admiring versus small steps

you can't get there any other way

Looking forward to seeing many of you tomorrow between 1000 and 1100 eastern for our Timely Topic: Cyber for the Concerned Citizen with the College of Information & Cyberspace Chancellor, Dr. Cassandra Lewis. I published the zoom link Monday but do let me know if you need it again. As a small token of my thanks for financial commitment to this substack, I offer a transcript of each Timely Topic webinar to those supporters. Please do consider joining if you find the column and/or the Timely Topic beneficial.

i planted the last (well, maybe) of my beautiful petunias, fuschias, dipladenia, dianthus, and herbs this afternoon. I still have seeds that I forgot to start inside so I will get them out next week or the week after when relatively confident our current warmth this year will advance ‘frost date’ from 10 May.

You won’t be surprised to hear I was seeking colour after the gentle bleeding hearts, various trees, and majestic tulips faded. The azaleas are cresting but not quite there; I don’t have a space for them so I admire and appreciate those others plant.

It’s been a lot of digging in dry soil. We are not California pre-2023 dry in the Chesapeake but we it doesn’t take a meteorologist to feel the soil parched in this region. The newspaper indicates we are at about a third of the annual average rainfall.

I started with about 40 containers, several bags of potting soil, a spade, and plenty of water. It was admittedly daunting when I surveyed the job after unloading the car. Yes I did ask myself whether I really had the energy to do this because there were other things calling my name.

I planted one container rather than just staring at them.

I planted a second one, shaking it out of the little carton while managing to spray some soil around the patio.

I went to a third one, then a fifth, then eighteenth, and so one. I took each, then looked at another rather than considering how many were left. I only did that last step when one was left—seriously.

I broomed the patio and hand brushed the balcony. By the time you return after a few minutes away, something else needs brooming but it’s pretty inconsequential. It’s a small item but definitely an improvement—kaizen as the Japanese say.

They are all planted. I will have seeds to plant when I feel certain the freeze is over but they are decidely lower effort.

Each and every plant got done by doing it. How often do we forget that change really is always, at a minimum, one step at a time?

Even if it’s a huge change, it is an action followed by a change in status at a minimum.

Humans, particularly so many of us, prefer ‘admiring the problem’ as my dear chum Chris Coke always loved saying at the College when we had students who kept studying and evaluating and re-studying and re-cogitating about a strategic question. the other common criticism is ‘analysis by paralysis’ but I like Chris’ elegance better.

Analysis is important and often gets shunted aside in favour of doing too quickly but in the end tackling an overwhelming amount of work requires action beyond thinking (or dreading). It takes one action after another, pure and simple.

The key, however, is the repetitive act to accomplish a huge project. No, planting a number of plants is not huge and it’s purely elective. Grading several hundred papers, however, is a huge task, one that overwhelms many people. In my line of work, it is not elective either.

Instead of seeing seven hundred forty-nine individual opportunities to grade, it’s seductive to see masses of them, triggering panic to do anything. The result, too often, is paralysis, unhappy students and university/college administration, and guilt.

The same is true for a messy pile of dinner plates one doesn’t want to risk in the dishwasher. If you invite many folks and serve several courses, you confront a tiring task late in the evening but one really unavoidable.

It makes much more sense to approach big tasks by focusing on that one full action, savouring the reward of accomplishing it, then moving for more positive reinforcement after the next success. Positive reinforcement is an astonishing tool. Ask my friend Susan who uses clicker training with dogs: she can house train in a day using rewards. It works with self-training, too.

Thank goodness I have such smart friends as Susan and Chris.

Any and every task really is one item at a time. Sounds trite but often also true. Doing one dish reduces the pile. One article read lowers the student’s reading load for a boring course. One day of work gets a person closer to retirement.

Repeating that day by day, article by article, or trashbag by trashbag to empty a basement is what gets an intimdiating volume into a manageable pattern.

Why am I bothering to remind us all of this? Because actions create consequences; admiring too often creates paralysis and frustration.

Yes, there is a fine line between ignoring analysis helping to define and incapsulate the problem. That aspect of accomplishing something is certainly valid. However, what ultimately reduces tasks is doing them rather than thinking about doing them.

Actions get things done. Amazing. Truly amazing

Oh, and I got to look up in the end to see this. FIN