“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”
This quote sends a similar message to the one that tells us to remain comfortable being uncomfortable. Anytime you get the feeling that you are in a zone of security or structure, it is time to agitate it. Allowing comfort to settle in is what causes long periods of dormancy. The mindset to maintain is one of energy, uncertainty, slight anger, and similar feelings of discomfort. Having this set of feelings will help to keep you on the right track, as you won’t become absorbed by your temporary fortuitous condition.
The optimal way to go through the day is to always leave yourself slightly overextended or ready to take on more. If you reach a point where you are on top of everything, you might start to get the good feeling associated with it, and then will not want to change things up. Avoiding this is important to not getting stuck in a relaxed position that is only useful for letting time glide by. To continually progress, you have to add on an item or two when you are very close to mastering the items you have started on.
“He who hesitates is a damned fool.”
Hesitating is a guaranteed loss every time it is done. Hesitating can be thought of as directly subtracting time from your day. Time spent hesitating is time you can’t get back, and it doesn’t provide any useful value for the decision you were making. There is a clearly defined separation between hesitation and thinking things through, and you can quickly feel when it is hesitation taking place. At that time, you have to remind yourself of quotes like “Be bold” or “Just do it” and skip the hesitation.
Hesitation won’t help in a basketball game, business meeting, school presentation, social interaction, or decision-making process. You can then use this seemingly obvious point to cut off anything in your day that seems like hesitation. This can lead to all self-asked questions coming to a quick ‘yes’ or ‘no’ result. It is useful to repeat to yourself that there are no benefits to hesitation, so behaviors of yours that seem to include it are to be decided upon instantly.
The negatives that come with hesitation include missing an opportunity, seeming to lack self-confidence, losing your train of thought, and gaining stress due to failure to decide. The positives that come from instant decisions are endless, and one that most people would be glad for is that others will pick up on your quick decision-making instantly. You will be remembered as the one that valued and saved everyone’s time by providing your input at the earliest opportunity.
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February 6, 2009 at 9:18 am
Very true. Personally, for marketing my blog, I use Google Calendar, and it emails me lists of things to do. I will not delete anything until I do it, and sometimes my inbox gets backed up. There have been times that I have considered starting over clean, but what good does that do me? Nope, I trudge along, and I do extra work to get caught up, and usually that extra work pays off!
So it was during the times that things seemed out of control for me that I benefitted the most.
Trey: This is a useful and direct point about the procedure. Having it send you items you listed, that you wanted to complete, is a fine way to have goals that remind you if you don’t remember them. That extra work to get caught up method sounds like it fits well with the idea of staying out of comfort.
I dunno that I agree with the idea of the first quote. I think that being comfortable in a situation is a good thing in some cases, especially if you begin to feel life moving a little too fast.
Corey: That sure can be true. At the same time, if you feel comfortable in a situation, maybe you would benefit more if you extricated yourself from it and put your time into a more uncomfortable experience.
Maybe the true task at hand, is being able to feel comfortable in situations that push you physically, emotionally, and intellectually to the limits. If you are constantly striving for a life of ‘unbalance’ – you will eventually find balance in the unbalance. When you are comfortable in situations you should feel uncomfortable in, this is possibly when the most can be accomplished.
Stephen: I like that point about eventually finding balance in the lack of balance. At that point, as you have alluded to, there might be very little that can then cause you to feel newly uncomfortable. It is like training to run in a cold location by running during late evenings, so that the actual run in the cold location comes out feeling normal.