Just ... do it?
"What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?" - Erin Hanson
Today we’re going to learn about how sometimes it pays to simply try …
The Daily Rabbit Hole: You can buy the cheese grater at Olive Garden.
"I looked at him and said, 'Do you sell those? Can I buy that from you?'" Gjerness recalled. "And he said, 'Actually, we do.'"
Ahh the power of just … asking.
Most people are excellent at accepting things at face value, but that isn’t always in their best interest. For example, I bet you don’t realize that you can haggle at the store. I’m not talking about bartering at a global city’s open air market where trying to cut a deal is a part of the experience, I mean at major retailers across the US.
The shoppers who made a purchase in one of the stores we rated tried to negotiate only 14 percent of the time, but when they did, they were frequently successful. In fact, 59 percent got a price reduction.
Now, to be clear, you’re probably going to get told to leave Target trying to negotiate down a tube of toothpaste from $3.98 to $3.75. I’m not trying to turn us into agents of chaos at big box retailers. However, it may be worth giving it a shot on future large purchases - at the very least it’s not uncommon to get some semblance of a perk or two (free shipping, longer warranty, an extra refill cartridge, etc.).
The ‘Wait, What?’ Vortex: Nike’s famous tagline, “Just Do It,” was inspired by a death row inmate in Utah State Prison.
“In Doug Pray’s 2009 documentary about advertising, Art & Copy, he confesses that the idea for the line was sparked by the last words of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, who said “Let’s do it!” to the firing squad before his execution.”
Trying is in our DNA …
In 1951, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the Double Helix shape of DNA. For the prior decade, many scientists had started and stopped their own explorations into how our genetic information was passed along from parent to child, but ultimately it was Watson and Crick who are credited with the findings. Why?
I’ve documented several interesting inventions and discoveries here over the last few months and they nearly all have on thing in common. The discovering party nearly always loses sight of everything else and focuses on a single thing. In the case of Watson and Crick, they dedicated 18 months specifically to understanding the shape of this “building block” of life because they saw a gap.
“Crick and Watson recognized, at an early stage in their careers, that gaining a detailed knowledge of the three-dimensional configuration of the gene was the central problem in molecular biology… This meant taking on the arduous intellectual task of immersing themselves in all the fields of science involved: genetics, biochemistry, chemistry, physical chemistry, and X-ray crystallography.”
Sometimes trying means learning more in 18 months than most people learn in a lifetime, other times it means you wind up with a new cheese grater.
The point is, maybe we have seen the phrase “Just Do It” so much that we’ve forgotten what it’s telling us. So I’ll go another route. Got something you’ve been wanting to give a go?
Just … try it.