Why You Keep Trying to Fix the Wrong Problem
Maybe you’ve told yourself you need to be more organised.
More motivated.
Better with your time.
Maybe you’ve bought the planner, written another to-do list, promised yourself you’ll get on top of things next week.
Or maybe you’re just waiting.
Waiting for work to settle down. For the kids to need you a little less. For life to stop feeling quite so full.
Because then you’ll have the time and energy to sort yourself out.
Except somehow, that point never seems to arrive.
And there might be a reason for that.
You could be trying to fix the wrong problem.
The thing you notice isn’t always the thing that needs fixing
When something doesn’t feel right, we naturally focus on the bit we can see.
You can’t get yourself started, so you think you have a motivation problem.
Your head is constantly full, so you decide you need to be more organised.
You finally get an hour to yourself and spend half of it scrolling or thinking about everything you should be doing, so you wonder why you’re so bad at switching off.
You keep putting something off, so you tell yourself you need more discipline.
But what if those things aren’t the problem?
What if they’re clues?
Because there’s a big difference between:
“I need to get better at managing everything.”
and
“Why am I trying to manage so much in the first place?”
That second question takes you somewhere very different.
Take the to-do list
There’s nothing wrong with a to-do list. I use them too.
But a better list won’t solve the feeling that you’re responsible for everything.
A new planner won’t help much if you’re saying yes when you want to say no.
And another productivity trick probably isn’t the answer if you’ve spent so long putting everyone else first that you’re not even sure what you want anymore.
Sometimes we keep trying to become better at coping with a situation that actually needs to change.
That’s why the solution never quite sticks.
So what do you do instead?
Before you try to fix the problem, get curious about it.
The next time you catch yourself thinking:
“I need to be more motivated.”
“I need to get organised.”
“I need to stop procrastinating.”
“I just need life to calm down.”
Don’t immediately jump to fixing it.
Ask yourself:
What’s actually making this difficult right now?
Then keep going.
If you’re struggling to get motivated, what are you trying to motivate yourself to do?
If you can’t switch off, what keeps running through your head when you try?
If your to-do list is overwhelming, how much of what’s on it genuinely needs to be yours?
If you’re waiting for life to calm down, what would you actually do differently if it did?
You don’t need to interrogate yourself for an hour or come up with some enormous life-changing answer.
You’re looking for the thing underneath the thing.
That’s where change gets easier
Once you understand what you’re actually dealing with, you can stop throwing solutions at the wrong problem.
Maybe you don’t need more motivation. You need to admit that something you’ve been pushing yourself towards isn’t what you want anymore.
Maybe you don’t need better time management. You need some boundaries around your time.
Maybe you don’t need to become better at switching off. You need to deal with the thing your brain keeps bringing back to you.
Maybe you don’t need another to-do list.
You need to decide what matters now.
And sometimes, simply seeing that distinction is enough to make things feel a little less tangled.
You don’t have to fix your whole life today.
But you do need to know what you’re actually trying to fix.
Not sure where to start?
My free Clarity Quiz helps you identify the area of your life that may need your attention most right now, so you can stop guessing and start with something that actually matters.
Take the free Clarity Quiz →