Those occurrences in life that happen by accidental discovery have provided some of the best “lessons learned” moments that I’ve ever witnessed. I’m referring to those favorable outcomes that miraculously arise out of unintentionally botched-up processes and procedures. Let me explain with a true life story…
Once upon a time (very recently), a young lady named Toodlez set a pot of red lentils on the stove to boil and then turned down the heat to allow them to simmer a bit. While she was waiting for them to cook, she went down to the basement of her house to accomplish some tasks. There were other family members in the house also (upstairs, in fact) where the lentils were boiling, but they were all busy doing their tasks too.
Meanwhile, the unattended lentils continued to low cook and cook and cook. Toodlez had forgotten about them and apparently the others weren’t concerned about them either. At one point, Toodlez’ mother even thought to herself…”Hmmm, those lentils sure seem like they’ve been boiling for awhile”, but her mother was quite certain that the lentils were in good hands, because Toodlez is a young chef extraordinaire in her family’s home kitchen. And since mother was confident that Toodlez had everything under control, she decided to go on about her business.
While everyone was busy doing their own things, no clues signaled to the household that the lentils had reached the overcooked stage. No over-boiling water sizzling on the stove burners and no burnt food smell from a pot whose water completely evaporated. No, nothing like that at all. Just lentils-a-cooking. Finally, Toodlez appeared from the basement and entered the kitchen, where she examined the pot of lentils. Surprisingly, she realized that she had totally forgotten about them. But there was no harm and no foul, because the kitchen was intact, nothing was on fire, and the lentils appeared to be okay. Whew! Toodlez stirred the pot of lentils with a spoon. To her amazement, the lentils quickly transformed into what she initially called mush and later likened to a delicious pot of mashed potatoes. Yes folks, Toodlez unintentionally created a more healthy replacement recipe for mashed potatoes, resulting from accidental discovery.
Hold up for a minute. Let me backtrack and make a correction to my statement about creating a recipe. I guess Toodlez didn’t formally create a recipe because no details about the accidental discovery were actually recorded. Unlike a process that is specifically outlined on paper and easy to duplicate, accidental discovery results from deviations from the norm. First of all, once I heard Toodlez indicate how good the lentils-turned-mashed potatoes tasted, I should have tried them myself. I didn’t though. And once she indicated that she accidentally made them, I should have purposely made her right down what happened right after the discovery occurred (while it was fresh in her mind). However, I didn’t do that either and she couldn’t recall the specifics when I asked about them weeks later. So, guess what happened when I tried to recreate Toodlez’ faux pas without knowing: the types and amounts of seasonings used, amount of water placed in the pot to cook the lentils, the total length of time the lentils cooked, how long the lentils boiled and then were turned down to cook on low, and what temp setting the burners were on throughout the process? Let me answer that question by stating that my multiple attempts at making the Faux Mashed Potatoes resulted in a kitchen aroma of “burnt” instead of “down home cookin'”.
Moral of the story above: sometimes things work out okay in the end even when we’ve unknowingly done our best to mess them up by deviating from well laid-out plans. There will always be a time and place for accidental discovery in all its glory, but we must remember that these fortunate instances are few and far in between. So, in order to increase the odds of success for a desired outcome to be achieved, a cautionary rule of thumb is to follow processes and procedures as instructed.
My personal take-away from the story: the problem with accidental discovery is that it happens by chance and it’s virtually impossible to replicate all the same variables that occurred in the initial scenario.
IMPORTANT NOTE: if you ever experience a positive outcome from an accidental discovery, write down the steps that led you there (right after it occurs) so you can try to recreate the same or close-to-the-same phenomenon in the future.
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