how you view yourself. And sometimes even a matter of life or death.
In life, we could try to prepare for these moments of truth. Attend a defensive driving course, or a first aid refresher, or even try to read up or research on common health issues that might after you.
In work, we could try to build our experiences, try to get opportunities to work on varied scenarios and rare projects with niche requirements. Try to get mentors who will try to talk us through their experiences.
In traditional martial arts, practitioners practice their techniques repetitively and frequently to create muscle memory. So that when they need their skills, it’s an instinctive action, the defenses show up by muscle memory, not incurring the milliseconds of conscious thought and response, allowing for that split second reaction for those 5% situations.
In both the work and life cases, what you know is the right thing to do may be different from what you actually do due to that lack of muscle memory. And even if you have muscle memory, should you still do it? Trends and best practices change over time with new understanding. There’s no right or wrong sometimes, and your best judgement may even be a best guess.
Some people may fear the 5%, shying away from situations which may give them 5% scenarios, maybe even thinking that those scenarios should be fully avoided. I think that that’s the wrong approach and that risk avoidant attitude is an attitude that leads to non-optimal results.
While we work and live in the 95%, I think we should always be more mindful of the 5% and figure out how we can make ourselves more resilient, adaptable or versatile so that we have the “muscle memory” to deal with the 5%. We’ll never get used to the 5%, but as we grow, part of those situations move to our 95% and we expand to realize more 5% situations.
Featured photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash
