Sometimes it's good to hurry

Sometimes the best way to stop stalling, deliberating, second-guessing or looking for the perfect choice is just to hurry up.  Rush things.  Make an artificial deadline.  Do it now.  

If your club needs to do a fundraiser, you could spend your entire meeting letting everyone make suggestions of what to do and still not have a decision at the end of it.  Or you split people up into groups and say, "Everyone has 15 minutes to come up with as many fundraising ideas as possible. We'll pick one before the meeting is over.  Go."

If you've got a snow day off from school, you could pretend that the project you have due next week is actually due tomorrow.  Jump in and do it.

Last month, my colleague Arun and I imagined how much we'd enjoy doing our college essay workshop at the annual NACAC conference, especially if we could recruit two particular admissions officers that we really admire to join us.  But we had that bright idea just 24 hours before the deadline to propose sessions.

That 24-hour looming deadline removed all of the opportunities to come up with excuses why we couldn't do it.  There was no time for writer's block or procrastination.  Arun went to work recruiting, I went to work writing, and 24 hours later, we proposed our dream session--with our dream team--to NACAC.

No idea if the the proposal will be accepted.  But the point is that we went from having a big idea to actually being done in just 24 hours, something we might never have pulled off if we didn't have to hurry. 

Being deliberate is a good thing.  But every now and then, it's good to hurry.