The Value of Strategic Decision Making in a Linkybrain’s World
I am now over a week deep into examining my life from a new perspective. Life as a #linkybrain has been fairly exciting so far!
I have connected with many outstanding people, who experience life in much the same way that I do. I have read through many articles about the challenges and successes of other linkys, and through that lens, my life makes a lot more sense to me.
I am not alone.
Yesterday, for perhaps the thousandth time, I learned a valuable lesson in decision making. It was not the best of days for me. But that’s okay!
We often learn the most through our failures, and sometimes a lesson must repeat itself many times over before we encounter the proper perspective from which to view those failures, and learn from them.
“I have not failed, not once. I’ve discovered 10,000 ways that don’t work.” — Thomas Edison
I had a goal of writing a Medium post yesterday, but my mind was a bit scattered, and refused to latch on to anything worth writing about.
When faced with this challenge, I often turn to watching something about which I know I will get emotional.
So that is exactly what I did.
I’ll withhold the name of the show and its content, as it’s volatile and I would hate for that to detract attention from the focus of this post.
I will only say many people find it to be a contentious subject, and it succeeded in getting me fired up.
FINALLY. Time to write.
I decided that I would find an opposing point of view to argue against. I felt that whatever I wrote would provoke more thought from others if I focused on a specific point of contention rather than the overall issue.
I searched for some articles written about the show, and dove headfirst into the comments.
Some three plus hours later, I was able to pull myself away. My mind was a patchwork of anger, confusion, and disappointment. I could not focus to save my life.
There are a few explanations one might use to describe this happening.
Some call it hyper-focus. Others call it distraction. I call it “falling down the rabbit hole”.
Often, when my brain connects passionately with a thing, I fall down the rabbit hole. From there on out, I work my way through a vast network of tunnels, twisting and turning until it finally occurs to me that I’ve fallen down the hole and need to climb out of it.
This was the best perception of this phenomenon I could muster, until recently.
I’m a linkybrain, pure and simple. I could have stopped the thought process there, but where’s the fun in that? Right!?
I was angry with myself for wasting so much time, and getting myself so worked up that couldn’t manage to focus on writing or anything else for that matter.
I wanted to figure out how this happens. How do I get there? Does it always have to be a random thing, or can it be directed?
Here’s what I’ve learned…
As a linkybrain, when I make one decision, I might as well be making a hundred decisions. That one decision invariably leads to another decision, and another. Each of these decisions are small, and each draw me further into whatever it is that I have decided to do.
It’s a perpetual loop. I’ve found that when I am feeling indecisive, the fear of this is usually the culprit.
It becomes a battle of wanting to dive in, to let my mind roam, and understanding that doing so means I could lose all concept of time and emerge hours later in a useless state, accomplishing nothing in the process.
Thus, making the right decisions become critical for a linkybrain such as myself.
The ability to understand which “holes” I should shy away from, and which would be productive to “fall” down, are of paramount importance.
The greatest gift that the #linkybrain movement has given me to date, is this insight.
A positive platform from which I can examine the parts of my life that, up until now, have been a struggle.
As more linkys begin to share their own realizations and realities, it becomes far easier to understand my own, and the negativity fades.
I couldn’t be more thankful for this, and hope that my meager contributions to this movement might light someone else’s path to understanding.
If you’re reading this post, or one of the many other #linkybrain articles and find you relate, join the community and write about it!
You never know, your story may be the inspiration that someone else needs to light their own linky fire!
Check out the linkybrain website HERE, and get involved!
