046: "Series Before Full Turns"

We were in our ops meeting this week, staring at our list of issues to tackle. The kind of list that’s part real problems, part vague dread, and part “we should probably talk about that eventually.”

Somebody asked where to start.

I said it before I even thought about it: “Series before full turns.”

If you coached beam, you know exactly what I mean. If you didn’t, here’s the translation.

You give the kids an assignment on beam. There’s always a full turn in there somewhere, and there’s always a series: the acro series, the hard tumbling connection, the thing that actually scares them.

Every single time, you’d see two kinds of kids.

One kind does the full turns first. They’re easy and safe. They check a box and feel like progress. But by the time that kid gets to the series, it has grown bigger in their head with every minute they’ve spent avoiding it. The assignment often goes unfinished, and they leave practice less prepared for competition.

The other kind does the series first. They get the scary thing out of the way while they still have the nerve for it.

Same assignment. Same amount of work. Completely different experience of practice, and a completely different kid walking out of the gym that day.

Here’s the thing: your business to-do list works exactly the same way, and most people run it backward.

Covey called this “big rocks” in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: put the rocks in the jar first, and the sand and pebbles fill in around them. Everyone nods at that idea. Almost nobody lives it, because the rocks are heavy, while the sand is right there and easy.

But there’s something Covey’s version misses that beam taught me a long time ago. It’s not just about what fits in the jar. It’s about what tackling the hard thing first does to you.

A team that clears easy wins all morning and saves the scary conversation for “after lunch” spends the whole morning dreading it. That dread has a cost. It shows up as slower decisions and meetings that circle instead of land. The hard thing gets bigger in the room, just like it gets bigger in the head of a twelve-year-old standing at the end of the beam.

A team that walks straight at the hard thing first, whether it’s the pricing decision, the underperforming location, or the manager who needs a real conversation instead of a hint, gets to spend the rest of the day building instead of bracing. Everything after that feels like a full turn. Almost like a reward.

There’s also a compounding effect that matters more than the schedule. Every time you choose series before full turns, you prove to yourself and your team that hard things are survivable. That’s not a mood. It’s a muscle.

Teams that build it get faster at making hard decisions over time. Teams that don’t get slower, because avoidance is a habit, just like courage is.

In that ops meeting, we chose the series first. We walked out with the hardest thing behind us instead of in front of us.

I’ll take that trade every time.

What’s the series on your list this week?

Go do that one first.

Keep going.

– Casey