Experiment to avoid procrastination

Reading is one my favourite activities. To relax, to learn and to get inspired. Sometimes I am inspired by whole book, but more common is that I just get that insight that I needed to hear at that moment. Have you ever noticed that you read a book and just one sentence hits you so hard that it will stay with you even though you will not even remember the book a few months later? One of those was for me: if you call something an experiment, it can never fail. And I gratefully used that for a while, because it helped me to act and not wait until I figured it out from beginning to end. Or even trying to predict the exact outcome before I start. Which I try to do often, it is the blessing and curse of an analytical mind.

Now again I find myself at a point that I need to take action, without knowing exactly what to do or what the effect will be. And if I don't know something, I tend to wait. And wait. And wait. Until I am done waiting and skip the action all together. But if you want to achieve something, you cannot skip the action, you have to get to work, even though you don't know the exact path when you start walking.

I always feel like writing is just around the corner when you read a lot. No wonder I have been playing with the idea of writing something (there you go, not very defined) and using it for something (again, not defined) and without knowing the 'somethings' it seems impossible to start at all. Making the idea clearer by replacing the first something with 'a blog' and the second one with 'my website' helped to see the first bit of the path. But still, a blog about what? For whom? How long? My familiar friend procrastination was making his entrance.

Thinking of how I could support myself to act, I remembered this method of calling it an experiment. It takes away the need to do something perfect the first time around. Telling myself that I am going to experiment with writing a blog, is a way to avoid the procrastination that usually haunts me when I don't know the outcome of my action, if I already know the action itself!

And with a final gentle but firm push from my coach, I decided to go for it and see where it takes me. I will learn from it, no matter what, and if it isn't as romantic as I picture, I will probably find a new idea along the way and take it from there.

What is your next experiment going to be?

With love,

Anne