Linear thinking

As I write this, I find myself work­ing on three dif­fer­ent books—or maybe it is four. This is, even by my own nor­mal work­load, seri­ous­ly exces­sive. Yet, it is not quite what it seems. For two of the books I am wait­ing for edi­to­r­i­al response. I tell myself don’t even think about them—but, of course, I do. One of the books I am active­ly research­ing, which is to say, the infor­ma­tion I need, is com­plex and hard to get. Then there is the fourth book, which I am active­ly writ­ing, find­ing my way, plot­ting as I go. And enjoy­ing it.

How does one do this? Think of being in school. Think of tak­ing as many as five dif­fer­ent sub­jects: his­to­ry, math, Eng­lish, some sport, biol­o­gy, and  … maybe more. You might even have home­work for all of those dif­fer­ent areas of thought. You don’t con­fuse one with the oth­er. You cre­ate a dif­fer­ent men­tal cat­e­go­ry for each area, and you work on each task as it comes before you. You may even have a dif­fer­ent men­tal approach for each subject. 

Yet the dis­ci­pline of lin­ear think­ing, work­ing log­i­cal­ly, mov­ing toward the goal of achieve­ment, is the same for all. You can’t do it by mere­ly want­i­ng to get it done. Or talk­ing about it. You get it done by … doing it. Like any work.