The Draft

File under Get a Smaller Plate

The NFL Draft is tonight and the typical manufactured drama this year is compounded by real-world confusion and multi-billion dollar business reality. For those of you who don’t know, the NFL ownership is in a bitter labor battle with their workforce, the players. It’s a battle over money, rights, freedom to work, and freedom to operate a business. It involves the courts, appeals, motions, lockouts, and a whole host of complications of how to proceed. But of those who didn’t know that, you probably didn’t even care. And that’s ok. You can breathe a sigh of relief because I won’t get into a discussion of the rights of labor or ownership here. Because honestly, I don’t care either.

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But what I do find interesting is the comment that many of the players will be significantly impacted by the lockout because they live paycheck to paycheck, because they have, in essence, lost their jobs. Now most of you are currently rolling your eyes and playing your miniature violins. I don’t disagree. This isn’t a defense of their financial woes, rather this is a commentary on human nature’s tendency to “fill the plate.” Many of these players make multi-million dollar salaries yet are so spread thin that they can’t survive losing their paychecks. We tend to think that scale of magnitude changes our ability to live within our means. That by having more, we want less. But practical experience shows that to be false. A year after getting a raise we can’t fathom how we used to make it on the old salary. Somehow we manage to fill our plate, or exhaust all resources, despite the magnitude. I would argue that the same percentage of people who make $30k a year live paycheck to paycheck as those who make $100k, or even $2 million.

I'll talk more about this but the concept doesn’t only apply to money. It applies to space, time, and tasks. Just because we have a capacity for more doesn’t mean we should take it. Identifying what is just enough is the key.

Song of the Day
Someone showed me the link to this video today and it only re-affirmed what I always knew.  The Beastie Boys are the greatest band ever.  In honor of awesomeness, the song of the day is the Beastie Boys' "Make Some Noise".  Comment on your favorite cameo!