The Zero Factor

How Things Quickly Go To Shit

Imagine you are going out for dinner with your partner.

The restaurant is beautiful.

The furnishing is tasteful and elegant, the music carefully selected and not too loud.

The waiter is very kind and funny, yet discrete. He is always there when you need them, and invisible when you don’t.

The food is amazing, not a single thing you would want to be different.

And ohhhh the wine! You haven’t had such a great red wine in a restaurant in ages.

Now, you excuse yourself for a minute to go to the restroom.

You push the beautiful wooden door with its somewhat extravagant, yet somehow classy golden knob – this place is perfect! you think to yourself.

You enter the bathroom.

You stare at a huge pile of shit that’s just sitting there in the toilet. Sewage is spilling out from it. You almost have to throw up from the horrible smell.

It’s the most disgusting and disturbing thing you have ever seen in a restaurant.

Nothing Else Matters

Now, would you ever come back to this restaurant or recommend it to anyone? Of course not.

Although everything was perfect – the atmosphere, the service, the food and the wine – the whole experience is a zero. The bathroom made it a zero.

The bathroom is the Zero Factor.

You can imagine your restaurant experience somewhere between would definitely recommend (= 1) and would not recommend at all (= 0).

If the service and everything else was close to perfect, you’d get an equation similar to this:

Experience = Service x Atmosphere x Food x Bathroom = 0.95 x 0.97 x 0.99 x 0 = 0

The other factors don’t matter anymore as soon as you have one Zero Factor.

Now, we can imagine Zero Factors in many areas of life:

• At the job:

The pay is awesome, the office is nice, the vision is inspiring, the free food is awesome. Your manager is horrible. Will you stay there? Most likely not.

• In a relationship:

Your partner is very attractive, they are super intelligent and funny, you both earn a great living, you have similar interests. But they don’t want kids – and you do. Will you stay together? Probably not.

• In sports:

The players are super skilled, the training facilities are world-class, the fans are motivating, the food is nourishing. But the cohesion in the team sucks. Will it win trophies? I wouldn’t bet.

The point is that there are things that can render everything else worthless. And you better find out what that thing is and bring it in order.