Obstacles in 4D

A great diagnostic tool for whatever you're struggling with right now.

Photo by Tim Collins on Unsplash

I had a wonderful strategic workshop last week as part of my work as a Pluralism Fellow for the Mercatus Center’s Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange. We talked a lot about how to grow my audience on the Substack, how to think about trade publishing, and what my plan of work should be over the next six months or so, which is roughly when my fellowship ends.

In addition to support staff, I had my Go Team with me: my podcast co-host

Lura Forcum

, my social media guru

Mollie Johnson

and non-profit innovation and emotional support (for me) author

Leah Kral

.

While I was sorting through the various action items that emerged from the workshop, I put my coaching hat back on to figure out an action plan.

One of the best things I did for year was coach for the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) in their Faculty Success Program. As part of that program, we use a three part diagnostic tool for identifying life blockages and how to tackle them. You can find this tool a lot of other places for other kinds of challenges, but at NCFDD I found it really helpful at identifying blockages around writing and research and how to work around them.

Basically, the diagnostic tool involves thinking about whatever Thing you want to do and figuring out not only where the blockage is, but crucially what kind of blockage it is in the first place.

Turns out, there are basically three things that keep us from Doing the Thing and each requires different solutions to overcome or work around them.

1. Technical Errors

The first kind of blockage is the most simple and that’s a technical error. Maybe you just don’t know how to do the Thing and need support to figure it out. It might be as simple as watching a YouTube video or setting up a Zoom call with someone who has already figured it out. It might be more complicated, like enrolling in an online course. But technical errors are often the easiest to sort out because you just have to figure out what you don’t know and then find out how to know it. Technical errors often take the form of overwhelm or avoidance since your brain doesn’t like thinking about things it doesn’t know how to tackle.

An example from the workshop is that we talked about the need for me to be more consistent on social media to boost my writing signal and help readers find my work. I realized quickly that most of what was going on here was a technical error. I literally didn’t know how to use Instagram and hadn’t been motivated to figure it out (whoops!). But since a lot of my audience is on Instagram it’s a place I should probably be, at least part time. That was a pretty easy fix. I had Mollie show me the ropes and I’ll learn more as I start posting. Blockage removed!

2. Psychological Obstacles

The second kind of blockage is more complicated. We call these psychological obstacles. These are the mental blocks we have about doing certain things. They take the form of avoidance and procrastination and these can sometimes feel deeply emotional because they may stem from bad past experiences or deeper rooted issues that we really don’t want to face.

In the workshop we talked about the need for to me to do more networking on the Substack app, reaching out to fellow writers, offering guest posts, and seeing if they’d like to recommend my work on theirs. I took me less than a second to identify this as a psychological obstacle because I hate asking people for favors or what seem like favors. I have a deep-seated discomfort with putting myself forward and an even deeper discomfort with “bothering” other people. My team very gently told me to get over it, which is what I will work to do.

For psychological obstacles it often helps to start with baby steps and breaking whatever the task is into smaller parts so it’s less mentally overwhelming. In my case, I’ll start with some friendly Substacks I know and go from there. It also helps to think about what the worst case scenario is and in my case it’s that someone doesn’t respond or says “no.” Hardly a catastrophic result. (In that spirit, if you’re looking for a guest writer on your Substack, blog, or something else, let me know!)

3. External Realities

The last kind are what we call external realities and these are things that you can’t change. You just have to accept them and work around them (if you can). Sometimes the external reality is that you’re moving or just had a baby or just started a new job. Or maybe you’re caring for elderly relatives or are struggling with your mental health. These are not things you can just power through. You need to think strategically about how to manage these realities while still pursuing your goals.

One minor external reality I’m struggling with is that my schedule is not consistent from day-to-day or even week-to-week. People can drop meetings into my calendar at will. While I do time block, I have to accept meetings from various folks, particularly on urgent issues. That’s my job and it’s a reality of it. My home time is similarly difficult to structure. My husband coaches sports teams, so three days a week plus Saturdays my mornings are eaten up with getting kids off to school or kid stuff and the other day workdays I try to workout to stay sane. My best time to write is probably starting around 7:30am, but I don’t have that luxury with my kids the ages they are. Instead I’ll need to work that time into my weekends (most likely) since evenings are usually a sprint of various events and pickups, dinner, unpacking and packing bags, and the collapsing into bed.

This reality makes it hard to have a consistent time to do writing or social media posting or other kinds of things that work better when they’re batch scheduled, so I’ll have to keep thinking about what makes sense here. (Suggestions welcome!)

Next Steps

My next steps are pretty clear, even though they’re not easy.

1. I need to spend more time on social media and interact more in those spaces. If you, dear reader, are interested, I’m on Instagram @radical_moderates_guide and on TikTok @radicalmoderatesguide and of course Lura and I have our

   We Made This Political Podcast
   (that you should also subscribe to).

2. I also need to be more proactive about speaking engagements and networking across the Substack-verse. In that vein, if you’re looking for a guest post or guest on your podcast or guest speaker at your next Zoom meeting on anything relating to radical moderation or just better living generally in our polarized and polarizing times, let me know! And please forward my website laurenkhall.com or this Substack to those who might be interested. There’s a speaker one-sheet on my website that includes possible speaking topics and info on how to book me.

3. I will take some baby steps this week to reach out to fellow Substackers about guest posting. The first step is a list of sympathetic and friendly folks. If you’d like to be included on this list or if you know of someone who would be, let me know! Once I have that list I’ll start to do some outreach, grappling with my genetic German Lutheran dislike of anything approaching self-advertising along the way.

Your Turn

Now it’s your turn! What’s a Thing you want to do but so far haven’t?

Does this diagnostic tool help you figure out a plan?

Do you have follow up questions or need help troubleshooting? Drop them in the comments or drop me a line privately and I’ll throw some ideas out!