“Do they have to eat EVERY SINGLE DAY!?”
This line from an old commercial became a running joke in our house growing up. Finding a recipe, shopping, prepping, cooking — dinner takes time. And after all that effort, the last thing you want is for you, or more likely your kids, to feel disappointed in the result.
No wonder we’re all eating takeout.
At first glance, the nightly rush to get dinner on the table might not seem like the right place to invest in empirical thinking. Just find a recipe online and get through it as quickly as possible, right?
But this is exactly the kind of everyday problem where thinking empirically can save enormous amounts of time and frustration in the long run. By making an upfront investment in following a structured process, you can develop repeatable solutions that reliably deliver what you actually want.
Let’s take the example of perfecting a pasta sauce recipe and outline the Thinking Empirically Framework:
- Define your goal in a SMART way (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), including deciding who needs to be happy with the solution. Is this pasta sauce for you, your kids, everyone?
- See what solutions are already out there. Look at multiple recipes. Pay attention to patterns, similarities, and meaningful differences.
- Try one new thing at a time. Changing multiple things at once may feel faster, but how will you know what worked? Introduce one new ingredient, or change the cooking time, or substitute fresh for dried herbs — but don’t do it all at once.
- Keep track of how it went. Simple notes and one-to-five star ratings make success repeatable instead of accidental. Did your new pasta sauce get a thumbs up from your kids?
- Decide what outcome is acceptable. Is your goal perfection, or do you want to move on to another problem once it’s “good enough”? Do I need this recipe to just get me through Monday nights, or is this the centerpiece of an upcoming dinner party?
It may feel like a lot — because it is.
Thinking empirically requires upfront effort. What you get in return, though, is fewer frustrating cycles of trial-and-error, less second-guessing, and solutions you can trust because you understand exactly why they work.
Let’s dive into each step of the framework one by one, continuing with the example of creating the perfect pasta sauce. First up, defining the goal you want to go after.
Thinking Empirically 