“Hey, we need to talk about the slide you created for the pre-prep meeting I have in 30 minutes. It’s absolute trash”. I closed my eyes in a vain attempt to conceal my eyes rolling to the back of my head and mustered the willpower to simply respond “which one is that?”. “Slide 347 in backup” Todd barks as he throws a print out of the offending slide on my desk. “Ok…what’s wrong with it?” I ask, trying with all my might to find a shred of caring. “Look at how the car’s images aren’t sized exactly the same and what color is that outline? Blue? Black? I can’t tell and it looks godawful. Oh, and…” Todd trails off as his squirrel-like attention focused on the bain of his existence for the last week…my pink water bottle. “WTF is wrong with you, why are you still using that damned pink bottle?”
I have a habit of losing things. Phone, keys, wallet, computer, and most certainly drinking vessels. Over the years, I’ve found that the best way of keeping items around is to make them in strikingly bright can’t miss ‘em colors. Orange being my favorite color is my normal go-to, but I’ve been known from time to time to carry a neon yellow pen or in the case of this story, a neon pink Yeti bottle that my wife gave me after receiving it for free from work. Since I tend to lose things, low-cost is critical and a free brightly colored Yeti bottle is something I just can’t turn down…even if it’s in the uber-masculine shade of neon pink.
My boss at the time, Todd, was a type-a personality that just HAD to sweat the small stuff. Thickness of lines to the pixel on a powerpoint slide, printer toner color accuracy when exercising the printer with a 500 page powerpoint deck, and for some reason he absolutely hated the fact that me…a 6’5” tall 30-something MAN would dare drink from a bright pink bottle. At first he was bewildered that I bought such a bottle. Assuming I could sort his bewilderment with the fact that I received it for free, I proudly shared that fact which just seemed to frustrate him more. “If it’s free, then throw it away!”. But I just couldn’t understand why a thing that met every one of my admittedly odd needs should be discarded simply because the color offended someone for no reason. Others thought it was funny and it somewhat became my brand that I like bright colored things and don’t care what the color is.
It was nearly a month before he found something else to stress about and accept that my pink bottle was a staple on my desk and to this day I often think about that cup and how it represented the inability to let insignificant things go. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” is a phase often repeated by many in society, and my pink bottle is the embodiment of that phrase. When I find myself dwelling on something no matter how big or small, I remind myself to consider the pink bottle. The hours wasted arguing about something insignificant that didn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things can be expanded to include just about any perceived problem in life. How much time do we waste dwelling on things that are ultimately inconsequential?
In the moment, just about anything can feel heavy and that’s doubly true as we enter the second half of the 2020’s. Politics aside, with a difficult job market, volatile stock market, and uncertainty abound, I often find myself stressing a bit about things that I can’t control. Sometimes it’s worse, I stress about things that I can’t control AND are truly inconsequential. Did I say the wrong thing to that one question in the interview? Is that divider on the homepage of my website too thin? Boxers or briefs? We don’t always realize how many different decisions we make in a day, Gemini says “The average adult makes roughly 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day, encompassing everything from what to eat to what to wear, and even seemingly minor choices.” Some are legit important and require serious brain power, though most are just neon pink water bottles. Stressing about the neon pink water bottle 35,000 times a day would be immensely taxing, and ultimately drive no tangible positive outcomes.
I spend a lot of time in airports travelling as part of my job. An instructor I had in graduate school suggested that if we find ourselves in that sort of position, take the time to call people. Reaching out to your network on a continued basis to check in and see how folks are doing is immensely rewarding on both sides, and it sure beats slamming $15 pints while choking down a criminally overcooked $20 burger at the Chili’s bar. This post is the result of one of those conversations I had with one of my prior co-founders Rob at my first startup who worked with me and Todd.
I’ve been dealing with a lot of personal and professional change recently that I tend to downplay the gravity of to maintain my sanity. I’m changing jobs, moving 2,000 miles, and created this website just to name a few, all within the span of a few months. All these actions seem huge, but to me are just life moves no greater than my pink bottle. I’m changing jobs for a better fit, I’m moving to be closer to family to create life-long memories that matter to me, and this website has provided a critical creative outlet to keep my writing chops sharp and document my experiences for sharing and future reference.
The external perspective of decisions doesn’t always reflect the true motivation behind them for the person making them. I find confidence and personal strength by doing my own thing and focusing on what motivates me while letting external perspectives fall to the wayside and using the pink bottle analogy as the water-line for what needs serious consideration and external perspective vs. what doesn’t. I encourage everyone to find their own pink bottle test to evaluate what truly matters in life, as that grounding can be life changing.
A few years ago and about a year after I moved on to a different role, Todd passed away. He was in his 50’s with a family and apparently a heart condition. While I don’t intend to conclude this post on a downer, this is a wake-up call. It’s something that truly changed my life and motivates me to make the most out of every day. I can’t help but think that if he had the awareness to convert his ire toward my pink bottle into a water-line test for what matters and doesn’t, he might still be there for his family. I certainly want to be and not sweating the pink water bottle might be the most useful tool available. What’s your pink water bottle?
