There’s something very humbling about being able to look at somebody else’s business, see exactly where the process is breaking, figure out how twelve different pieces should connect, build the system to support it… and then have one relatively simple task on your own list staring at you for three weeks.
That has been my life more times than I’d like to admit.
I can architect an entire client experience. I can see the handoff somebody missed, the communication that needs to happen two steps earlier, the information that’s sitting in the wrong place and the exact reason everybody keeps coming back to the owner with the same question.
But ask me to do one little administrative thing that my brain has decided it does not care about right now?
Apparently we have entered negotiations.
For a long time, I made that mean something about me.
I thought I was lazy.
I thought I was a procrastinator.
I thought I needed more discipline, more structure, another planner, a better routine, a new system, less distraction, more focus. I could never quite understand how I could be so capable in one moment and feel completely stuck in another.
And somewhere underneath all of that was this quiet frustration with myself because I knew what I was capable of.
So why couldn’t I just do the thing?
Since fully accepting my ADHD diagnosis and really starting to understand what it means for me, I’ve been looking at a lot of that differently.
I’m realizing I’m not broken.
I’m not nearly as lazy as I thought I was.
And while yes, I can absolutely procrastinate because I am still a human being and sometimes I simply do not feel like doing the shit, I’m learning that a lot of what I spent years labeling as procrastination was more complicated than that.
My brain processes tasks differently.
It processes importance differently. Urgency differently. Interest differently. Transitions differently. And God forbid there are 1,001 things that all feel important at the exact same time because now everybody wants to be first in line.
The more I understand that, the more I’m learning how to work with myself instead of spending all my energy being irritated that I don’t work the way I thought I was supposed to.
And because apparently I cannot experience anything in life without eventually finding the customer experience lesson in it, this has also made me think even more deeply about the work I do.
Because one of the things I say all the time is:
The experience is the system.
And apparently that applies to my brain too.
We blame people for friction all the time.
A customer keeps asking what happens next, so we say they weren’t paying attention.
An employee keeps coming back to the owner with questions, so maybe they aren’t taking enough initiative.
The client didn’t complete the form correctly.
The contractor missed a step.
The customer forgot something.
The founder can’t keep up.
And sure, sometimes people miss things. Sometimes somebody didn’t read. Sometimes somebody absolutely should have known better.
But sometimes?
The experience did not do its job.
That customer keeps asking what happens next because nobody clearly told them.
That team member keeps coming back to the owner because the SOP tells them how to do the task but doesn’t tell them when they have authority to make the decision themselves.
That client keeps emailing for an update because there’s a long stretch in the process where they hear absolutely nothing and have no idea whether anybody is still working on their stuff.
That founder keeps having to step back into a workflow because the tools are technically connected, but the information people need isn’t actually flowing between them.
Everybody is doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but the flow isn’t right.
And I’ve been thinking about how often we do the same thing to ourselves.
We decide the person is the problem before we question the experience around the person.
“Why can’t you just do it?” is not always a useful question.
Because I have spent years asking myself some version of that.
Why can’t you just start?
Why can’t you just finish it?
Why did you wait until now?
Why are you doing this other thing when you know this is more important?
Meanwhile, I could spend six straight hours completely locked into building something complicated because my brain had decided that was interesting.
It didn’t make sense to me.
Now I’m much more interested in asking different questions.
What about this task is creating friction for me?
Is the next step actually clear?
Is this one task, or have I casually written something on my list that is secretly seventeen decisions wearing a trench coat?
Do I need information I don’t have yet?
Is there a transition I’m avoiding?
Does this need to happen this way at all?
Can I make the environment around the task easier instead of continuing to make myself wrong for not doing it?
That’s customer experience thinking.
It’s also systems thinking.
And lately, it’s becoming life thinking for me too.
A system should support the human being inside of it.
This is the part I think businesses get wrong when they start talking about systems.
We become so focused on the tool, the automation, the SOP, the workflow or the process that we forget there are actual human beings who have to move through all of it.
