Not because you didn’t know what to do, but because devoting yourself to focus on key endeavours delivered a crucial insight: knowing what to do and knowing how to do it reside on different planes.
Of course, knowing what to do is a prerequisite for accomplishing important work. It's why you maintain:
- A master list of thoughts and to-dos.
- A curated list of important things to do.
But moments arrive when engaging an item from your curated list delivers not progress, but resistance. And you are left bewildered—because you thought if you knew what to do, results and outcomes would simply pour forth.
The thought isn't incorrect, it is incomplete.
Think about it: It's one thing to know to "drive a car". It's quite another thing to know: "start the ignition > depress the brake pedal > switch gear to "D" > gently release the brake pedal, so the car might move". One tells you what the other tells you how.
This distinction between what and how is important because it can be easy to see both as the same and miss that lack of “how” knowledge is what keeps you stuck, and at the mercy of resistance. What makes it particularly important is that: the most rewarding endeavours are usually the ones most stubborn to revealing how.
- The small business owner deparate to turn a profit, so as to keep business afloat.
- The writer looking for the clearest angle to deliver prose.
- The engineer tweaking a process design for optimized output.
For each, what is clear: turn a profit, find the angle, optimize the design. But how remains resolutely opaque, feeding the sense that of “I don’t know what to do”, and being stuck, with zero hope of progress.
Getting unstuck requires turning to two essential measures:
- Tracking timespent
- Tracking milestones
The power of tracking timespent resides in the ease it presents to entry into bringing attention and effort to an endeavour. You simply play a pre-set timer and devote self to the endeavour at hand throughout the duration of the timer, keeping a record of time expended. It is particularly useful for endeavours without clear outcomes, for which clarity and long stretches of time is needed to arrive at progress. The danger here is activity alone doesn't guarantee progress.
Tracking milestones orients you towards hustle mode. With a clear outcome in mind, you can hunker down on an endeavour and deliver attention and effort to it until you reach the milestone. The danger here is outcomes are often unclear and reaching certain milestones requires long stretches of time, the kind of which interuptions are bound to arise to untether you from maintaining focus on the milestones.
As with most things, when you come up these two measures, you may be tempted to think in terms of either/or. But that needn’t be the case. Both can be applied together to distill satisfaction with your efforts.
- Milestones provide orientation and direction.
- Time spent keeps effort flowing, especially when clarity is lacking and needs to be distilled.
At the same time, in the early stages of an endeavour where outcomes are unclear (or in those I-don’t-feel-like-doing-anything moments), time-tracking becomes your entry point.
Running a timer to record how much time is being delivered to an endeavour eases bringing attention to and attention to the work, even without clarity. The aim is to let time and the attention you bring unravel the next milestone. And if a milestone proves unresponsive to your approach, that’s feedback: a different approach of effort might deliver progress.
Running a timer to record how much time is being delivered to an endeavour eases bringing attention to and attention to the work, even without clarity. The aim is to let time and the attention you bring unravel the next milestone. And if a milestone proves unresponsive to your approach, that’s feedback: a different approach of effort might deliver progress.
Interlude: How To Slay Important Things To-Do
In this previous post, you may have come upon the term "facilitators". To recall, facilitators are activities (outside a core activity) that ease or enable execution of a core activity. Entry into focusing on important things begin at carrying of out facilitators.
And in an even earlier post, the term "enablers" was introduced to mean actions or activities that ease you into what you are trying to accomplish.
What separates both is their relationship to what you are trying to accomplish. Facilitators are directly tied to enabling execution of a core activity. Enablers, not so much.
To slay important things, structure enablers into facilitators. Which is to say, structure activities that would ease you into what you are trying to accomplish into activities or system-of-activities that would guarantee arrival at what you are trying to accomplish, like turning a series into a sequence.
It can be simple. For example, when you come upon an important task in your curated list, you can:
- Open a note taking app (preferably, Roam Research).
- Surface the project or task (preferably, its block reference).
- Surface the next actions.
- If none exist: develop them (deploying conversational style journaling) → then do them.
It can be broader. For example, to enhance intentionality about execution of things that are important, you can:
- Keep a curated list of important things.
- Open curated list.
-
Start at top of the list and sequentially deliver attention, effort, and focus to each project, one at a time.
- Hold the next project only as placeholder, in case the project-in-focus proves too recalcitrant to effort and attention. Project in focus stays pinned and delivered with timed revisits until its milestone is reached.
-
Use structured entry into your focus periods, particularly for recalcitrant projects.
- Open a note taking app (preferably, Roam Research).
- Surface the project or task (preferably, its block reference).
- Surface the next actions.
- If none exist: develop them (deploying conversational style journaling) → then do them → moving toward clarifying or a milestone.
- Keep mind on the one next smallest action, not the milestone.
-
Keep breaks on the horizon.
- There is something about knowing that your focus period will soon be over that makes it easier to enter focus.
To get unstuck is to keep an eye at the distinction between what to do and how to do what to do. While unraveling how to do what to do can present difficulties that keep you stuck, it is not impossible to circumvent those difficulties.
By structuring enablers into facilitators, you create reliable entry into the work. This structuring channels time, effort, and attention toward clarifying how and reaching milestones that deliver progress—and with them, satisfaction.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for reading this piece on BasicPulse...
Do you have questions, suggestions or comments?
Please leave them in the comment section below.
Be remarkable!