Rush, Rush
I heard recently about a man who prided himself on being exceedingly punctual. He followed a very precise routine every morning. His alarm went off at 6:30. He rose briskly, shaved, showered, ate his breakfast, brushed his teeth, picked up his briefcase, got into his car, drove to the nearby ferry landing, parked his car, rode the ferry across to the downtown business area, got off the ferry, walked smartly to his building, marched to the elevator, rode to the seventeenth floor, hung up his coat, opened his briefcase, spread his papers out on his desk, and sat down in his chair at precisely 8:00. Not 8:01, not even 7:59. Always at 8:00 AM. He followed this same routine without variation for eight years.
Until one morning, his alarm did not go off and he slept fifteen minutes late. When he did awake, he was panic-stricken. He rushed through his shower, nicked himself when he shaved, gulped down his breakfast, only halfway brushed his teeth, grabbed up his briefcase, jumped into his car, sped to the ferry landing, jumped out of his car, and looked for the ferry. There it was, out in the water a few feet from the dock. He said to himself, “I think I can make it,” and he ran down the dock toward the ferry at full speed. Reaching the edge of the pier, he gave an enormous leap out over the water and miraculously landed with a loud thud on the deck of the ferry.
The captain rushed down to make sure he was all right and said, “Man, that was a tremendous leap, but if you would have just waited another minute, we would have reached the dock, and you could have walked on.”
Short Memory
A man who flew his own plane got tired of the long auto trip from the airport to his country place which was situated on a lovely lake. So he had the idea of equipping his plane with pontoons so he could land right in front of his cottage. However, on his first trip up to the country with his newly-equipped plane, he headed for a landing at the airport just as he always had done in the past. Old habits are hard to break. But as he was going in for the landing, it dawned on his wife what was happening and she hollered, “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t land this thing on the runway. You don’t have any wheels, you’ve got pontoons on it!”
Fortunately, her warning shout was in time and he pulled up from his landing pattern and swung the airplane around and headed the plane for a landing on the lake.
After the plane landed safely on the lake, he heaved a really big sigh of relief and turned to his wife and said, “That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever done!” Then he turned, opened the door, stepped out, and fell directly into the lake.
Following Orders
There is an ancient story of a sentry standing day after day at his post with no apparent reason for his being there. One day, a passerby asked him why he was standing in that particular place. “I don’t know,” the sentry replied, “I’m just following orders.” The passerby then went to the captain of the guard and asked him why the sentry was posted in that place. “I don’t know,” the captain replied. “We’re just following orders.” This prompted the captain of the guard to pose the question to higher authority. “Why do we post a sentry at that particular spot?” he asked the king. But the king didn’t know. So he summoned his wise men and asked them the question. The answer came back that one hundred years before, Catherine the Great had planted a rosebush and had ordered a sentry placed there to protect it. The rosebush had been dead for eighty years, but the sentry still stood guard.
Conditioned
Years ago, the Denver Zoo had a difficult decision to make. They were offered the gift of a beautiful, large polar bear, but the problem was that there was no existing room for the bear. At the time of the gift, the board of directors was in the middle of a fundraising campaign to renovate the zoo. They changed the strategy to include a magnificent habitat for the polar bear in their renovation plans.
In the meantime, the bear was put in a small temporary cage. The space was so small that it could only take three steps, turnaround, and walk three steps back.
Because of the unforeseen delays, the construction took three years, but the bear’s new home was grand—waterfalls, caves, and lots of space. The bear entered its new home, looked around, took three steps, turned around, took three steps, and turned around.
Pay as You Go
A conductor on the Santa Fe was converted and united with the church. After he had been faithful in his religious duties for some weeks, he was asked one Sunday morning to help take the offering. He started down the aisle, and all went well until he came to a richly dressed woman. She allowed the plate to go past her, whereupon the conductor unconsciously reached up for the bell rope to stop the train, and said, “Madam, if you don’t pay, you’ll have to get off.”
Ruts Aren’t So Bad
Why this passion for shaking people out of the ruts? I am devoted to ruts. Moreover, most of the people who are in ruts are much nicer, and much happier, than the people who are not. Ruts are the wise old wrinkles that civilization has traced on the earth’s ancient face. –Beverly Nichols
The Powerful Motivation of Habits
Farmer Brown and farmer Green were neighbors. Farmer Brown had a dog that loved to chase cats. Farmer Green had a cat that hated dogs. Whenever Brown came to visit Green, his dog would come along. As soon as the dog got into Green’s yard, the dog and cat would be off, and the car would flu at top speed around the house with the dog in hot pursuit. As they came out from behind the house, the cat would take a flying leap and make his escape up the big maple tree. This happened every time Brown came to visit Green. After a few years, Green cut down the tree. A couple of days later, Brown and his dog came to visit. The dog and cat took off. Out from around the house came the cat with the dog right on his tail. The cat was thirty feet in the air before he realized that something was different.