You can have a beautifully documented process that nobody follows.
You can automate something and still create a terrible client experience.
You can hire someone and still have everything come back to you.
You can have five platforms doing exactly what they were designed to do and still somehow be the person manually holding all five of them together.
Technically, you have systems.
But what is the experience of using them?
Does the next person know what happens next?
Does the information arrive when and where somebody actually needs it?
Does the customer understand what’s expected of them?
Does your team know what they own?
Can they make a decision without waiting for you?
Can the business flow without unnecessary owner intervention?
That’s the stuff I care about.
Because the system isn’t just the software.
The system is the entire experience of how people, information, decisions, communication and work move through the business.
And if the humans inside of that experience constantly have to compensate for bad design, eventually somebody is going to become the system.
A lot of times, it’s the owner.
My diagnosis is making me more compassionate without lowering the standard.
And I think that distinction matters.
Learning that my brain processes things differently doesn’t mean I suddenly get to say, “Well, I have ADHD, so nothing is getting done.”
Please.
I still have a business to run.
Clients still need me.
Money still has to move.
Things still have deadlines.
The work still has to get done.
What’s changing is that I’m becoming less interested in beating myself up as a productivity strategy.
Because it turns out, calling yourself lazy twelve times does not actually make the task more appealing.
Who knew?
I’m learning that accountability and compassion can exist in the same room.
I can say, “Mocha, this still needs to happen,” while also asking, “Okay, what do we need to change so it’s easier for you to actually make it happen?”
I don’t need to lower the standard.
I need to build a better way to reach it.
And honestly, that’s what I do with businesses too.
I don’t look at a capable business owner and assume they just need to work harder.
Most of the people I work with are already doing a lot.
They’ve got the CRM.
They’ve got the assistant.
They’ve documented processes.
They’ve automated things.
They’ve hired.
They’ve invested.
They’re doing all the things.
And sometimes the flow still isn’t right.
My job is to look at what’s actually happening between all of those pieces and figure out what the experience needs to do differently.
Customer. Business. Money.
This is why I look at businesses through Customer + Business + Money.
On the customer side, what are people seeing, feeling, waiting on, questioning or needing next?
On the business side, what has to happen behind the scenes to make that experience work? Who owns it? Where does information live? What requires the owner? What shouldn’t?
And on the money side, what does all of that friction eventually cost?
Because friction isn’t always dramatic.
Sometimes it looks like an inquiry that never gets followed up on.
A client who doesn’t renew.
A customer who liked the service but never thinks to come back.
An owner spending twenty minutes answering something the process should have already answered.
A team member waiting three hours for an approval.
A payment that requires somebody to figure out which project it belongs to.
Ten little moments that each seem harmless until you realize they’re happening every day.
That’s why I don’t believe in putting technology first.
First, understand the experience.
Then figure out what needs to support it.
Maybe the person isn’t the first thing that needs fixing.
That idea feels especially personal to me right now.
Because I spent a long time trying to fix myself.
Trying to become more disciplined.
More organized.
More consistent.
Less distracted.
Less… me, apparently.
And now I’m realizing that what I actually needed was a much better understanding of how I work.
I needed better ways to move information out of my head.
Better ways to see what matters.
Better ways to start.
Better ways to transition.
Better ways to design my own environment around the brain I actually have instead of the imaginary version of myself who wakes up every morning excited to complete administrative tasks in chronological order.
She does not live here.
And that’s okay.
I’m learning how I work.
I’m learning which things need a system, which things need a shortcut, which things need somebody else’s help and which things I simply need to stop pretending I’m going to do the traditional way.
I’m learning that different doesn’t automatically mean deficient.
And more than anything, I’m learning that I’m not broken.
That’s probably the part I’m proudest of.
Because once you stop spending so much time trying to fix the person, you finally have some energy left to design the experience.
And whether I’m looking at my own life, a client’s business, a customer journey or the systems running underneath all of it, I keep coming back to the same thing:
The experience is the system.
The question is whether that system was designed for the people who actually have to live inside of it.