It’s reading week at Wycliffe College, which means that I am taking the time to focus on catching up and getting ahead on the larger projects in my life, like term papers. In place of a original post, here is a fantastic quote from David Allen’s Making It All Work.
Sometimes I think we all need to lighten up a bit about goals, plans, and priorities. Do your best to capture, clarify, and organize what you can, have the basic conversations you need to have with yourself and other key people at the horizons that are calling you, and then just get moving. If and when you find yourself off base, course-correct and then get going again–ad infinitum. Frankly, that’s what you’ve been doing all along and will continue to do, so let’s not set ourselves up with overly romantic or idealistic standards for attaining some perfected state of total clarity about everything we’re doing, all the time.
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Ultimately, motion is key. Truly, taking any action will give you more of a sense of control than hanging back in hesitation, even if the action might not be the “right” one or best one to take. One of the critical things that I learned while training in the martial arts was that being in motion is the optimal state in which to be effective. It takes less energy to change direction 180 degrees while moving than it does to start in that direction from a standstill. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should allow yourself to get wrapped up in frenetic busyness [!]. There are times when slowing down and retreating into a more reflective mode are called for. That’s not actually slowing down, however; it’s slowing the body down, so that the mind can continue to be active at a more dynamic level (191-92).
