Getting The Hard Part Out Of The Way

Despite not having any children of my own, I'm getting quite proficient at assembling children's toys. Over the weekend my father and I put up a new swing-set for my nieces. It is actually a fairly fancy model with space for five swings, a see-saw on one end and a slide on the other. Now, despite all of those attachments, it went together rather nicely. Ironically, the hardest step was the first one, in which the center posts had to be attached to the crossbar. This also doubles as the most important step because if the center post fails the whole swing-set could collapse, so no pressure or anything. It took us a while before we finally got it. (It was an issue of trying to guess the outward angle of those posts, which is a lot narrower than you would assume.) But after that we flew through the rest of the construction and we were done in a short few hours. Anyway, assembling this thing got me to thinking about how much I appreciate any construction project in which the first step is the hardest.

You see, when you first start any home improvement project you are full of gusto and spirit, because you are getting to this thing you said you would start two weeks ago. It is this pride and energy at finally getting started which motivates you to keep working even though you forgot to charge the drill overnight and it has now taken fifteen tries to get the screw through to the other side of the piping and to the point that you can catch the end with the nut. No, you said you were going to complete this project today and at that moment you're motivated to finish it today if it kills you. However if this type of continued failure was occurring on the sixth step, which you didn't get to until you were two and a half hours into the process, then you would clearly need to take a break before you shatter this stupid thing and throw it out the window out of frustration. At this point the momentum is lost and your 15 minute break leads to the project being abandoned for the day because during your break you discovered there was an all-day NCIS marathon on USA and you start to bargain with yourself because ok, maybe you didn't finish, but at least you started and that's better than nothing. But if after that first step you start breezing through the rest of them, then you can stay motivated and tell yourself you have to finish. Because, even if it is taking longer than anticipated, if you find yourself on step 10 of 15 step directions who the hell stops at that point?

It is because of that I wish all projects would come with a warning label about which step in the directions will be the hardest. Wouldn't you feel better if you read a box on the front page of the booklet that said something along the lines of: "Step 4 is a real pain. Perhaps now is a good time for you to mentally prepare for the fact it will take you 20 tries to get it right." Not only will you feel better with the knowledge that everyone has a problem at this point of construction and also get a huge ego boost if you complete the step in less than 20 attempts, but you will also be comforted in the fact that after this point it should be smooth sailing. I do want to say, no matter how hard a project is to complete, it is all worth it when you see the look on one of your niece's face after she sits on the swing for the first time, half swings herself back and forth for fifteen seconds, then looks up at you and says, "Yeah, I think I'm all done now."