Progress

I’ve been away for a while, learning how to build this site, which means learning how to manipulate the elements to make what you see here approximately what I want to see. It’s been a long learning curve so far, embarrassingly long, and I’m not done with yet. But I’ve decided to publish today, because … well, just because.

I recently read a suggestion for decision making, to consider the values that are in conflict in the choices, and which of the values matter most to me. The values in conflict here, in deciding to publish this site today, are “don’t stress about a deadline, but rather patiently allow the process to take as long as it takes” versus “the perfect (or even the good enough) is the enemy of the done.” I’ve been favoring the former; now it’s time for a change.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

• Lower my standard for “good enough.” If I still can’t move forward, lower it again.
  

• I don’t need to know everything before sending my creation out into the world.
  

• Don’t get lost in trying to solve a problem just because it seems solvable. I spent a lot of time today trying to figure out how to put photographs someplace on my computer where I can upload them into this blog. (It’s a new computer and I’m just starting to learn it.) I ask myself, is what I’m trying to solve essential? If not, drop it for now and move on.
  

• Slow and steady gets results, eventually. Slow and intermittently ends up taking a lot longer. I think I should be able to set a deadline and meet it. But if I don’t know what I’m doing — which is the definition of learning something new — I don’t know how long it will take. If I let that discourage me, I’ll procrastinate, sometimes for weeks. Commit to working on it for a short time every day.

I grow frustrated when a new skill doesn’t come easily to me, which is the case with every skill related to technology, social media, and pretty much anything online. I imagine that everyone but me just intuitively gets all of it. But I don’t really believe that. I suspect that there are a lot of folks like me, who have to learn, maybe one detail at a time (like me), and maybe they, too, get frustrated and tempted to give up.

If you are one of those, welcome, friend. Rest assured that I’m not going to teach you, or anyone, anything. I’ll just keep sharing my journey, so that I can make sense of it for myself, and it if helps you to make sense of your own journey, so much the better.