I often don’t dwell long enough on the accomplishments of my business partners before moving on to the next problem they/we need to fix and thats kindov shitty. My nature as a problem solver has its benefits in business, and especially the kind of business that requires lots of those balls in the air being juggled – but a major downside is in the glossing over on the completions in the meantime.

When we fix a flat tire, my instinct is to say “great&goodjob and now what about the transmission and oil and steering fluid and double-axel-piston-valve-port” (idk cars). But that’s kindov obnoxious. Especially if the person changing the tire isn’t a mechanic and even more so if they didn’t know how to change a tire before they learned just to change that one. That deserves some dwelling over before just racing ahead to the next problem to solve or otherwise it can be discouraging as a person is faced with a seemingly endless list of problems.

That’s how I see life, of course (an endless sea of problems that we have to be diligent not to drown in) and while that mentality might be a good way for me to charter my ship, I am recently seeing that it has a drown-y effect on others. It’s a bummer to do something good and then have the immediate next-thing be a new thing that is wrong and needs work and attention, time and energy to solve and otherwise deal with.

I should be better about this and will try to be, but the first step is knowing it about myself and warning others that it is a problem within my nature to skip over the good and scurry right to the next thing that is not-so-good. I excuse this about myself because 1) I don’t deny people recognition for their accomplishments and 2) I celebrate people as a whole after they’ve collected a series of impressive points that make me swell with pride or admiration over them but the problem with both those points is that 1) Sometimes a quick thumbs up isn’t enough or appropriate for the effort put into the accomplishment and 2) if you don’t enjoy the small accomplishments enough, it is less motivating to make the big ones – especially when the small ones lead to the big ones. If you’re building a pyramid, each milestone and perhaps each day of brick laying should be celebrated, not just the grand opening of the finished product. ps: is it telling that the first construction example I thought of was one traditionally built by slave labor? oops.

I don’t mean to be a slave driver. I mean to do excellent things.  I’m hard on those in the trenches because that excellence can only be earned with diligence from tough soldiers. Further, an obsession with success is what allows me to lead those troops to those excellent things in the first place, so I don’t want to lose that – but along the road I do recognize the need for motivation acknowledgement more than what I currently do.

I’ll do better. You’ll all do the same. But I’ll make you feel better about it.