One of my biggest pet peeves is hearing people say, “You need to think outside the box.”
What does that even mean? Does it mean that the “box” from which we derive our knowledge is completely worthless? Is everything we’ve learned to this point devoid of any value? Or is it just a catchphrase that makes the speaker of those seven little words sound innovative and smarter than the rest of us?
The first time I was treated to this enlightening wordage, I was a beginning teacher and was captive to one of the most boring presentations for which I’d ever sat. The phrase was uttered, over and over again, by a bespectacled university professor of education that was trying to promote the latest fad in teaching. Even though I was certain the old man couldn’t teach two rabbits how to copulate, he was considered one of the leading experts in his field and the convention had paid him big bucks to speak to us and motivate the attendees to go back to their schools and become better teachers, using his “outside the box” methodology. I remember thinking that if this guy came home with me and tried to use his teaching style on my group of freshmen kids, they would have him locked in the hog house we were building before the 50-minute class was over.
Even now, I can hardly go to a farm meeting or convention where someone at some point in time will encourage us to, “think outside the box.” They will, invariably, preach to us about how the old ways of doing things on our farms will just not work anymore and will surely lead to our demise. Yet, when I’ve visited with more than a few of those speakers at the conclusion, and ask them how many acres they farm or how many cows they have, they have to admit that they don’t have any.
Consider this: I usually sell my spring-born calves sometime between the last of September and the last of December, depending upon the market. For many years, I’ve talked to the brightest and best of economists, professors, marketing specialists, and other producers to try and choose the optimum time to sell, in order to receive the most money. I take their advice, analyze it and pick a date to market my calves. I have never hit the highest market.
This year, I surveyed the same group of experts to try (since we are in the midst of extremely low prices right now) and find the date of the absolute lowest price for feeder cattle. After getting input from all of them to determine the date that prices would be at the lowest point, I set up my cowboys and trucking for delivery on that date. As one of the guys stated, when I told him what I was doing, “Have you gone completely crazy?”
Probably.
You guessed it…they missed that date, as well, and though I would have liked to have received more for them (I say that every year), I can’t complain considering the current state of the market.
If there is a moral to this story, it would be this: don’t be so concerned with thinking outside the box…. Just think.
