2024-01-20
I've been thinking a lot about a choice that I've been making lately that's helped manage stress while dealing with a lot of ongoing projects. I separate the tasks of planning and actually executing action. I don't know that this is particularly unusual, in fact, I'd guess that most people do this to some degree. It's exceedingly difficult to do any large project without some kind of a plan. I find, however that I benefit significantly by really separating them. I plan to sit down and make a plan. Then, to lower the stress of wanting to just dive in and do the thing, I force myself to make these planning sessions at least a full day before allowing myself to take action on the project. I have even gone so far as to write a simple computer script that helps generate a list of "next steps" for me to do, based on plans I've written.
I was recently given a little diorama kit. It is intentionally sized to go on a bookshelf, depicting a small street scene. I've never done diorama building before and I discovered that the process is pretty chill and I can get really focused on it. I was reminded that I like following directions. These are pictorial instructions and I enjoy puzzling out the final details on the ideas set forward. It reminded me of making k'nex builds as a kid. It's calm to simply trust that someone else wrote out all the necessary steps and that I just have to follow along. When I get through them, it'll come together and I'll have the thing I set out to build.
I think I was gluing together a tiny window frame when I realized that this calm feeling is what I'm attempting to achieve when I give myself this separation between making the plan and executing the plan. I am good at, and enjoy, following instructions. I'm ok at writing instructions. When this goes well, I'm trusting past-me in the same way as I'm trusting the designers of these little kits. I don't have to stress about whatever it is I'm doing, the stressful part is over, I'm now just executing the steps. I can enjoy the calm of achieving whatever goal I set out to. I have mental energy for dealing with the in-the-moment puzzles in the details of the task, because I'm not worrying about the over-arching project.
This works pretty well, until I take on a project where I don't really know what I'm doing. Unfortunately, most of the projects I've been taking on lately have been well out of my comfort zone. I may have created a set of instructions, but I can't really trust that they're good. I will have done the research, but if I've missed something significant, I probably won't know until I've spent a fair amount of time trying to get something done in a way that it just won't work. When a model kit has badly written instructions, that same time and frustration is spent, but eventually you can always just be annoyed that the kit was bad, and toss it. Or redesign it into something slightly wonky, but that you enjoy anyway. If a home improvement project has bad instructions, on the other hand, there can be some pretty significant repercussions. You can't just say "I give up" and toss the whole thing when "the whole thing" is the pipes you've exposed by making a hole in the drywall in a bathroom. That's got to reach some kind of completion, whether it's going back to the drawing board and making a new plan, or hiring someone in to fix the mistakes you've made. So when I don't have full confidence in the plan, it does put a significant damper on the chill, fun experience I'm trying to give myself.
All that said, much of that stress is also mitigated by truly taking time to make, and write out, a plan. If I really have no idea how something works, it'll show up when I try to detail out the steps of a thing. When I discover that there are large gaps in my knowledge, I can fill that in. Research is another thing that I greatly enjoy. I have to reign in some of my curiosity, I need to know how to do the thing, not the full history of why the thing is done. Now, I'd be ruining the fun of the research if I didn't allow myself a few tidbits of trivia to go along with the actual helpful information, but I do try to keep a balance. To that effect, that idea of scheduling myself to be doing the task about a day after the planning? That deadline helps keep me on track. If I know that if I don't do the planning and research now I'll be stuck feeling scared of the project, overwhelmed because I don't know where to start, and having to stop part-way through when I realize I have no idea what I'm doing, it helps me buckle down.
I keep all of these plans in a wiki, in no small part because having a record of having done certain tasks before helps me feel confident to more frequently do a "repeat" task in a more impromptu way. If I keep good notes on the steps, I can easily do something again and the next time it should be as relaxing as doing a model kit. I know the instructions are good!