Doing Something? Ask Yourself Why.

A couple days ago, I was reading feeds in Google Reader, and found Wubi through MetaFilter. Wubi is an application that lets you install Ubuntu through Windows, just like any other application. You download it, you double click the exe file, and Wubi basically does the rest. When it’s done, you reboot your computer and are presented with a boot menu, allowing you to boot into Windows or Ubuntu. Pretty cool, huh? I thought so.

But Wubi isn’t the point here.

After reading the MetaFilter post, I clicked over to the Wubi site and downloaded the installer. I started the installation process (which takes quite a while, due to it having to download an Ubuntu ISO), and left my computer for a few hours. When I came back, I rebooted and selected Ubuntu. It didn’t work. It hung at a line saying something about finding menu.lst. I rebooted, selected Windows, and immediately got to digging in the Wubi support forum, trying to solve the problem. I’d spent half hour, maybe 45 minutes, doing this before I paused and thought…

Wait a second - why am I doing this?

You see, I’ve installed Ubuntu in the past. The “correct” way, the standard way, by making a couple of new partitions, then booting from an Ubuntu install CD. It’s not that hard at all. I ended up removing Ubuntu because while it worked quite well, I still found myself in Windows XP more often than not - old habits die hard. So why in the world was I spending time trying to figure out how to install Ubuntu with Wubi?

Umm… I guess I just got caught up with the flow of “wow, this is a neat idea!” and kept going with it. I never stopped to think, why am I following through with this? Why am I going beyond just reading the post, nodding, and saying “Hey, that’s pretty neat”?

It’s easy to get dragged down into the current, of just running with whatever your brain thinks is appealing. The problem with that, of course, is that our brains have a massive (I’m talking enormous) case of ADD, and if we grab on to everything it labels as appealing, we’re never going to really be in control.

Try to break the cycle. If you catch yourself jumping into something new (or old) without really thinking about it, ask yourself why you’re doing it. It’s entirely up to you as to whether your response validates your actions or leads you to stopping - but just make sure you have a response. It sucks to burn up a an hour or two of time, and only then think, “What in the world did I do that for?”