Morpho Designs

Hello world!

Functional Inertia

One of the biggest problems I have is something I’m going to call functional inertia (FI).
This mental affliction shows up as one or more of the following symptoms:

• excuses
• procrastination
• indecision
• perfectionism
• analysis paralysis

Whenever one of these is polluting my mind, very little is accomplished. FI is a small pebble that, if left unturned, grows by accretion into a large boulder, blocking me from completing even routine tasks.

Since I don’t have a lot of money for a business coach or yet another self-help book that I never seem to get around to reading, I’m going to start my own treatment for FI. If it works, then I can share it with the world!

You can follow along as I chronicle this process. If any of this sounds like something for which you know the cure, feel free to comment and point me in the right direction.

Day 1: Where is Your Blog?
Symptoms: excuses, procrastination, perfectionism

My excuse had been that I was too busy with my clients’ blogs, developing websites and marketing to work on my blog.
I procrastinated because I wanted the blog to spring forth full-blown, with lots of content pre-loaded, so to speak.
The perfectionist in me wanted the blog categories to be established, the layout to match the website and the RSS feeds to be established.

Of the three symptoms, the easiest to treat is excuses. So, here I am, writing in my blog. Procrastination obviously gets treated at the same time, but its root cause is still nagging at me.
It seems that indecision, another symptom of FI, is also the underlying cause for the procrastination: I wasn’t sure what kind of “face” to put on my blog.
I couldn’t decide whether to teach, build relationships, chat or sell.

So, in tackling the root of procrastination, I decided to focus on teaching. I have loads of stories to tell.
There are lessons in reading about the experiences of others. In addition, I have about a dozen website critiques that I can share.
This would be good for newer webmasters and do-it-yourself marketers, as I had found a bit of repetition in each of the critiques.
Finally, I have learned that if you help enough people get what they want, you’ll get what you want. This is so fundamentally true, I can’t believe I veered off-course while contemplating the creation of my blog. Tsk-tsk.

The final symptom, perfectionism, is going to be the toughest symptom to treat. The medicine for today is called go with the flow. Nopody’s berfect, so I may as well just stop trying.
I can strive to be as clear and concise as I can.
I can work on being as creative as possible, dipping from a wonderful well of inspiration.
I can look for ways to improve weaknesses without holding back until they’ve all been eradicated.

So, there it is. Hello, world.