Think without doing or do without thinking

My renovation presents all sorts of delightful philosophical challenges. One of those is about finding a balance between doing and thinking. In theory, when you start a project, you go through a planning phase and start doing it. And the better the planning, the better the result. But that’s just theory. In practice, you’d be a fool not to adjust your plans as you progress.

My most successful endeavours always started out as rough ideas, which would develop into concepts while I worked on them, like inventing brakes while driving the car. Sometimes that’s not possible, and you need to plan. When you’re about to travel abroad, you have to pack a whole bag of clothing, it isn't easy to quickly return home and fetch your underwear.

The advantage of building a house yourself is that you can decide many things much later on. I've installed ceiling lights all over the house, but none are fixed yet. And it is very cool to adjust and move them while living here. 

Usually, you decide those things based on a drawing before construction begins. Then you later regret not adding an extra light in the hallway once the whole thing is done. My hallway doesn’t have a ceiling yet, so the lights hang from their power sockets, and I re-arrange them every other day until they’re perfect. Still, some planning needs to be done, and I know things improve if I think about them some more. I keep quoting Benjamin Franklin, who famously said, “If I have 8 hours to cut down a tree, I’ll spend 7 hours sharpening my axe.”

Thorough preparation saves you tons of energy and time. But, there are lots of jobs that need to be done where I noticed I’m stalling, evading, and telling myself, “Maybe there’s a more efficient way to do this,” and there either isn’t or getting the more efficient tool really would make the whole process last longer. Those are the moments I have to tell myself: quit stalling and sharpening your axe and just cut down the damn tree already.

Benjamin Franklin was right unless he was wrong. And that’s the lesson for today.

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten Founder, TNW

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