Over-indulgence is kind of becoming my Sunday evening ritual. This weekend my gluttony resurfaced for a dance with Italian take out. When I placed the order for my fiancee and me, they told it would be ready in 15 minutes. Cool.

I walked through the doors exactly 17 minutes after hanging up. Food wasn’t ready. I was instructed to go wait by the bar and distract myself with a football game I didn’t care about. (The 49ers have sweet uniforms, though.)

10 minutes later I heard someone yell for an eggplant parm. I walked back up there only to be turned away again. It was another incoming order.

10 more minutes and my couch is starting to taunt me.

Still waiting.

4 more minutes and they call me up. To compound my frustration, the total came to $22.02 and I was handed $0.98 in American coin. I carried it in my hand because I was scared my pocket couldn’t withstand the weight. (And then your hand gets all sweaty and gross while carrying change, ya know?)

Do you know what’s awesome? Living in a world in which your sudden craving for eggplant parmigiana and spaghetti can be fulfilled in 41 minutes. A perfectly reasonable amount of time to take to prepare a delicious dinner. Fully awesome indeed.

But do you know what isn’t awesome? Living in that same world and being told it’ll be ready in less than half that time.

Scientific research has proven disappointment like that affects how your eggplant tastes. (Disclaimer: No it hasn’t. I just made that up.)

One thing is true, though. How we feel about an experience coming out depends heavily on our expectation going in. You can drink the second-best cup of coffee in the world. It might be the best cup of coffee you’d ever had but you’d be disappointed if you were expecting the first-best.

Some say the solution is to under-promise and over-deliver. I happen to think that’s a sound practice. You hear this in the business community all the time though the opposite approach is more commonly employed.

Coincidentally, I’ve been working on this lately.

Get this. You have something coming up. A meeting or a date or a social gathering. People have expectations for you at this event. Like that you’ll wear pants and be polite and other stuff that may depend on the situation. Pick any one of those expectations and figure out a way to exceed it. Wearing your favorite underwear isn’t going far enough. Buying them a car is going too far. Anywhere in the middle should do.

Entertainment is nothing more than offering someone a thought that’s better than the one currently in their head.

Whoa.

Start offering people an experience with you that’s better than the expectation that’s currently in their head, and I can only suspect your life will ascend to even greater heights of awesomeness.

Photo credit: Amy Groark