Declaring Systems Bankruptcy
For years and years, I’ve helped teams evaluate their systems, fix their systems, tweak their systems, and evolve their systems. And sometimes it’s even been necessary to help teams declare bankruptcy on their systems, blow them up, and start anew.
And now it’s my turn.
It started as a slow realization until it all came as a quick punch in the face: a whole bunch of systems across my life and work haven’t been working for me.
Fixing them with light adjustments, tweaks, or refinements was wholly inadequate; I needed to declare bankruptcy on many of my systems and start anew. That’s the journey I’m on.
Why is everything hard?
I’ve got a little multi-faceted empire going on: online courses, blog posts, newsletters, videos, podcasts, social media posts, client consulting, workshops/trainings, conferences, secret projects, musical endeavors, and plenty of business admin to keep everything running. And that’s just on the work front!
There’s also my marriage, my daughter’s increasingly-active social life, other important relationships to maintain, grocery lists, home maintenance, taxes, and all sorts of other fun chores that come along for the ride.
It’s a lot! I know you know it’s a lot because you’re juggling your own version of this.
That’s why each and every paper cut causes just a little more compounded pain. I’m now at a point where:
- Responding to text messages: hard.
- Responding to Slack messages: hard.
- Responding to emails: hard.
- Finding & protecting head-down time to do deep work on my many important projects: hard.
- Scheduling time with people: hard.
- Catching up with people: hard.
- Writing blog posts: hard.
- Writing social media posts: hard.
- Playing music: easy.
- Sharing that music: hard.
- Talking to people: easy.
- Transforming that talking into real action: hard.
- Finding time to rest and just be: hard.
You might be thinking to yourself: “Well, Brad, you’re doing too much! You’re spreading yourself too thin.” To which I reply, “Thanks for your concern, but respectfully, no.” Making many things happen concurrently across many different areas is where I thrive. I’m passionate, enthusiastic, excited I know what I’m capable of. I know in my soul it’s not the quantity or variety of my pursuits.
So then, what’s the issue? It’s the processes. The handoffs. The seams. The signal chain. The orchestration of technology, human beings, and processes to bring creative work to life.
It’s many of these processes that I’m declaring bankruptcy on and starting anew.
KonMari’ing my life
For the last few months, I’ve been hard at work overhauling software, overhauling hardware, overhauling systems, overhauling services, consolidating, shedding dead weight, shifting gears, shifting roles, shifting responsibilities, shifting all of the things in order to leave the gunk behind.
While many of these overhauls are still in progress, I’m already seeing some truly transformative and foundational improvements to my work and my life. I’m so incredibly excited to emerge from the quicksand, and am excited to share these shifts to hopefully help others get into more of a creative rhythm.
Flowing Freely
All of this is necessary, but I also know that it comes at a cost. I especially want to apologize to the people who have preordered my Atomic Design Certification Course; I wanted to be done with it by now and am a few months behind schedule. I’m 100% committed to getting it done and out the door; and I really appreciate your continued patience. I promise it will be complete soon!
I also know that this has been disruptive for our core team, who have endured a lot of whiplash and shifting sands. I’m sorry to you too. While everyone understands why things need to change and is starting to see the benefits of the new systems, it’s still been pretty jarring!
There’s a design systems parallel here: we’ve encountered so many teams who are under immense pressure to ship. “I know I should use the system, but I just need this quick tweak so I’ll detach it for now.” “I’m just going to copy and paste it for now; I’ll hook it up to the system later.” But in the words of John Fogerty, “Someday never comes.”
It’s a hard-earned lesson we all have to learn that sometimes you need to go slow in order to go fast. Doing things right takes time. Not always a lot more time than hurrying things out the door, but more time nonetheless. It’s worth building the muscles to override the pressure to move quickly in order to tackle things at the system level. Building this habit will prevent your future self from having to one day declare systems bankruptcy.
