and the protocol (trick) I use to do my best work before the sun comes up
I was looking at my slack notifications flashing, on a Friday, debating when to break the news to my boss.
That I was leaving.
This happened at a company I worked at a while back. It was run by a prominent leader, who had accomplished a lot of things. But then whenever it was time to have certain difficult conversations about growth, leadership changes, company direction.
Nothing.
I’d bring this up in meetings and get one of those “well, that’s how things go around here.”
The more I stayed, the more I thought I could ignore it until I decided to have a conversation about my growth at the company.
A few emails here.
A couple of slack messages there.
The standard yearly review in person and over zoom.
Then came the cancelled meetings.
And the awkward “let’s discuss that another time.”
Still nothing.
I eventually left.
Not due to a blowout or major fallout. It was more a series of non-decisions that led to a slow deterioration of morale. It happened to me and my team.
Just before I left, I watched everyone get used to staying silent and kicking decisions down the road.
Month after month, talent trickled out the door.
As I considered leaving, one of my wise colleagues said something that I still remember, he said: “They’ll box you in, but they’ll never kick you out.”
That was the M.O.
No one got fired, which was great. But then, there was no room for growth.
A recipe for stagnation.
I learned something important about the tragedy of avoidance.
You choose the pleasure of avoidance now, you get the pain of delay down the line.
Avoidance trades short-term comfort for long-term pain.
I personally see the tyranny of avoidance on sales calls.
The most difficult part of a sales call is dealing with the uncomfortable silence that exists after you ask someone to buy something from you. If you are going to build a business, you have to overcome the difficult problem of asking “for the sale.”
There’s no way around it but a lot of people avoid this last part of the call.
Why? Because it is difficult and uncomfortable.
It’s easier to stay on the “happy, everything seems to be good, no objections, let me draft another thing up” part of the conversation.
It’s safe. A lot of times, the person trying to make the sale does not want to deal with a possible rejection or they have not practiced dealing with objections. That’s how your sales process remains in the easy zone.
Getting on multiple discovery calls that go nowhere. Talking over and over again, until the conversation goes stagnant like a clogged gutter.
I’ve found that when I prioritize only good vibes in the beginning, I’m prioritizing ghosting and miscommunication in the future. It’s better to have the difficult conversations head on.
I’ve seen projects deteriorate just because people didn’t have difficult conversations to start with.
The pleasure most seek in the moment usually comes at the expense of long-term discomfort.
But here’s where the advantage lies.
While everyone seeks escape, you’re building something different: the ability to move through resistance instead of around it.
Practice making hard things easy to get to (do it early)
Here’s what I’m learning on the practice ground: The consistent way to learn how to do hard things is to get to them early.
Yes, be the person that addresses the elephant in the room.
I’ve started experimenting with addressing the difficult conversations with the work I do with my clients.
Recently, just before starting an engagement, the client and I spent close to six weeks negotiating the terms, pricing, scope, even boundaries. It was a series of difficult conversations with multiple proposals written and reviewed. We eventually landed at a place of clarity and now the engagement is a lot easier.
Roles and responsibilities are clear and communication cadence is set with weekly working sessions and reports.
Because I’ve prioritized a long-term relationship with the client, a few months of conversations about expectations and results was necessary to have a better engagement.
By frontloading the hard thing in the beginning, the rest of the project got easier.
And the best way to develop this practice is to do hard things early.
I’ve been playing around with this frontload protocol.
Systematic approach to timing difficult things:
Daily: Have that hard conversation before 10 AM – catch avoidance when it’s smallest, before it compounds.
Weekly: Tackle your toughest project task on Monday (for me that’s outreach and content) – take care of the intimidating to-do before it turns into something bigger.
Monthly: Work on your most uncomfortable goal in Week 1 – when the timeline expands, it’s easier to lose track and easier to avoid important things. Get to it early.
Yearly: Focus on your biggest challenge in Q1 – don’t wait until it’s the end of the second quarter, where the fear of “the year is just flying past” starts to kick in.
Whatever it is, break down your goals, and do the hard thing early.
This practice reminds you that you are capable of getting through hard things and resistance.
The earlier you get to it, the harder it is to avoid.
Because the longer you sit in it the more you get trapped by the cages of avoidance.
Practice Focus:
My colleague said ‘they’ll box you in but never kick you out.’
I now see he was describing the prison of avoidance. The question isn’t how to escape the box. It’s whether you’re willing to stay uncomfortable long enough to open the door yourself.
The practice isn’t avoiding the box. It’s refusing to get comfortable inside it. That requires showing up to hard things before they escalate into a bigger mountain that feels a lot harder to climb.
That’s where growth actually happens.
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. I’m mapping the patterns of how builders move through resistance early. Reply with your hard thing. I’m testing if naming it makes it harder to avoid. Your answer might be my next practice ground.
P.P.S Happy new year in advance.
