Don't Over-Think It, Suck It Up and Get Going

Thinking too much

I live mainly by two principles; kick you own butt and don’t think too hard. This is not an attempt to lecture people on “the good way to get things done”, just some ramblings about what works for me.

I don’t consider myself especially gifted or smarter than the average; truth be told I was a pretty chubby kid, introverted and shy as hell. I guess I still am in some ways if you scratch deep enough, but I’ve tried to make up for it with what people perceive as stamina; churning through things and getting there ultimately, or not really, but at least giving it a honest swing.

Now, I am not pretending to be some kind of Tim Ferriss guru, I won’t tell you how you can get your stuff done and then some in a matter of hours. I don’t get to the bottom of my todo list, ever. I honestly perceive myself as highly inefficient in a good deal of what I undertake. That being said, I can see that I do get stuff done on a fairly regular basis, through burn out and busy weeks, and my main approach for this is to;

  1. Not using my brain if I don’t need to. I don’t try to solve things that have been solved already by somebody else (thanks Google), neither do I try and solve things that are too uncertain yet. If it’s not concrete enough to be summarized to a couple options, I’m probably better off dealing with it later on. Finally, I don’t try to wrap my head around the whole problem; I just slice things up in smaller, more actionable chunks. Then I slice it up some more. It’s a redoubtable tool, slicing.
  2. Kicking my own butt on a daily basis. That may be coming from my natural self being socially unequipped, lazy and overall unpopular, but I’ve started at some point just sucking it up and giving myself mental slaps. That may sounds borderline schizophrenic, but I have some arguments with myself on a regular basis;

Can’t finish your run? Cool, but don’t come whining about how out of shape you are buddy.

Too tired to wrap up that strategy brief and feeling like grabbing a drink with friends to relax? Sure, genius idea! You’ll put in double shifts tomorrow, it worked so well for you in the past.

Most of the time it feels like fighting two kids at the same time; one who can’t stop blabbering while the other keeps dozing.