I am the queen of procrastinating basic problem-solving. When something breaks or functions incorrectly my first response after frustration in not figuring it out in the first 30 seconds is “welp, guess this is how life is now” and just work around that problem.
Here’s an example: my car Bluetooth stopped connecting with my phone like it used to. No more calls received or audiobooks playing through phone speakers. And sure, I hit the connect button a few times to no avail, but then proceeded to just set my phone in the cupholder and let my audiobook play from there during commutes. And I just left it this way. For months.
Then yesterday, after parking at work and getting ready to go inside, I caved and took a few minutes to try to figure it out. Hit the connect button. Device not found. Over and over. Then disconnect all devices. Search for devices. connect. And it works fucking fine now. It took 5 minutes for me to solve something that’s not been working for nearly a year.
Why do I do this to myself?
Molehills really do seem like mountains sometimes. When my mom visited over Christmas I was complaining about some reunion planning stress and not having an update and she kindly reminded me that I must be stressed out because all this took was a one-minute email asking for an update. She was right and I did it at the restaurant table from my phone.
I am trying to be better at this. I have gotten better at switching into problem-solving mode over the last year. Part of it is taking care of myself in other ways so I have the brain space to not let small issues get to me (+ that recent “Everything is Figureoutable” mantra is super helpful).
We had a saying going around at work last year from our of our leaders: Don’t do stupid shit.
This was meant to be a flag for when we were doing processes that didn’t make sense or work that didn’t have an impact — step back and take the time to ask if there’s a better way or a better priority. Invest a little time to help out your future self.
I caught myself at this in a different situation yesterday working on a large spreadsheet and starting to enter in data manually from a separate file. Luckily I remembered vlookup and sumif functions. Even if I did have to take the time to check the right formula (a quick google search), I saved a boatload of my own time and sanity.
Problems can be paralyzing — and I’ve only talked about the small ones here — and truly not everything is a five-minute fix. But there usually is a fix. Something that can be done if we can just remind ourselves to stop and think for a moment in order to take action. Even if I don’t know or can’t figure it out, I probably can figure out someone who can help. Another yesterday example — I couldn’t figure out how much our upcoming business insurance premiums would be based on our records, so I contacted our agent who’s happily (and easily) helping.
Most times problem-solving starts with this: do something.
With Love,
Natalie