This very important rule has its genesis in my law school days. It is born of desperation. What does a person do, when faced with a time-sensitive critical test and a multiple-choice question that seems incapable of intelligent resolution? Pure guessing is not very helpful unless you always choose the first choice or the last choice or some other completely random treatment. I suppose you can expect to get 25% or so of the answers correct if you employ such a plan. Unfortunately, getting 25% of the answers right will not get you very far. In fact, if you are lucky or know a few of the correct answers and can increase your percentage to 50%, you are still pretty much out of luck. Law school is probably out of the question. If you manage to get in, you can pretty much count on never passing a bar exam.
Faced with those bad choices, I started to look for a more reliable method of “guessing” when the correct answer to a question is not obvious. I noticed that, in part due to the very nature of law tests, it appeared that the longest answer was the right answer in a significant majority of questions, including the ones I thought I could answer. I have subjected my hypothesis to rigorous, albeit anecdotal, testing. During law school and the 25 years since law school, the hypothesis has proved to be correct in an overwhelming number of instances. It has led to the adoption of this important rule for life.
The rule has obvious application to the academic world and even to the world of professional or certification exams. It is not a fool-proof rule and will not give you 100% of the right answers without the benefit of hard work and study (see rule 2) but it is a very good tool and will win you the correct answer often enough to be successful when you are taking a test (see rule 6). Learn the material so that you can be confident of most of your answers but if the test gives you a stumper, pick the longest answer and move along.
How does this rule apply to life generally? Life is full of little tests. Spouses and significant others test us from time to time. Children are constantly testing the boundaries of parental and other authority. Subordinates at work will test their boss’ authority and his resolve. We test the speed limit and the temperament of the police when we drive. We often test our own limits when we drink a little too much, exercise a little too hard, or spend a little too much. The rule applies in all of these situations although finding which answer is the “longest” can present a separate challenge.
Your child is testing you about doing his homework. Because you have read and are apply Rule For Life Number 2, you want him to do it, do it himself, and do it well so that he can succeed at school. He thinks there are about a thousand other things that would be more fun to do. You have had the battle repeatedly. You are at the point where you are about to give up. So what if the kid does poorly in school? He can be a day laborer the rest of his life. It is good honest work. It will build character. If he is as smart as I think he is, he might eventually get to be supervisor and not have to work in the hot sun all day. Like his grandfather. Who died at the age of 54 because all of his parts were worn out. I would submit that giving up in a case like this, while it sounds attractive, is the functional equivalent of the short answer. You should, instead follow the rules and choose the long answer, spending as much time as it takes to make sure that junior does the right thing.
The short answer in many of life’s situations is the answer that seems easy because it will take less time, attention, aggravation, emotional investment, or whatever. It may very well be a good answer for the moment because it will allow you to save time, money, temper, or some other valuable commodity. Those answers are seldom the right answer, however.
The correct answer in our “hypothetical” is to continue to work with the child to make sure he is doing his homework and advancing appropriately at school. That course of action is the “longest” answer in several respects. It requires the most effort from the parent and the most effort from the child. It takes the most time. It causes the most conflict between parent and child and perhaps even between parents. In addition to being generally more taxing, however, spending extra effort to get the child to do his homework is also the answer that provides positive returns over the longest period of time. The student will do better in school and reap the rewards of a better education for the rest of his life. Parent and child both will benefit from the bonding that naturally occurs (perhaps with a little screaming and disagreement thrown in for good measure). The benefits and memories from that bonding experience will also last well after the time-consuming efforts are complete.
Picking the longest answer has two important aspects. The longest answer is the one that takes the most effort to put in to place. Equally important, however, the longest answer is the one that returns the most important benefits over the longest period of time. Choosing the resolution to a problem that will return the greatest dividends over the longest period, even if that course of action takes greater or more time-consuming effort, is a course of action that will inevitably lead to success and happiness. That is why I counseled my daughter to choose the longest answer and that is why the rest of the world should do the same.
Let’s examine how this rule applies at work. Most of us work in some sort of job where our main function is to resolve problems of one sort or another. Teachers daily face the problem that their students (or at least some of them) are ignorant or even lazy and unmotivated. Their job is to solve that problem. Carpenters face significant problems every day when they have to find a way to build with wood and nails what an architect drew with paper and pencil. Architects have to solve the sometimes impossible problem of designing space for a client that wants the impossible. Salesmen are faced daily with solving the problem presented by potential buyers who may not know they want or need the product and definitely do not want to part with any money. I could go on but I think you get the picture.
Applying Rule 3, the correct answer to these test questions is the longest answer. For the teacher with a lazy, unmotivated student, that means spending a little extra time with the child. It may mean applying a little extra creativity to develop learning activities that will motivate the unmotivated. It might mean spending the extra time and emotional effort to call the child’s parents. These are the long answers to the problem because they are the answers that will yield the most long-term benefits even though they require an extra investment of time, effort, and emotional capital.
For the carpenter, the longest answer might be one that requires a special tool or raw material. The longest answer might be no more difficult than calling the architect and discussing the problem so that together, you might find a viable answer that will please the owners. The carpenter might even find that he can accomplish the task with an extra 30 minutes of work. These solutions to the problem all could qualify as the longest answer because they all, in an appropriate case, could yield the best results over the longest term notwithstanding the fact that they may take the most effort.
Country and Western comedian, Jerry Clower, used to talk about how ethical choices were easy. Corporations did not need ethics departments to help people make the right choice. That choice is simple, he said. If you are faced with two choices and you have to ask someone else whether one of those choices is morally right, it is a pretty good bet that the choice is morally wrong. This is yet another example of how we need to choose the longest answer in life. The moral high ground is rarely, if ever, the shortest answer but it is always worth doing. If you have two choices and cannot decide which one is right, it is generally a pretty good bet that the more difficult or time-consuming choice is the right one. That is because it is the longer answer.
Rule For Life Number Three
