Just Missed It: Avoiding the 90-10 Trap

Did you know that flats can make great running shoes? I found out this morning. With coffee mug in hand, I strolled out of my house before the intercampus shuttle appeared two minutes earlier than it was scheduled to do so. My fight-or-flight response kicked in: flee to the shuttle, or fight the man and skip work altogether? Against my desire (and mitigating my morning shower) I bolted to the corner. Like many a movie moment I watched the shuttle pull away just seconds before I would’ve been able to stop it. What a way to begin my morning.

Disgruntled, “glistening,” and tired, I trudged to the el. Less convenient, and $2.25 more than I would’ve had to spend otherwise. I was praying for karmic retribution. I figured that what I had just been put through warranted a new watch. The only thing that could have made that moment worse, in my mind, was if it had sprayed me with a mud puddle as it pulled away preemptively. This is going to be a bad day, I automatically thought to myself.

If only my parents had cared more about my athletics and less about my academics, I would have made that shuttle. That being said, were that the case, I probably wouldn’t be chasing down the Northwestern University intercampus shuttle to begin with. Conundrum.

It’s easy to let our bad experiences affect the possibility of having positive ones. After all, it takes 4 positive comments to soften every one piece of criticism. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff author Richard Carlson believes that we have a tendency to fall into what he refers to as the 90-10 trap; if 90% of our day goes well, and 10% does not, we are most likely to focus on the latter ten percent when recapping our days. Despite the majority of things going well, all it takes is one event out of ten to go poorly, and all of a sudden our days are shot.

As soon as I missed the bus, I started thinking about all the other things that had gone wrong that morning. There were grounds in my coffee because the filter had collapsed oddly in the coffee maker, my room was in a shambles after having thrown all my clothes around…how quickly do we fall into that trap? How easy is it to let one bad experience color the rest of your experiences? It’s as though we decide to Photoshop our days, setting the picture to black and white and then having the program only pick up red hues. There’s more to the photo than that.

Try isolating your bad incidents. You’re allowed to be upset for as long as you need to be…about that particular incident. Vent, take a lap, whatever you must do to express and relieve your anger, and then shut the door on the event. If you let your anger overflow into the other events in your day, you are bound to be upset. On the other hand, trying to get over your anger more quickly than you might be ready to will cause a thin layer of residual anger to color your day. Don’t force yourself to feel better. Just make sure you’re upset about the right thing.

In the meantime, try and leave to catch public transit solidly early, and maybe you can mitigate being upset at all. Also your coffee won’t get cold, and your shower will last the day. Isn’t that all you can ask for?

To our readers: how do you handle when your morning starts out less than desirably? How do you handle incidents that put you in a bad mood?