Reverb10: Defrag

By Jessica Albon

“Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. The end of the year is an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead. With Reverb 10, we’ll do both.” (I took that straight from their site–forgive me, but they said it better than I could.)

Like Sarah J. Bray, I won’t be publicly posting my responses daily, but today’s was great inspiration for a blog post and for a computer-y end-of-year reminder (see the very end for that).

Looking back over 2010, the word that best suits my year as a whole is: Defrag.

I’ve mentioned that this year has been complicated for me. Professionally, it’s been a big year–so much adventure, so many amazing projects, so many thrilling clients. And, as “they” say, running a successful business is a crash course in personal development. Growing, personally, in leaps and bounds this year definitely made the business growth a little tricky. (In the past, I’ve prided myself on being professionally productive at all costs. I would never miss a client deadline, regardless of hospitalization, personal crisis, or “Panic Friday” (when one or more clients drag their feet on approval and then all write on the same Friday that It Must Be Launched On Monday!!).)

In years past, I’ve believed being a professional service provider meant no boundaries; service at any cost; “the client is always, always, always right.”

And the only way that I could make that work was to shut down, on some level. Not all the time, but when things got really complicated, when I was working round the clock, the only thing that really could give was *me*–my reaction to things, my checking in with myself, my refueling time.

This year, that all changed. Dramatically. It started at the very end of 2009 with a project gone spectacularly awry. A client who had proven impossible to please kept making new demands and I finally had to draw a line. It was clear he was never going to be happy with what I could create, and though I was loathe to admit defeat, I finally did. The funny thing was, when I cried uncle, he admitted he *liked* my work very much there were just some “small changes” he wanted to make. No matter. I’d drawn the line, and I didn’t take him back.

And that was the reason I’d been so reluctant to draw boundaries in the past–see, to me, the only reason to draw a line is if it’s a non-negotiable. So, if I draw that line, and you cross it, that can only mean we’re done. It’s over. So, the idea that I would have any non-negotiables in a business that’s all about thrilling my customers… It just didn’t seem right.

But I simply couldn’t function anymore with absolutely no boundaries. And, so, as the new year began, I began, bit by bit, to establish tiny boundaries. I started saying no to my clients. And I wish I could say that everything changed in an instant. But it didn’t, of course. Setting boundaries wasn’t the magic wand waving that meant perfect clients 24-7. It was hard and required constant management. In the beginning, as I was doing more backsliding than making forward progress, I was quite sure I would never get it right. But, I had gotten to a place in my business where the status quo was too painful to continue with it. And so, every morning, I recommitted to listening to myself, to staying present with what I needed and wanted, and to running my business in a way that balanced me and my clients.

Back to My Word of the Year

So, where does defrag come in in all of this? Once I’d gotten better at setting boundaries and staying present, I started noticing all sorts of lingering “programming.” Little thoughts I had on repeat, beliefs that were getting in the way of where I wanted to go, being quite sure that unless I ran my business This Way, my clients would hate me forever. And one by one, little by little, I started clearing those out. Anything that I couldn’t absolutely prove, I stopped believing. (By this, I mean, for instance: “If I don’t email people back on quote requests within 15 minutes, they will always find another firm to work with.”)

Sure, it sounds simple in retrospect, and some days it was. Some days it was a simple matter of noticing each time that thought came up, and reminding myself: “I’ve proven that to be false and don’t believe it anymore.” Other days… Well, other days I got to the end knowing I’d have to try again tomorrow.

Which, actually, is very much how your computer handles a defrag, too. When your harddrive is all cluttered with the reminents of programs you’ve long since uninstalled, sometimes the defrag stalls after making just a tiny bit of progress. And you have to restart the computer before trying again. (That, by the way, is the sum total of my computer advice to everyone: have you restarted it? It works 95+% of the time.) So, I saw sleep in much the same way–a way to restart my brain before trying again.

Sometimes, it takes many tries before the defrag program runs all the way through, and sometimes, you’ll find that once it’s been completed, if you run it again the next day, it finds new pockets of information to clean up. My brain was much the same–some weeks, I felt like I’d made it all the way through, only to discover an outdated, lingering pocket of information. But, bit by bit, week by week, I made progress. Mostly steady, always slow.

I did other clearing out as well–stuff, tasks, emotional clutter. I cleared out stories about family members that I thought were rock solid, but turned out to be wrong. (To give a very small example: my dad always talks about this momentous trip to Oregon he took at 18 [he and his roommate drove across the state line, and then turned straight around and drove back to school] and how he’d never been out of the state of California before that. If you were a member of my family, you’d have heard this story dozens of times–it’s one of a handful that he tells fairly often. In going through boxes of family photos, I discovered his family had taken a trip to Jerome, Arizona when he was 7 or 8, and that there are souvenirs from other out-of-state trips as well.) Many of the stories aren’t important in any particular way, but it feels so good to know that I’ve cleared out some that simply weren’t true and have replaced them with stories that are more true.

Bit by bit, defrag by defrag, I’m feeling clearer and more focused. So, that’s what the year of 2010 has been for me. A time of clearing out and clearing away and preparing for what’s ahead. For 2011, as I look forward, I see a year of Lightness. Can’t wait to see how that unfolds!

Now about that practical computer tip…

And, I can’t share my computer metaphor without also sharing an annual tradition with you. Each year, I clear out all of my computer files that I don’t need anymore and run full computer scans and checkups and backups. It feels good to enter the new year with a clean computer. (And, what’s more, it has saved my ass several times!) I highly recommend it, if you can make the time in the weeks ahead. It’s lovely to archive what’s past, and only keep what you need for your present.