A few days ago I mentioned the struggle I had with my central air conditioning system, which had broken during a heat wave. Not wanting to spend a lot of money, I learned enough to do some simple diagnostic work, then tried a quick fix. It didn’t work, but I had learned enough to know that proceeding further would likely be similar in repair cost by a professional, so I was at peace with the decision. Throughout the entire ordeal, I was fully aware that I was on unfamiliar ground and did not beat myself up over not mastering the Art of Air Conditioning Repair.

It later occurred to me that knowing and accepting I was a novice helped keep me stress-free during what otherwise would have been a frustrating experience. By comparison, I had been feeling SUPER STRESSED about my continuing efforts to achieve creative freedom through learning how to design and sell my work. And that’s when I realized that this time, I was a novice but didn’t fully accept it. My goal is conceptually simple, and in my mind I had come to imagine my growth path as “becoming a simple country designer, working and living free of the corporate stresses of big business.” And yet, for the past three weeks I’ve been feeling exceptionally perturbed at my lack of progress. It also seemed like I had a million things to do, and even though I knew I could start anywhere and make progress, I still felt a looming sense of hopelessness.

I am a Novice at Making my Own Way

In other words, I was a novice at this. As clear as my end vision was, I had fallen into the trap of assuming that I knew what I was doing. And indeed, I do know what needs to happen. However, unlike a master, I have no framework of understanding that I can use to anchor my studies. I’m vaguely aware that they exist, but I haven’t systemized them or even tried to create helpful structure to make the task easier.

That is not to say I’m completely ignorant of what I need to do. I have what I think is a solid basis of understanding about business and business practices. I also have an evolving plan, which I’ve been writing about at least once a month for the past few years. What I don’t have is a…well, I wasn’t sure what was missing. All I knew was that I felt constantly demoralized by the sheer number of things that I had to do, and I was painfully aware of how many dependencies existed between each task. It’s like a big tangled lump of many colored strings of yarn; I know if I can unravel it perhaps there’s a beautiful sweater waiting on the other side, but in the meantime I can’t really see it because the mess is so overwhelmingly difficult to unravel.

Itemizing Chaos

Having recognized that (1) I needed to wake up and accept my novice status as a business entrepreneur and (2) I could now turn on my structured learning process, I decided to spend Friday morning doing a brain dump. A brain dump is (as I define it, at least) the writing-out of everything on my mind regarding a particular subject. Once everything is out of my brain and in the open, I can then go through what I wrote and find the patterns.

So I picked a topic: “Stuff that I should be doing (to succeed)”, and started writing. I expected at least a couple dozen things, but I was surprised at just how many topics were on my mind…no wonder I felt so conflicted. Below is a table of everything. Click EXPAND ALL in the table header to see the entire list.

Organizing Chaos into Focus Buckets

I can see why I was feeling so crappy; I was trying to do all of that at once, one tiny thread at a time. Each task thread is tangled up with other task threads, and is a distraction.

The table above is actually the cleaned-up version of my brain dump, with each thought grouped into an appropriate category with a clear responsibility, as if I was writing a resource for defining job positions at Dave Seah Enterprises.

Every one of those 180+ line items produces a benefit for the operation. I made-up a bunch of accounting codes to go with them, so I could define a job position as a list of result-producing activities. The main benefit to me, as a solo operator, is that I can reduce the scope of my thinking to that of a particular role. For example, if I am designing new product, I’m not even going to think anymore about the packaging design or inventory; I’ll handle that when I’m done with design. Before, I would allow myself to think about upcoming tasks related to the work at hand, like having to make a new logo or write the copy to go with it, while I was designing. That meant I was distracted, which made the design work go slower. If I started to consider packaging or inventory control strategies, I would have to “switch heads” and drop out of designer mode. This is not very efficient when you are actually trying to get something done that requires any kind of continuous concentration.

Now that I have a map of all my tasks identified and grouped into “buckets of thinking”, I am feeling much better. I’m not 100% certain that this is a false sense of security, but I think this map will remind me to not try to think of everything at the same time. Instead, I can think about one bucket at a time, and remind myself that it’s OK to take the time now to do the job well. Then, I can move to the next bucket that needs addressing. As a result, I think I will have a more realistic sense of how fast I can work; before, I felt like I was always too slow, possibly because I was aware of the giant ball of tasks that I had assigned myself without thinking about how to divide them up.

This week, I’ll see how effectively I can use this list to give myself both focus and peace of mind as I chug along toward the goal of creative independence.