"And I was going to contribute the John Lennon quote, but Julie got in there first... !"

I'm pretty sure John Lennon was quoting it himself too - but I don't know who from. Maybe it's a trad quote, a proverb. Well it is now anyway.

The thing is, any time I decide to do something that's been looming over me, I find that there are all kinds of other things which need to be done alongside it and in the course of doing it. So they get done as well. Or instead of it maybe, if I run out of time/energy/resources. But that thing I decided I was going to do something about getting done is important to the whole process, even if ,in the end, it never gets done .

It's like "there's a hole in my bucket" - but the other way round, because you can find other ways of fixing the things that get in the way, and they wouldn't get fixed if you hadn't wanted to mend the hole in th first place.