Yesterday I realised that I have what I suspect is a bad habit. When I think about doing a thing I want to do, like building a model boat, running the south-west coast path or meditating more, I immediately turn the thing into something much more complicated and involved. The thing becomes a THING. For example, I have a model of the RMS Titanic waiting to be built – it is a big model with lots of stages involving cutting and glueing and painting and to do a good job of it will take a long time. Now, instead of simply thinking that I can spend some time making the model, bit by bit, I catch myself wrestling with the idea of completing one step of the model instructions every day and taking a photograph to record my progress. The simple thing of building the model becomes the more complicated THING of building the model every day with the added visual record. Or, I have had the idea of running the entire South West coast path, which is around 630 miles, but instead of just seeing how it goes over a long period of time, I catch myself thinking of setting myself a target of completing it in 5 years, getting sponsored for charity as I go and writing a blog/website about my experience, all of which require quite a lot more planning and turn the simple (on paper) thing of running quite a lot into some kind of crazy complex public challenge complete with time pressure, accompanying subsidiary activities etc. – in other words, a big THING. And obviously, when I think about meditating more or exercising more or writing more I’m not happy just to try to do these things more, I try to convince myself that I have to do them EVERY day and track my progress.
The more I consider this, the more I think that turning things into THINGS is a really bad habit. It adds layers of complexity that means that activities then require planning and oodles of motivation which, of course, renders them less likely to happen. In fact I wonder whether this is why I think this way, as a kind of internal avoidance system which naturally puts the brakes on my initial enthusiasm and holds me back from taking action. I’ve decided this is something I will try to resist. I don’t want to be making lots of big grand plans. I don’t want to be thinking about doing THINGS. I just want to be getting on with doing things.
Tim O'Hare 