Yesterday I was working on clearing snow from our sidewalk. I was specifically trying to clear a path on the section that connects the main walk and the street. The greatest problem is that most of the snow I had to clear had frozen solid, and was resistant to my attempts to clear it away. In the end, I was able to clear a narrow path through, and later on I expanded the path I had cleared.
Most of the snow I cleared with the use of a garden shovel (the snow being frozen solid enough that a standard snow shovel would have been of little-to-no use), jamming the shovel underneath, chipping away at the ice and snow, and prying up chunks that were tossed off to the side. During the later session (in which the path was widened), I continued in the same manner, but with the addition of a crowbar to aid in prying and also to chip away pieces from above and at the sides (use the shovel underneath, use the crowbar to perforate the snow so a large chunk breaks off, use shovel to relocate chunk). (I didn't use the crowbar during the earlier session as my sister was using it to break up the ice that covers much of the main walk, and I didn't want to interrupt her - she was doing an admirable job of it, and enjoying the task greatly.)
As I had suspected before starting the second session, the work went fairly quickly, and required me to switch back and forth between using the shovel and the crowbar. It occurs to me now, as I look back, that having the right tools to complete a job make the task of completing a job somewhat easier. You still need the mental and physical capacity to plan out a course of action and follow through with it, but being well equipped for the task at hand does make it somewhat easier.
However, this does raise another set of problems: knowing what tools to use, and acquiring those tools. Just because you can do something, doesn't necessarily mean you should. A certain course of action may seem like a good idea when first conceived, but it may turn out to be a terrible idea upon closer examination, or upon execution. I could clear away the snow with a shovel, or I could attempt to melt the snow with an improvised flamethrower (NOT RECOMMENDED). I would rather use the shovel, because while it may take longer, there will be almost no risk of accidentally setting my house on fire. Take the time to consider your options carefully - prevention is much easier and cheaper than repair.
Of course, it may be that you lack a variety of options. In these cases, it all the more vital that you are careful in considering what to do next. You may feel pressured into making a snap decision because none of the available choices are very appealing (reasoning that it's going to be unpleasant no matter what, so just get it over with). There is an old saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Lack of options can be potentially devastating. Take the time to consider things; don't just go with the seemingly obvious answer. There is no one right way to do everything. Different people often have different ways of approaching the same problem.
Just because you lack tools, that doesn't mean your options are limited quite so severely. Perhaps you just need to be a little more creative in how you go about using the tools at hand. I heard a story some time back about Niels Bohr (a physicist) when he was a young man. The story goes that Mr. Bohr was taking a test which included an interesting question: you have to measure the height of a multistory building using only a barometer as your primary tool. Mr. Bohr put down an answer that was deemed unacceptable by the teacher, and later went to the teacher to plead his case/explain his answer. He had thought up several ways that a barometer could be used to measure the height of a building, including:
- Find the mass of the barometer, then drop the barometer off the top of the building, and time how long it takes to hit the ground
- Measure the height of the barometer, then measure how many barometers tall the building is
- Use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the ground and at the top of the building, take the difference between the two, use that to calculate the height
- Measure the height of the barometer and the length of the shadow that the barometer casts, measure the length of the shadow that the building casts, use cross-multiplication to find the building height
- Find a custodian within the building, and offer to give them the barometer if they will tell you how tall the building is
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