The treasure hunt analogy
Imagine you’re staring at a huge field of barren land and there’s treasure buried somewhere. There are two crews with shovels, both of them are looking for the same treasure.
Now one crew decides on a strategy where they look under a rock, dig a little, and if they don’t think they’re going to find anything move on to the next rock. After all there’s a lot of ground to be covered, and very limited time and resources. Lara Croft is on her way and they’d rather get adopted by than compete with her. The other crew tries a different strategy. They look for clues on the surface, pick a spot, and decide to keep digging and digging till there’s absolutely no doubt that there’s something (or nothing) there.
The emotional ride of both these crews is different. Digging a fresh spot every time is a new dose of excitement, and not digging too deep makes it easier to move on. For the other crew, the deeper they go, the more anxious they get because they’re nearing the end, and they still haven’t found something. Sure, it doesn’t have to be all work no play for these guys. They all have a few drinks, share tales of their adventures at night, maybe have a Mexican stand-off or two to make things interesting. Regardless, the second crew will have a harder time giving up and moving on to a new spot. “We’ve dug so deep, might as well go a little more before starting over.”
Ok, I think you see where I’m headed, but I’ll finish this analogy anyway. To you, looking at this field from a distance, the first crew definitely looks like it has more ground covered. You can’t even see the other crew, buried deep in one of their holes, maybe their first one. No prizes for guessing which crew has a higher likelihood of getting featured on TreasureCrunch.
However, there’s no way to tell if one crew is going to win. Maybe the treasure wasn’t very deep, maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t all at one place. Maybe there is no treasure, the clues were wrong, and both crews have to go home empty handed. Who knows. One thing is clear though, if one crew finds it, their strategy will be hailed in the leading Treasure Hunt media as THE strategy to follow. Books will be written, workshops will be held. It is always simple to explain why someone succeeded or failed in hindsight.
As a crew leader, picking one strategy over the other is really hard. But what is even harder is to avoid second-guessing the strategy after you’ve dug for a while. It is important to enjoy the adventure, make merry when you can, and believe that nobody knows how it is going to play out, until after it happens. It doesn’t matter what the books, blogs and past treasure winners say; if they agree with your strategy you will feel good about the validation, if they don’t then denial is your best friend.
At least that’s what I’ve come to believe.
P.S. “If you’re looking for treasure, you can either look under every rock or find a spot and dig deep”. That’s what one of my best friends said a year ago during a night of heavy drinking and philosophizing. This is a sober expansion of that.
CC Photo from nitraglicerina on Flickr
