Getting Things Done

We all do make mistakes and we do regret making them. Based on my short-lived experience (life is short), I would say that the mistakes that I make can be broadly classified into two types – mistakes due to carelessness and mistakes due to wrong decisions. There are simple and very severe consequences of both types of mistakes. But it is not the consequences that make our life miserable, but our response to those consequences.

According to the common cultural assumptions, mistakes are sign of failure and we should try to completely avoid them. Since childhood you are condemned for your mistakes and are pressured to avoid them in future by not ‘repeating them again’. This mentality hampers your decision making ability. You think more about not making a mistake than trying to come up with a solution to the problem at hand. Even I am victim of this thinking. Many times I think more about what if this fails or that fails rather than try to really solve the problem.

In my previous post analysis paralysis and just do it attitude, I mentioned how I am learning to avoid this overthinking, this fear of making mistakes. But decisions do go wrong and I do have to face the consequences. There is no escape. But what differentiates my mistakes from being failures is my attitude towards them. It benefits me a lot to accept the mistake, find what went wrong, and then move on. There is no point in lamenting on it and making your own life miserable. Imagine that you go for a dance show and one of the dancers loses her balance and falls on her butt. If she panicks, feel embarrassed and leaves the stage, you would definitely call her a failure. But if she gets up and starts from where she left, you would appreciate for her courage and attitude. It is the same attitude you need to bring in your daily life.

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience. – Elbert Hubbard

Consequences are not in your hands. You cannot control them. What you can do is to take actions and choose your attitude towards the consequences, good or bad. As Viktor Fankl said that the greatest of human freedoms is to be able to choose one’s own attitude. Your attitude determines your response to an event. And your response makes you feel good or bad about your situation.

Sometimes you just fail to move forward. It happens to you right? You think about doing this and doing that, you do your research well about the topic, you make all the preparations but in the end you just fail to implement or launch what you have been thinking. The phrase that comes to my mind to define such problem is ‘Paralysis by Analysis‘.

It is characterized by lack of execution. It affects your decision making process from simple everyday decisions, like where to go for lunch, to important life/career changing decisions like should I switch jobs or should I do a Ph.D. You face lot of trouble making such decisions because you are conditioned by your thoughts. You are afraid to take action and face the consequences. You want to somehow look ahead in time and make sure that everything will be perfect as you want. You are afraid of failure. You want to avoid embarassment. You are just lost.

But you are not alone. There are many like you and I, who find it difficult to decide on one thing and then go for it. Stop overthinking.

Recently, another graduate student, Ady (name changed) joined our group to work with me on one of our projects. Earlier, I was the only person working on the project, so I had to do all the work of designing, implementation and testing. But now, I handle mostly the research aspects, prototype design issues and some basic coding for the application and Ady handles the development, implementation and testing part.

Since Ady joined us, our progress has taken a steep upward curve. The main factor for this increased producitivity can be attributed to Ady’s ‘Just Do It’ attitude. Generally, I do a lot of analysis and planning before actually doing any task. This saves me from going in tangent directions but sometimes this analysis/planning phase doesn’t seem to end. So, the task gets delayed more and more. Now, with Ady I am learning to put closure on analysis phase and start doing things. Everything doesn’t need to and cannot be perfect. At some point you need to stop thinking and take action.

However analysis is important too. Time spent on thinking, researching and planning is not wasted if it leads to action. Action without direction is harmful. So in our team we found a balance. I save Ady from going in tangent directions and he motivates me to take action. And that’s why our project is progressing pretty well.

There are mainly two things you have to cure about yourself to break this problem of analysis paralysis.

Avoid fear of failure:

Thomas Edison was successful because he knew the importance of failure. Had he given up after few failures, he would have not been able to find the right filament for the light bulb. According to him, failures tell you what won’t work. He used Ready-Fire-Aim approach rather than Ready-Aim-Fire approach. All you have to do is make an attempt and instead of being afraid of failures, embrace them, learn from them, and your aim will get better as you go along.

You should not get bogged down by what people say about you. Limitations are not in your abilities but in your thinking. You become your thoughts. So, if you are afraid of failures then your thoughts are more about failures than success. This way you are giving more importance to failure and attracting it. Change your thinking right now. Think yourself as a successful person and accept failure as necessary steps towards success.

Just do it:

Finally I have learned the importance of what my advisor always says, ‘Bite the bullet and just do it’. You’ll always regret the time wasted in over-analysis. One of my friends is contemplating on what career path he should choose. He discussed with me in lengths if he should do MBA or not. That led me to write a post on ‘Getting ahead without MBA‘, which he found very helpful. But still he has not made any concrete decision. He doesn’t want to choose a wrong path and then regret the time wasted on it. But my argument is if he doesn’t make a decision soon, he is going to waste his time analyzing the options and regret anyway.

We have a habit of trying to make everything perfect. We are always looking for a perfect solution not knowing what perfect means for us. What we don’t realize is that solution is a noun. It won’t work by itself. The key term is solve which is a verb and requires action. You have to attempt, make efforts in some direction even if you fail a couple of times.

It is a learning process. It is a shift of attitude. The only solution is to believe in yourself and ‘Just Do It’.

You might agree with what I say and do recognize the problem of analysis paralysis, but still many of you won’t take any action to do something about it. This attitude is quite common with blog readers and I must accept that I am also a victim of it. But instead of directly encouraging readers to apply ‘Just Do It’ approach, Darren listed 4 strategies for blog writers on ‘How to Move Readers to a Point of Desire‘ in his series on Persuasive Blogging. Now, instead of contemplating on whether the strategies would work or not, I’ll have to ‘Just Do It’ and test it myself.

If you want to be successful in life, start early. Make decisions sooner and take action without any fear of failure. Life is nothing but a series of experiences, the more you experience, the richer you become.

[Update]

Also Read:

• Breaking the perfection habit – Penelope Trunk