Saturday 23 February 2013


#6 Flipping burgers

Ok let's think of the best way of explaining this. The reason burgers need flipping, even though part of them is done, is so that they can get fully cooked all over. Pancakes are the same. Ideally you flip them before they start to burn. If they're already burned then you really need to flip them. Have you ever tried to flip something and ended up losing it? If you don't move your arm enough, the burger hardly moves. If you move it too much, you'll either lose the burger or flip it right back round onto the burnt side. If you never flipped it at all, what would happen? The burger would still cook on the top side eventually when the heat reached it and maybe you could eat it if you really wanted to but the under side would be completely charred. You need to turn the burger, so you grab the pan, give it a flick and the burger magically spins, lands happily and before you know it, it's done. Bigger burgers are harder to flip and if you've got a lot of burgers in the pan, it can take a while to flip them all. It's still completely possible though and it only takes a second. If you want to make it easier to flip your burger, you can use a tool such as a spatula or you can get a friend to help you.

When this weekend arrived, I really just wanted to chill out but the reason I felt like I needed to make a few notes, even though I was done with work, was so that I could fully remember all the stuff I'd learned during the week. Have you ever tried to work at the weekend and just got stressed out? If you don't do enough, you feel like you've hardly learned anything. If you work too much, you either end up flipping out or all of a sudden you're right back round to Monday, feeling burnt out. If you never did any overtime at all, maybe you'd remember what you'd learned eventually when you revisited it, or maybe you could pick it up at a later date if you really wanted to but your ability to persevere would remain completely untested. I needed to change the situation, so I grabbed some thick colourful markers, drew a few pictures and wrote out technical terms accompanied by obscene or funny notes. Magic. Before I knew it, I was done. Yeah I know this is a tiny example. Bigger situations are harder to flip and if you've got multiple issues, it can take longer.

Perhaps the greatest thing about flipping a situation is that it just takes a second. It might take a bit longer to learn how to do it, to find the right tool or person to help but once you're ready, you can literally change the way you feel about something in a heartbeat. With practice, I expect it's possible, although harder in some cases, to do it with anything.



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