I Keep Planning The Restart

There are four plans.

One on paper, in the drawer. One in a notebook with the pages ruled into columns. One on a phone with dates attached to it, which is the most detailed of them. And one you made out loud in the car about three weeks ago, which was the best of the four and was never written down.

Every one of them is good. That is what makes this so hard to see clearly. These are not fantasies. They are sensible, workable, correctly sequenced plans made by somebody who understands the job.

And not one of them has been carried out by so much as a single step.

What is happening is that planning is producing the feeling that work produces. It takes concentration, it takes an hour, it produces something that did not exist before, and at the end of it there is a real sense of having moved.

So the appetite gets satisfied and the room stays exactly as it is, and three weeks later the appetite comes back and another plan gets made, because planning is the thing that has been feeding it.

You are a woman with real work in her hands tonight, and four plans on paper have never once been the same as one thing done.

In all labor there is profit

There is a proverb that sets two activities side by side and reports what each one produces.

In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury. (Proverbs 14:23, King James Version)

In all labor there is profit.

Start with the word all, because all is the word that matters most here. Not in great labor. Not in finished labor. In all of it, which includes twelve minutes, which includes one shelf, which includes work that stops before anything is complete.

That is an unusually generous accounting standard and it is the first thing to take from this verse.

You have an accounting where every amount of work counts, and a small piece of labor has never once been rounded down to nothing. Proverbs 14:23 says in all labor, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that word all a real thing in an ordinary evening.

And then the second half, and it needs handling carefully, because it can be read as a slap and it is not one.

The talk of the lips tendeth only to penury. That is a comparison of outputs. It is not a verdict on a person who talks. It reports what each activity produces, the way somebody might observe that one seed grows and another does not.

You were never being called a talker, and a proverb comparing two outputs has never once been a proverb about anybody's worth. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a comparison from turning into an accusation, and Proverbs 14:23 describes what activities yield rather than what people are.

The plan is a real thing that is not the thing

So here is the practical claim, and it is worth being precise.

Planning is not the enemy. A job with no plan at all goes badly and people on this site are not being told to stop thinking.

The issue is that in this house the planning is complete and the labor has not started, and a fifth plan will not fix a shortage that is not a shortage of plans.

You have no shortage of thinking in that room, and another good plan has never once been the thing that was missing. Proverbs 14:23 sets labor and talk beside each other and reports the yields, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person which of the two they are actually short of.

And here is why planning keeps winning, and it is not a character flaw.

Planning is safe and it is comfortable and it can be done sitting down at nine in the evening with a cup of tea. Labor cannot. Labor requires standing up, going into a room, and doing something that might go badly.

The two things are not competing fairly. Of course the plan wins. It wins every week.

You are choosing between two things that were never evenly matched, and a plan winning at nine at night has never once been a sign of anything about you. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when a woman stands up instead, and the written word puts all labor on the profitable side, which includes the labor that happens badly and briefly.

And one more, because there is a specific mercy in the word all.

You have permission for the smallest possible amount, and twelve minutes of doing has never once fallen below the line where it starts to count. Proverbs 14:23 says all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an inadequate looking amount of work into something with profit in it.

One physical thing before another word gets written

Here is the assignment and it is an ordering rule.

Do one physical thing on the project before you write anything else down about it.

That is the whole instruction. Not never plan again. Not throw the notebook away. Just this: nothing else goes on paper until something has happened in the room.

You have one physical thing available tonight, and an ordering rule has never once been the same as a ban on thinking. Proverbs 14:23 puts all labor on the side of profit, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room while a woman does one thing with her hands.

Pick the most physical item on any of the four plans. The one that involves lifting, or painting, or screwing, or carrying. Not the one that involves deciding, and not the one that involves measuring, because measuring is planning wearing overalls.

Do it. It might take eight minutes. It might take half an hour. The size is not the point and the doing is.

And then, afterward, if you want to write something down, write it down. The rule is about order and not about prohibition. Something in the room first. Paper second.