This week I’ve been in Vancouver, British Columbia, for two marriage ceremonies and it has been an amazing experience, with the one caveat: in Canada they drive on the incorrect side of the road. You might think this has everything to do with my ability to drive on the right hand lanes on the road whilst sitting on the left side of the car (ok, that’s a little bit of the issue) but the main problem is that I actively avoid turning left.
Turning left from the right hand side of the road is the hardest activity for my brain to contemplate.
Everything in me screams that it is dangerous, it’s wrong, and I should avoid it at all costs.
So as I was driving home close to midnight last night, after a sunset 7pm ceremony on Vancouver Island which involved two hours of driving and a 90 minute ferry ride, all I wanted was to eat dinner before passing out in a bed at my Airbnb.
Without turning to my friend in Apple Maps I thought I’ll just drive until I find somewhere that’s open.
It wasn’t until I’d passed the third restaurant on the left that I realised that I was subconsciously avoiding turning left and there were no open restaurants on the right.
I was starving and wouldn’t turn left to save myself.
I wonder how many of us are making subconscious decisions based on it being too hard – despite relative ease (turning left is like turning right but you have to try and not hit other cars while doing so, some might say it’s like turning right in Australia).
Are Instagram Stories (or Instagram itself) seemingly too hard so you actively avoid publishing them? Is electronic bookkeeping, invoicing, and accepting credit card payments too hard for you at the moment? Maybe moving to an online booking process, and away from paper processes, is your turning left?
What business improvements have you been avoiding because they’re too hard?
I believe that calling out our struggles and our weaknesses is step one to confronting them and either tackling them, paying someone else to tackle them, or learning how we can tackle them.
In my own business I know that there’s a number of “turning lefts” that I’ve been avoiding. Some are regular to-do list items that I’ve left too long, and some are long term goals to reduce expenses and improve our processes.
What is your turning left? Call it out in the comments and maybe even some of them are things Sarah or I could help with.
Nice article Josh!
I also find (in RHD countries) that turning left is weird because my elbow always hits the door of the car as I’m used to having a heap of space!
My turn left for my businesses is what I call “the overhaul”. By this, I mean that I acknowledge that what I currently have in my systems, process -and even my website is band-aid after band-aid as I’ve “learned by doing” and it’s nowhere near where I want it to be. The band-aids have been put on a website architecture and systems architecture that was built before I’d ever booked a client and I reckon I’m not the only institute member in the same boat!
I’ve been putting off a complete overhaul and getting rid of the things that I know don’t work “great” because they work “okay for now”.
Mate, overhauling processes is my specialty!! The biggest issue of course is finding a chunk of time to devote to it; can you see any days in the weeks ahead where you could diarise a four-hour period to make a start on it?
I just did one of my left turns this morning!! I’ve had an email in my inbox for weeks about cleaning up the images on my website. I’m outsourcing this task, paying someone else to do it, but I still have to oversee the task and it all just seems a bit too hard. But I’ve had a few hours sitting around with nothing to do today so I bit the bullet and opened the email. I figured I can only do half the task without further information, but at least I’ve now asked for that info!
Yes! My turning left is online payments and automating processes – I just signed up to Tave after listening to your podcast and I’m investing in it to get more time for myself and less in the drudgery of emailing and paper diary confusion. I’ve also engaged a solicitor to fancy up my CSA.
My next left turn is figuring out how to actually use Tave.. but this was a huge step for me.