The Annoying as an Advantage

This parking lot pavement combines hard scape and soft scape. The bricks allow water to flow through to prevent run off, and the weeds that have grown inside each square help keep the area ‘green’ and growing. I thought about someone making weeds that grow between cement a feature. It’s actually rather brilliant. Most people work very hard to get rid of weeds. They pull and spray and strain to keep them out and prevent them from coming back. Yet this designer used their most annoying feature to the advantage of their design. Weeds keep coming back, are hard to kill and THAT is what made them perfect for this area. Simply by letting the weeds grow and grow they eventually filled in the blank spaces and have been doing it for years.

So when was the last time you looked at the most annoying feature of someone or something and took advantage of it? It seems counterintuitive yet it is genius. Sometimes the feature we find most disruptive is exactly what we need. When the air is heavy and no one wants to say what is on their mind, you need a blunt person to just say it to clear the air. When you want the thing that no one else wants, but you don’t want to appear pushy or greedy, you need the direct person to call out the group and make the decision clear. When you find it hard to put your thoughts into words, you need the talkative person or human ‘thesaurus’ to find the right thing to say.

We all have strong – possibly annoying –  features that we are known to possess, and sometimes they are our blind spot or are a source of friction. If there is any lesson to learn from this beautiful parking lot it is that annoying can be EXACTLY what you need. Instead of always seeing that flaw as a downfall or weakness, what if we could use it to help or make things better? When the situation is right, maybe the blunt, or direct, or walking thesaurus is just what you need to get to the truth. In order to do that you need to know people AND you have to be able to read the situation and put the right trait to work at the right time. Like getting a weed to fill in the gaps…brilliant and clever all rolled into one.

So next time someone is blunt, or direct, or a walking thesaurus think about how it may be exactly what the situation needs to get the job done.