I had a test on my “People of Action” concept this weekend and it wasn’t until I was halfway through the solution that I realized what a test it was. It was Saturday morning and I was getting ready to do some wood work in the garage. The previously sunny morning had started to cloud over and there was an ominous looking bank of clouds heading my way. My biggest concern, however, was right outside my garage door. My front lawn.

I’m not a big fan of mowing but I don’t want to have the worst looking lawn in the neighborhood so I tend to mow it weekly. Often, my neighbors mow their lawn before I plan on mowing mine and so it becomes much more obvious that I need to mow mine. Basically there is a line between our properties of mown lawn. I joke that we all aught to agree on a day to mow so no one’s lawn looks bad.

So looking at my lawn I see that it looks shaggy and sure enough both of my neighbors mowed theirs a couple of days earlier. The final issue is that we have been getting a lot of rain lately, which messes up my mowing schedule and causes the grass to grow faster. So I’m looking at the grass and I’m looking at the ominous clouds.

I’m trying to decide should I mow or not. More specifically can I mow the front lawn before the rain comes? It typically takes me 20 minutes to mow it and I can see lightning in the storm clouds to the west. My wife and kids are playing out front and I ask her what she thinks, but she is as undecided as I am. Truthfully I don’t want to mow but who knows when the grass will dry out enough to mow. Likely it will be days and I don’t want a shaggy lawn for that long.

I wallow in indecision a little bit longer before I finally make a decision. I’ll just mow the stupid lawn and hope the storm doesn’t come while I’m halfway done. So I fire up the mower and get to work. As I’m mowing I wonder if the time I spent trying to decide whether or not to mow would make the difference between beating the rain or not. How ironic if the very decision I wanted to make causes the failure result I was most afraid of.

At that point I reminded myself that I was a “Person of Action” and there should not have been a decision to make at all. I should have seen the need and taken action. If it started raining before I was finished, then the lawn would be half-mowed. That was the worse case scenario (assuming I did not get struck by lightning). If I succeeded, I wouldn’t have to worry about the lawn for another week. Instead, I spent about 15 minutes puttering around trying to make a decision.

I hope in the future, when I’m confronted with a similar issue, I remember I’m a “Person of Action” and I act rather than look for excuses and not make a decision. Analysis paralysis does not lead me to my ideal balanced life.

Oh yeah, I finished the front lawn with only a few minutes to spare before the rain came.