Just a bandaid?

I was lucky enough to spend the long weekend giving my kitchen a minor “face-lift”. Has anyone watched those Bunnings D.I.Y. step by step videos guides? How good are they! This isn’t a paid spot for Bunnings of anything, but I’d have struggled big time without those videos.

Anyway, I did have a minor accident whilst completing the refurb and needed a Band-Aid pretty urgently to stem the light, but increasing, flow of blood dripping from my thumb. A search of the medicine cabinet yielded only an empty box of Disney Princess strips, and I was forced to piece together my own bandage (no D.I.Y. video for that, though).

Later, as I sat picking tissue out of my wound, I got to thinking about how handy band-aids are. Which in turn, made me think of Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point. It’s a fascinating read, and I genuinely recommend it. The book is subtitled “How little things can make a big difference”, and honestly I can’t summarise it any better than that. There is a passage in Gladwell’s conclusion, that particularly resonates with me, in which he is discussing how small and specific things can effect huge change:

“A critic looking at these tightly focused, targeted interventions might dismiss them as band-aid solutions, But that phrase should not be considered a term of disparagement. The Band-Aid is an inexpensive, convenient, and remarkably versatile solution to an astonishing array of problems. In their history, Band-Aids have probably allowed millions of people to keep working or playing tennis or cooking or walking when they would otherwise have had to stop. The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.”

How spot on is that? The term “Band-Aid solution” has been mis-appropriated to mean something that just “covers up” a problem. But what a malapropism that is.

Gladwell continues

“We have, of course, an instinctive disdain for this kind of solution because there is something in all of use that feels that true answers to problems have to be comprehensive, that there is virtue in the dogged and indiscriminate application of effort, that slow and steady should win the race….there are times when we need a convenient shortcut, a way to make a lot out of a little”

I’m certain Gladwell’s thinking can and should be applied to so many of the big issues facing our modern society. And, on reflection I applied the “Band-Aid solution” to my kitchen and it looks great!

Have a brilliant week,

Jake