How to Load a Dishwasher

Take a break from fixing the world via social media to consider the art of loading silverware into a dishwasher. Dishwasher manufacturers recommend putting knives point down and spoons and forks tongs up (though there exists a minor kerfuffle over the posture of forks). This approach results in cleaner silverware, simplifies unloading, and reduces risk (no sticking yourself with knife blades).

While my kids might treat this best practice as a burdensome “to do,” I accept it as another helpful standard for improving a situation. If you orient toward adopting best practices, then strategies such as optimal dishwasher loading become learned habits, allowing you to redirect limited energy and attention to something else.

Trust versus Agreement

My wife has a friend, a doctor, with whom she disagrees on issues related to the state of the world. However, she also trusts this friend with advice related to her health and the heath of our family. I have similar friendships and find that I trust most people I disagree with, and I distrust many people that I agree with.

Trust differs from agreement. If you do what you say you’re going to when you say you’re going to do it, then I trust your word and know that, for what you say and do, you are reliable.

How often do you need to do what you say you’re going to do to be worthy of trust? Basically 100% of the time. You could make a mistake or have a bad day, but how reliable is a person who does what they say 95% of the time? The math of this is simple.

If an employee shows up for work or tells the truth or respects your or their own stated values 95% of the time, that means they fail the team once every four weeks. Even if that person is the most agreeable and funny and charming of humans, 95% is insufficient. If a person abuses our trust every month, then he or she is unreliable, whether or not we agree on the meaning of life or the proper loading of dishwashers.

Cherry Picking

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the expression “cherry pick” traces back to the 1960s and means “to choose selectively… from what is available.”

I looked this up after reading about a September 2023 talk delivered by Supreme Court Justic Amy Coney Barrett at Catholic University’s law school on the limitations of judges relying on non-judicial historical precedent. She noted that the selective use of history is, “like looking over a crowd and picking out your friends.”

Each approach to life has limitations, especially when one selectively picks from the data or analysis or news with a bias towards confirming his case or her philosophy. In this way, to cherry pick is to deceive. In other words, it’s not a best practice for building trust.

We are Lucky

Thanks to chance and happenstance, many of us born in the 20^th or 21^st century United States enjoy unimaginable luxury, wealth, and lives relative to the history of people on Earth. One hundred years ago, the life expectancy in the U.S. was around 58 years. Today, it’s just over 79 years (putting the U.S. ahead of Estonia and behind 47 other countries)

When something exists, and we had nothing to do with its creation, we can take it for granted. This can include running water, television, automobiles, the right to vote, vaccines, peanut butter, and the hard-earned control over diseases such as polio, smallpox, leprosy, and the measles.

Sometimes, it helps to humbly accept the fact that, in many ways, we were simply born at the right time and in the right place. So let’s observe a moment of gratitude for the work and dedication and investment of our predecessors, whose efforts bequeathed to us a better existence.