Sometimes the right thing to do is easy, but it can be hard at times. In those times, it might be worth revisiting the stoic idea of doing what you can, where you are, with what you have.
If you have evaluated available information, and acted on it, you have done what you can. If that decision turns out to be wrong, you have learnt as much as when it turns out to be right. In many instances, you will not even know whether it was right or wrong, and for whom, and that’s ok.
The future you has less time than you bargain for. Right now you’re open, and you know you can do it. Later on, you may get additional assignments vying for your time.
Do it now, when you can.
That’s a question I was asked today and that I have been wrestling with. What you want to achieve is easier to answer, and strive for in a sense. But the pursuit of a goal is often more rewarding than reaching that goal.
Who do you want to be?
Sometimes, it is so close to the end, with seconds ticking down on the clock, and you decide to wait it out. There might be valid reasons, in a game where you are leading, or the lead cannot be changed in those final seconds. However, in many situations, there is still time to make a change, to act, to contribute, to make things better.
With only a few minutes left before the day is over, or with a few days or weeks before the new year starts, you decide to wait it out. You have been through this many times before to know that there is nothing magical about the coming hour. You know that if you start now, you will be that much further along on your journey. And you also know that, while you wait for the weeks, days, minutes or seconds to tick down to zero, you will have lost that time forever. For while we wait for time to pass, time waits for no one.
Sometimes, you’ll hit a snag. It might seem insurmountable when you weigh up your options. Or you might not have hit a snag, it’s just that you haven’t started yet. You’re agonizing about all the ways you might do what you’re supposed to do. You might be looking for hacks to make it easier.
You will realize that, more often than not, it’s easier than you thought. The real learning happens when you start, and you realize that most of your worries were a real waste of your time. That hack that took you hours to find, the same hack you couldn’t find, was not worth it.
When you stop stewing and start doing, work gets done, bit by bit. The progress will look slow, but when you look back after a while, you’ll be surprised how far you came.
Random Walks 