The Year I Spent Avoiding a Two-Day Task 😅

Ever delay something so long that it became bigger than it really was? Here’s what one dusty shelf project taught me about momentum, emotional avoidance, mental tax, and starting before you’re ready.

Last year, I decided to build some shelves in my wife's walk-in closet. I was excited to get started. I drew up the plans, bought the wood. I measured twice and cut once. I painted the shelves in my hot garage. Everything was ready...and then nothing happened for a year.

I hit a mental block, and the shelves sat in the garage collecting dust for a year.

My mind took a simple task and exponentially increased the difficulty of completing it. I just couldn't get myself to work on the project.

Each time my wife asked about the shelves, I would make the same excuse of not having the time or energy. I had built up the task in my head so much that its weight felt like a mountain weighing me down, keeping me stuck in the same story.

That was until last week when I decided to stop the excuses and finally get moving.

As I started building the shelves, I reconnected with the joy of making things by hand, which is what got me started on this project a year ago.

The shelves sat in the garage for 365 days. The work took two evenings!

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we turn small projects into year-long headaches?

Here are a few insights I learned from this experience:

• Don't believe everything you think - Your mind can turn simple tasks into mountains. The only way to see the truth is to start climbing.

• Momentum builds confidence - You don't need to finish everything at once. Start small because action builds the desire to keep going.

• Emotional avoidance disguised as “lack of time” - The story we keep building in our minds might be a cover for something else, like fear of making mistakes or not reaching other people's standards.

• Mental tax is real - Every day, the unfinished task sits in our minds, quietly draining our mental energy and adding low-level stress.

• Practice compounds - Start on smaller projects to build up your skills and confidence, and once you're warmed up, roll straight into the bigger projects before your "practice energy" cools off.

• Reframe the project as play - How we frame something in our minds affects how we perceive it and how we take action on it. By reframing a task as play or an experiment, we can bypass the resistance we would have faced.

We all have our own ‘shelves in the garage’,

that email we haven’t sent,

the box we haven’t unpacked,

the book we haven’t finished.

Your Turn

Do you have a project or task you have been putting off?

Try this:

• Lower your expectations - Commit to starting on one tiny piece. It doesn't even matter if you finish it on the first go.

• Treat it as an experiment, not an obligation - Take the pressure off and see it as a learning opportunity

• Once you're in motion

Your own "shelf-project" might not need more time, energy, skill, money, space, information, or anything else that is weighing you down.

It might just need you to take the first small step.

May curiosity be your guide ✊🏽