I didn’t know what to write about this week. Not quite writer’s block, as I wrote a few things, just nothing I could curate into an ‘on topic’ article.
It made me recall a project manager I once worked for. My role was to write the project’s business case. I got the gig, because I’m good a writing business cases. We were early in the project feasibility stage, and he asked that whenever I was just sat at my desk, to “just write.”
That makes sense if you’re writing say a novel, but for a business case I found this an odd request. At this stage we knew relatively little about the project or its merits, so how could I write much about it. I wrote, sporadically, with limited structure, often with very few words going on the page across an entire day of being sat my desk.
At the time, I was also battling with general anxiety disorder which included unexplained (at least on a conscious level) panic attacks. At one particular project update meeting, I was so concerned about my progress being insufficient I was shaking. I’d basically made no progress in writing over an entire week. I feared reprimand, I feared being shamed, I feared for my job…
Then came the project manager’s response: “Don’t stress.”
“You’re just one person and this is a massive project, so don’t stress. I know you can write; I’ve seen your writing, you can write. What this shows is we haven’t been asking the right people the right questions to give us information to write up. So let’s see what we can do about that…”
The relief, in both feeling supported and that my skills were recognised despite there being a week of no progress. We’d had meetings rescheduled to later that week, that would have meant I could have progressed sooner if not for the reschedule. My lack of progress was #notmyfault and my stress was a classic case of #anxietytalking. By the end of the week, I had 5 pages of compelling argument for the project.
In that particular week I had the purpose, write the business case, but not the means. It was the means that made the difference. Also, it was taking the right action in response to the circumstances. In this case, adjusting our information gathering approach to not be so reliant on meetings which invariably get rescheduled.
This is the trouble with purpose, in life and in business. Even with a clearly defined purpose, you won’t get anywhere without taking the right action in response to whatever life is asking of you. So rather than focusing on purpose, focus on working out what is the next right action, and doing that.
Mark Manson often makes the point that significant progress towards a goal is best made by taking frequent consistent action. This is far more likely to result in significant progress being made than making significant actions when motivation happens to strike.
What consistent action/s do you need to take to progress your current goal/s? Leave a comment and let me know!
For me, I have set myself a goal to write and publish an article each week. It seems the right action for achieving that is to “just write”.