This is post #9 of the 100 days to offload challenge.
It’s a story from Greek mythology. There was a person named Procrustes. He invites travellers to his home and offers them a place to sleep. But there was a catch.
He had an iron bed. He invited them to sleep on the bed. If a person was too tall, Procrustes would amputate their legs until they fit the bed. If they were too short, he would stretch their body until it reached the length of the bed.
Everybody had to fit the bed exactly regardless of their actual size.
This continued until Theseus killed Procrustes using his own method.
What I take from this story
This story is a metaphor for forcing something to fit a fixed standard.
It connects with another mental model: “The map is not the territory.”
A map is a simplified picture of reality, not the reality itself. When we mistake the map for the territory, we can draw the wrong conclusions.
Here, the bed of Procrustes is like the map he refuses to correct, while the traveller represents reality. Procrustes assumes that the bed is the correct measure and forces the traveller to fit it.
In the same way, when reality doesn't match a fixed idea we have, the first thing we should do is not force reality to fit the idea, but question the idea itself.