What Learning To Make A Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Can Teach You About Learning A New Skill

A couple of years ago, I resigned from my job of six years working operations for a medical device company and moved on. I went from working at a $17 billion company to a $5 million company.

The transition was far different than I expected. In a small company, you’re required to wear many hats. You will have to do roles that you were not hired to do because they need to be lean on employment.

Many people would look at that as a major downside, but I looked at it as an opportunity to gain a lot of professional experience in fields I wouldn’t have had the ability to work in before.

The biggest barrier was that I had to teach myself how to do a lot of these roles because the people above me didn’t necessarily have any more knowledge on how to do the job than I did. My boss, Katie, said to me, “have you heard the peanut butter and jelly analogy? Tell me how you would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

I replied, “well you would get peanut butter, bread, and jelly. Then you would spread the peanut butter and jelly on the bread, put it together, and you’re done.”

It turns out, I was wrong.

Explaining How To Make A PB & J

Katie corrected me on how you would truly explain in all detail on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich:

• First, you watch to the kitchen. Then you have to identify where the peanut butter is. It’s in the cupboard? You walk over to the cupboard, raise your arm, grab the cupboard door, open it and then grab the peanut-butter out of the cupboard. You take the peanut-butter and set it down on the kitchen counter.
• Second, you walk over to the refrigerator, and grab the door and open it. You then grab the jelly with your hand, grip it, and then walk over to place it near the peanut butter.
• Third, assuming that the bread is on the counter, you will grab the bag of bread, open the bag, reach into it and pull two slices of bread out.
• Fourth, you need a butter knife. You will open the silverware drawer, grab a butter knife, then close the silverware drawer.
• Fifth, set both pieces of bread side by side on the counter. Now take the jar of the peanut-butter and jelly and open both of them. Use your hand to unscrew the jar and set the lid on the counter.
• Sixth, place the knife in the jar of jelly and scoop out the contents that you wish to have on the sandwich. Then wipe the knife off and repeat the same steps with the peanut-butter. Spread the contents. Then place both pieces of bread with their contents together.

At first, I didn’t get it. Why would you think through all these steps when it’s so simple to explain something like this? Why does everything need to be listed out to the most minuscule step?

This process in the beginning did cause me to overthink my job in the beginning. I was struggling to decipher when I should go into full detail and when not to. I would go into meetings, not understanding expectations, and would be called out for too much detail. Then other times I wouldn’t have enough detail.

It wasn’t until after I left the job, I began to understand the analogy.

What It Means To Describe How To Make A PB & J

When learning any new skill, there’s a temptation to take shortcuts. We want to get from point A to Z and skip steps B through Y.

You cannot skip steps B through Y because those steps have value to them even if you do not think they do.

Every so often, there are times when you have to skip some steps because you’re reaching a deadline, but with skipping a step there comes a risk.

My job was working in supply chain, and forgetting a step as simple as calling a co-man on the status of a shipment could lead to a delay of a few days. A delay of a few days could lead to us losing business.

As minuscule as these steps seem, they add up. This especially came useful when it came to building out project plans for something I had no idea how to build.

Building A Project Plan And Accomplishing What You Didn’t Think Was Possible

When you’re building a project plan, list out each step in as much detail as possible.

After listing out each step, ask yourself about how long each of the steps will take.

Put that step in your calendar so you will not forget to do it.

This helps you break out the project and goal into bite-sized steps. If there’s a part about it that you’re unsure of how long it will take, give the most conservative estimation that you can.

It’s always better to underpromise and overdeliver than vice versa.

One of the projects I had was building out an autogenerated purchase order template because it would take us over an hour to draft one purchase order. Over the course of several weeks, I worked on a project to build a purchase order template.

I had to list out all the resources I would need for it. Then I would have to write out a formula and make sure that I didn’t miss a piece of it. Rewriting a formula that’s as long as this post can set you back more than an entire day worth of work.

This project plan was over fifty steps long. It was chunked out throughout the course of a couple of weeks, but that hour to draft a single PO was cut down to 10 minutes. The number of hours of work it saved us is difficult to quantify.

Conclusions

If you’re stuck in learning something or understanding how to build something, don’t try to tackle the entire thing at once. Find what the next step is that you need to take and see what you need to do.

I didn’t realize that I was trying to tackle all of my problems at once until I came face to face with it.

There are some issues that you cannot tackle in a day or two. Some of them might take over a year to tackle.

Those issues are usually solved by those who have the most discipline.

But understanding all the steps to get closer to solving your problem will assure that the only excuse you’ll have for not finishing it will be discipline and nothing else.