Some weeks, the problems stop feeling like separate problems.
Mine last week was the first real week back from nearly three months of paternity leave. The things piled up. An inbox to clear. A career inflection I keep turning over now that I'm a father. An industry moving faster than I can track. Twenty years of wills, taxes, and college costs in a planner's platform. People at home who count on me tonight. And don't forget friends, health, a life.
Today, this quarter, two decades out, dinner in an hour. Each one alone is fine. Together, the chest gets tight.
Years ago at BCG, a mentor of mine, a former MMA fighter, watched me run through a project status one morning in our 1-on-1. He had an athlete's stillness. I raced through my updates: We're on track for Thursday's meeting. The initial analysis is in. The additional data lands tomorrow. I've got the senior partners' calendars locked. We got this, we got this, we got this. He let me finish. We'd worked together long enough that he could read me. The red in my eyes, the words coming out faster, the look of someone running on fumes and adrenaline.
Then he said:
Okay, Eric, that's good, now take a breath.
Problems are like fingers on a hand. If you take them all at once, all those fingers make a fist, and a fist, my friend, can knock you the f*** out.
He let it sit.
Now take each finger on its own. None of them are that strong. You can tackle them one at a time. So let's slow down a minute.
I was in my twenties and it landed. I still come back to it. Most weeks, the move is to pick one “finger” and start there.
The problems today are bigger and messier than they were on that first project. They overlap now. Career touches family touches money touches health. But the move is the same.