Whirling Mental Gyrations

Undertaking a new project, serious change mostly begins with a certain amount of evasive thought that moves with whatever speed from concept to taking action.

Sometimes taking action is just taking the step of making a list. Clarifying and itemizing the steps, creating an initial outline of what needs to happen is what happens when we move from the conceptual to 3D material.

We spent 4 hours with a white board listing what we wanted to accomplish. It required multiple rewrites and like many “To Do” lists …. It kept growing.

From the simple to the complex taken as a whole it felt overwhelming and seriously daunting. Sometimes you have to accomplish a few simple steps to create the belief that the rest is doable. Sometimes you have to write the component elements down to stop the endless whirling mental gyrations of getting your arms around the full scope of your undertaking.

Oddly, the neat green check beside a task requiring 3 days of focused work and input from high priced professionals looks the same as the check beside a task that took 15minutes. Yet we mostly approach the tasks with similar mindsets. Committing to taking some type of physical action.

Procrastination consumed 2 days before starting the tear down of the engines cooling systems, the replacement of windshield wiper arms remained unchecked on the list. Sometimes it pays to step back and review what motivates and hinders us. Triage in a maritime sense.

Eventually if the scope is daunting to the point of paralysis it becomes evident that qualified assistance is actually the first step to get started. We hired 2 people and with dates and start times established we had morphed from thinking about what was next to taking action.