thinking vs doing
DATE OF ENTRY: 3-7-25
“Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.”
It’s an interesting quote because we could consider that rushing into action is just as much rooted in fear…fear of genuine change.
100% yes, eventually you have to start doing something in order to know if what you are thinking is going to work.
But here’s the rub when it comes to genuine change.
Up until the point at which you may decide that something needs to change, you are an “expert mind” in whatever you’ve chosen to do up to that point….the point now being that you need to change something because something is not working out.
Here’s precisely where efforts to change fail right from the beginning.
First a clarification of “expert.” We are not referring to the idea of someone who has studied something at length and can speak or write about it to no end. We are referring to the fact that whatever you currently do as a process, you practice your own form of expertise in that process. You know it so well that you largely do it subconsciously.
Keep in mind that “expertise” in the current system is rooted in people being able to readily recall the best practices, norms, and conventions of a particular segment of life and work.
As “experts” we tend to posses a limited set of things we believe in, have thought about, and tried in the past to fix problems or mitigate certain symptoms. If we leap into taking action, we are likely to attempt to repeat something that’s currently not working (why we need to change it) and try to make it work better. This starts the problem solving mindset cycle.
The issue is that the expert mind often does not rise to the challenge of change because change is about doing the new things (that are currently uncertain and unproven) that avoid creating the current problems or symptoms, not simply try to make them look better.
I did this for 15+ years…leapt in with a best practice, norm, or convention about project and change management in an inherently complex change situation. The leaping into action with my expert mind under the guise of change kept me stuck for the larger part of the past two decades. The additional point is that although I was studying other approaches to change in my own time, when I returned to the system with these ideas, the inertia of expertise washed out any effort to change how the work got done from that point forward.
If we look around, we see expertise being relied upon for almost every problem or symptom, yet the problems and symptoms that existed for many years still persist…or have worsened over time.
It’s the breakdown in believing that the best way to pursue genuine change is the expert mind vs the Beginner’s Mindset.
I only stopped this downward spiraling cycle on a personal level by consciously stepping away from that inertia in order to more fully immerse my thinking in the stronger change philosophies.
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The Beginner’s Mindset vs the expert mind is a great way to make this dichotomy more obvious.
If you step away from the inertia of your expertise for a bit, whatever you may practice it in, you would not know what action to take. You would have to pause to think about your past context and conditions, what you wanted to change about it, and then imagine new perspectives and experiments for discovering a new way forward….a genuinely changed way forward.
You’ll have to start from the Beginner’s Mindset of having no clear idea what to do differently….and that would be fine and the correct thing to do for genuine change…because change is about starting the process of doing completely new things that you can’t be sure will be the right things to do going forward.
The transition (liminal space) between the expert mind and the Beginner’s Mindset is a decision and event that forces a pause and a lingering in order to create some space for thinking before leaping into doing (to avoid likely repeating a past mistake.)
Yes, for change you also have to start doing something to know whether or not you are doing the right thing. But it starts with doing the new and uncertain right thing a bit wrong at first, as you work to get it more right with practice and learning.
END OF ENTRY
