Rule of Thumb

Only got up to 32 F or so today, but it’s been so warm for January that it felt very cold. Still, the snow that fell late last week was is long gone, and the ground has returned to natural winter browns and grays.

Called a lot of people today. In my line of work, I call a lot of people to ask for information, some days more than others, but someone almost every workday. I came up with a rule of thumb about that recently. Out of every four people you call for information, one’s going to be there to talk to you, one’s calls back shortly, one calls back well beyond your deadline, and one never calls back at all. On average. As a rule of thumb.

The nice thing about rules of thumb, besides the curious term itself, is that by definition rigorous methodology isn’t involved, so they’re easy enough to create, and easy enough to discard if they prove useless.