Invisible monkeys

They’re on our backs, and getting them off will unleash creativity | Andrée Seu

When my husband died and this kept woman was hired for her first paying job in 20 years, managing the café of a seminary, I felt anxious and insecure until my mother said the following: "Look at it this way, your goal is to make a decent sandwich."

Why was this so helpful? Why did it dispel the paralysis and release a burst of productive energy? Because it replaced amorphous anxiety with a concrete goal, a goal ("decent sandwich") from which I could mentally work backwards to list the steps toward its accomplishment.

If you have the same problem I have—walking around in a cloud of vaguely nagging uncompleted tasks—management consultant David Allen has suggestions for Getting Things Done. Look at the book as an elaboration of "doing the next thing," which, in its Christian application, involves acknowledging the following division of labor: Trust the loving and omniscient God to protect your life; you, attend to the next required action.