Overcoming Decision Paralysis Part 2
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
This week I pulled up to my house after 30 hours of driving and 42 days away from home. When we pulled up, we kept our car outside the garage and loaded everything in. We took off the roof box and rails and put them inside as well. The next day we had the car cleaned and it looks beautiful inside and out. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about my house.
When we walked into the house, I was accosted by the color red and snowflakes as I remembered I had prioritized taking down the outside Christmas decorations, but I never got around to the inside. While the house was perfectly clean, all I could think about was how much work it would be over the next few days to not only unpack and set up my office again, but to put away the winter stuff. This on top of work for my clients, writing, exercising, grocery shopping, picking up our plants, and trying to visit people we haven't seen in a few months.
In moments like these, it's very easy to let the sheer volume of it all overwhelm us. A few weeks ago, I wrote about overcoming decision paralysis and how the best thing to do is to just take the next step. This morning, I want to add to that advice just a bit because sometimes you know what the next step is, but other times the thing that causes the paralysis in the first place is trying to figure out which step to take. Which suitcase should I unpack first? Should I do decorations before I unpack? What's the most important and time sensitive? I also want to write today and exercise, should I do those first and unpack later?
How do I take the first step?
If you ever find yourself in that situation, like I did this week, my advice is to take that first step by embracing the chaos. Whether it's cleaning a house, unpacking from a road trip, or figuring out the next step of a big project, we get stuck because we try to stay organized. We know that the most efficient and cost-effective way to do something would be to plan and figure out what to do - I'll clean the bedroom first, then I'll unpack, then I'll…. For those that really struggle with decision paralysis, this line of thinking (while justifiably correct) ends up friend-zoning you out of what you really want. We end up stuck in the planning zone instead of the doing zone. If we don't want to still be staring at that suitcase a month from now, we need to stop planning and start doing.
We get stuck in decision paralysis because we have trouble finding the first step, but the first step isn’t found in the planning, it’s found in the doing.
I like to think of it like a productive Cartoon Tasmanian Devil wreaking positive havoc all over my house. I start by making the bed, then I see something on my dresser that shouldn't be there, so I ignore the rest of my bedroom and go to the kitchen to put it away. Then I see dishes in the sink, so I stop to put those away. Which reminds me that I haven't had coffee yet, so I make that. While I'm waiting for the water to boil, I see my first aid bag still on the floor from my shift last night, so I walk over and start putting it away. Then my coffee is ready, and I get inspired to write, so I sit down and do my Sunday Starter. I continue this process little by little until slowly the mail pile starts to go down, each room starts to look a little nicer, and one by one the suitcases start to pile up by attic ready to be put away. And bonus: I get a lot of steps.
Part of what makes this work, is that everything has a place. Even when it has no place, you have a temporary place for things that have no place, so you can later figure out where the permanent place should be. This keeps you moving, doing all the things that you wanted to do, just maybe in a different order. Sure, it would be more efficient to clean one room at a time, but if doing that gets you stuck then it's not more efficient for you.
The Tasmanian Method, as I just now decided I like to call it, is similar to Dave Ramsey's debt snowball where he recommends paying off the smaller bills first because they are easier and allow you to gain a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment by paying them off. It creates momentum that keeps you going. Financially, it makes no sense. Financially, you should pay off debt that has higher interest rate. But behaviorally, it's exactly what a lot of people need. We can't sit there and slowly plan the best way to pay off the debt or the best way to clean the house, we need to just start doing it. We need to embrace the chaos and let our productivity take us where it may.
