Moving the table
The story
During the weekend, my wife and I helped a couple move a big heavy dining table from the garage to the second floor of their house.
I measured the dimensions and compared them with the narrowest passway we need to move by. There are 1~2 inches of buffer and I decided it’s doable[mistake 1]. After moving the table from the garage to underneath the stairway which seems small in comparison, we briefly considered disassembling the table and move the parts separately. I rejected that idea after seeing multiple screws. I fear disassembling it will damage the table[mistake 2].
Expecting to finish in 30 minutes, we then spent the next two hours trying the get the heavy and huge table through the narrow corner connecting the 1st and 2nd floors. Mistake 1 began haunting us, not only the buffer was too small, but also my calculation failed to envision how the table need to move around in the space. With considerable ingenuity, we managed to get it to the last and narrowest bottleneck.
“You may come this far, but no farther” — Job 38:11
We exhausted all possible maneuvers before determined the search is possibly an NP-complete problem and the table can’t pass the corner without breaking any physical laws. Under a rare moment of clarity and out of frustration, my friend suggested reconsidering disassembling.
This turned out to be a game-changer. After careful examining, we found that disassemble is simple — the many screws I mentioned only strengthens the tabletop structure thus didn’t need to be removed, and the legs can be easily detached from the tabletop! With this insight, we changed the game plan to
- Disassemble the table on the spot
- Separately moving the four legs and the tabletop to the second floor
- Assemble the table
This plan was finished in 15 minutes. The previous plan — moving as a whole and try to maneuver through — took two hours and failed.
What I learned
Win by strategy, not tactics
Besides the universal strong strategy of divide and conquer, widely used in computer science, furniture moving, and many areas in life, the most meaningful lesson is what a difference strategic decision can make.
Most people, including me, often feel life is stuck in some way. We feel things are so hard: Why people just don’t listen, why there are some many works? Most of us choose to unfuck the situation by working harder. More often than not, this won’t solve the problem, or the long hours will create other serious issues including even more disorientation.
I then learned a principle: The weakness in strategy can’t be compensated by however strong tactics. When things get hard, I will force myself to focus on finding the best strategy, the game plan that will make things easy. Yes, sometimes I simply can’t discover a game-changer solution, like disassembling the table. But I believe that’s the right way to fail — I would rather fail in finding a sound strategy than settling down with an unsatisfactory plan and laboring myself to failure anyway.
There are many games we simply can’t play and win; we can beat them by defining new rules, but can’t win under the status quo.
Buffering is the remedy of being over-optimistic
If you are like me, you constantly underestimate the difficulties, the time needed, the unexpected blocks that come from nowhere. This resulted in mistake 1. This curse is especially strong for beginners — watch any episodes in Clarkson’s Farm if you are not convinced.
Therefore, we must aggressively buffer for all schedules. In Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg Mckeown recommended a rule of 50% to 100% buffering on time or other resources.
The value of domain knowledge
The lack of domain knowledge or experience in moving large furniture resulted in mistake 2 — and mistake 1 to some extend. While we were trying to manually solve an NP-complete problem, I remembered all professional movers I ever hired never measured big furniture like the table at all — they always start disassembling right away. I think they know that disassembling is the best way to move big furniture and they can be re-assembled easily.
Moving may sound straightforward, but I believe all professions take a long time to mastery. Life will be easier and more productive if we focus on one thing that we do best and delegate, collaborate, and exchange on other tasks; this way we are tapping the power of the free market. Hiring experts, or leveraging them in other ways, is usually the optimal cost-effective strategy.
The joy from teamwork
Along with physical, mental, and spiritual needs, all human being has social needs. Collaboration with full effort is one of my most satisfying social experiences — the other being helping others in a meaningful way.
I felt being stupid and clumsy, and two hours with no progress was frustrating, but every moment is enjoyable when everyone in the group is trying his or her best to help a common mission. In the progress, you find each person’s thinking process, personality, and a bit of their character; you also felt a stronger bond with others. Such is the teamwork I’m looking for and the main reason for my employment.
So many lessons from a dining table! Lastly, below is the table we moved.
