The project is a dense fog and if you think about it you'll quickly drift into paralysis by analysis; a state in which you can pretend to be thinking or working but will really be doing neither.
The cure is to take small actions - a bit here and a bit there - that are related to the project's completion. You know this. You've read David Allen's Get It Done, but you probably failed to adopt his entire program so just go with this small slice:
Complete a few small tasks and then a few more.
You'll find that the fog has lifted.
Look solely for happiness, and I doubt you'll find it. Forget about happiness, seek wisdom and goodness, and probably happiness will find you. Happiness is usually indirect, a side effect or by-product of something else.
- M. Scott Peck
The Strategic Learner has a tale of woe that caused me to shout, "Oh, no!"
I am sure that, at the time, he was far more eloquent.
Thanks to the Internet, we are surrounded by:
- News that is reported before facts are established;
- News that really isn't news;
- Information we don't need to know;
- Information we don't want to know;
- Information that could have been postponed for weeks; and
- Information that is an undesirable distraction.
It is increasingly necessary to find a refuge in order to preserve time and judgment.
We do not need to have a personal foreign policy or regular briefings on the problems of the Bolivian economy or breathless reports on which celebrity just entered a treatment program.
There are poor people who are wealthy in terms of their personal values and rich people who are destitute.
Many people overlook the importance of values when they insist that all that is needed to improve an individual's economic status is a job. They seem to think that with a steady paycheck, the right values will eventually emerge. What they overlook is that without the right values that job will not be held for long.
As for the ranks of the wealthy but values-deprived, they enjoy the buffer zone of wealth and yet within that zone is a shabbiness that is difficult to disguise.
And despite the slant of the press, the rich are not inherently evil nor are the poor inherently noble.
The old approach is best: Judge people by their values and not the size of their wallet.
When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now? Do not the nightly guards placed on the Palatine Hill—do not the watches posted throughout the city—does not the alarm of the people, and the union of all good men—does not the precaution taken of assembling the senate in this most defensible place—do not the looks and countenances of this venerable body here present, have any effect upon you? Do you not feel that your plans are detected? Do you not see that your conspiracy is already arrested and rendered powerless by the knowledge which every one here possesses of it? What is there that you did last night, what the night before— where is it that you were—who was there that you summoned to meet you—what design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that any one of us is unacquainted?
From Cicero's orations against Catiline.
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
- Mark Twain
