It’s the dog days of summer, as we cross the midway point of August, and I find myself in a grey zone.
I love summer, the days are hot (although this year not so much) and dry (although this year not so much), and it’s the best time of year for bass fishing (although this year not so much).
The problem is, now summer is drawing to a close, but it hasn’t quite finished.
I find myself with a bunch of items on my to do list, and I could get to them right away, but we always take the last week of summer for one last family vacation. If I attack my to do list, I will end up with a week break right as I get them knocked out, and these things aren’t one off items.
I’m getting near to completing my book. Promoting it is not something I can do for a couple of weeks, take ten days off, and start again.
In fact, launching my book provides me the perfect opportunity to create an email list, but I can’t start a list, and then abandon it right after I get it going.
It leads into content marketing, but again, I can’t start, hit it hard, and then take a pause.
What’s more, although there’s still a nice chunk of summer left, it’s 3/4 gone, and instead of looking forward to what I can get done, I’m busy looking back at the things I haven’t got done.
I’m a forward looking man; I do something, finish it and move on. I rarely look back on what I have accomplished. In other words, I’m always focused on the list of “Not Done.” This is not good as it regards my depression, because one of my major triggers is failure.
How is my to do list related to failure? The longer something is on my to do list, the more I focus on not having done it, on having failed to do it.
For me, focusing on the future is focusing on failure.
So here I am, in the middle of August, making a conscious choice to look back (a little) to get myself to focus on success, rather than failure.
