There has been a constant struggle in my life based on a paradox which this blog aims to resolve. I constantly long for deep and meaningful moments and I want them to appear within a superficial time frame. I want to be a better person now. I want to have a full and rich understanding of human complexity now. I want to know who I am fully and I want to know that now. Also, I want to do a million little things now that may or may not better my life in any meaningful way.
“Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution; this gives you a 1,000 percent Return on Energy!” – Brian Tracy
I can see that doing everything right now is undermining my ability to meaningfully execute and understand later. When I was an engineer, I would hear problems and begin to immediately solution a fix without taking the time to step back and consider all the options for resolution. Sometimes, I would happen on a really good solution from the outset and no course changes were required. Other times, I found I had to constantly readjust the starting point as the constraints I knew at the outset were incomplete. When I became an architect, I began to consider the requirements and constraints from the beginning design phase to ensure the end result would be successful. This same type of pattern plays out in my personal life too.
My children often struggle with a lack of organization which is a constant source of friction. “Clean your room” is a simple three word command and yet it would take my children hours to make any meaningful progress which was always frustrating. However, I recently cleaned their room and made an observation that comes from understanding the broader issues. In trying to quickly clean the room, I struggled to find an organizational method for success which hindered my ability to execute the simple three word command. I suddenly understood why my children struggled with the seemingly simple task, and I even realized that my wife and I had failed to set our children up for success. I guess the simple solution of putting things where they belong assumes that there’s a logical place to put things to begin with.
These life stories underscore the importance of this blog for me personally. I want to start taking the time to digest the issues that bother me and start analyzing them from a broader perspective. Over time, my goal is to unwind that point of view from just the inconveniences in my life and start looking at ways to solve larger issues as well. By creating this content and sharing it with the world, I hope to create a sense of obligation/accountability to growing up and tackling my issues with a deeper understanding than I have before. I am tired of living the engineer’s mindset and want to graduate towards more of an architectural mindset in handling my personal and professional challenges.
This is my stake in the ground for taking the journey of life seriously and learning to plan a trajectory rather than walking in circles. Please keep me accountable to this journey and join me if you have the same tug in your minds or hearts. Having a Samwise to my Baggins is never a bad thing.
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
— The Site Author