Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Analysis paralysis is where I sit and think a long time about what I should do. I recommend against such. Instead, experience has taught my that in most cases the best thing to do is one thing, and then the next, and then the next.

This has happened to me about a thousand times in my life. I walk into a situation with a thousand things to do (fatigue often brings hyperbole).

What do I do next?

I actually studied this situation in college. It was in a class on computer operating systems. One of the biggest jobs of an operating system is to select what task to do next. (Surprised? Yes, this is actually the case despite all the pretty pictures, sounds, videos and other things that companies tell you their operating systems do.)

An operating system can do the next task based on

• size
• time to execute
• priority
• time the task has been waiting

and all other sorts of attributes and combinations of attributes.

That was a great class to have taken. (Note, to have taken not to take. I hated the class at the time.) I learned that there are different ways to schedule tasks. There are different answers to that nagging question

What do I do next?

Outside of the billion-operations-per-second world of computers and back into the real world of my mundane existance, I have learned a good-enough answer to this question:

Just do something.

Hmm. That answer doesn’t appear so impressive, but it has worked for me. In most cases, it isn’t critical that I do the most important thing first. If  just do something now, then the next thing, then the next thing…I am okay.

One short example. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (not hyperbole, believe me) I walked into a storage room. Well, not exactly. I could barely open the door of the room because everything in the room was piled on the floor. The room was lined with storage shelves, and the shelves were empty.

“A few days,” I thought, “and I will have this place in shape.”

• I picked up one item from the floor and placed it on a shelf.
• I picked up the next item from the floor and placed it on the shelf.
• I picked up…

When the floor was empty of items I looked at my day-date watch. I had worked in the storage room for one hour. It was all done in one hour. Just do one thing, and then the next, and then the next.

I could tell many stories just like this one. The outcome was always the same. Just do something, and then the next, and the next, and I will be okay.