After a French Minister recently advised French people to Think Less and Work More (I guess she meant over analyzing), I remembered an old French expression ‘couper les cheveux en quatre’ (or ‘splitting hairs in four’ en anglais).
It seems the same can be said when we have a new idea, business plan or just want to change things around.
We can be paralyzed (by fear) if we try to have every dot and detail jotted down before springing into action.
A better way to get moving would be to start with a sketch like a painter and move on and create and fix the kinks as we move along.
This theme is echoed in Dick Costolo two wheel metaphor: "The key is to just get on the bike, and the key to getting on the bike
is not the confidence in knowing you will be successful if you do
x,y,z. The key to getting on the bike is to stop thinking about "there
are a bunch of reasons i might fall off" and just hop on and peddle the
damned thing. You can pick up a map, a tire pump, and better footwear
along the way."
and also by Ahmed Bilal with Get Started Already!
In her book One Person/ Multiple Careers, Marci Alboher quotes Carrie Lane, a Pilates instructor/ Art consultant as saying "I tend not to think too hard about things I want to do, I usually just move forward and then worry about how to deal with it later".
So is it just a French thing?
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