Ever heard the saying, “The devil is in the detail”?
Henry David Thoreau went to live in the woods to strip his life back to what mattered, and he came away with this:
Our life is frittered away by detail.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
Most of us can’t move to the woods. But you can stop the detail getting in the way before you’ve even started.
Too much how, too soon
I’ve found the detail shows up most when you’re trying to plan what you want to do next, when you’re trying to set a vision. If you get too stuck on the how, you never get clear on the what or the why.
Whereas if you’re clear on what you’re trying to achieve and why you care about it, I’ve found the how seems to somehow figure itself out eventually. It’s almost like introducing the how too early becomes the barrier, the blocker, the thing that stops you getting stuff done.
If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you be willing to try?
Say yes first
There have been countless times in my life when I’ve made a commitment to something without really knowing how I was going to make it happen. Richard Branson is famous for saying yes and then figuring out a way later. His “screw it, let’s do it” mentality.
Too much detail at the beginning just acts like a block. If, the first time I agreed to run a race, I’d gone, “But how am I going to run 10 miles? How am I going to train? How far am I going to run each day? What exactly is my plan going to look like?”, I probably never would have got started. Or I wouldn’t have got past the first training run, when I found out I wasn’t as fit as I thought I was.
As far as your headlights
For me, the simplicity in this is to get really clear on what it is you want, and get clear on the next step. Nothing more than that to begin with.
There’s a famous quote about being able to drive long distances in the fog, because you can still see the distance lit up by your headlights. That stretch of road is your next step.
So what do you want, and why do you care about it? Get clear on those two, then take the one step you can see.
