At Some Point, You Have to Stop Narrating and Start Moving
On why insight alone rarely changes anything
Richard and I have noticed something about ourselves lately, and I suspect we’re not alone.
We have gotten really good at talking about a problem. Not avoiding it or pretending it’s not there. If anything, we are probably more guilty of the opposite. We are pros at working out what isn’t working, where the friction is coming from and what’s really going on underneath the obvious issue. Give us enough time and we can pull something apart from multiple angles and get to the real problem.
Which sounds useful, and often it is.
The problem is that in your own business, being good at identifying an issue can start to feel a lot like doing something about it, even when nothing is actually changing. You’re talking about it, analysing it, turning it over from every angle and naming all the reasons it feels hard or why progress has stalled. You understand what is getting in the way, what the trade-offs are and what probably needs to happen next. And all of that feels productive, because thinking takes effort and so does problem-solving.
Then the other day, deep in another discussion, we realised we were having the same conversation we’d already had multiple times before, about the same problem ... arriving at more or less the same conclusion about what probably needed to happen, yet nothing ever actually changed.
At one point Richard said something like, “Okay, but are we actually going to do something about it this time?”
And that was really the whole issue.
We weren’t stuck because we didn’t understand the problem. We understood it perfectly well. We weren’t waiting on some missing piece of information or hoping that if we thought about it for another week the answer would suddenly become obvious. If we were being honest, what we were really doing was procrastinating in a place that no longer felt good, but did feel familiar.
The more I thought about that conversation, the more I realised this probably happens more than people think, especially to people who spend a lot of their time solving problems. You get so good at understanding what is wrong and articulating it clearly that, before you know it, talking about the problem starts to feel a lot like progress.
But understanding something and changing it are not the same thing.
Part of the problem, I think, is that talking feels safer. As long as everything stays in discussion mode, nothing has to become real. You don’t have to commit, risk being wrong or deal with the discomfort that comes with making a decision and living with it.
Eventually we had to admit that talking about it more was not helping. We weren’t missing information and we weren’t confused about what needed to happen. If anything, we understood the problem a little too well. The question was no longer why this was happening. The question had become something much harder, because it required commitment.
What are we actually doing next?
That is the part that feels harder, because once you answer that question, the conversation changes. You’re no longer talking about possibilities or workshopping ideas or circling the issue from every angle. You’re deciding, choosing a direction and accepting that it might be imperfect, difficult or wrong.
I think that was probably the biggest thing we took from that conversation.
There is nothing wrong with understanding a problem. In fact, sometimes you need to sit with something long enough to properly understand what is really going on before you can take action. But there also comes a point where more talking is just more talking, and eventually you already know enough. After that, the thing standing between you and progress isn’t insight or understanding. It’s your willingness to actually do something.
At some point, you have to stop narrating and start moving.
If this struck a chord, Richard and I explore these sorts of questions every week on the Richly Told podcast. Business, family, travel, leadership and all the complicated bits in between.
New episodes land every Friday on Spotify and Substack.