The Workaround

I am the Queen of The Workaround. And I realized today, that's nothing to be proud of. 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines workaround as:

a way of dealing with a problem or making something work despite the problem, without completely solving it

Here is another definition:

A workaround is defined as a temporary fix that normally implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed. Workarounds are bad; it means that people are having to do things outside your solution in order to be effective.

What I am realizing as I am asked to come up with workarounds in my personal life and at my new job is that The Workaround is exhausting. You are going here, there, and every f-ing where (like Roy Kent! Any Ted Lasso fans?) when you should really just take the direct approach -- which is to make people be accountable for their own shit.

When my daughter was maybe 3 years old, she came across a page in an activity book similar to the one pictured above. Only, in the book we had, there was an illustration of a bird in the upper left-hand corner and a picture of a few baby birds in a nest at the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Then there were all of these squiggly lines which represented the different paths the momma bird could take to get to her babies. Holly had no idea what to do when she saw this page. I told her she needed to find the path for the bird at the top to get to her baby birds in the nest at the bottom. Holly took a yellow crayon, and she drew a straight line from the momma bird to the nest similar to how I have drawn a red line to from the unicorn to its castle in the above illustration. After ignoring the curvy and loopy paths suggested by the activity book designer, Holly just drew her own line - straight and direct.  She looked at me with her giant blue eyes and said, "That's how the mommy bird should do it." 

Bam! Right then and there Holly solved the world's problems. 

Holly ignored the noise and drew a direct line from the problem to the solution. She didn't ask if that was allowed -- she just did it. I stood dumfounded as she moved onto the next page in her activity book.

(BTW - I had that bird/nest page capturing Holly's brilliance hanging above my desk for years. It reminded me of how to best communicate, problem solve, and basically live. Sadly, Holly's page got lost during my last office move, and so I found this unicorn activity page and drew a straight red line as a reminder of Holly's bold thinking. This unicorn/castle picture is currently hanging above my desk at work.)

And that's what's wrong with The Workaround: it's not direct, and you end up running around like a lunatic and exerting unnecessary energy. 

PLUS! And here is what I am realizing at home and at work ... the workaround affirms bad behavior. Whoever we are working around is really none the wiser, and so they think that what they are doing is acceptable. They have no idea we are killing ourselves coming up with ways to get around the problem they are creating. We are coming up with a solution without actually solving the problem. So then it's not really a solution, right? It's a loopy, squiggly waste of energy.  

At some point, this gets old.