On Readiness and Eggs －準備ができている状態と卵について－

You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.  So says the proverb.  But you can buy a ready-made omelette, and heat it up in the microwave, without ever having to break an egg yourself.  Which do you value more: the convenience of the ready-made meal, or the satisfaction of eating something you have made yourself?

Perhaps the ideal choice is somewhere in-between.  Instead of cooking a meal from scratch, or heating up a ready-meal, many people now make “ready-to-cook” meals.  The ingredients have all been chopped and packed for you.  You just have to throw them all into a frying pan or whatever to finish the process.

According to an article I read recently, the growing popularity of these ready-to-cook meals should not be surprising.  Many psychological studies have shown that people assign more value to things if they have helped to make them.  For example, in one experiment, participants were taught to make some simple origami objects.  They also watched an expert making some beautiful origami objects.  They were then allowed to offer money to buy the creations.  People tended to offer much more money for the things that they had made themselves, even if the quality was much poorer.

So are there any other industries which could try to give customers greater satisfaction by involving them in the creative process, whilst keeping an element of convenience?

How about ready-to-knit sweaters?  Hmm... that might be a little too much effort for most people.

So how about “ready-to-peel” bananas?  No, actually, I think we already have those.

“Ready-to-finish” jig-saw puzzles?  These puzzles would be extremely difficult, but come 90 per cent already completed.  The customer would get the satisfaction of finishing a difficult puzzle without having to do most of the work.

How about “ready-to-write” novels?  They would be great for me.  The basic plot-line of a story would be provided – Character A falls in love with character B but in Chapter 2 they have an argument and... etc.  Then all you would have to do was fill in some absorbing dialogue and interesting characters and you have written your first novel!

Or “ready-to-pedal” taxis?  The car doesn’t have an engine.  You have to pedal along with the driver to make it to your destination.  That would also be popular with fitness enthusiasts and environmentalists.  This might actually be quite a good idea.  (Copyright William Lang, 2019!)

[Please insert your own joke here to complete the article.]

Vocabulary:

a proverb – a traditional saying, often giving some simple life advice or observation about life

to do something from scratch – to do something from the very beginning, not building on previous work

an ingredient – one part of a food item or dish

a psychological study – an experiment designed to show how people behave

to assign value to something – to decide how much something is worth

to peel (a banana) – to take the skin off (a banana)

absorbing – tending to draw your attention; fascinating

to pedal – to push your legs in a circular motion, such as to make a bicycle move