Don’t Bet on One Box

What’s on my mind?

Increasing the probability of success.

For the past two weeks, I have been working on my first Indigenous Microorganism, or IMO, collection of the year.

The basic idea is simple.

Cooked rice is placed in a breathable wooden box and set in a healthy natural environment. The rice becomes a food source and collection surface for the microorganisms already living in that place. If the conditions are right, the rice is eventually covered with visible microbial growth that can be collected, stabilized, and used to introduce more biological diversity into other systems.

The basic idea may be simple.

Getting the conditions right is not.

My first collection attempt failed after only five days.

When I placed the box, I thought I had found a great location. It was near a wooded area, protected by leaves and surrounded by life. At the time, it seemed like the kind of place where a wide variety of microorganisms would be active.

*First collection site with tarp.

The problem was that it was not really in the forest.

It was on the edge of the forest.

That difference mattered more than I expected.

The location received more sun, held more heat, and was warmer than the deeper wooded area nearby. The microorganisms grew faster than I anticipated, and by the time I checked the box, the collection had gone too far.

*Close-up of failed colorful rice.

It was disappointing, but it gave me useful information.

The next time, I moved about 100 yards deeper into the forest. The new location was more shaded and approximately 10 degrees cooler.

I also changed the way I collected.

Instead of using one large box, I used three smaller boxes. Together, they provided approximately the same amount of collection space as the original box, but they gave me more flexibility.

I had watched a video from someone who regularly places three to five boxes in the same location. The reason was not necessarily to collect more microorganisms. It was to allow one box to be checked while the others remained undisturbed.

If the first box was ready, the others could be collected.

If it needed more time, the remaining boxes could sit for another 12 or 24 hours.

If one box failed, there was still a chance that the others would succeed.

This approach made sense to me because I spend a lot of time thinking about probabilities.

How can I increase the probability of a good outcome?

How can I decrease the probability of a bad one?

How can I make a process less dependent on one perfect decision?

The second collection was ready after six days.

Two of the boxes looked great.

The third box had been moved and partially emptied.

A raccoon had apparently found it, shaken about half of the rice onto the ground, and then left a pile of scat nearby.

I cannot prove the raccoon was frustrated that it failed to break into the box, but I am choosing to interpret the evidence as a strongly worded message.

The good news is that the new boxes held up to the attempted break-in.

The better news is that I still had two undisturbed boxes and a successful collection.

That is the part that has stayed with me.

The second attempt did not succeed because everything went according to plan.

It succeeded even though something went wrong.

I could not control the temperature.

I could not control the exact speed of microbial growth.

I could not control the timing of the collection with complete precision.

I definitely could not control a raccoon with strong opinions about cooked rice.

What I could control was the system I created around those uncertainties.

I could choose a cooler location.

I could use multiple boxes.

I could create a way to inspect one collection without disturbing the others.

I could avoid betting the entire outcome on one box.

After collecting the rice, I mixed it with an equal weight of brown sugar to preserve the microorganisms for future use. Within an hour, the mixture already looked completely different as the sugar began pulling moisture from the rice. Soon after, the surface was covered with active bubbles.

Even after the collection is complete, the process keeps changing.

There is an important difference between trying to prevent anything from going wrong and building a process that can still succeed when something does.

I think we often spend too much time trying to eliminate uncertainty.

We want the perfect plan, the perfect timing, the perfect conditions, and the confidence that our effort will produce the result we expect.

Sometimes that is not possible.

Nature does not operate with guarantees.

Neither does business.

Neither does life.

The goal is not always to remove every possible problem.

Sometimes the better goal is to create enough options that one problem does not become the whole story.

My first collection failed.

My second collection included a raccoon attack.

I still ended up with a successful IMO collection.

Not because I had figured out how to control everything.

Because I stopped betting on one box.