Is it okay if I eat while we talk?

Photo by Ellen Qin.

A few weeks ago, we set up an appointment to put the snow tires on the car. We try to do it early. There's always this giant rush as soon as the first leaves change colour. In Canada, snow reserves the right to show up in October and stick around until May.

And then last week, sitting at lunch, we realized. We just. Didn't do it. We'd called ahead the night before to make sure the tires were in. And then that morning we just entirely failed to show up. Or even notice that we hadn't. For days.

When we finally called them back to (re-)schedule we had to start from that place you do when you're not sure if you dreamed something. "I think we had an appointment to switch tires. Did... did we have that and just not do it?"

We knew what we needed to do. We just didn't do it.

Maybe you have your snow tires all sorted. But everywhere we've looked for the last few weeks we've seen variations on the same thing.

Bosses, frustrated that their teams are missing steps. And not in a post-mortem, "let's unpack this and carry they learning forward across the org," sort of way. They're pointing to sloppy errors. Not new lessons we haven't learned yet. These are core truths about how our work or industry operates. Ones we're just failing to put into practice. Even though we know better.

We're also hearing from lots of folks that they're forgetting to eat. It's happening in our work with bosses. People join zoom calls, midway through a sandwich and mumble "sorry, I didn't have time to eat." We're talking to HR leaders who turn off the video at the start of the call. "Is it ok if I eat while we talk?" More people tell us they are surviving on granola bars and coffee. Because the flow of their work day doesn't make space for anything else. They know better. And yet.

There's so much about COVID that is new and scary and requires creative adaptability. But what's messing everyone up, 7 months in, is stupid shit. Systemically, we aren't tripping over new and unfamiliar obstacles; we're tripping over our shoelaces.

It's noisy in there

We're asking our brains to do a lot of work right now. We're doing our day jobs, caretaking, feeding ourselves, figuring out voting, trying to keep track of the latest public health guidelines, R (and also k), and waiting for updates from the vaccine trials. It's. A. Lot.

And in the face of all that noise, our brains are doing something very clever. They're dropping some stuff on the floor. Unfortunately, a lot of what's ending up on the floor is the stuff that's not so cognitively intense. It's not the COVID-tracking, it's the life tracking.

And it's why we all feel like the stuff we're screwing up is the stuff where we ought to know better. Because we do know better. There's just not enough space to keep it all in the air.

One of us lives with ADHD. And the other of us lives with someone living with ADHD. And the thing about a brain that often misses details or forgets birthdays is that minor fuckups hit different.

Lots of ADHD folks live with a compounding story about these moments. If this is how you keep score, every one of these stumbles can kick off a cycle of shame and frustration. And that shame and frustration can make it harder to get back on top of things. From that place, the story about being a fuckup becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Everyone has these moments. You don't need a diagnosis to flake on a seasonal tire appointment. And maybe for you, that missed appointment is a stand alone. You're able to shrug it off and move on. But for a lot of folks right now, it's further proof that they are a hot mess. And it doesn't matter that everyone else is messy, too.

It takes work to change the hot mess narrative. To track and celebrate the wins. Rather than beat yourself up over every miss. And particularly as bosses, you not only hold that narrative for yourself, you hold it for your team.

The secret to juggling

As individuals, the answer to all of this is so obvious it feels like a bad joke. The way to get back on top of things is to do the things you already know you should do. Rest. Unplug. Breathe. Remember to eat.

Make lists, if you're a list maker. Use technology to remind you of the things on those lists. Pilots don't use checklists because they're forgetful, pilots use checklists because they're professionals. And because it is far better – and safer – to have a checklist carry that mental load.

As a boss, understand that your people are all in this. They may not be tripping over their shoelaces today. But we promise they're dropping balls somewhere. They'd have to be. And some of them are feeling shitty about it.

Your job is not to make it so no balls ever drop. Your job is to choose which ones. If you refuse to choose, it doesn't mean nothing drops. It means you have no insight into which ones drop, in which order, until it's too late. And the longer you wait, the more unsteady everything gets.

If your team can only get one thing done this quarter, what's the one to focus on? And do they know it? You might get away with asking for more than that. But when you add something new, it puts extra risk on every other ball in the air.

The mistakes happening right now don't come from stupidity, or indifference, or malice. If you assume that they do, you will make bad management decisions. Your people don't need a lecture about things they already know how to do. They don't need more shame about feeling like a fuck up. The more you overload them, the less effective they'll be.

Your people are trying their best. Even when it seems like they aren't. Even when it seems like they're sloppy, or checked out. If they're fucking up, it's because everything is harder right now.

Manage from the assumption that your people need to put down a few balls as gently, but quickly, as they can. And that they need your help figuring out which ones can drop. Manage from the assumption that they may not have eaten for a while.

- Melissa and Johnathan