Nothing ever happens without a decision. The decision is the catalyst. But it’s a bit like the difference between a passive sentence and an active sentence. One has the idea but the other has the action required to make it come alive. It’s a case of getting rid of the verbiage and concentrating on the verb—the small but mighty part where the ‘to do’ comes in.

I’ve been away from gym for a considerabe time because I chose to let it slide due to work commitments. I had previously made the decision to be the sort of person who exercised at least a certain amount, which is why I started going to the gym for small workouts  two years ago. Today, I am making the decision to go back after a time away. Decision or no, it will never happen unless I get my verbs up to speed. Dress. Pack water and  gym tag. Leave. Drive to gym. Do what you went there to do. The decision itself is just so much hot air unless I pair a verb—or a number of verbs—with it.

I have noticed that there are two verbs—’doing’ steps—which are more important than all the other steps that go into making this decision active. They’re the ones which are the main sticking points if I let other things get in their way: Getting dressed in appropriate clothes and getting out the door.  So for me, they’re the two on which the entire operation rests. Once I’m out the door, the rest of the sequence falls into place without any great effort on my part, because of the momentum which has already been created.

So it’s not just a thought. It’s a number of small steps, of which two are key. The knack is to find, whatever the subject of your decision, which couple of steps are the ones most likely to put you on the path to success.

This is all very simple stuff, but it can help to look at the process if you have trouble with follow-through. Perhaps it’s a case of (to paraphrase George Orwell), all steps are equal, but some are more equal than others.

It seems that life gets in the way of our hopes and dreams. We are so busy just doing the tasks in front of us that we don’t get to the things that are really important to us. Sometimes those things that might have been important once lose their urgency and inherent energy and we wonder why we even wanted to do them in the first place. Or dared to think we were good enough for such an undertaking.

I think this can be a danger sign. If we thought, once, that it was something we wanted to do, perhaps we have simply ignored it long enough that its unique energy has dissipated and what’s left is only a cold husk of our initial passion or idea.

This happens to me. I think I might like to do something but there are so many other jobs that need completing that I put the thing I want to do on the backburner. Yet when I have time to do it. the passion has gone. The energy is no longer there. This has happened many times in my life but it is only now that I am questioning it. Is it that I talk myself out of it once the initial flush of enthusiasm is gone? Do I need to make a start when the thought is new? Am I simply fickle? If it is something worthwhile for my life, how do I get my enthusiasm back? What is the first step that I need to take?

These are all good questions. Is there a way to get that enthusiasm to return? To re-ignite the passion? Can you take an old idea and somehow infuse it with the just-born newness it had when you first met it? And if you can, the next question is a simple one. How?

Ah, the futility of it all. Of knowing that I keep sliding down that slippery slope only to do the same 10 hard yards all over agian. Or 10kg. Or whatever.

That’s why I said way back at the start that it has to be a paradigm shift. A new mindset. But perhaps it’s a mind-body thing. They both have to be ready. No, the body is always ready for something better to be fed into it. It’s definitely a mind thing.

How does one become an enlightened being? Is it a slow sunrise, inexorable and from darkness to brilliance in imperceptible stages? Or is it the flicking of a light switch to instant light? Perhaps it works differently for different kinds of people.

I don’t know. All I know is the futility of having even a modicum of knowledge and not using it. Of knowing what to do and not doing it. Every day is a new opportunity to do well, to honour our bodies, our selves, our world. Yet many of us go through life in a dream state, never really awakening to the truth of how to eat, to think, to live. I think it has become too hard. We are bombarded with so much information, some of it which may be right!, that we end up with overload and our reaction is to overload our bodies as well.

We think we have to be able to create amazing vegan dishes, or paleo masterpieces or whatever is the diet flavour of the month. We have to be foodie whatevers. We need a title, a name, an identity. We don’t simply eat. Within a span of 20 years the game has seemingly changed forever. And yet there are people in the world who every day do not get enough to eat or who eat the same kind of food every day and are content with that.

For me, my kitchen habits changed when my cirumstances changed, and I have never returned to the more disciplined and more simple meals of that time. Some of it is an expectation. I think that now I have to be able to prepare so many different types of foods. I think that what I had in the past was not good enough for today’s sophisticated world. But at the heart of things, I know this is wrong. I know that simplicity is good. Simplicity is the state to strive for, to accomplish. Meals can be simple affairs. They do not have to be orchestrated and presented with overt flair. They just need to be made of the right componentry.

So today I am thinking to simplify at least some of the meals in our house. To clear some of the backlogs in other parts of my life as well and to pay attention to how simple I can make the repetitive things in my life.

It seems to me that enlightened beings never have complexity in their life. They see things clearly and their lives have an enviable simplicity. They’re not addicted to anything. They don’t crave complex cuisine. They are happy with simple and natural.  And that in itself is fulfilling enough.

If there’s one thing that makes life easier when you get super busy, it’s having the PIA gene. It’s a special ability to see a job right through to its natural conclusion. This is something for which tidy people have a natural affinity and that others can only admire and wonder about.

No, not really. It’s eminently learnable and it’s not a gene, it’s a muscle. As with any muscle, it get stronger the more you use it. PIA is, quite simply, putting it away. You go out to buy groceries. When you return you bring your shopping bags in from the car, put them on the kitchen bench then quickly go through and put the cold goods into the fridge or freezer. The rest can wait. True, but not if you want to use your PIA muscle. Doing the job to its natural conclusion means putting everything away including the shopping bags.

Here’s another example. Doing the dishes. ‘Doing’ is shorthand for washing, drying and putting away.

Clothes need to be washed, dried (I prefer to peg on a line outside then bring in), folded/hung, ironed as necessary and placed in wardrobes or drawers. These are not difficult jobs. Parts of them are time consuming, but not hard. To make the chore easier to fit into your schedule, you might divide it into washing and ironing. In that case, clothes that require ironing need a temporary, specific home until that task is completed.

Just about every repetitive chore we do is not really one task but a series of small steps that need to be accomplished in a certain order. There are a few sticking points with this whole scenario. Some people are inherently lazy and just won’t do more than they have to do at the time. This actually creates more tension, more mess and more work for your future self, so get past this attitude and go the extra mile which may take mere seconds and will definitely save time in the long run. And don’t use the excuse that you’re too busy. You are almost never too busy to do tiny actions.

The biggest hurdle, in my opinion, is within the PIA part. Not the actual action involved in PIA, but the ‘A’ itself. For this to work, you have to have an ‘Away’ to Put It. That’s the secret tidy people have. Every solitary little thing has its very own ‘away’. And here’s the paradox: Although putting it away is right at the end of the sequence, the ‘away’ part needs to be decided at the beginning.

Spend as much time as you can spare finding the perfect home for things. Some kinds of items can be roughly organised into a certain basket. Others need a designated space—so precise you could draw around its base like those shadow boards for tools. The message here is that this is the exact spot for this thing. When the item is not in its home, that space is empty. If closets and cabinets are already bulging, they’re the problem, not the thing that doesn’t have a place to call its own. If you don’t use certain closets or cabinets because they’re a nightmare to open, that should be a red flag telling you this needs your attention—preferably with a rubbish bag and donation box close by.

If you have to clean out a whole cupboard (or multiples thereof) to get to that happy place where you have exact spots for all your items, this is going to take time. But once that work is done, PIA is so easy you don’t need to exercise your mind about it ever again. Just exercise your PIA muscles and your countertops and tables will be clear, your demeanour will be calm and your next task will be that much easier.