No new instructions for the computer
You load the program into the computer, and it begins its calculations. It’s computing. It’s working hard, and it’s going to take some time.
If you interrupt it with new instructions, it has to begin all over again, because the parameters have changed. If you keep giving it new information, it will never finish its job.
People who tell me they are lost and running in circles have one thing in common: They say they keep listening to podcasts, reading books, watching videos, doing courses — taking in more and more information — and still don’t know what to do.
Consider the computer metaphor for yourself. You’ve taken in so much information, and heard so many instructions. That’s enough input. It’s time for output. Run the program. Stop interrupting yourself with new information. Let yourself execute one plan of action, and see it through to fruition.
Something similar may happen at the group level. Professors, by definition, like to be open minded. Yet once a project starts the academic must close his mind like a steel trap and see the thing through. For example, if you have almost finalized plans and budgets for a campus speed skating rink, don't listen to people who want to start planning to add curling sheets. (A real example from my campus)
Derek, your "see it through to fruition" could mean finishing the rink, and then in a separate budget year consider renovations for curling. (which never happened, the interest and energy wasn't there)
At the small group level, brainstorming is beautiful at the beginning, but at a point in the planning the group must say to well-meaning open-minders—who might frustrate the group—, "we have passed the point in the road where we can widely consider other ideas: we are still planning, but now we are working on what we agreed to do."
There was a comic episode in My Favourite Martian where Bill Bixby could read the mind of a politician and found the guy kept ping ponging back and forth, rather than settle on one thing.
I think some sincere, earnest teenagers may have that problem too. For me, the solution is what people mean when they talk of getting centred or grounded. I don't actually raise my palms to the sky, but I do the Zen centred thing, and then I feel assured of what the right thing to do is, (for me, for now) without feeling static from "others" or "shoulds" outside thoughts.
For doing this I role modelled off of a mountaineering teacher who would "look inside" for a moment when things got rough.