Do you know what are you doing?

Do you know what you are doing?

Many of us can answer this question, and say 'yes', while rest of us will choose to be honest, and say 'we are not sure'. If you really know what you are doing, then you can skip this write up; you are already a pro.

As we hear from time to time,

A problem well defined is already halfway to the solution.

Same goes with everything you want to do, no matter how trivial it is. You want to learn something? You want to prepare a presentation? You are looking for some professional help? and since you know what you want, but you are not able to achieve it? There can be many reasons. Let's debug the process to identify why it happens?

First step,

To establish what you really want to do?

You wanted to learn about that hot topic, that technology everyone is swearing by? You can't do it because you know you want to learn it, but it is so wide and you have not identified which exact topic you want to start with. This clarity comes from giving some time to think about the task, to learn more about why you even chose to do it in first place.

Once you know why you were doing this ('Why you do certain things' is a topic in itself, we will get to that), you will start to get a picture of what you need to do to get to your why. Now you know that you want to learn about that technology so that you can understand what use-cases you can apply it to, rather than force-feeding yourself. This way you will gain not just the knowledge, but more importantly - how to apply it.

Now that you know what is that exact thing you want to do, you will not waste your energies to wonder each time about where to start whenever you start. You know how much hassle you save yourself from if you decide on what to wear the next day; Imagine how much time you will save if you already know what exactly you want to do.

So, here comes the gist of this whole post -

Don't try to save on the time to think before you start by jumping right to the work. Know your enemy first, and rest becomes easier.

So next time whenever you think you can't focus, and keep wandering from task to task, or can't get enough motivation to finish something you started, know who your enemy is.