Six hours and two trips to Lowes

Colleagues,
​
Earlier this week I listed out my major projects, but I forgot to mention one: rewiring the patio lights. We have a patio on the far side of our yard and the wiring was disconnected when we replaced our deck last spring.
 
Essentially, all I needed to do was splice two wires together. Unfortunately, to do that I needed to run a 20’ section of wire underneath the deck and then up and into an outlet on the outside of the house. I budgeted four hours, which began, as all projects do, with a trip to Lowes.
 
Six hours (and another trip to Lowes for a 33-cent part) later, I turned the power back on. That was good because by then it was dark.
 
I knew exactly what had to be done for each step of this project. I doubled my estimate of how long it would take me, and I was still wrong! That’s the way change is. We can know exactly what to do, but it still takes twice as long and is twice as hard as we thought it would be.
 
This is why I advocate an incremental approach. If you initiate a small change and it takes one week instead of two, you haven’t really put yourself in a bad situation. If you plan a six-month change and it takes a year, that’s a bigger problem.
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick