Good Morning,
I remember a scene from the movie Space Cowboys when Tommy Lee Jones’ character Hawk Hawkins talked about the SR71 Blackbird spy plane. That when it starts it leaks fuel and liquids and as it takes off and picks up speed, the friction created by the air hitting the plane causes it to heat up and the leaks seal tight as a drum.
This made me think about how I go about life. I look at the SR71 in flight, everything working together, smoothly and efficiently. My focus is there, but what I often miss is the leaks and the messes around me when I first get started. That is, my focus is on the end result instead of what is often happening right around me.
In the Blackbird analogy the leaks are a necessary factor to achieve the end result, but in life, there are times that the things we overlook or miss can cause us problems which then end up precluding us from achieving our goals.
When we overlook, or worse, ignore the situations or events surrounding us because we are looking off to a distant goal, we can cause ourselves a lot of frustrations. We forget to file a document or follow up with a task and when we start to do something we mean to do, we have to stop and take care of what we forgot or left undone, and then we can get sidetracked from there.
For example, I was cleaning out a gutter on my house last week. I started in the middle where I often noticed water coming over the side of the gutter. Then I moved to the downspout and cleaned that out. Then I started cleaning other areas of the gutter in no specific manner and soon realized that I would have to re-clean some of them due to the way the standing water would deposit dirt after I cleaned. I could ignore this and just keep cleaning and then have to re-clean, or I could accept this fact and re-focus my efforts on being efficient. The first gutter, which I just haphazardly cleaned, took me 45 minutes. The second, which I attacked efficiently took me 20 minutes with the same results.
Our plans can get all bollixed up due to having to step back and take care of something we missed or ignored, and that can send the entire day off track, losing more time than just 25 minutes. Also, things we ignore can grow and get worse if ignored.
A former boss of mine once said that we should tackle problems when they are small, and before they become huge. For example, if there is a personal issue that will take you a day to resolve, do it soon, rather than waiting a few months and then having to take a week to solve the same problem that has festered and become more complicated.
This can apply to pretty much any area of our lives, and often the resolution of these matters is totally within our ability to resolve them.
We can live life with blinders on, but we should also take a look beyond the blinders to make sure what we are missing is okay to miss or if it will cause us further problems.
I would much rather be flying high in the Blackbird, then wasting a few days in the repair shop.
Enjoy!
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