Tend To The Small Things

This is a 'title trade': where folks interested in writing collaboratively in a style I'd describe as 'alone together' trade a title for the other to write about. I've done several over the last two years! This is with Brendan, who wrote about 'tend to the small things,' and here (two months overdue) I'll do the same. I appreciate your (unintended) endless patience, Brendan.

The Cycle Of Procrastination

I hyperfixate on and notice the smallest possible details, but do I tend to them? No. Or, if I do, it's often only because I've noticed them for months and months and months and then…I lose the battle.

What am I fighting, exactly? What am I hoping to achieve with these endless rounds of procrastianation?

Escape from uncomfortable feelings, no matter how inconsequential, seems the only honest answer.

Yet, as Diane Shiffer writes about in her wonderful book, The Smallest of Joys, the small things are the important things. The minutes and hours are what make up a life, not the lump sums of years and decades.

The Experiencing Self vs. The Remembering Self

I read a book which talked about the differences between the 'experiencing self' and something else called something like the 'remembering self.' It mentioned an experiment where, I'm fuzzy on the details, but, people were asked to place their hands in slightly uncomfortable cold water for a certain amount of time.

After they'd done so, after a certain amount of time had passed (one group waited much longer than the other) they were told they'd need to repeat the excersise, but were given a choice as to how long it would last. The result? The folks who'd more recently done it made the smarter decision: less time.

Why? The conclusion the study reached was: we underestimate how bad past experiences were, and overestimate how good they were. And that cognitive pattern gets worse the longer time elapses.

(That might explain why most of our grandparents claim their childhood was the best time in history to live, never mind they might've not had running water, cable television, or a decent spice supermarket aisle.)

Tending To The Small Things

So what do those tangents have to do with anything around 'tending to the small things?'

The answer is, as usual, and forgive me for repeating myself ad nauseum: everything.

The longer you leave something, the worse the pain gets, self-inflicted or otherwise. Procrastination seems fun or soothing in the moment, but it's always almost regretable.

There are many things I keep putting off. Emails, phone calls, heck, even this post…'big things.' Except whatever we define as big or small is up to us, and everything can be broken down into smaller steps.

Scope Before Tasks

Speaking of! This won't sound revolutionary to anyone with a brain on their shoulders, but I've recently discovered a framework which works wonders for figuring out the scope for work projects.

And why 'scope' and not what the common advice is, which is tasks?

Sometimes the project is so large (like in my instance, upending my entire life, again) you need to clear the fog before you can even see the forest to then see the trees. (Apologies for reverse toturing that metaphor.)

The idea is: write out everything you think needs doing, refine it into a 'scope,' or as they might call it in software engineering, a 'spec,' then, and only then, do you divide it into tasks.

It's worked for everything from a massive overhaul for how I'd designed something to a writing project. So if it works for those medium-to-large size projects, why not the massive ones?

I guess I'm trying to say: to tend to small things, sometimes you need to know what the big things are first.

Now go read Brendan's post, with the title: Tend To The Small Things.