Learn From Your Stumbles!

Learn From Your Stumbles!

This episode and article were almost titled “But what about the second verse?”!

I’m writing this article on a Sunday. Actually, on Mother’s Day! But it won’t come out for a few weeks. And more to the point, I cantored for 2 Masses this morning, and I made sure to practice all the words to all the songs for both Masses. Because we all, including myself, need to learn from our stumbles!

And here’s where I stumbled!  The idea for today’s topic came to me a month ago now, after singing at a Mass with my friend John. He is an amazing accompanist and person, and we were adjusting the line-up on a Sunday as we do a few minutes before Mass begins.  And as we looked at the songs, I said assuredly, “Oh, yes, I am familiar with all of these, no problem” or something like that.  And… well… we found out midway through Mass that I was not 100% familiar with one of the songs. Oops.

I believed I knew them, but I had not taken just a few extra minutes and reviewed them, and not taking those few moments to prepare meant that I stumbled in the moment.  

And here is what I want to work on today - Have you ever?

Have you ever said to yourself, “Oh, I know that (fill in the blank here)”, 

• I don’t need to study.

• I know the words to say.

• I know how to do those math problems.

• I know how to get to that destination without a map.

• And then, perhaps, you find out in the moment that you didn’t know it as well as you thought?  Or you didn’t remember as clearly as you thought?

You didn’t stop and ask, Do I really? Do I really know it? And then… “Hmmm… I had better make sure.”

I mean, yes, of course we know things. You know a lot of things!  We all do. And sometimes it's hard for us to believe that other people don't know what we know! Because we all have interests and strengths! AND YET… we also need to review, refresh, rehearse, whatever you want to call it, and not get too comfortable with what we think we know.

Let me explain. If you've listened for any amount of time, you know that in addition to being a productivity coach and certified professional organizer, I am also a professional liturgical musician. It is my ministry and I also often get hired and paid to sing at various Catholic Parishes here on the south side of Chicago. Amazing!  And when I sang with my friend a month ago, I was feeling a little too comfortable.  It is possible I was feeling a little rushed, as well, as I was singing three Masses at 2 different parishes.  

I will say, I am a professional, and preparation is critical to success.  I have a template of tasks to complete for every weekend when I cantor.  My habit is to ALWAYS request the line-ups a few days before, set up my hymnals with colored tabs on the songs in order of the service, make sure I have my list with me, etc. I look at the songs, hum the first line or so playing the melody on the piano or with my pitch pipe app, or I listen to the first 30 seconds on Youtube, and then I must have said - “Oh, I know this one and that one, so I just need to learn these 2 or 3 new songs by Sunday”, and then I work on those new ones.

I love the professional challenge of learning new music every week, and I am good at it, but I might get a little too comfortable.  And when I stumbled on the timing of the refrain of a song I thought I knew, I was reminded that we may need to RE-learn things, too. Thankfully, I quickly figured it out, and even more thankfully, my fellow musician is awesome and quick to adjust, and is easy to follow as a cantor.  And in music, I had the notes right in front of me so I needed to READ and count and pay attention!

The point? We need to re-learn lessons. 

We need to keep notes, even if they’re just in our head, from day to day, week to week, year to year, and we need to actually go back and review them once in a while. We need to refresh in certain areas because maybe we don't still know them as well as we think we do, or because things change!

This can be something like words to a song, like it was for me, or it could be reviewing your scheduling policies or your boundaries that you have set that have become lax over time.  Maybe it is reviewing a presentation you feel like you’ve given a million times, because when we gloss over details, things get missed. 

Being in a coaching class has reminded me to have my coaching framework in front of me when I coach, and I also created a coaching form to remind me of a few specific steps I need to reinforce.

We need to re-learn lessons. 

This applies in productivity and organizing to lessons we need to relearn and systems we need to recommit to.  We need to review why we put systems in place, why they're there, why they work, and why we made the decisions that we made to do things in the way we do them. 

I recently said to a room full of people that we never want our routines and things to become no-brainers. We should always be using our brains!  We might get comfortable in life with how we do things, and that is not a bad thing! Things can get comfortable, less stressful, more of a habit, less of the heavy decision making.  In these ways, comfort is good!

But we also need to check our notes sometimes, so we don’t start phoning it in. So that things don't get missed. And that is my point for today.  We need to re-learn, and not get complacent or too comfortable!

For example, I have added to my Thursday notes to ask for the line up, tag my pages and sing all the songs and ALL the verses!  To spend the extra few minutes and be confident instead of just comfortable.  

And now it is your turn!  Where do you stumble? What are areas for you that could use a regular refresh, reinforcement, review or rehearsal? Identify the area, and also put the regular refresh on the calendar!

We can’t let “comfort” cloud our judgment.  We can’t let “complacency” make the decisions.  

Whether it's an organizing system, a scheduling policy, a seasonal activity at work that we haven’t done in a while, we might benefit from remembering again why we've made the decisions that we've made. We refresh that for ourselves as we recommit to maintaining a system that we've created.

We need to take opportunities regularly to check in on the systems and processes to ensure that they still support us.  We just don't want to get too comfortable. I am a big fan of comfort, but we also want to remember to check in once in a while. 

“Confident and competent”  would have been better choices, and confidence comes from preparation. 

We need to learn from our stumbles! What are those lessons you need to relearn? And make a point to relearn them!