Let me tell you why the phrase “I SHOULD” should be -pun intended- banned. It is a sneaky energy drainer that forces me either into a state of indecisive paralysis or makes me do things that I resent doing, so I end up doing a poor job and spending my precious life feeling under stress.
For the past 5 years, I used “I should” far too often when having self-conversations. I am not talking about my private life, because on that front it was quite easy to set my priorities and act accordingly.
For instance, I chose to spend a lot of quality time with my daughter in her pre-school years, so whatever I had to do to accomplish this, I gladly did it. Breastfeeding on demand and carrying her around in the baby carrier in her first years, then keeping her out of kindergarten on days when she felt too stressed out, even if it messed my daily planning and productivity completely, as well as home-cooking every single meal because of our dietary preferences and limitations. Any of those choices took a lot of effort and energy, but even though they were often exhausting, I still gladly did them. They were my choice. My conscious choice.
However, when it came to business choices, I’ve had plenty of difficult times. This was mainly because I was trying to act according to my inner “should’s” and not according to my true inclination. Let me give you a few examples.
Building an Entire Marketing Strategy for a Tech Start Up
The tech world is not really my thing. The startup world is not really my thing. Trying to sell highly specialized apps for technical developers, whose professional world is an utter mystery to me, is definitely not my thing.
And yet I sticked with the project for a few months, hoping that I would end up understanding what it was that we were trying to sell, who would be our target buyer persona, what their life looks like now, how it could be improved and so on. It took large chunks of time out of my busy schedule, learning about a field I wasn’t even eager to learn about (and that is quite unusual for me as I have a huge array of interests).
The worst part was that I thought I really should go on with it, that I shouldn’t disappoint my team and that I simply should put even more effort into it. I spent a lot of mental energy on discussing with myself what to do about it. But it was useless. First I did the usual procrastination tricks. Deep-cleaning the kitchen. Grocery shopping at five different places. Finishing a book. And so on… When I was done with those, I still ended up staring at a blank screen, feeling total resistance to do anything related to the project. That’s when I admitted to myself the uselessness of thinking that “I should” continue.
Offering Google Analytics and Google Ad(word)s Services
In the past years, I would send out my resume for jobs that were at least remotely connected to what I do. After finishing the Google Analytics Individual Qualification and Google Adwords Certification, I would include these two certifications on the resume (because technical skills are an asset in the digital marketing field, so they looked good on it).
But, honestly, I never enjoyed doing any tasks related to digital advertising or analytics. So I ended up in a couple of very uncomfortable job interviews where I was being interviewed for technical positions and I felt I “should” give them a fair chance.
However, after several sleepless nights following the last of such interviews, and ending up refusing the job offer (even if it meant staying poor and unemployed for even longer), I finally realized there is no point in forcing myself into what should be done. I am not a technical enthusiast and even if, given my theoretical economics and finance background, I understand numbers reasonably well and could definitely work with them, I don’t have to do that.
Sticking with a difficult client
At one time I had found a client that seemed to be a perfect fit. Although he needed certain marketing skills that I still had to develop, there were a lot of things that I could do for him already. We agreed on a fair hourly rate, a flexible working schedule and ground rules of deliverables and communication.
Already two weeks down the line, I realized that job could mean a lot of stress. There was a campaign to be launched in a very short time, the contents were not delivered to me on time and to top things up, both my daughter and I ended up being down with a flu. Being committed, I worked through my illness in impossible conditions, but I thought to myself, it’s just this one time. Things would get better.
But they didn’t. If anything, they got worse. The client felt entitled to call me or send me urgent messages at all possible hours, deadlines were never respected, direction was changed in the last minute, I felt constantly under stress and unhappy with results, even though he was satisfied with my performance. On top of it, he was a late payer (and chasing payments down is a terrible kind of stress!).
But I thought I had no choice. At least I had work and I should do anything to keep it. I should set firmer boundaries, I should find better project management tools to help him get organized, I should find better communication channels. I did all of that – and the stress levels still didn’t decline. I kept that client for about 6 months too long. When I finally released him, it felt amazingly liberating. Within a few days, new working opportunities appeared.
Behind all of the situations described above, there was a nagging phrase of “I don’t want to, but I really should.” I thought I wasn’t in a position to refuse any work opportunity. That I needed to just try a little bit harder and it would all work out. That I owed it to others and had no right to choose.
Fortunately, now I know it was not true – because, anyhow, I ended up performing poorly, messing up interpersonal relationships and keeping my mind and body under prolonged stress because of inner dissatisfaction.
Lesson learned: I’d take the decision to quit any of the three situations much sooner. I’d check and keep checking if doing a certain job was something that I wanted to do or if I just thought I should be doing. And if the decision would appear too difficult, I’d make conscious effort to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible – not just stick my head in the sand, pretend it would go away on its own and hope that time would give me the answer on its own.
