Do, More Than Study

I tend to want to learn it all, right now. I pick a hobby-du-jour and go out to find all the websites and all the books I can on it, and read like mad, to try to learn as much as I can as fast as I can.

This time around with photography has been different, though. I spent the first month doing nothing but take pictures, reading very few webpages, and no books. I have questions, to be sure, but I'm letting them simmer. And after the first month, instead of running back to study-mode, I decided to just expand a little bit, from "just taking pictures" to planning a little bit more of what I'm going to take, (in some cases by trying to copy the ideas I find in others' photos), and leaving the study for after Christmas (when perhaps I'll get some gift certs for some books, hint hint).

And what I'm finding is that as I'm doing, I'm building up some much more meaningful frameworks in my mind, making some of my early questions fade away as irrelevant, and causing others to become much more well defined. This way, (mind you, I'm guessing here) when I do go hit the books, what they're saying will have some nice, appropriate mental structures to fall into, rather than under my old system, where I throw everything at a wall and hope some of it will stick.

I'm so very curious how this experiment will turn out, that I'm quite enthused to leave the books shut for now. (I'll keep ya posted...)

The Tyranny of Lists

I've noticed a pattern with me and lists. If I have a bunch of things to do, I'll make a list. So far, so good. It helps me get it all out of my head, so I'm not spending so much energy trying to remember things, and gives me that energy to focus on doing.

But then I'll do the first things (i.e. the most interesting things) on the list, and the remainder will sit idle for weeks/months/until I lose the list. I've noticed that the longer it sits on the list, regardless of how worthwhile it is, the less I want to do it, (or perhaps, the more I feel like I'm being nagged by it).

So I'm trying something new. First thing in the morning, I'm making a list of what I want to do that day. If there's something truly important that doesn't get done, it can be carried over to the next day, otherwise I just erase the list at day's end, and start over. So far, it's been great to have a fresh start every day, and it's been nice to spend a few minutes thinking about what I really want to do with the day.

Tools are meant to serve us, not us serve them. Harumph!