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The Better Way Mindset

By Peter Lloyd

Trembling in terror, a doctor, lawyer, and an engineer shuffled up to the guillotine. The surrounding crowd gazed in horror as the hooded executioner arranged the doctor into position. The brightly honed blade hovered ten feet above the condemned man’s neck. A collective gasp burst from the onlookers as the executioner pulled the lever’s rope.

The blade jerked and stopped. “Jammed again!” growled the executioner, his voice muffled beneath his black hood. “You’re free to go,” he snapped at the doctor and motioned to the lawyer.

The doctor scrambled off into the crowd as the lawyer approached praying that the blade would fail to fall at least once more. Again, the executioner positioned his victim and pulled the rope. Again, the blade failed to fall.

The engineer stepped up and circled the device of death, intently examining its sinister mechanism. Turning to the executioner, he confidently announced, “I think I can fix that.”

I plead guilty to taking advantage of people as creatively focused as the engineer portrayed in that old joke. All you have to do is mention to some creative people that you have a problem, and they instinctively begin to work on it. It’s as if “I can’t seem to figure out how to...” triggers an autonomic response in the problem-solving area of their brains.

Certain intensely focused creative people can’t seem to perform an ordinary task the standard way. They have to come up with a better way of doing almost anything they do.

At the receiving end of the spectrum you will find people willing to pay more for anything that helps them do anything a better way. Trivial better ways fill the pages of gadget catalogs and websites. And then there’s Sir Bobby Charlton. On a visit to Cambodia he saw the devastating effects of abandoned land mines and the inadequate ways they were being removed. Watch his response.

How You Can Help
If you’re like the engineer in the guillotine joke, why not focus your fierce creativity on helping Charlton.

See also:

• A Better Way to Get Into Outer Space Demonstrated by a Power Drill Operated Shotgul Slingshot Channel
  
• 30 Engineer Jokes An Engineer’s Aspect
  
• Home Building Video Tips Chuck Miller

Peter Lloyd is known around his home as The Amazing Fix-It Dad. He and his family live in a restored Queen Anne Victorian house in the historic Mansion Hill district of Newport, Kentucky.

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