It’s Like A Game Of Chess…

Have you ever played chess with someone, and the game ended up taking a really long time… like a couple of hours to play, due to their inability to move their pieces?  They probably seemed like they had to think about each move for minutes on end before they made it, didn’t they?  Or even worse, maybe YOU are the type of person who brings these types of games down to a speed so low that it’s like a snail with arthritis?  If so, then read on.

I’ve touched on Analysis Paralysis before.  What it is, is when you spend so much time planning about how you’re going to do something, that you actually lose the benefits of the preparation.  As my blogging colleague, Giovanna Garcia likes to say, “Imperfect Action is Better Than No Action”.  Not only will the person who creates imperfect action have a product to show off that the over-analyst doesn’t, but the one who creates imperfect action will hone their craft much quicker by developing a muscle memory and actually practicing their skill.  Simply put, there’s no substitute for experience!

Learn From My Example

Take me, for example.  In the middle of 2004, I registered www.swollenthumb.com.  I never did anything with it until January 9, 2009.  Don’t think that I was lazy or unmotivated.  In fact, I was probably more motivated than 9 out of 10 people who had registered a website that year.  That was part of my problem.  I was so motivated to do a killer job with my company, that I set my expectations WAY too high, and two things happened.  First of all, I never completed anything that lived up to my unreasonable expectations, and secondly, the thought of having to live up to those expectations actually deterred me from getting started a lot of times.  It just seemed like too much work.

I’ve also had recent bouts with Analysis Paralysis in my music.  I have tracks that I started over three years ago that I am still working on today in April 2009.  I’ve set my sights so high, and my standards so high that I have been unable to move forward in my music career.  I’ve barely been able to START my music career because of this.  After three years of composing it, I currently have two posted tracks on this website to show for it.  My analysis paralysis has caused me to start over a hundred tracks, yet finish only two of them. I’m not exaggerating, OVER A HUNDRED TRACKS. Learn from my fault, people.

Examples In The Corporate World:

Analysis Paralysis is very common among office buildings.  Mandatory weekly meetings to attend, dozens of pointless email and voicemails to sift through, paperwork to file, checks and balances to adhere to.  All of these things help to derail momentum, or even prevent you from gaining it in the first place!  Don’t let other people destroy your positive energy.  It’s a huge waste to not use this energy.  If you’re caught up in analysis paralysis due to office bureaucracy, then there might not be much you can do about it, so a change of jobs might be in order.

So Don’t Succumb To It!

To return to the chess analogy, your ventures are very similar to a game of chess.  Think of what you are trying to accomplish in your venture, whether it be personal development, your own business, or whatever.  When you take a lot of time to figure out your strategy, you are only giving your opponent free time to devise one of their own.  Likewise when you overthink your actions in real life, you’re letting time pass you by, and missing opportunities.  Your opponent might be a co-worker who is trying to climb the corporate ladder alongside you.  Or your opponent could be more abstract, and be someone in the world who has the exact same idea as you, and is working at this moment to make it happen before you do.

If you have a valuable piece such as a knight or a bishop, you won’t send it into battle without a plan.  However, you likely won’t spend too much time worrying about your pawns.  So send a few pawns into battle… I.E. Take small steps toward making your plans happen.  Try things, and if they work, then you are in a better position than before, and if they don’t work, you haven’t risked anything of value, and you’ll learn a valuable lesson for the next time you play the game.