@chadhassler

The Unbreakable Line

Can someone please make an app based on this concept?

Yesterday's thoughts on Behavior Modification Using a Social Douchebag Jar unearthed this little gem from the depths of my mind. I call it "The Unbreakable Line".

The concept is simple. You have a goal/habit/resolution that you'd like to stick to/acheive/attain. Everyday you make good on that goal, you draw a line through that day. If you keep it up, the line gets longer and longer and longer. Soon, you don't want to break that line. You've put so much work into that line. You don't want blank space, you want a line.

You have to use a little mind-trickery, but this is a fun way to help you stick to your goals. My advice: get a big calendar and hang it somewhere you'll see it everyday. Starting in February, I'm going to have this on my fridge. Whatever my weight loss plan is, I will use that calendar to log my lines.

What do you think?

Behavior Modification Using a Social Douchebag Jar

Behavior modification sucks.

Trying to modify things like eating, drinking, and exercising is difficult. Trying to modify my incessant need to leave clutter in my wake is a right pain in the ass. It's hard because it doesn't seem that important. I can't get amped up about cleaning up after myself.

As you can see in the picture above, my wife came up with a solution. A social douchebag jar. She got the idea from the hilarious Fox comedy, New Girl. 

Why don't you see a jar? You know why, Neo. There is no jar.

Leaving my contact solution and glasses on the vanity is a nasty habit of mine that drives her nuts.  So what she's done is committed to posting my failures in cleanliness on Facebook. She's making a humilitation deposit in her Social Douchebag Jar. I see it in my feed, feel shame, and eat 2 bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios, which only compounds my weight loss challenge!

Perhaps I need to start posting everything I eat directly on Facebook and Twitter and let all my friends shame me into fitness.

For all you wives out there, this might be a great way to change your husband's behavior. Unless they're like my Dad, who has no shame. Love you, Dad!

A Lesson on Creativity...Cellar Style.

I've recently joined my sister's restaurant, The Cellar, as a Garde Manger (French). I'm told this means "keeper of the food". A direct translation from an online dictionary search tells me that my job is meat safe. Let's move on before I take that one out of context.

My understanding of my job is to help with prep, prep my station, call out orders, garnish any hot appetizer or entree when it comes by my station, plate any cold appetizer, salad, or desert, communicate with the Sous  (my sister) and the other line cook, communicate with the servers, come up with the occasional amuse bouche (here's my latest creation), improvise when I run out of an ingredient, keep my station neat and clean, heat up the occasional bar drink, refill my station after the kitchen closes, clear down my station, help with mats, sweeping, and mopping. And this is a part-time job.

It's challenging and I love the work. 

This past weekend I got a chance to sit in on the creative process of designing a Valentine's Day menu for the restaurant. In attendance was Executive Chef Michael Lanahan, Executive Sous Chef Sarah Hassler, Line Cook Tyler (I simply can not remember his last name) and me.

After setting a table with a few slices of vegan, gluten-free carrot cake, and coffee,  Sarah set the table with the theme: a six-course aphrodisiac tasting menu designed to make you and your valentine swoon. 

What took place over the next hour was fantastic. 

Sarah facilitated the discussion and kept everyone's ideas along the edges of the lines she had drawn earlier, yet no one was afraid to blurt out an idea. Sarah and Michael played off one another in a creative thrashing session with remarkable ease. Clearly, not their first time. Tyler added his own twists which added another layer of depth to the jam session. Even I got one or two suggestions in there. Everyone's opinion was respected, even if it wasn't adopted. 

That one hour of creative labor has manifested itself in a one page menu that's truly going to delight the city of Corning. It felt awesome to even be in the audience, let alone add something to it.

Now the real work begins. With just two and a half weeks until launch, the menu preparation needs to be mapped out, the food needs to be ordered, the cooks and servers need to be trained, the atmosphere needs to be set, and reservations need to be made. Short version: Holy Shit.

And here in lies the lesson. While that creative jam session felt absolutely awesome, the only thing that matters is the results. We could come up with sex-on-a-plate, but if we didn't execute, who would care?

Your epic, world changing, earth shattering, mountain moving ideas are just ideas, until you make them something more.