GNT #166: What hurts vs. what's broken

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read time: 3 minutes

A spring morning a few years ago, I dropped off my youngest at daycare and sat down at my desk. The morning sun was coming through the window. The lilacs out front were starting to bloom.

I opened my calendar.

I scrolled through the day. Then through the week.

And I realized I wasn't going to pick a single one. I wasn't going to stand outside long enough to smell them. By the time I got through this week, the lilacs would be done.

I sat there for a minute. Then I said the thing I'd been saying for months.

I just don't have enough time.

That sentence felt true. It was also the wrong problem.

If you're a consultant, coach, or founder, or really anyone whose work runs on what's in your head, this one's for you.

I'd been naming what hurt for a long time. I hadn't named what was actually broken.

Today I'll walk you through four symptoms I lived with for years, what was actually causing each one, and a simple test you can run on whatever's bothering you in your work or business right now.

Let's get to it. 
 

The translation

A symptom is what you feel. A problem is what's causing the feeling. Most business advice treats the symptom and leaves the problem alone.

Here are the four I lived with the longest.

Symptom: I don't have enough time. Problem: My time was the product and I was maxing it. There was no other deliverable. That was true on the lilac morning. It was true a year before that, and a year before that. The fix wasn't a calendar tool. It was building something that created value when my hours weren't attached to it.

Symptom: I can't take a vacation. Problem: Quality lived in my head, not in any system. Nobody else could ship the work because the standard was in my judgment. The fix wasn't planning the vacation better. It was moving what was in my head into something that could stand without me.

Symptom: I'm in feast and famine. Problem: My pipeline was my adrenaline. When I delivered, I didn't market. When I marketed, I didn't deliver. The fix wasn't more discipline. It was a system that generated leads while I was delivering.

Symptom: Every client is custom. Problem: My knowing wasn't productized. I was rebuilding the wheel from scratch every time because the wheel only existed in my memory. The fix wasn't templates. It was treating my expertise like an asset and externalizing it.

The pattern: every symptom pointed to a structural condition. The fix wasn't trying harder. It was building it differently.

Why it matters

If you only treat the symptom, the problem keeps generating new ones.

Buy a calendar app. The exhaustion still shows up. Hire a VA. The bottleneck moves but doesn't disappear. Take the vacation. The pre-work and the catch-up make it a more expensive version of the exhaustion.

Symptom-treatment looks like progress. It feels like progress. It's the kind of progress where you're moving but the structure underneath isn't.

This is the move I made with myself for a long time. Identify what hurts. Address what hurts. Move on. The relief was real but it was temporary, because the underlying setup was still doing what it was designed to do.

Almost no one can name what's actually broken, including me for a long time.
 

How to tell which one you're describing

When you describe what's wrong, ask yourself: am I naming what I feel, or am I naming the design that's producing the feeling?

If the answer is "this would mostly go away if I were more disciplined or more organized," you're describing a symptom.

If the answer is "this would still hurt even if I did everything right," you're describing a problem.

A simpler version. Keep asking why until you hit something structural.

I'm exhausted.
Why?
Because next week looks like every other week.
Why does next week look like every other week?
Because I'm the one delivering all the work.
Why am I the one delivering all the work?
Because the way I've built this, value doesn't get delivered if I'm not the one delivering it.

That last sentence is the problem. The first one is the symptom. Everything in between is the path between them.

Takeaway

You're probably not under-disciplined or under-organized. You're accurately describing what you feel and incorrectly diagnosing why you feel it.

The next time you catch yourself naming what's wrong, listen for whether you're describing a symptom or a problem. If it's a symptom, don't try harder to fix it. Go one layer down.

The lilacs out front haven't quite bloomed yet this year. Almost. I'm out there every day, watching for them.

Not because I have more time. Because I finally named what was actually broken.
 

I'm always rooting for you. See you next week.

-Colleen

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