What Does Success Have To Do With My Burnt Finger?

What does success have to do with my burnt finger?

I was toasting bread the other day, and my mind started wandering off thinking about Singapore, life and other unrelated thoughts. You know, basically day-dreaming.

Before the timer on the toaster went off, the smell of freshly toasted bread was already floating in the air, and I was already anticipating the crisp crunch and the slightly burnt flavor of freshly toasted bread in my mouth.

The toaster I’m using is the kind where you can toast anything, from slices of bread to pizza, and it opens from the front like a small oven. It’s nothing fancy, just a simple toaster that can be used to toast almost anything.

When the timer went off, I opened the toaster to take out the bread. It’s not the first time I’ve toasted bread. In fact, I’ve toasted bread on numerous occasions! But this time as I reached in, my finger touched the hot metal grill.

Yup, you know it. “Ouch!” is the word.

I spent the next minute or two with my burnt finger under running water.

So what does my burnt finger have anything to do with success?

You see, at the time, I was distracted and thinking about something else when I should have been focusing on taking the toasted bread out safely. We can’t concentrate and focus all the time. That’s crazy, of course. But at the crucial moments, we need to be able to focus.

The same thing goes for our work. It’s really tough to continually be mentally focused and on the edge all the time, so that’s why we need to have down-time away from work. But during work, at the crucial moments, like taking toasted bread out of a hot metal oven, we have to be mentally present and focused.

Little mistakes in our work can affect the quality, and that’s not something that you’d want. It’s like me spelling toasted bread as taosted bread.

When it’s time to work, the ability to focus on the task at hand is important. Otherwise, it might mean more than just a burnt finger when you’re “taosting” bread.