Thinking can be the enemy of doing
When I was a kid I was fearless... and maybe a little reckless. If a tree had to be climbed, I was up it. If a lizard caught, I’m on it. If there was a bullfrog in a sewer pipe just big enough for a small child, I was already halfway in crawling towards the two bumps of frog eyeballs barely visible in the darkness.
I never thought too much about the consequences. I just did what needed to be done. But somewhere along the line my brain started thinking.
I’m pretty sure it happened right after I graduated from college and got my first job. I didn’t actually want to get a job. I wanted to jump in my ‘67 VW Bus and drive across the country, eating regional foods and playing guitar around campfires and coffee shops.
But I needed money for gas and food. I should save a little... I thought.
So I got a job working in a warehouse as a shipping clerk. My job was to print labels and stick them on boxes.
I lasted one day.
I didn’t get fired, I got promoted. Someone in the front office heard there was a guy with a college degree licking and sticking envelopes, and word traveled up to the VP who grabbed me and took me for a walk.
She said, “Tomorrow you’re gonna come in and work for me in sales support. We will pay you twice as much.”
So I accepted and the next day I started running around the front office helping the sales reps nurture prospects and close deals.
That’s hard work! And it was chaos. I needed a plan to get me out of there!
So they let me hire a couple people, made me a manager, and my plan was to train them to replace me and I’d take my savings and split.
Thats when I discovered I was really good at seeing entire systems in my head, finding bottlenecks and creating processes to tame the chaos. I liked thinking and solving problems. I thought...
Pretty soon I had the entire sales support department running lean and as a reward my boss said, “We are going to double your salary and we want you to build out a customer support team.”
A little extra money couldn’t hurt. So I delayed my cross country adventure again and started building a team, creating processes and figuring stuff out.
It seemed like I could make a lot of money just by thinking. It was easy and fun. Other people did the work. Little did I know this was my brains way of keeping me out of trouble.
Instead of taking my savings and hitting the road I thought, “I should buy a new truck that will be more reliable.” So I sold my VW bus, and bought a brand new 1993 Ford Ranger. Now I had a reliable truck, and a car payment.
Well, the truck got me a date, the date got me a wife, the wife got me two beautiful kids, the kids needed a home which got me a mortgage, and the government has been rewarding my accomplishments with increasing taxes for the last 30 years. I’m grateful for all of it.
But I still haven’t left on my road trip.
Thinking is not straightforward. I’ve learned to not believe everything I think. I’ve learned that everyone thinks differently. I’ve learned that thinking is valuable and important. But most of all, I’ve learned that thinking can be a trap to keep me from doing scary things.
So when my brother asked if I wanted to do a road trip into Baja for two weeks at the end of March I said, “Hell yeah!” (Before I even had a chance to think about it)