Do one thing wrong, but in the right project
It’s rare that I don’t know which project is the priority at any given time.
It’s not rare that I don’t know exactly which aspect of that project is a priority at any given time. I can find myself flitting from aspect to aspect without actually achieving anything tangible.
Woah. Did you spot the double negative. I used a double negative. That’s wrong. “not rare that I don’t know”. What kind of imbecile writes that. This one. That’s who.
Normally I would rephrase to hide my idiocy. But I leave it in here because by doing that stupid thing, by getting it wrong, I’ve become more actively engaged in this tiny ‘write a blogpost’ project.
I’ll now get it done, ship it, and move that sticky into Done. Moving stickies is addictive, like pringles, once you move a sticky you can’t stop moving stickies. You are suddenly unblocked. Excellent.
Why wrong is right
I think what’s going on here is a little bit of reverse psychology. By making the project worse, instead of better, my brain kicks up a gear and gains some focus. By threatening to break something, you zap your brain out of stupor mode. Brains don’t like things being spoiled.
Also, it’s REALLY easy to do something wrong. You can do something wrong in an instance. Even a double negative in some copy might be enough.
The key word here is ‘doing’. When you do something it’s easy to do something else. It’s moving from doing nothing to doing something that’s hard.
So, do something. Embrace the fact it may well be wrong, safe in the knowledge that future you will be in a better mental state to sort it out.
Steven Milne 