You Know What You Need To Do

11 Jul, 2024

I don't like to use the word "should".

I feel it's really hard to tell someone what they should do. There's so much nuance in every situation and so many factors to take account of that I almost never suggest what anyone should do.¹

However, when I find that I am trying to think of how I need to accomplish something, it's almost never the case that I don't know what I need to do to accomplish it. That's a very broad statement so let me try to make it more specific.

If I have a goal in mind, I might not know each small step that I need to take but I at least know the big steps. And since I know the big steps, I can research the smaller steps I need to take to do those bigger steps. I may not know right now everything exactly that I need to do, but I have everything I need to get started.

There have been times when I have to make a decision between a few things. Maybe some options are easier than others. Maybe some options require more work than others. My argument is that I actually know what I need to do to get what I want done. Every time I've made a decision and taken the easy way out, I know that it's not what I need to do. It's not what I should have done to get the thing that I want done. Sometimes the easier or more desireable paths end up working, but not as well as what you knew you needed to do.

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