What’s Your Recipe? - Grasshopper

We all have recipes for what we do, but most often don’t know what they are. How to unearth these recipes is the topic we explore in this Grasshopper Notes mini essay.

I’ve mentioned her before, but the best lesson I got on recipes came from a neighbor who made delicious brownies. People raved about her mouth watering delights, and many of them asked for the recipe. She didn’t have it written down but verbally gave it to anyone who made a request.

The problem was nobody’s brownies tasted as good as Barbara’s, even when using her recipe. 

That’s because recipes have nuances that don’t make it into the cookbook. Getting in the room and watching and matching her every movement from start to finish got you her taste tempting results. 

All our behaviors have recipes whether they deliver excellent or poor results. The useful behaviors don’t need much investigation, but the ones not “up to snuff” do. 

The tried and true method for getting in the kitchen with the behavior generator is reverse or backwards engineering. That means to find your way back to the stepping stones that led you here.

This is more than finding out about the history of s particular behavior, it’s a tinkering process with the steps that got you here. What step did you practice over and over ’til they became second nature?

Was it something your parents drilled into you like “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “eat everything on your plate”? Or was it something you saw someone else repeatedly do that you wanted for you? Both are ingredients for generating behaviors.

Once you find the initial ingredient, work your way forward. You’ll discover other steps that got you here. This is where the nuance comes in. Did one of these steps take you off the beaten path? If so, this is when to take corrective action. “Ah ha, too much sugar.” Adjust the amount and get back on track towards an award winning recipe.

It’s valuable to find where you went astray and make adjustments to that walkway.

Just a little investigation and some action changing perspiration will get you to replicate Barbara’s taste sensations.

All the best,