An important reason why I started this blog was to present myself to future employers as a responsible authority. I fear part of this post could serve to cast doubt on my character and abilities. Regardless of perception, I would rather share a genuine experience of progress than portray a false identity.
A few weeks ago, I realized I was neglecting some of my responsibilities. Long term projects weren’t being chipped away at, and small tasks were slipping through the cracks. My mind was a terrible reminder system, and the weight of my failure to act loomed large in my psyche. I returned to David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done“, and started practicing a simplified version for myself.
I dumped every responsibility, large and small, out of my head and spewed them onto a Word document. This was as cathartic as a solid six-mile run. The pressure in my head was relieved and I could breathe again.
In the process of creating my Next-Action List out of the items in my In-Basket, I found myself seriously doubting that some items were ever going to get done. These weren’t large daunting projects either. They were simple tasks that my mind grew to associate with pain and friction. The fact that I had repressed them for so long, made them all the more difficult to perform moving forward.
Less than a week of practicing this system though, writing down my tasks and dedicating time to them each day, I began completing the very tasks that had seemed unrealizable just a few days prior.
My epiphany: whatever I write down on paper, I can accomplish. Given enough time and effort, I have the capacity to manifest any change in the world I seek to make.
This is a lesson I should have learned many years ago. It’s also an idea several thousand years in the making:
For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
(Mark 11:23-24, New King James Version)
After more than a year of avoiding my blog, I wrote down that I would turn this experience into a shareable message. I completed it within three days.