Personal & Productivity 11 Mar 2007 01:03 pm
Planning for what's real rather than what's ideal
I've made a lot of plans over the last six years. Dozens of times I've made a plan only to change it later, or discard it entirely. I've finished maybe 25% of the things that I've started. That's not a good record. Yeah, I've got ADD, but that's not excuse in my opinion. It can perhaps explain the problem but it certainly doesn't help solve it. On the plus side of these failures, though — I start lots of things. Probably 3-4x as many projects as the "average" 20-something. So I've probably had a similar number of successes as the average person my age.
Looking back over all the discarded ideas, I've noticed a trend: I've always planned for what my ideal self, rather than my real self.
In short, I've planned to fail.
Having a fairly simple life over the last 18 months, I've had a lot of time to do self-inventory, assessing my own weaknesses and strengths. I'm happy to report that my strengths more than outweigh my weaknesses, but to be truthful, consistency is not one of these strengths.
I'm getting better, but I'm nowhere near my ideal. Which brings me to the point of this post — every time I have planned to:
- Return to school
- Be consistent with my finances
- Start saving money on a set schedule
- Go to the gym or exercising regularly
- Et cetera
I have not accounted for my own inconsistency in the original equation. I am great at digging myself out of holes, but I suck at climbing mountains.
So for someone who is largely on flat ground now — neither in a hole nor on top of Mt Kilimanjaro — how do I proceed? I'm at a crossroads in life right now, in a very real sense. I have two paths before me: one leads to great wealth, and one leads to a lot of hard work and an uncertain future.
The path to great wealth is the path of least resistance, ironically enough. But I don't care to choose this path. The other path requires much more work, but the personal rewards are far greater.
I don't have any solutions to my conundrum. How does one build in mechanisms to overcome one's own shortcomings? Wanting something badly clearly isn't enough. I have some possible solutions, but I don't know how well they will work in practice. In this regard, I am looking for some advice from people wiser than I am, who learned at some point how to get out of their own way.
Accountability
I like building systems. Systems take the thinking (and sometimes doing) out of everyday tasks. This can be simple: write down the instructions on how to program the garage door code so you don't have to re-figure it out every time. Or it can be complex: set up an automated task to execute which removes 1) doing the task by hand and 2) remembering to do it on time.
I like systems. Building systems in my personal life has helped me overcome many of my weaknesses in the last 18 months. But I never build in accountability, so I have failed at the Hard Stuff.
I always accomplish more when there is an outside force compelling me to do or accomplish something. I succeeded in high school simply because you'd get detention if you skipped class. (No, I never really studied.) College, of course, is a different story. Hence my spectacular academic implosion since I graduated from high school — I never went to class and barely studied.
But accountability is uncomfortable.
Inconsistency
I blow with the wind. This doesn't mean I follow the crowd, it just means that I'm not consistent about doing anything. Whether that's backing up my computer, or going to the gym, or writing for Ars for an appreciable length of time — inconsistency is my biggest weakness. I am starting to chip away at it with the help of the people in my life, and by immersing myself in positive media, but I'm still far from where I'd like to be, and I am afraid that this inconsistency coupled with a lack of accountability will continue to haunt me moving forward.
So much so that I am almost afraid to try something new, or plan something truly ambitious, because looking at my past, I know what I will do: give up about 3 weeks in, or at least start seriously slacking off. This is a new feeling for me, because I've always been one to jump in with both feet, probably because easy come, easy go, right?
I don't want to be that person anymore, and I am about to embark on something that is *completely* outside my comfort zone.
