David Allen’s Advice on Preventing Decision Paralysis
Motivation is fleeting, so it’s important to create a solid system for getting the job done . This way, you’ll make it as easy as possible to achieve your goals, even on low motivation days. However, when you question your system, you lose focus. David Allen reminds us: Trust your system.
Let’s say your goal is to eat healthier foods. Sometimes you have motivation and it comes easy. On other days, you just want pizza. To fight those pizza days, you set up a system for yourself that involves filling your fridge with healthy foods and perhaps allowing yourself to be pampered from time to time to keep from burning out. This is a typical example of a system and can be quite effective. But we often refine our system to perfection at the expense of our common goal. Getting Things Done author David Allen puts it this way:
If you don’t trust your system, you cannot overlook the operational details and limit your ability to create at a higher level.
This is my fault. I set up the system and then I think I thought what could be better. For example, I schedule all my tasks for the day, and I complete the first task, but then I think: “Maybe I should rearrange everything and optimize even more.” If I took that time to use my system instead of analyzing it to death, I would be one step ahead of my goals for the day.
Allen calls this micromanaging his mind. Your system may not be perfect, and of course, at some point you will want to come back to it. But if you are paralyzed by analysis because you cannot let go of the working details, you are distracting from your common goal. Set up this system, trust it and move on.
Trust Your System | GTD