Curse of the Shiny Object

I have a client—let’s call her Sue—who was locked in battle with a formidable but conquerable opponent: medical bills. The problem was that Sue was never one to get behind on bills, and when her son broke his arm, she paid a lot of the bills in full (yikes!) at the expense of her mortgage, on which she then fell quickly behind. Luckily, she had a steady income, so it was a comfort to know that her problem had a simple (if stressful) solution. She just needed to cut back, track her spending, and weather this storm with patience and planning. In a few months, Sue could be back on track and ready to start saving. But after the first meeting, I wasn't so convinced that she had the drive to do it.

I’m sure that “steady income” alone has made some of you jealous. In my experience with clients, this is often the deciding factor in whether or not a coach will be able to help a client make progress. So to hear that Sue had a steady income was exciting for me, because I consider myself a problem solver. I like to experience new challenges and unfamiliar territories, because that’s what fuels my curiosity in life.

Unfortunately, that curiosity comes with a curse: the Curse of the Shiny Object (AKA a short attention span). When a problem pops up, I want to solve it—right here and now, before it floats away on the breeze. So when it comes to coaching, I run into problems with my patience and focus. That’s not to say that I’m a bad listener. I always work to hear my clients out, empathize, and find myself asking good, leading questions (after all, I've been through training over a dozen times by now). Where I run into problems is in taking all the information they've given me, and narrowing down my focus onto a few manageable pieces. When we touched upon the idea of a budget, I started a budget. While working on the budget, we ran into student loan payments, and I switched gears into debt prioritization. When we entered her interest rates, I suddenly wanted to know what her credit situation looked like. Sue tuned out, and for good reason. I had the skills to lead her to water, but when I didn't slow down to prioritize and focus, she assumed that she needed to drink the whole lake.

When we met for her next appointment, she was quick to let me know that she “didn't do any of that stuff we talked about last time.” I asked why, and she told me what I should have known: “There was just too much to look at.” Since she was kind enough to identify where we went wrong, it was easy to correct it, and in that second meeting we made an emergency budget to get her through to the next meeting, for which she’d be bringing bills and a list of her debts. I realized quickly that Sue was a very driven woman, but she needed someone to help her map out a plan and hold her accountable. I needed to be her focus, so that she could worry about doing the work.

I know it sounds so basic, but it really dawned on me that in the hour we meet with our client, we are seeing just a brief glimpse of what composes their life. While it might seem like they’re presenting us a dozen different problems, that doesn't mean we need to solve them all at once. As with habit-change, even the most basic tasks take time and effort to accomplish. As a coach, it’s my job to make the process as simple and logical as possible. I’m now happy to report that Sue is nearly caught up on her mortgage, and is still waiting on a large tax refund. I’m also happy to report that the tax refund is the only item on our agenda for the next meeting, as we allocate it one account at a time.