Who needs an automagical button?

An IT consultant was helping a group of my coworkers and rather than giving a deep explanation on how a particular piece of software worked, he joked that it would “automagically” fix the specific issue we were discussing.

I’ve never worked in IT, but I’ve heard sales people, consultants and project managers refer to automagical solutions a number of times over the years. I’ve often thought that it would be great to automagically take care of many of life’s issues.

For example, instead of bending over to pull the laundry out of the dryer, wouldn’t it be great if you could just hit an automagical button and the laundry would automatically fold and put itself away. Now there’s a problem that IT needs to fix.

Here’s a few others.

–Exercise. Who wants to exercise? Yes, I love running and I need it to keep my sanity, but there are still days where it would be great to hit the automagical button to speed up time to a future point, skipping over my run. And oh by the way, wouldn’t it be great too to automagically lose the twenty pounds I’m trying to lose.

–Taxes. If you’re tax-law challenged, you can take your taxes to an accountant. I even read the other day about an accountant with an entrepreneurial spirit who sets up shop in a bar for young executives to take care of their taxes. You can even purchase software programs like Turbo Tax that walk you through sticky tax questions. Saying all that, I would still love a button that would instantly take care of my taxes each year. Now that would be an “easy button.”

–Dinner. You come home from work, your family’s waiting. Everyone is starving and nothing is prepared. You haven’t even remembered to defrost anything. Did I say too that you really don’t want to call the local pizza joint or go out for dinner? What do you do? Easy. Hit the automagical button and dinner’s waiting on the table.

–Car issues. I’ve spent a small fortune on car maintenance bills this year. Engine issues, check. Tires, check. Brake issues, check. A funny noise when you have the air conditioner running and you make a left-hand turn, check. Push the automagical button. Gone.

There’s no question that life would be easier with an automagical button. No problems, no worries, right? But something tells me that those little burdens, those inconveniences are what make us stronger and give us the strength to face bigger, more important challenges.

So, I guess I’ll skip the automagical button for now.