📍 Coordinates: Buenos Aires, Argentina. 🇦🇷
📖 Reading Time: ~4 minutes.
🪬 Vibecheck: Today is the FINAL DAY to join the HERO100. Doors close tonight. An incredible group has come together for this adventure. It’s not too late to take the leap, and make the decision that makes the difference. 💯
“To plash is to depart, leaving your work unfinished.”
I stumbled across this long-discarded English word and it was love at first sight…
There’s something aesthetically and conceptually pleasing about words. Finding a term that so elegantly describes a complex set of actions and variables. *chefs kiss* 🤌🏻
Oh, how I and the people I know succumb to plashing daily. For many, it’s their default mode of operating.
Some are expert plashers. Leaving strewn behind them a trail of half-assed projects and long-forgotten dreams, almost as if their stated goal was to see how many things could be started and then quickly dropped.
Endless lists, sticky notes, ideas, dreams, and commitments are left for dead in the endless pursuit of the Current Thing, the next shiny object, the favourite distraction.
If this sounds like you, there are a few main reasons it happens:
1. It was too big of a task; you need to break it down.
That major project staring you down from your bucket list is too daunting as a single line item.
“Write a book” is a huge undertaking, far greater than a single session. And frankly, it’s overwhelming. Your mind and body do their best to protect you from being overwhelmed, thus you plash your way along.
The antidote is to learn the practice of breaking things down. “Spend 20 minutes researching this topic.” “Write a skeleton outline.” “Write 500 words.” All of these are much more approachable, unlikely to succumb to resistance, and exponentially more likely to find their way into your week and be seen through to completion. One of your tasks can be chunking it down into smaller tasks.
I’ll give an example and let you in on a little secret: I never write from a blank page.
It’s so cliché you see it in movies: the struggling writer, staring down their most fearsome opponent: the blank page. The cursor blinks ominously, like a demon taunting them.
The antidote? An outline. This post you’re reading now was first:
Introduce PLASH
Reason 1
Reason 2
Reason 3
Close
Extremely basic. But now I have things on the page, and all I need to do is fill in those bullet points, and voilá!
2. It was never worth doing in the first place, and you know it.
There are innumerable commitments, tasks, projects, and undertakings that find their way into our consciousness mostly because “someone said I should do this,” “this is what a good team member does,” or “I may as well try this.”
None of these are compelling. None of those are your dharma, your unique calling in this earthly existence. At some level, you recognize the futility and uselessness of this task, and it creates an insurmountable motivational blackhole. Thus, it’s written down, pecked at a bit, but then discarded, forgotten, and plashed.
Most of modern life is busy nonsense. Trivial pursuits of mindless hobbies, distracting entertainment, and productive procrastination.
This is a blessing in disguise: a doorway into letting go of the mind-numbing nonsense, to make space for the truly significant to arise. The antidote here is to allow yourself to have more space, contemplate more, and sense the things that are truly exciting you.
3. You need to build the muscle of single-tasking to completion.
The Art of Focus is a skill that can be developed.
Instead of getting lost in self-deprecating stories—“I can’t do this,” “I’m not cut out for this work,” or “there’s something fundamentally wrong with me,” (self-diagnosed ADHD’ers, I’m looking at you!)—you can frame this as an opportunity to build a skill.
Just like going to the gym: you make beginner gains quickly and then grow your strength over time. It doesn’t matter what you do to build this muscle, so long as you set the intention to complete the task, with as much presence as you can muster, and see it through to completion.
“Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.”
Fortunately, the skill of presence and full completion is one of many meta-skills that arise naturally in the HERO100.
When you commit to the 6 disciplines, an obstacle many face is learning how to enjoy the process, cultivate presence in each discipline, and see them through to completion each day.
The 6 disciplines we have included are incredible on their own, with millennia of transformational power behind them. But it’s these meta-skills: intentionality, presence, commitment, overcoming perfectionism & plashing, that truly excite me.
They can be taken into any endeavour in your life. Whatever you do, whoever you are – your life becomes more rich, inspiring, and important with these meta-skills in hand.
Today is the FINAL DAY to join us on this adventure.
If you want to overcome plashing, perfectionism, self-doubt, negative narratives, lack of momentum – this is your moment.
If you want to unlock focus, intentionality, confidence, unconditional positive self-regard, massive momentum, and inspired action – this is your sign.
We begin on SUNDAY.
You can use ‘SERIOUSPLAY’ to join the same tribe as me and many others as we do this together.
Stop plashing around. 💛 EB.