Category: Mindset

Being honest about projects:

In every project or endeavor, there is a certain amount of pain that will occur. Maybe it will be physical exertion from rearranging my working space to be more efficient. It might be intellectual pain from having to research a topic I’m with which I am not familiar.

The pain I dislike the most is the lost time and effort from delaying a decision that needed to be made sooner rather than later. I delayed making a conscious decision, not admitting that by my actions I was making a decision anyway. Then later things turned out in ways I didn’t want. After undoing hours or days of work, I had to admit that all could have been avoided if I’d made difficult decisions at the start, rather than putting them off.

This has happened in sewing projects, homework for math and engineering classes, rearranging a space, deciding on which software program to use, deciding which camera to buy, or writing a long paper.

These are the rules I’ve set for myself to avoid excess time lost due to avoiding necessary decisions:

Be honest with myself about what decisions I need to make now. If I’m still getting stuck, asking myself what my goal is and why that is my goal will usually help me realize what decisions are needed.

Find some way to document those decisions, whether it’s notes to myself, the file names I choose, or a physical note taped to something.

Realize my time is more valuable to me than my pride over having made the “correct” decision. If later I find out I still made a bad decision, I own up to it and try to make a better decision.

Honestly, that last point about realizing my time is more valuable to me than my pride was one of the hardest decisions of all. I made it years ago. It’s worked well for me.

I started this site to help people — including myself — who want to make their technology work for them, instead of the user tying themselves in knots working for their technology.

Because I don’t know what you, the reader, are trying to accomplish or what particular piece of technology you’re using, I’ll mostly be writing in first person. I’ll tell you what I did and how I look at things, and if it’s helpful to you that’s great. I’m not an expert and I’m not claiming to be an expert. I’m someone who might be a couple of steps ahead of you, and maybe something I write will be of use to you.

Today’s post is about mindset. I have met very few people — only one or two — who can read through an instruction manual for a piece of technology and immediately start thinking of all the things it would be possible to do with most of the options.

For myself, who does not have that gushing internal fountain of creativity, I’ve started to discipline myself to have a goal and a motive for any piece of technology I want to use. If I don’t have a goal, then my efforts are all over the place and lack focus, I flip through a manual restlessly and poke buttons without really taking the time to see what a button actually does. If I don’t have a motive, I get bored and move on to something else.

So, for mindset I start out with two things about which I must be honest (if only with myself):

What is my goal? What do I want to accomplish when I use this piece of technology?

What is my motive? Why do I want to do this?