I’m sick of burnt toast

by Tulsi van de Graaff

I buy really nice bread. And I love my toast.  I even have a lovely turquoise 4 slice toaster. But I have this thing that happens to me.  A lot of times (even most times) I burn my toast.

Now my bread cutting skills aren’t that great.  So the various widths of one slice of bread also contributes to the problem of ‘burntness’.

However, the main problem is that I haven’t stopped to work out the perfect amount of time it takes for my toast to get just the way I like it…and for me that’s well toasted.  So I put my bread in twice (first time it’s hardly toasted at all – yes I know the setting’s too low).  Then I wait (but I walk away or forget) and next thing – burnt toast.  I still eat it but really it’s not quite as good.

And there’s a lesson in it.  How many times do I, do you, do we, continue to do the same thing even though it’s producing the same results and…those results are just NOT working and it’s so disappointing!

How often do you take stock of what is really not working in your work, your business or your life, small or big, and say ‘hey, you know what, I keep doing the same thing again and again and getting the same result and I feel let down every time.  Something needs to change’.

What we often find, as well, is that at work the person who keeps burning the toast gets blamed. A manager might send me on a three month bread toasting course and at the end of it, I might still be burning toast.

So really, for me and my toast, what I need to do, is take even 5 minutes, to pay attention to how long my bread needs toasting…to get what I’d really love, delicious crunchy, dark golden toast.  I guess I might have to work on my bread slicing abilities while I’m at it.

Often it’s the little adjustments, the small steps, that can make all the difference.  Work out the problem, tweak the system, get the settings right, and you might even get your own perfect toast.

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