The symptoms of “maybe”

Yes or no leads to flow. Maybe messes the whole thing up.

This week in the Daily, I didn’t really set out to talk about this. But, it sorta flowed from Monday’s email about the use of deadlines in marketing and why they work. And yesterday, I talked about an algorithmic look at why this works which comes right out of how our computers work.

There’s this thing called the “state of flow”. I’ve seen a lot of personal development types talk about it. It is defined as:

“A mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”

This is a great state to be in. It is a state of action. It is a state of games. We’re getting things done and we are enjoying every minute of it.

The real keyword there, though, is FLOW. This is what we’ve been talking about here. Energy is meant to FLOW. Energy that doesn’t flow is just a charge, but the real magic happens when it FLOWS.

As we’ve talked about, our algorithmic view of things shows us that things FLOW when we have yes/no decisions and a process. It is why we make flow charts to guide through processes and guide us based on simple decision making. Funny how we call them FLOW charts, too.

What stops FLOW is the arbitrary. It isn’t a yes or a no. It is a… MAYBE.

Maybe’s are a stop. It is a halt. It is the opposite of a state of flow. A maybe is a blockage to your mental energy and instead of a flow, we get a built-up charge.

What then happens is that tasks back up. Our mind wanders. We begin to feel overwhelmed and confused. And it is all because we’ve parked off energy into these stuck charges.

Imagine if, for instance, that your mental capability could be divided into 100 units. If you can apply all 100 units of you toward something, magic can happen. But, as you leave these maybe’s stack up, each one begins to park off units of your mental capability as stuck. It is like having a computer process hang up until you have to use Task Manager to quit it. But, the more and more this happens, your mental bandwidth reduces. You have less of you to apply to things… because more of you is stuck in these hung-up processes.

What are some real-world things that represent these maybe and stuck processes? Well…

• Emails you keep your inbox because of an undone task, a decision unmade, etc. These emails can stack up to a point where your email inbox is literally a source of stress.
• Papers and junk all over your desk, each one kept there because you had some undone task or decision unmade and you put it off.
• Projects in your life which have halted because you came to the point of a decision and didn’t make it. So, it is hung up at that point.
• Closets packed full of junk you keep “just in case”

All this are real-world manifestations of MAYBE.

They’re stuck processes.

They’re not yes/no decisions anymore. There’s no state of flow there, just a stuck charge.

But, each time that happens, there’s a little part of YOU which gets stuck there, too.

You ARE energy. You are designed to FLOW. But, if you keep parking yourself off in these little maybe’s, you make yourself smaller.

And it sucks. Trust me, I’ve had days where I’ve been quite unproductive and I ended up wasting time on Facebook or something… all because there was some task that I was indecisive about and didn’t know which direction to go with it.

I got stuck on “maybe”.

So, what do we do about all this?

Tomorrow is Friday and I’m going to leave you with some action you can choose to take over the weekend. The exercise will free up some of your own mental capability and free up more of YOU. Because I want you to flow. I’m in the business of helping people like YOU build and grow an online business. And for that to happen, I need you to flow. Not get stuck in maybe’s.

I’ll leave you with how I started this thing off today, because now it might make more sense.

Yes or no leads to flow. Maybe messes the whole thing up.

So, with that, I’ll see ya tomorrow.

– David