Finding My Nemesis

One way to relearn an old lesson

My nemesis is a parking meter.

A meter in Vancouver hoodwinked me, and it only took 15 seconds. I was supposed to be on a mellow vacation, yet it set off an inevitable cascade of events that had me running around one neighborhood of the city like a madman. I bought parking at the same place four separate times in one day, and paid nearly $35 for something I could have gotten either for free, or for $15 at the most.

My nemesis also taught me (or really retaught me) a lesson I sometimes need to relearn: at pivotal moments when the adrenaline is flowing, that’s when you most need to take a real pause and step back from the flow of events before you try to finish. I’ve found a similar principle in organizations. When you’re working on a team project that is 95 percent done, it’s that last 5 percent that can mean the difference between true excellence and the mediocre. If you don’t step back for a minute to figure out the last few things, you’re probably going to end up with the latter.

OK, now let me tell you the full story.

Hieroglyphics, anyone?

During our recent trip to British Columbia (which is absolutely fabulous, by the way), Lani and I plan to spend part of a day on Granville Island in Vancouver. It’s an artists colony. It also happens to have a huge indoor market where local food artisans sell everything from their home-smoked salmon to specialty teas with more than 100 ingredients. We arrange to take a walking tour around this foodie heaven led by a chef.

I make all the arrangements, map out our route to the island (which you can drive to), and learn about parking options. We leave a little late, and my navigation isn’t perfect. By the time we arrive, it's 10 minutes after the tour is supposed to have started, and Lani is a little annoyed. So I drop her off at the tour place and go to park. Though I know there is free parking on nearby parts of the island, I don’t see any as I drive around several blocks. When I finally find a paid parking lot, I pull right in, hop out of the car, and go over to the machine that sells the parking tickets.

A path to bafflement

The more I look at the meter, the less I understand. The instructions are in little picto-graphics that might as well be cuneiform. I press the blue button that appears to offer a full day of parking for $15. Nothing. I press more buttons. Not much more. Eventually, I hit one combination that offers to "add and hour." I hit it four times and pay about $15.

Lani ogles the olives

As it turns out, since it's a weekday, there actually is no one else on the tour. So it's just the two of us and a chef named Jamie. We wander among the stalls and meet some of the artisans. We try out a homemade oatmeal blend, handmade doughnuts, chocolate truffles with hints of lavender, delicately herbed sausages, fresh croissants, and home-cured olives. We finish the tour, go for lunch, and that's when I realize that the four hours are already up. I sprint back to the parking lot and buy another two-hour ticket. We want to return to the market and a ceramic gallery nearby to buy some gifts. By the time we're considering one of our larger purchases, our time has run out yet again. So time to pay for two more hours.

I ogle the truffles

From there, Lani wants to go to a store a few miles away that has a type of hemp yarn you can’t usually get in the states. We leave Granville Island close to 6 p.m. and drive to the store, where we find out they don’t carry the yarn anymore. Being insanely nice Canadians, they call around and find another store that has all the colors of the yarn. Where is it? Yep, on Granville Island.

There's a dilemma for you
We arrive back at Granville and I drop Lani off at the yarn store while I circle around looking for one of those free spots. But it turns out the island is a popular after-work gathering place, and there are no free spaces—and few paid spaces, either. When I finally find a space, it is 6:50 p.m. I’ve also learned by that point that parking, no matter where you are on the island, is free after 7 p.m. So, do I pay another $4 to park for 10 minutes? Or do I risk it?

Most people I know would risk it. But not me. I realize how crazed I would become if I paid for parking three separate times that day, and paid a lot, but still got a ticket in those final 10 minutes. So I pay for parking a fourth time. I just can't stop myself.

In this corner, a punch line

Up top, the thing I missed

After all this parking mania, I bring Lani back over to the lot to see my nemesis. I point out the cuneiform-level-incomprehensible directions. I rant. I rave. She looks at it for all of 10 seconds and says, "What about those directions at the top?"

And she's right. On top of the machine, in full view, is a second set of directions so simple, a third-grader could have followed them. But not me. I was in too much of a hurry at the beginning of the day. I never stepped back, took a breath, and looked up. And for that, I have four receipts and about $35 in parking fees as souvenirs.

Some thoughts:

• My real nemesis: When I'm on a tight deadline, stepping away from my task for a bit runs totally counter to my instincts. But that's how I do my best work—and avoid mistakes. In a way, the urge to skip this step is my real nemesis.
• Groups need a step-back moment, too: For group projects, that step-back moment has to be built into the process or it won't happen. During complicated, long tasks, people are usually sick of the project when it's near the end. They just want to get done. But that last bit of effort separates professional-quality work from the merely average.
• Trust in the niceness of Canadians: All over British Columbia, we ran into insanely nice Canadians. If I had just called the tour people when I was having trouble parking at the very beginning of the day, I bet they would have walked over a few blocks to help me out.