I don't know. And that's fine.

Thinking is great. Overthinking, not so much.

You know how it goes. You've finally leaned back from the laptop and decided to think about that knotty issue at the heart of your current work. The real reasons the policy isn't working. The stakeholder relationship that just doesn't seem to click. The seemingly irreconcilable trade-offs.

And yet instead of thinking it through, your thinking just seems to go round and round.

You think you see a way forward - but then you think, no, that's not it - and then you wonder about something else - but then you remember a conversation and realise that's not it either - and on and on it goes until your mind is just full of increasingly awkward questions and blind alley responses.

You don't know.

There comes a point when more of the same thinking doesn't help. You still don't know.

It's like digging for treasure nowhere near the 'x marks the spot' - digging deeper simply doesn't help.

And nor does your inner voice, which is probably saying something along the lines of: you really 'should' be able to figure this out, you're so stupid, there must be a way but you're not good enough to see it...

But what if it were ok to not know? What would happen then?

You might start asking yourself some better questions:

• what would 'knowing enough' look like?
• what do I know so far?
• who else knows something?
• how could I know more?
• what can I do with what I already know?

Straightaway, you're out of the loop and into something more productive. Perhaps some more thinking, or perhaps some action to fuel a later burst of thinking. Either way, it's better than spinning in circles like you were before.

I've been doing this kind of thinking about my newsletter recently. How often should I write one? Where should I publish it? What do people want to read about? How long should it be? If I could only think hard enough in the right way, surely the answer will emerge!

But then I thought: What if I don't know? And what if that's ok? What would I do then?

And that's prompted me to do some experimentation. It'll help me know some more.

In the new year, I'm going to start publishing a newsletter directly to subscribers.

It'll probably be called The Quiet Way, probably monthly. Watch out for the sign-up link.

I'll still publish here on LinkedIn, so don't worry if you prefer hearing from me this way. But for those who sign up direct, I'm thinking I'll do a fortnightly 'in-between' newsletter with some extra goodies in it. Plus it makes the newsletter available to folk who don't use LinkedIn.

I don't know how it's going to go. And that's ok. We'll figure it out together.

Drop me a comment below, if there's anything you'd like me to know!