Guacamole Projects

In the part of the world I live in, avocados come from grocery stores and they’re never ripe. When I bring them home, they sit on the counter for days. I’m all set to use them, but those avocados – the main ingredient, the star of the soon-to-be-guacamole show – are defiantly unworkable.

Until they’re not.

And then that day, that hour, everything happens at once. The tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and garlic must be chopped. The limes juiced. The salt shaken. There’s work to do to turn those avocados into guacamole, and that work needs to happen now. As much as I’d like to plan, prepare, and absolutely positively not have to rush ever – it just makes no sense to chop cilantro on Monday in the anticipation of Thursday’s guacamole.

Some projects are guacamole.

These are the projects where their outcome would be decidedly worse if you started early. To do the best work you really do have to wait (and wait) for some event to trigger before you can start. And then you better hope you stretched that morning because it. is. on.

These are the worst projects, avoid them.

And they are largely avoidable. Sure some guacamole projects are inevitable – I have yet to figure out how to automatically ripen an avocado for example – but there’s almost always something you can do to get ahead of the game.

Try to get ahead of the game.