Ask all my friends and family, I am constantly coming up with ideas for products.

Many of them were already products I was not aware of when I thought them up.  Others went on to actually become successful products (think energy drinks).

If I had only pursued the idea, I might not be writing this right now. (I know many of you are feeling me).

We all have great ideas that we do not act on.

The reason I started thinking about all my great inventions that never went anywhere is because I saw this clip on my LinkedIn feed from a Shark Tank Presentation. It has a person demonstrating a piece of metal that attaches to your cook pan that acts like a strainer. Link

How many times have you spent lots of minutes trying to remove the grease from your ground beef by either taking many minutes using a slotted spoon or holding a pan lid to strain out the fat only to lose half your meat back into the grease.

This product is genius because it solves a real problem most of us, especially if you ever made sloppy joes, have had in an easy, fast, and non-messy way.

Why this analogy matters to your career

I have missed inventing this simple tool myself because I thought I had already solved the problem. In fact, I had 2 solutions: the slotted spoon and the pan lid techniques.

When Our Solutions Become Our Routines:  

This had me wondering where we might fall into a career routine because they solved the initial problem, but they have never been all that efficient or easy.

We just tolerate them.

Here are 3 routines that solve a problem but now have become a problem themselves:  

1. The Completion Routine: Many of my clients (me too!) are really good at finishing things. And honestly, it feels good. You’re dependable. You’re count-on-able. You get that little hit of satisfaction from checking something off the list.

But sometimes our commitment to completion means we don’t stop.

We stay glued to our chairs because “I’m almost done.” We work through hunger, thirst, bathroom breaks and the fact that our brains stopped being particularly brilliant an hour ago.

We have solved the problem of getting things done.

But we’ve created another problem: we’ve made stopping feel like failure.

Completion Routine Fix: Experiment with defining the finish line differently. Instead of asking, “Can I finish this?” ask: “Is this a good place to stop?”. Tune into your Body Genius. Is it screaming, “YES PLEASE STOP!”. Do not ignore this.

A good stopping point is a skill, not a failure to complete.

2. The Proving Routine: At some point in our careers, many of us learned that being good wasn’t enough. We had to prove our value and worth.

So we volunteered. Took on the hard assignment. Answered email at 9:30 p.m. Fixed the problem. Raised our hand for the extra work.

And it worked. People noticed. We built credibility.

Until we had created a routine that became a problem: We got so good at proving our value that we never stop proving it.

Now the things we do to demonstrate our value have become expectations.

Proving Routine Fix: Before automatically saying yes, ask: “What am I trying to prove and to whom?”. This pushes back on imposter syndrome and the old routine of thinking you had to prove you were capable. You are a different person now. You do not need to prove yourself.

Now you demonstrate what you’re capable of by choosing where you want to spend your capability.

3. The Devil-You-Know Routine: I just heard a version of this talking to a coaching client last week:

“The weirdly unanticipated scary part about of pivoting my career is leaving the devil I know!”

• We know our job.
• We know how to do the work.
• We know how to navigate the politics.
• We know which meetings matter and which ones don’t.
• We know our boss’s quirks.
• We know who to call when something goes sideways.

We’ve figured it out. And that’s exactly what can make it so hard to leave.

Because the alternative is unknown. A new role means learning a new company, a new culture, new people, new expectations. What if the boss is worse? What if I don’t click with the new team? What if I can’t figure things out fast enough?

So, we tell ourselves: “It’s not that bad here. I can stick it out another year then think about changing”

Then next thing you know, you have stayed for years in a role you’ve actually outgrown, because being good at something familiar feels safer than being a beginner at something new.

The Devil-You-Know Fix: Question if you are remaining in what’s familiar.  Ask: “Am I staying because I want this career or because I know how to do this career?” Familiarity can feel like security. And sometimes it is. But comfort isn’t the same thing as alignment.

You don’t have to stay in a comfortable career just because you’ve figured out how to make it work. Interrupt your routine! Begin again!  

The genius of that little piece of metal wasn’t that it solved a problem nobody had ever solved before. It was that someone looked at a problem we’d all gotten used to tolerating and asked, “Is there a better way?”

Maybe that’s a good question to ask about our careers, too.

What are you tolerating simply because you’ve gotten used to doing it that way?