JPhoto by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash

Member-only story

You Need to Ask This One Question at the Start of Every New Project.

Five words from Charlie Gilkey can change everything.

Gray Miller
5 min readFeb 7, 2022

--

Do you overcomplicate your life for no particularly good reason, or is it just me?

I’m getting better; I’m learning not to multitask, learning not to overschedule my days, learned not to try and learn a brand new personal knowledge management system at the same time that I start a new job and buy a house.

That was January of 2020. Won’t do that again.

At least, I’ll try not to. But it is kind of like a slippery slope: hey, this note-taking system seems nifty, I should try it out. Oh, they say this new app is the best one to use for it, I should learn that. Hey, I bet I’d look smart at my new job if I used it there! Wow, now I can finally afford to buy a house — we should do that right away!

Every step seems logical, necessary, reasonable — and then I find myself in a room full of boxes trying to host a board meeting with notes lost in one of a dozen databases called “PROJECTS.”

That’s just one example; if I asked my friends and loved ones they could probably give you many more. It’s a known issue, but I think I’ve found at least a temporary workaround to fix the tragic bug in my personality:

--

--

Gray Miller
Gray Miller

Written by Gray Miller

Gray is a former Marine dancer grandpa visualist who writes to help adults figure out what they want to be when they grow up.

No responses yet