default.measure-twice!

“Measure twice and cut once…this sh*t’s expensive!” - a real estate developer

At beautiful Topsail Island, NC around the year 1998, I worked with my uncle installing residential and light commercial electrical systems. It was hot, dirty, salty and exhausting. We serviced condominium associations by running service calls and repairs along with working for house and real estate developers of all kinds—wealthy and friendly as well as rich and grumpy. There was one man I recall very clearly who had been a former agent in a secret government agency (you get lots of former military/agency types being close to Camp Lejeune ). I can’t recall his name, and wouldn’t write it here even if I did, but he was developing nice houses on the very island that we were wiring. Minding my own business but aware of what was happening around me, I would often observe him saying to the trades people ,“measure twice and cut it once…this sh*t’s expensive and I don't’ want to buy more!” I chuckled to myself and went along with my work feeling lucky I was never the object of his ire.

Fast forward to today, 7.28.2025. I wanted to get a jumpstart on the day and had a couple of errands to run before work. I told Siri the name of a local coffee shop I like to frequent, King St. Cafe, and low and behold the trip router reported I hasd an estimated arrival time of 3 hours and 26 minutes! What?! I laughed to myself and expressed amusement about actually not paying attention and blindly following the directions to a very different King St. Cafe located in far-off Ontario, Canada! …boy I hope their coffee is good, LOL!

How many times in life do we cut before we measure a second time? How many times in life do we blindly take advice or come to a decision, sometimes critical, without taking time to check the facts and ensure the data or perception is correct? There is a term for this, it’s called rashness, and it can lead to wrong choices on many fronts.

The moral for these antidotes is to verify what you ‘hear and read’ as often as you can, measure a second time from another direction or someone else's perspective. I will leave you with two quotes:

Two Stories Wide, Willy Nelson / The Highwayman: “Life's too long to worry. And it's too short to cry. And it's too deep to measure. It's two stories wide”

The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis (Pg 155): “When Danny heard an illogical argument, he asked, ‘What might this be true of?’”

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