{"id":1020,"date":"2014-03-15T14:12:56","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T18:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2014-03-23T18:23:25","modified_gmt":"2014-03-23T22:23:25","slug":"slow-motion-planning-youre-secret-weapon-for-getting-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/?p=1020","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Slow Motion Planning&#8221; &#8211; You&#8217;re Secret Weapon for Getting Started"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know the feeling and it sounds something like this&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Oh, I&#8217;ve got just one more phone call to make, then I can&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>I first need to organize XYZ&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>I need to first think about it more and have a better plan&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>I need to find my notes and rewrite them so&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Next week I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;ll be clearer so&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">What&#8217;s the problem? You&#8217;re talking yourself out of starting something really important. It&#8217;s not that you doubt you should do it. You just can&#8217;t get going&#8230;right? Am I alone? No, I don&#8217;t think so.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Starting line\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/96\/260978898_2b3214c2b4.jpg\" alt=\"Starting line\" width=\"500\" height=\"306\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><!--more-->If you agreed with this assessment, let&#8217;s take a second &#8220;to hit rewind&#8221; to make sure we clearly see the problem we just articulated &#8211; it&#8217;s &#8220;you just can&#8217;t get going&#8221; (&#8230;right?). See, once we &#8220;get going&#8221; we typically have exponentially elevated our chances of actually being successful, because we have &#8220;movement&#8221; on our side.<\/p>\n<p>The key hurdle therefore is overcoming inertia to go from being &#8220;parked&#8221; to begin rolling. Once we&#8217;re rolling, the odds of gathering momentum, and even acceleration, are dramatically higher than when we&#8217;re parked. This certainly does not mean you don&#8217;t need a plan to continue moving forward, but it compels us to zoom-in on the &#8220;getting started part.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So how do you do it? Like anything else start with a plan &#8211; a very simple one, almost insultingly so. Construct it by thinking of the first 5-10 minutes of activity and writing it down at the sub-activity or what I call the &#8220;slow-motion&#8221; level. You can certainly think beyond this time period and sketch out an outline of the next steps, but make sure to go into most detail on the 5-10 minute period.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Your mind just needs a good toe-hold to get you jump-started. As mentioned earlier, once you&#8217;re moving you&#8217;ll be surprised how naturally it will continue to flow. The key is just &#8220;getting started.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a real example to make it come alive. I am working on a project with a research institution and need to give some examples on possible ways to illustrate a key concept. Here&#8217;s my 5-10 &#8220;slow motion plan&#8221;: print off an example template I have on my hard-drive , draw a template in powerpoint using my notes from a recent trip, fill out one of the templates with some &#8220;live&#8221; content to make it come alive, write some explanation text in an email, attach examples&#8230;.Get the point? I&#8217;m sure by the time I reach this step I will have no problem with the rest of this task and my mind will be inspired with further possibilities &#8211; I just need a &#8220;boost&#8221; to get started.<\/p>\n<p>So what is it for you? What execuses do you use? What do you continue to put off? Try the 5-10 minute &#8220;slow motion planning&#8221; technique to get moving. I&#8217;m confident it will be your new secret weapon to get started&#8230;and hopefully build momentum.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Picture:\u00a0<a title=\"Attribution License\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/compfight\/images\/cc.png\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" border=\"0\" \/><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<a title=\"Jon Marshall\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/51983028@N00\/260978898\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Jon Marshall<\/span><\/a>\u00a0via\u00a0<a title=\"Compfight\" href=\"http:\/\/www.compfight.com\/\"><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Compfight<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know the feeling and it sounds something like this&#8230; Oh, I&#8217;ve got just one more phone call to make, then I can&#8230; I first need to organize XYZ&#8230; I need to first think about it more and have a better plan&#8230; I need to find my notes and rewrite them so&#8230; Next week I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration-creativity","category-personal-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johannesmutzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}