Lost in the “how”

People often come to me with questions about tactics.

• How can we configure our membership levels to support this novel requirement?

• How can I use a wait-list for my limited-capacity team-based event?

This is awesome! I love to see that folks are reaching out for help with how-to questions.

But what I really love is when people hit pause on the "how" long enough to think about the "what" and the "why":

• What is it that I'm really trying to achieve, long-term?

• Why do I want that? What do I think it's going to get me, and why is that so important to me?

Because — believe me — I know what it's like to agonize for hours (or days) trying to get some feature or configuration to work exactly right, without having thought clearly about why I wanted it in the first place.

And then — really believe me on this one — the sinking feeling, after spending all that time and effort, that this thing isn't so important after all; that I could have gotten the same results (or better!) with a simpler solution.

Example: Fighting with that report to make it show exactly the right output, before finally realizing that I just need these numbers one time, and I could get them far more easily by just exporting it to Excel and quickly manipulate the data there.

Chances are you've done something similar.

I've done it, and I have stories from most of my clients who've done it.

Here's the thing:

Don't get lost in the "how." It's a seductive trap.

Our brains just love puzzles, and there's some (usually fleeting) satisfaction in the feeling that we're "working hard on something."

Before you start digging in on the "how," push back on that temptation and make sure you can articulate clearly "what" your end goal is, and "why" that end goal is so important.

You may have to really force yourself into this at first.

But the payoff is real.

In the end, we all have a mission to improve the lives of people we care about.

No one will care how slick our solution was or how hard we banged our heads on the keyboard to make it happen.

They will only care that we helped them. That's where the payoff is.

All the best,
A.