When we moved into our flat, we had a hunch the extractor fan in our kitchen wasn’t working properly.
We’d turn it on, it would whirr, but it made little difference to the ventilation when cooking.
Our landlord insisted it was fine.
He even said he’d bought insurance on it, so if it ever stopped working, he’d have someone come out to fix it.
So we lived with it; diligently turning it on each time we cooked in the hope that it was helping.
I don’t know why it took three years, but the other day, I finally decided to investigate. I got up on a chair and peered around the back of the unit.
Lo and behold, there was no ducting hose. The fan was simply moving air around our kitchen, rather than transporting it outside.
It wasn’t the fan itself that surprised me, it’s the fact I spent 3 years believing something about it that wasn’t true.
We all have habits. These could be diets, exercise routines, or ways of working. If we’re not careful, it’s easy to take things at face value and say, “That’s just the way it is.”
Sometimes, though, a quick investigation reveals that we’ve operated on an incorrect assumption for quite some time.
What really matters, then, is what we do about it.