Agile is about failing forward fast.
Yes, you heard me correctly. Listen, we don’t want to be sitting here using a system that doesn’t work for months. We want to move on.
Meal planning is the number 1 example I like to use when it comes to systems we get married to that just aren’t working for us.
When I first started meal planning, I had a million Pinterest boards. I’d collect recipes on each one of them for the next 2 weeks. I’d collect the recipes into Trello on a board where I listed the days of the week and the name of the recipe went onto a card under that day and the recipe was attached. This was great because it kept me out of Pinterest on the day I actually had to cook, but it was kind of awful too.
First, I was planning for 2 weeks at a time. It’s great if that works for you, but I know that I don’t always know what I want to eat a week from Tuesday. Sure, I know that on Tuesdays I like tacos, but I don’t know what kind of exact Mexican dish I want on that day. Yes, I like to liberally define Taco Tuesday.
Second, I was making meal planning something that left zero room for improv or flexibility. The ingredients were going to go bad if I didn’t stick to the exact plan. That was bad news for both my pocketbook and at the time my brain. You see I was very bad at following multiple step instructions at the time so that meant throwing my hands up some days and saying FINE you cook to my husband. He is much better at just looking in the fridge and improving dinner. If our meals are planned out exactly and he does that though then maybe he’s used the ingredients I need for tomorrows dinner and BAM we’ve got a whole domino effect.
That is why in Agile we just plan for the fact that failure is the only option. We want to fail forward and fast.
How did we finally end up meal planning?
Well, I still need exact recipes. I’m not like my husband. I can’t just walk into the kitchen and pull something out of my head while looking at the ingredients. So now we do themed days, and I have various Pinterest boards with recipes stored on them. Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Pasta Wednesday, Favorites or New Thursday, Pizza Friday, Sandwich Saturday, and Slow Cooker Sunday. I keep a staple pantry and fridge with ingredients for those themes around and my husband can improv from those themes readily.
It ends up keeping us both happy.
Now we are no longer using a system that doesn’t work out of habit and because the internet told me it was the right thing to do. We are using the system that works for us, because we are Agile. Also we enjoy failing forward fast.
How do you mean plan? Is it working for you? Could it use a tweak? What is another system that you’re using that isn’t quite right but you’re using out of habit?
Recent Comments