My way.

You see this a lot in aviation, and in law: “I do it my way.” Even when all the research has established that way is obsolete and based on bad, old information. See the ever-present debate over lean of peak vs. rich of peak. (We follow the teachings of Mike Busch and John Deakin in this hangar! Lean of peak.) Or shock cooling. Or WordPerfect. (Okay, the last one’s debatable, I hate some of the idiosyncrasies of Microsoft Word, and as much as I wish it was up to the task, LibreOffice still falls short in key areas, like generating tables of authorities. But network effect is real and the battle’s won; it’s a Word world.)

Researching severability clause language (because that’s a thing I do, apparently; childhood dreams fulfilled), I stumbled across this blog, now offline but thankfully captured in the Wayback Machine. Here’s an excerpt that spoke to me:

It’s just possible that “your way” is made up of all that is clearest and most effective. But the notion of doing things “your way” implies an approach that at least to some extent is static and shut off from new ideas. ... If that’s the case, doing things “your way” has less to do with quality and more to do with some combination of inertia, expediency, and egotism.

I’m trying my very best to remain as “plastic” as possible, and not end up with this mentality:

 

Interesting how things percolate into my news feed when I need them to; Firefox gave me this nugget  (linking to a 2015 article) right after I found the above post. Pascal’s thoughts:

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others. (I)(9-10)

I have no idea how to incorporate that in practice in, say, a situation like running an engine lean of peak. And maybe that’s why I won’t own an airplane in a partnership with a pilot rigidly locked into a “rich of peak” mentality.

Stay plastic y’all!