When Competence Creates the Chaos
I was talking with a client the other day who said she felt like the “train was getting away from her.”
It’s a pretty normal feeling when things are busy, to be honest. One I hear a lot.
Especially from people who are exceptionally organized.
I should know. I am one of those people.
I love my calendar, my plans, my spreadsheets. I don’t let things passively happen to me, and I always get things done (even if it takes me until the last minute!).
And yet... things still get away from me.
Maybe you can relate? 🤣
When systems hide the cost of holding everything together
When you're good at putting things in their place... you can build amazing systems... you can make a calendar do things a calendar was never meant to do...
It's only natural that you *use* those systems to keep finding ways to fit more in.
The calendar gets rearranged, the spreadsheet gets improved, the process gets documented, and the request gets added to the queue.
And, for a while, it works.
You are getting things done, your systems work, and from the outside, it may even look like you are thriving.
But all that organization? Might just be functioning as a coping mechanism; a way of managing everything that has already made it onto your plate.
Honestly, it's the same reason that so many women reach adulthood without an ADHD diagnosis: because of all the elaborate external systems that get built to produce the same results other people seem to just get... automatically.
Thing is, when the structure works -- it's useful.
But it's also exhausting.
The question all that competence ends up masking
All that competence with systems, reminders, to-do lists, spreadsheets, and ways to "keep the trains moving on time" can help keep the mess moving.
What they don't do is answer the more important question:
Should this be on your plate at all?
Because, look, a lot of us are very good at dealing with the pile of stuff once it has landed on us, but we completely forget to filter it on the way in.
So we don’t have decision processes for things like:
- When you customize your work for a client, and when the customization is no longer worth it.
- Whether you should actually answer your team member’s questions, or whether they should figure it out themselves.
- When it’s time to add a new product, and when that would take you away from what’s already working.
- Or, even more simply: what belongs on your calendar in the first place.
Without those decisions, you end up not just doing the work, but managing all the different versions of the work that could possibly exist.
And so the client request becomes a custom version...
The team question becomes a decision only you can make...
The new product becomes another moving piece to maintain...
And the calendar? It becomes a record of everything you are capable of fitting in, rather than a record of what you have actually decided matters...
Meanwhile, you need another spreadsheet to manage the spreadsheet.
Not because we are bad at managing things, but because we’re exceptional at managing a lot of things.
Filter the work before you organize it
So before you add another system to manage all the moving pieces, try this:
Ask what decision should have happened before this work reached you.
For example:
- What belongs in the standard version of the work?
- What requires your judgment, and what could someone else learn to decide?
- What is truly worth customizing?
- What makes it onto the calendar because it matters, and what makes it onto the calendar because you have proven you can somehow make it fit?
Because, look, your competence is useful. It can help you build a business that fits your actual priorities and is easier to run.
But it should not be required to make every possible thing work.
The answer isn't always to find a better way to organize the train.
Sometimes, it’s to first decide which trains you’re actually going to get on.