Making Progress by Making Decisions

I've been thinking about how and when I make progress, and also how I don't.

And to be honest, most of it comes down to decision making. Of course, I'm far from perfect and there are some things that I just don't make progress on, but the ones that I do definitely have the 'making decisions' part in common.

We've had our house for 6 years, we were meant to renovate it shortly after moving in. We still haven't done it. And sure, we've been busy (2 new kids plus a growing business to deal with!), but I know deep down inside that the reason we haven't done it is because we can't decide on what we actually want to do with it. I know if we could decide that, then we could make clearer steps towards our goal.

I tend to make progress with my business projects when I've made decisions.

I made a decision to support the testing community with an online community. I quickly pulled something together and made something of it. It didn't take too long until it became a daily habit of mine to check in and see what I could do to support it and help it grow.

It remained a labor of love community until I made the decision that it had to make some money. That's when I started doing the events.

After years of supporting Ministry of Testing I knew in my heart it wasn't where I wanted to be. I got stressed and burnt out. However, when I made the decision (to myself initially) that I would not be the one leading the company longer term, then everything else started (slowly) falling into place. Everything I did from that point onwards was with my goal of being free from the day to day running. That decision helped me guide the company in the direction I wanted. It helped me look for and see the opportunities that were right for me. My decision kept me focused in on my goals (and it also helped my own personal situation).

I made the decision to take on the community manager role here at Indie Hackers. I knew that if I committed to something outside of my business it would help me towards my goal of not being involved with Ministry of Testing (as much) and also help me towards my own desire to do something else focused on the 'business' world. My role at Indie Hackers has helped accelerate me doing less at Ministry of Testing.

I also know that I get frustrated when I don't make decisions. I hate it when things linger. My mind ends up wandering and my energy ends up being spent on the wrong things. I have a couple of side projects that are in that state, I struggle to make proper decisions about what to do with them, so nothing ends up happening.

I am also really bad at not making decisions about meeting up with people/friends. Admittedly my life is fairly busy, but I also now that if I could just schedule in some dates to meet people then it would end up happening (most of the time). I'd really like to get better at this.

Of course, I'm also aware that sometimes decisions will come at the right time. I can't do all the things at once and brewing time is just what is needed for many things in life. I try to reduce stresses by mentally acknowledging what things are in a 'brewing' stage and hopefully I'll get to them when the time is right.

(I whipped up the above in 30 minutes, start to end. Thought it was worthy publishing on my blog too and it also helps me keep track of the random things I write.)