Just do it!

I’ve been feeling really guilty. I had this little blog built for me by the super talented Gary Hartley of The Floating Frog up in Harrogate, a few weeks ago now.

‘Can you build me a blog, Gary? Nothing fancy, just somewhere I can write without constaint and share my thoughts with people, for what they are worth.’

‘No probs’ he says.

After some hassle with getting my domain name out of the clutches of a domain re-seller, a saga I won’t bore you with, it was done. Just like that.

‘Can you send me a blog to check the formatting?,’ asks Gary.

I don’t have one. I write something about Legal Marketing in these dificult times. That was published on the 2nd April, since when nothing. Zilch.

I feel guilty because Gary, a busy chap and much in demand as a web designer, did it for me so quickly and then I’ve left it.

It’s not that I’ve not wanted to write something or that I’ve not had any thoughts about what to write. I have ideas, usually whilst out running or walking the dogs. Then when I get back home, I get sidetracked and another opportunity is lost. I tell myself I’ll do it later, but then I make an excuse – getting late, better spend some time with the family, blah, blah, blah. No blog.

Anyway, finally, the penny dropped today. I got up and started worked early, so by mid-afternoon I was ready to call it a day.

I decided to take the dogs out. Just before closing the PC down, I was exchanging emails with a friend. For some reason that I forget now, he quoted some paragraphs from the book ReWork by two American guys, Fried and Hannsen. I remembered that I already had the book on Audible and had started listening to it before. I quite liked the theme – a sort of minimalist manifesto about work and business. I just didn’t like their voices!

Anyway, I decided to listen to it on today’s dog walk. This time I was very receptive to it. Although I only got an hour into it, it started to answer a few questions for me. In particular, I latched on to the fact that when we have a new business idea, our tendency is to think we have to fully plan it out before we start. Instead of just jumping into action we overthink and over-plan.

It struck a chord with the problem I’ve had getting these personal blogs written. Too much thinking, too much planning. I’m not writing a thesis for a PH.D after all. Just do it.

It’s not just these blogs though. I’m overcomplicating everything that I do. Instead of ‘doing’, I’m being too much of a perfectionist before I even start to ‘do’.

Alternatively, I’m indecisive. Faced with options, they become overwhelming. It’s mentally exhausting!

I don’t think it’s helped, that there’s a kind of feeling floating around at the moment, that because we are in lockdown, we should be using all this spare time we have to develop new skills, brush up on old ones, learn to play every musical instrument under the sun, read all those classic books that we’ve always meant to read and so on and so on.

I’ve had those thoughts too – get the electric guitar out, start studying German again or learn a new area of law. That Booker Prize-winning book that I’ve been starting to write for the last 40 years, has been sitting on my shoulder again, too.

Stop the washing machine head!

Time to dejunk the mind a bit. Too many thoughts and too much garbage in there. Back to basics. Keep it simple. Just do it.

So, I have and this is it.