Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
I often talk about the fact that fandom is great because it lets people do projects and learn from them. However, I want to take a bit of time to define just what a project IS – and its counterpart, the Continuing Effort.
The reason I want to do that is simple – if you can understand what a project is, you can't easily analyze your fannish activities to determine which one's you've done. Without doing that it's harder to assess or build your skills and experiences.
The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good. We hear this saying a lot, probably to the point that we miss the lesson – if you seek perfection you'll likely fail, and miss the chance to do things that are good.
We also are very familiar with people who lie to themselves and others about who they are. They conceal interests, religious affiliations, sexual orientations, etc. We know such people – or are such people – and know they're miserable.
You can't hide from yourself. The perfect is the enemy of the good. These two things go together in the hard fact that you can't be perfect – especially someone else's idea of perfect.
Lately I've been coaching several people on being more organized – as well as working on putting together some of my future plans after a busy year. I wanted to share an interesting insight that may help the readers since I know a lot of us are scrambling to plan for a future in a tough time.
What I noticed was many people have a particular "level" they're most aware of in scheduling – they may think ahead a week, a month, a year, etc. and that's where they plan best. Though they may plan well on that level, they're often surprised or unprepared for things happening in a different timeframe. Some examples:
For a few people, they may even operate well on more than one level – but these levels are not necessarily connected – one can be good at planning five years ahead and a week ahead, but miss, say, planning well on the level of one month. Thus they grind to a halt caught between timeframes, trying to reconcile plans.
If you're trying to be more organized (and who isn't?), you need to be aware of you have a particular "level" or "levels" you like to schedule on, and work to ensure you plan well on all levels of your schedule.
– Steven Savage