I came across this interesting article from Adam Mastroianni where he describes the process of unpacking.
I meet a lot of people who don’t like their jobs, and when I ask them what they’d rather do instead, about 75% say something like, “Oh, I dunno, I’d really love to run a little coffee shop.” If I’m feeling mischievous that day, I ask them one question: “Where would you get the coffee beans?”
If that’s a stumper, here are some followups:
- Which kind of coffee mug is best?
- How much does a La Marzocco espresso machine cost?
- Would you bake your blueberry muffins in-house or would you buy them from a third party?
- What software do you want to use for your point-of-sale system? What about for scheduling shifts?
- What do you do when your assistant manager calls you at 6am and says they can’t come into work because they have diarrhea?
The point of the Coffee Beans Procedure is this: if you can’t answer those questions, if you don’t even find them interesting, then you should not open a coffee shop, because this is how you will spend your days as a cafe owner. You will not be sitting droopy-lidded in an easy chair, sipping a latte and greeting your regulars as you page through Anna Karenina. You will be running a small business that sells hot bean water.
The Coffee Beans Procedure is a way of doing what psychologists call unpacking. Our imaginations are inherently limited; they can’t include all details at once.[…] Unpacking is a way of re-inflating all the little particulars that had to be flattened so your imagination could produce a quick preview of the future[…]
Very interesting and thought inducing read about our boring everyday lives and how important it is to match our crazy with our careers.