There’s a great chapter in The Obstacle is the Way on process. When dealing with big, challenging work, the big picture matters at times, but most of the time, it’s best focus on the small, doable pieces of work in front of you rather than getting lost in the what if’s of the big picture.
In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way. It says: Okay, you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize.
This is of course simple advice but hard to follow every day. I’ve found though that the key to making this work is to keep your thoughts and your workspace organized. When we leave tasks and projects ambiguous. When we haven’t done the work to organize their component parts, it’s easy to avoid them for the big, confusing ideas they currently are. But taking the time to organize your thoughts around them. To plan “if it could be done, here’s what I’d do first”, it has a way of disarming the work of the ambiguity that causes us to fear and avoid it. Instead, we transform the work into a set of steps, akin to a cooking recipe.
Good organization, both in how you think about problems, and in how you physically organize the work that needs doing (especially when it requires other people), is one of the best bets you can make to tackling the problems that really matter, and tackling them well.