BACKTRACK BUILDING

February 4th, 2020

It can be so exciting to acquire a new skill that we start using it before planning what to do.  As aggravating as this is, it’s simply part of the learning process for acquiring that new skill.

As with the difference between merely thinking about something and talking about it out loud, there is a fundamental difference between what we want to do, and what we realize we can do once we start making that first vision a reality.

Learning and experimentation is a compounding process.  Each new step builds off all previous progress.

This creates the tension between planning and doing. 

On the one hand we want to plan as well as possible in order to save the need to backtrack in the future, but on the other hand we cannot predict what we will learn and what we will come to realize is possible as we progress.  This tension is a bit of a paradox.

It either paralyzes us with perpetual planning.

Or,

We barrel ahead and just do whatever.

Or,

We squeeze between the constraints and we keep the larger goal in mind and make small plans that we hold on to loosely.

The process of achieving the goal is not one big thing we do.  It is an iterative process.  We can take smaller steps, and while this might hark of slower process as opposed to taking big leaps, it requires less effort to backtrack when we come across some sort of new information.

The faster we can take smaller steps, the less we have to rely on big leaps.

Big leaps that we might regret.