Zen and the art of patio laying

I am currently 3/4 of the way through building a patio in my back garden. Having dug out around 3 tons of earth I am now part way through filling the hole back up with 3 tons of rubble, grit, sand, cement and large paving slabs. As the light began to fade last night my father-in-law and I laid the 26th out of 48 large slabs. It's a physical struggle laying these things on a dry mix trying to get them just off level with a consistent slope away from the house and conservatory to allow water to run off, whilst ensuring the slabs are adequately supported across their entire span and not rocking.

I was on my hands and knees for a good part of this process fussing about getting gaps, edges and levels within a couple of millimetres and getting frustrated when having to lift and re-lay several slabs at least three times.

Then my father-in-law said "stop a minute and take a look from over here". I stood up and took a look from about 15 feet away. The patio looks absolutely fine. A little grouting when finished and all the little imperfections will disappear. Coming hot on the heels of this month's blog entries and the pressures of work it was a timely reminder that sometimes we all have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Attention to detail is great but be sure it's an appropriate level and that you maintain a perspective.

Spending yesterday concentrating on this new challenge (I'm a business consultant - this is my first patio) was quite therapeutic as I was so absorbed I temporarily forgot about the work stuff normally buzzing around in my head. When I was finally able to relax around 9pm last night the business stuff started leaking back into my mind but I was able to look at it from a distance and come up with a new plan to cope with the next few months.

I believe Edward de Bono describes this process as discontinuous thinking - throwing in completely different experiences or knowledge in order to break a cycle of thinking constrained by current stale knowledge and boundaries and forcing new perspectives to encourage creativity.

We all know this stuff. But like cobblers' children I guess we readily apply our knowledge to our clients but rarely to ourselves as we don't make the time to take an occasional step back.