As this entry is taking shape, I’m in great angst working on “Terms and Conditions” for web site registration and find the confounding, compounding detail required to be excruciating.
However, templates from other notable sites are extremely helpful, and, truth be told, all one has to do is keep mining available information, applying it to current purposes, filling in the blanks, crossing the “T’s” and dotting the “I’s” until it’s all accounted for.
Easier said than done, to be sure. But more tedious than tough!
That’s pretty much “par for the course” in life.
One of the first truly paralyzing encounters I remember from my own journey was filling out the scholarship and student loan applications for college entrance. SO MUCH DETAIL!! And all in triplicate, it seemed. But there is no “catch”. Fill it out and you can be considered. Don’t fill it out and you CAN’T.
You want a mortgage? Same deal. Fill out the forms! Driver’s license? Same deal.
Of course, for college entrance you also have to take the ACT and SAT exams; if you want to go to medical school, you have to take the MCAT; and when you finish law school, you have to pass the Bar exam … all of which are correspondingly more difficult. But you commit to doing it, you do the studying (“information mining”), you take the exam, and, hopefully, move to the next level.
It’s all a matter of taking the time and making the time – including adding content to the brain. At some point, you’ve simply got to let your brain take over with whatever content you’ve packed into it – with as many “blanks” filled in as possible. It’s the loading and “filling in the blanks” that’s more tedious than difficult. The really “difficult” part is giving up everything else we’d much rather be doing!
Starting a new business is equally daunting in tedium. Yes, it’s also formidable for first-timers. But there are lots of agencies and individuals who are willing to help – even traditional “gatekeepers”, like the US Patent and Trademark Office, are willing to assist where needed. All you have to do is ask! (See “Catalysis” below.)
Wow!
And, generally, it’s not just a one-time pass or fail deal … you get to ask again and again as many times as you need to or want to until it’s “passable”. (NOTE: Earlier in the going is better than later in the going.)
“Perfection is achieved in small steps … but you have to take the steps!”
Halfmaster
Committing the TIME and committing the EFFORT is the tough part – not only because the unknown and unwelcome is compounded by fear, but also because of our recalcitrant reluctance simply to be “bothered” or nudged out of our comfort zone.
In chemistry, nothing happens unless the ACTIVATION ENERGY (an appropriate amount of “commitment”) for a particular reaction is sufficient to get it going. Often that requires heat. Sometimes it takes high pressure. [And it certainly helps to get everything else out of the reaction flask that might interfere – get rid of the newspaper, already … and the video games … and the TV … !]
The presence of a catalyst is extremely helpful. NOTE: Biological chemistry runs almost exclusively at ambient temperature and pressure with catalytic assistance from micronutrients and enzymes.
Autocatalysis – the spontaneous generation of “order” out of “disorder” – is an unusual but extremely powerful process where permissive conditions exist.
“There are many instances in which physical systems spontaneously become emergent or orderly. For example, despite the destruction they cause, hurricanes have a very orderly vortex motion when compared to the random motion of the air molecules in a closed room. Even more spectacular is the order created by chemical systems; the most dramatic being the order associated with life.” [Wikipedia]
Getting to the point where the blanks start “filling themselves in” is the ideal circumstance. Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi uses the terminology “Finding Flow” to construct such circumstances. [Finding Flow, BasicBooks, 1997, NY, NY]
Meanwhile, ignore all the “fluff” you’d rather be doing; just keep mining and filling in the blanks. (Anyone up for a trip to the library … a web search for key content needed for your next project … ?)
Repeat after me: “It ain’t that TOUGH; it’s merely TEJOUS!”
Let’s get “T’d UP”!
Quartermaster
