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A week… on and off. That’s how long I tried to get our Anchor Podcast streamed to our WordPress site in a way that each episode would have its own page. I stop trying now, it’s been enough. This has kept me from what I set out to do for too long.
You know, I wanted this to work so badly. Why? Yes, why was it so important?
I’ll tell you: I created a very beautiful Podcast overview page. And I was so proud of it, that the single episode pages had to look decent at a minimum. But they didn’t, at least not without manually downloading, uploading, adding and tweaking each episode.
Anyways. I know it should work. I checked blogs, YouTube video’s and tried a couple plugins. But it never really acted or looked the way I wanted it to.
Granted, a couple of weeks ago, when trying to create that overview page that now looks so beautiful, I did mess up the templates that came with one of the plugins.
Probably, if I would be able to download those templates again, my problem would be solved 🙂
To my recollection I used this ‘Stop Trying’ approach for the first time, when we talked about moving back to Belgium in 2012.
You see, 14 years prior we moved to Fryslân (the north of The Netherlands) for a two year assignment for our company (EDS). Both our children were born there, we had a house and our animals.
With the collapse of the house market in The Netherlands (due to the banking crisis and European regulations that heavily affected the Dutch tax deduction and thus the mortgage market) timing didn’t seem ideal for such a decision. All kind of scenario’s of things that could go wrong, crossed our minds. For each of them we were able to find a workaround or a solution. Once we realized this, we stopped trying to find things that could go wrong, we stopped worrying.
Instead we started to look at our future and the things that could go right!
Whatever would come our way, we would be able to deal with it!
And we did: The worst case scenario did happen. We had to pay heavy taxes in both countries, the house wasn’t sold for another 5 years and when it finally did, it left us with a huge dept. But we were right, we are able to deal with that. The decision to stop trying to find answers was the right one, as was our move back to our home country.
My memory is rather good, most of the time I easily find information and I know my way around many tools and applications rather easily. My whole career people have realized this and found me every time they were looking for something or needed help with certain apps or tools. When I think I should know something or be able to find the solution, it’s hard for me to stop. Sometimes at the expense of my own work.
So I started implementing time constraints in certain situations. I would for instance say: “I will look for 15 minutes. If I haven’t found it in that time, I will stop looking and you will need to find the solution elsewhere.
This has saved me multiple times and I still use that technique for myself too. So, when I realized my search for a solution to the podcast streaming issue wouldn’t be solved easily after all the time I invested, I decided to stop trying. For now, we will link to our Anchor.fm page in the menu instead of to my beautiful Podcast overview page. At least you can admire it via the picture I added to this article 😉
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Know when to stop. Worrying doesn’t bring you anywhere. Trust that you will always find a solution and when investing time in something, it might be a good idea to allocate a fixed amount of time before you start. This should help you stay your course.
Let me know if you found value in this article and while you are here, let me invite you to listen and follow our Podcast: ‘Designing our Life’. You can find us on the major Podcast Channels or via this link.
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