Do you ever look ahead to all the things you want to do next month or next year and then go down the rabbit hole of planning that without actually finishing up your current projects?
Yeah, me neither.
Today I’m sharing over at Medium all about Plancrastination: the idea of stopping and planning the next project or thing instead of working on the plethora of projects in front of me.
Here’s an excerpt:
We’ve all heard of “Bright Shiny Object Syndrome” but in my book I share that it’s more honestly called “OMG I’m stuck on this thing and no one will help me figure it out so I’m going to go over there and work on something that seems easier now, #okaybye” Syndrome.
Not as pithy, but you get the idea.
Having a tendency to horse trade to a new idea, project or business plan isn’t just time consuming and risky in practice, it smolders all of your momentum and previous successes and effectively puts you back to square one, yet with the sense of accomplishment that comes from “making decisions” without actually “doing the work.”
Too often I stop running one race to go waiting at the starting line of another.
In my mind this is the same cycle of insanity that followed my friend Melissa and I in college when we would decide that dinner would be off-campus and get in the car not knowing where we’d end up. Without direction or strong opinions on our upcoming meal we would drive in circles for an hour, passing restaurants that were “fine, if you want” and then turning back only to pass them again.
I cringe to think of the fuel we wasted with our mutual indecisiveness which was only ended when one of us would get hangry and declare “we are eating THERE!” and point to the next open restaurant.
These were the pre-Yelp struggles, my friends.
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