“Four times a day? It’s impossible! How can I remember it?” I complained to the eye doctor who prescribed the eye drops to me.
“do you eat meals? 3 meals plus the bedtime, that’s 4 times.” He said quickly, unmoved by my complaint.
“But I don’t normally have breakfast.” I persisted.
“When you drink coffee in the morning, that’s the time to have the drops.” He added.
“I drink milk. Well, I guess I can do it after the milk.” I suddenly see the light.
“What do you have for lunch?” The doctor asked matter-of-factly.
“I sometimes have a bagel …” My voice trailed in thought, and was interrupted by his, “Then have the eye drop after the bagel. What do you have for dinner?” “anything…” “Then have another eye drop after anything.”
In the end, I see that I have no excuse but doing it 4 times a day.
I learned the power of specifics. When you create concrete actions, you have no choice but doing it. When we are stuck with grand but complex task, we need to quickly move into specifics. What are the specific difficulties? What needs to be done for the next step? By getting to specifics, we create easy actions. We will no longer be stuck.
The second thing I learned is that there is no excuse. All excuses are just ways of not taking actions. For every excuse there is a solution. We have no choice but find such a solution and remove every excuse.
