u/YOLOdollhair

I constantly find myself unable to start something unless conditions are perfect. It's noticeable in my personal and work life and I feel like it's seriously affecting me and preventing me from getting things done or even enjoying my hobbies.

At work I'll think about a design for a new project we're working on, but I'm hesitant to start unless up against a deadline. I need to research materials, mounting mechanisms, how to make the perfect engineering drawing for that specific assembly, etc. I won't have the complete picture and I won't start. Instead I'll start researching stuff irrelevant to the project. Different designs and ideas, how to solve a problem we're having in the machine shop, how to improve x process in the shop.

I actually really noticed it yesterday while attempting to enjoy one of my hobbies (flight simulator). I made a spreadsheet outlining things I want to learn and focus on during my flights, almost like a private pilot curriculum and have been flying and going through it. Yesterday I hopped on late at night, so it was dark in the sim and there was inclement weather. I can't fly because I haven't gotten to the night section and the weather was crappy.

I'm in a god damn simulator for Christ's sake. I can change the time to daylight and modify the weather to be more favorable. But my brain is set on progressing down this ideal path I have set in my head and if conditions aren't how I envision this path, I won't start. I ended up just researching procedures and weather and dove into some chart reading and planning future flights.

It's incredibly frustrating because it's affecting a lot of what I want to do outside of work and how I enjoy my free time. My work at work gets done, but only because there are deadlines and delivery dates to meet.

What's funny is I feel like there have been periods in my life where I don't hold myself back and just dive head first into things. The last few months I've been in this slump of not doing.

Where do I begin with breaking down this mental barrier and getting back to executing and enjoying work and my hobbies?

I'm currently responsible for overseeing a few large projects for my organization. We're a mom and pop shop, so I wear many hats and deal with many facets of the organization. Our projects are separated into programs by customer and within each program there can be dozens of projects that may involve several dozen to a hundred tasks. The logical solution is hiring more people, but we're doing that on the manufacturing side and unfortunately it's not helping. That's a management problem for another day.

I'm utilizing Todoist (which also includes my laundry list of personal projects), Favro (beefed up version of Trello), excel spreadsheets, and word documents. I've gotten to a point where there is just too much scattered everywhere. I'm forgetting where spreadsheets are or that we've made one in the past but it has forgotten about because we didn't use it like it was intended. I'm double tracking tasks in Favro and excel because at least in excel they'll be visible when I go to re-use the document and I don't have to go searching in an archive for individual cards.

I'm tired and overwhelmed and I need a reset. I need a better system.

I'm managing the documents and tools more than I'm managing the projects. I don't have a clear framework for processing incoming tasks and planning forward.

My current system is a slightly modified GTD framework, but I'm struggling sticking to it because I'm either overwhelmed or desperate to try new things (shiny object syndrome).

I've been thinking of doing a digital detox and just getting a notebook, but that seems like a project in and of itself to get started with how much is on my plate at the moment.

I read somewhere a while ago about how leaders/managers struggle with separating personal task management with overall operational visibility. I think that's the shift I need.

Are there any good example or resources that dive into the framework of a project management/tasks system on the lower and higher levels?