A client emailed me with a concern about her progress. She’s discovered that there is a particular action she keeps planning to take, but somehow hasn’t been able to accomplish.
I called her to find out more. At first, she had lots of excuses for not performing this task, but then she ran out of excuses.
“This would take you less than five minutes,” I said. “So, why haven’t you done it?”
“I told you already,” she said, sounding exasperated.
“No, you’ve told me some great excuses. But you haven’t given me the real reason. What is it about this task that makes you not want to do it?”
“Huh?”
“We already know it’s simple. We know it’s not time-consuming. It looks like the only reason you haven’t done it is simply because you don’t want to.”
Silence.
More silence.
“No,” she finally said. “I don’t want to. It’s not fun.”
Fun? I am SOOOOO glad I have a mute button on my phone. ROFLMAO doesn’t begin to cover it. But I am a professional so of course I recovered quickly, before she could suspect anything.
“Ahem. So, for you to accomplish something, it needs to be entertaining?” I’m a coach; it’s part of my job description to clarify.
“Well…no….”
“Well…apparently,” I said. “But is it fun to get up and go to work on Mondays?” I asked.
“Eeew!” I took that to mean no.
“Uh-huh. But you do it anyway?” I had always assumed, but maybe I was wrong.
“Of course!” Now she’s getting huffy with me.
“You have a 45-minute commute, you work eight-and-a-half hours, you have another 45-minute commute. And you’re letting this two-minute task screw up everything you’re working for?” This is the less-pleasant side of coaching; drill sergeant, which is also part of my job description. “You didn’t tell me your goal was to do fun things.”
“But, I thought I’d like doing all the stuff.” Now she’s getting whiny.
I thought of telling her that you aren’t supposed to like it, that it’s supposed to be tough – a character-building experience. Like my 100 sit-ups every day. But just as quickly it occurred to me that I haven’t done 100 sit-ups in my life, let alone every day, and another part of my job description is to be generally honest, so I didn’t go there.
“Would you like to be able to check that task off your list and move on?” I asked.
“Well, yeah! Yeah, I would!” Now she’s a little excited. This woman is an emotional roller coaster. Her drama over this was exhausting me.
“You’ve turned this little thing into a big thing. So now, when you do it, it’ll be a big accomplishment,” I began, launching into my favorite question. “Is there any reason why you can’t take two minutes, as soon as you’re off the phone, and get it done and over with?”
She agreed it would be huge and quite the relief, promised to get it done immediately, yada yada yada. So now I’m wondering why, if it’s supposed to be fun for all of us, why we don’t all get more done?!
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