Stop Thinking

100! Instead of joy & happiness, I'm feeling a bit disappointed in myself for not reaching this milestone earlier. Apparently there is room for improvement, which I like.

Today I drove 270km (one way) to buy a kitchen cupboard we have been searching for more than 2 years now. Listening to Anouk (the band mentioned a few days earlier) I had my share of thinking today. And singing out loud in the privacy of my car ("We walked the street to the beat/Hand in hand you and me/Smiling faces so in love..."). Have I said how much I like listening to good music while being alone.

I had this idea that it seems that we do not stop to think often enough. Weird, as it gets, just having this though I had a call with a friend of mine. Being also a colleague of mine* we discussed also on work related stuff. At one moment he said: "Why don't we stop to think these requirements for a few moments before committing to those."

You guess he had The Point in his words.

On different occasions I tell this one hiking metaphor I've experienced. It's about how we orienteer while hiking in Lapland. The story goes as follows:
"When hiking in Lapland, we do not locate ourself from the map in the morning, take a bearing to our next camping ground and start walking there. We do, instead, locate ourselves from the map and then continuously
1) observe the surroundings
2) plan where to go next and how to get there
3) take a (first) bearing
4) estimate the distance walked
5) locate ourselves from the map and
6) start next round from step 1 until finding our way to the camping ground.
That is, many times a day we stop and think. And we'll answer to the following questions: 'Where we are?', 'What's happening around us (especially weather)?', 'Where are we going?', 'How we are going there?', 'How are we proceeding with our plan?'
For hikers, the safest way to home is to know where we are at any given time and what is the surrounding environment like."

Why don't we use this valuable habit of stopping to think regularly in our daily life (work). Then again, it might be just me. I might be a special in not doing so. Don't know.

So, instead of Stop Thinking (like the provocative title says), I'd urge us all to Stop And Think!


As a side note, I just so love this site. That's probably the biggest reason for being a bit disappointed in myself.


* Another friend of mine made me to realize that also colleagues can be good friends. It seems that I've been a bit too strict in separating my 'real life' from my work. Being too strict, by definition, is hardly ever a good thing. So, for all my past colleagues, my apologies to you for shutting you off from my real life.