30%

When contractors bid a job, standard practice is to add 30% to whatever the estimated costs are.  On really big jobs, they may even add 50%.  This is because there are always unforeseeable events and costs that take place; an employee cuts a board wrong or drops something, obstacles get discovered while digging the foundation, someone hurts themselves on the job.  The profession has developed to account for unforeseen events.

Ravens often live with the top predators of the area.  In Yellowstone they live with wolves.  Their main diet is deer meat, their nests are lined with deer fur, they play with wolf pups and eat with the pack.  Its clear that the ravens benefit from the wolves, but do the wolves benefit?  Ravens are known to be very good lookouts so that is one benefit.  It’s also hypothesised that they may locate prey for the wolves but this has not been proven.  In greenland, hunters viewed ravens as a good omen and would also claim that they would point out prey to them by flipping upside down in mid flight.  This has not been proven however and the alternative theory is that a hunter upon seeing a raven would explore further, motivated by the positive sign to keep looking for game and would therefore be that much more likely to find some.  (For more on Ravens, check out: “Mind of the Raven Investigations and Adventures with Wolf Birds” by Bernd Heinrich)

My first year at university I was driving my friend to show him this awesome thrift store I had found called Last Chance.  It was appropriately named as is was located outside of town right next to the dump.  My buddy was a 42 year old  army ranger veteran.  As I was driving I started to think that maybe I had made a wrong turn or past it, it felt like I should have been there already.  I started to get self conscious about leading my friend on a wild goose chase. “Maybe I passed it, I thought it was this way, I cant really remember” I’m sure I was clearly fretting and anxious about getting us lost.  I’ll never forget his response, “Don’t worry, you know what you’re doing, just keep going.”  A minute later we were there.

Since then I have applied the percentage mark up that contractors use to navigation.  If I’m going somewhere and begin to feel lost, I start paying attention to time and/or distance.  The moment I think maybe I passed a turn or am going the wrong way, I look at a clock or start tracking distance traveled.  At a certain point later I have the feeling of, “ok I should turn around, this is the wrong way.”  That’s when I look at the clock again, add up the time, roughly calculate 30% of it and keep going that much longer and further.  It usually gets me there.  My hypothetical raven.

I’ve been able to apply this concept to other facets of life; estimating the time it takes to do something, how much work something will be, how late a friend will be when they say they’ll be done with something at a certain time. As it turns out life in general, not just contracting, has unexpected events and costs, and one can expect the unexpected.

Try it out at let me know how it goes.

…I have to admit, I kinda hope that ravens actually point out prey to wolves and hunters even though it would make their place in this post slightly irrelevant.

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