The One Operational Lesson I’d Teach My Younger Self

I used to think that chaotically doing everything (multitasking, juggling spinning plates, and running at 120% capacity) was a badge of honor.

It I wasn’t sprinting from one fire to the nest, I thought I wasn’t doing enough. If my calendar wasn’t stacked edge to edge, I thought I was falling behind.

Two decades, two kids, cancer and most recently a pulmonary embolism later… I see it a little differenlty now.

Back then, ‘awlays on’ felt like the only way to survive. Every problem became my problem. Every task felt urgent. I was context-switching so fast I’d forget what I’d even started an hour earlier. And when you live like that long enough, it becomes part of your identify. You start believing that being busy is the work.

Life has a way of forcing you to slow down, whether you want to or not. For me, it wasn’t one moment, it was a collection of them. health scares stopped me in my tracks. Becoming a parent and realising my kids didn’t care how many projects I was juggling, just whether I was actually there. Enough years in the trenches to see that chaos isn’t a sign of high performance, it’s a sign your systems aren’t working.

These days I work differently. I believe slow productivity beats chaos every time. Not slow as in lazy, but slow as in deliberate. Doing one thing well, seeing it through and moving on without leaving a trail of half-finished things behind. Building a rythm where deep work can actually happen, where priorities are clear and where the urgent doesn’t constnatly bulldoze the important.

That doesn’t mean chaos doesn’t happen anymore. It does. Something will break. A client will call with a crisis, a system will go down. When it happens, you deal with it. You do what you need to do to get it fixed, and then you go back to slow. The difference now is I don’t live in that heightended, firefighting mode like it’s the norm. Because it’s not; it’s surival mode. And if you say there long enough, it breaks you.

So if I could sit my younger self down and give them one operational life lesson, it would be this: if you’re constantly living in chaos, it’s not a sign you’re impotant, it’s a sign your systems need work. Build the foundation now, learn to slow down, and when things inevitablity hit the fan, hand it, and then reset. Your health, your team and your results will thank you for it.