What’s Not Working

by Peggy Haymes

Sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee, I’m thinking about what’s not working.

It’s not as grim as it sounds. My work and my life have evolved to the point that my old ways of doing things can no longer keep up. That’s good news, but also a new challenge. So, I’m starting my week considering new systems and what might be helpful for me.

My friends in recovery teach me that the first step in addressing a problem is admitting that you have a problem, and when it comes to managing tasks and the administrative parts of our life and work that admission can be a surprisingly hard step.

One of the things that keeps us from looking at what’s not working is shame. How can I be this many years old and not know how to keep up with my to do list? We can feel like failures, and believe we need to hide our dirty secret. What would people think if they knew how disorganized some of our days are? That shame only increases when we drop the ball or double book a meeting because our system (or lack of it) is overwhelmed.

Shame doesn’t push us to make changes. It paralyzes us and leaves us feeling like we just can’t do it (whatever it is.) If you’re familiar with the Imposter Syndrome, this is a great place for it to make a grand entrance.

Perpetually having a group of Olympic judges in our heads raising their signs with our scores doesn’t help us improve. (And let’s admit it, there’s always that one judge who scores us absurdly low, no matter what we do.)

That’s one of the reasons I love the design approach to life and work. In their book, Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans present design perspective as an alternative to our success/failure mentality. (Their course by the same name has been one of the most popular courses at Stanford University.) In the design approach, the question isn’t whether we succeeded or failed. The question is what worked and what didn’t work? What did we learn from what didn't work? What might we do differently?

For some of you this might sound familiar. It’s very much along the lines of what’s called the coach approach, and is at the heart of coaching. What’s working? What’s not working? What do we learn from what’s not working, and what do we want to do differently? With the coach approach, we embrace the opportunity to continue to learn and to grow.

There's no shortage of people offering systems for us to stay on top of tasks, administration, and the general stuff of life. Some of these are even trademarked. Sometimes, however, they can be more of a roadblock than help.

We see ourselves as failures for not being able to keep up with a system because after all, the person who created it is a New York Times bestselling author and hot on the guru circuit. We never stop to ask if it’s a system that works with the way our brains work and with the shape of our particular personalities. If you try to squeeze yourself into a way of doing things that is antithetical to the ways in which your brain works, you're setting yourself up for failure.

Sometimes, however, we have a good system but simply lose the momentum. Starting out, we’re full of determination and hope. But then there’s that day in which we sleep through the alarm, and we get up knowing we’ve ruined our carefully planned schedule for the day. Or we get swept up in busy days and urgent calls and then a week or a month later we realize we had a system, “but it just didn't work.”

Once again, I learn from my friends in recovery. “Today I am choosing this.” It’s the same for our habits and systems. Today I am choosing to live my day in this way. Today I choose to look at what didn’t work (knowing it’s not a referendum on my value and worth as a person) and to consider alternatives that just might work. We’ll see.

There is a part of me that believes all will be well and Nirvana will be reached if I can just find the right a) planner, b) journal, and c) pen. That's an illusion, of course, but we can also distract ourselves by looking for the next shiny system instead of sitting with the real questions: What's working? What isn't working? What do I need to do differently?

A coach can be a valuable help in sorting through these questions and providing accountability for those daily choices. A coach can help you design a system that works for you, even if it wouldn’t work for anyone else in the world. At Pinnacle we have coaches who are well trained and who also understand the world of ministry. We can work with you in figuring out what doesn’t work and creating a system that does.

You can find out more about us here. Contact us to talk about the possibilities for you.