Just Can't Stop

I recently came across the most wonderful single-panel cartoon ever, on a social-media site.

  "Oh my gosh!" I thought.  "This is...everybody!"  Then I wondered; what is the siren song of busyness?  What keeps most people (including me) from being willing to stop ineffective behavior long enough to replace it with effective or efficient behavior?  The large automotive factories do it.  Most, if not all summers, there is a scheduled factory shut-down of several days, while parts of the assembly lines are "retooled" or updated in order to make new-model cars.  It would be absurd to continue to make older-model cars because it would take "too long" to change the machinery.  Cruise ships also do it.  Those that sail certain routes in the summer and others in the winter have "repositioning" cruises twice a year, in order to get to the most seasonally-appropriate route.  How silly it would be to be caught in the ice in the Alaskan inland passage, because it would take "too long" to motor the ship down the coast.

So why don't individuals stop long enough to retool or reposition?  Is it the belief that any activity trumps perceived inactivity in defining a productive/busy/important person?  Most people can probably think of a time when someone should have stopped what they were doing or stopped what they were saying, taken a moment (or several) and repositioned themselves.   Awkward or destructive social situations aside, a life-path or course of action that seems (to even the casual observer) to involve dragging a heavy weight through soft sand on square "wheels" could equally benefit from a moment (or several) of inactivity, reflection and repositioning.  Why doesn't this happen more often?

I can only speak with certainty about myself, and I have to guess that others feel the same way.  It's psychologically much easier to change an ineffective or inefficient behavior early in the process, before it becomes part of my identity.  It's also easier for me to say to myself "Well, that was six months I won't get back" than it is to say, "I've been heading down the wrong path for five years.  I have wasted five years of my life."  And so, the five years become six, and the six become ten.  Why?  Is it pride?  Is it "I don't make bad decisions, so for this course of action to not be a bad decision, I have to keep doing it."?  To anyone who has ever received a blast of anger after suggesting a course correction, or who has ever lashed out after being told, "I think there's a better way" this may ring true.

The hardest part isn't dragging rocks through sand on square wheels, although people like to complain about it.  The hardest part, the deal-breaker for many, is acknowledging ineffective behavior, stopping and making the change.