Trivial and Non-Trivial

My favorite college professor was Dr. Tom Cheatham. He spoke six words that changed my life as a young college student. "You have the aptitude for this." It was like the line that Don Rickles used when he appeared in an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. He said, "I'm not inept. I'm ept!"

No one in a position of influence in my life had ever said such words to me. It empowered me achieve great things in my studies of math and computer science. I have never been the same.

I took every course I could under Dr. Cheatham. He was such a good teacher, and showed great concern for all of his students, both in and out of the classroom.

One of my favorite phrases he used had to do with the difficulty of a particular problem or project. He categorized everything into one of two buckets: trivial and non-trivial. Sometimes his description was a little different than what I thought of the same problem, but you knew immediately when he said something was non-trivial you better grab your bootstraps, because it was going to get deep.

I believe this simple categorization has helped me in other areas of life. Most things we deal with are trivial. Even some of the more complicated issues we face are under the surface quite trivial. The problem comes when we treat EVERYTHING in life as non-trivial. I have met people that make everything hard. Any issue they face seems to be insurmountable.

Before making a decision about the difficulty of a particular thing you face try to keep things in perspective. Everything is not hard. Some things are trivial. Treat them as such and move on. Then when you face something that actually is non-trivial you have the energy and mental capacity to properly evaluate the circumstances, devise a solution, and execute a plan.

Non-trivial does not mean impossible. It simply means it will take some time and effort to accomplish.