How do you learn that an option is available to you if you don’t know that it is available to you?

And how can I tell you that the option is available if I don’t know that you don’t know?

To uncover gaps in my students’ knowledge and skill, I designed my middle school program so that the students essentially did their homework at school.

We called it “discretionary time.” The students could choose any of their assignments to work on, using any of the resources at their disposal.

This gave the teachers priceless information about each student’s process. We could literally watch over their shoulders as they worked on something, which meant that we could step in and help to solve a problem that a student didn’t know how to articulate — or that they didn’t even realize was a problem.

For instance, as we watched them formatting a document, we might see them add a bunch of spaces instead of hitting “enter” or “tab.”

We might discover that they didn’t know about cutting, copying, and pasting, let alone the keyboard shortcuts for those actions.

I’m fascinated by these kinds of problems, where solving them is easy but diagnosing them is hard. They show up a lot not just for wayward middle schoolers, but also for accomplished professionals.

Because at a certain point, if you’re good at what you do — that is, good at producing the outcomes you become known for — you get left alone. No one is going to micromanage you and tell you how to run your email inbox, how to handle Slack and other communication tools, or how to manage your workflow and prioritize your tasks in a given day. It’s assumed that you know how to do it.

And of course you do. You’ve gotten this far. But if you’re frequently overwhelmed, overworked, and struggling to keep up, it is possible that your tools, systems, and even your beliefs are no longer adequate for the volume and type of work you’re doing.

You’re like the person deleting a paragraph by holding down the delete button instead of selecting the entire block of text.

Or snip-snip-snipping with their scissors instead of gliding gloriously through the wrapping paper in one fluid motion.

Or dragging a piece of furniture down a long hallway because they don’t know dollies exist.

These problems and solutions are obvious to you and me, but not obvious to the person struggling.

So then we must ask ourselves: Where are our blind spots?

What do we need that we don’t know we need?

What are we tolerating that we don’t have to tolerate?

What problems do we have that might be solved with additional knowledge or skills?

Obviously, this is where a coach or consultant can be useful. But the tricky part for a lot of high performers is allowing themselves to get help. When you are used to being resourceful and hard-working, your go-to solution is to push through. And that, my friend, is very much like using a bunch of spaces instead of enter.

The next tricky part, as you pursue support, is to be vulnerable enough to share what’s not working. It might help to consider that what you’re looking for is help to get somewhere new and be even more effective. That doesn’t invalidate how far you’ve already come or the expertise you bring to your work.

And the tricky part after that is accepting that the fix for a longstanding problem might be a simple, tactical one. It can be painful to look back and see all of the needlessly wasted energy. But you did the best you could with what you had, and now you have the opportunity to drop a few sandbags and climb higher.

I love to help people create transformational change in their lives: the kind of shift that seems like it should take years, but instead happens in a moment. It doesn’t seem as though a mundane adjustment like, say, switching to an appointment-booking software could achieve that.

But what I’ve found is that these kinds of tweaks to your process can give you a new lens that is grounded in a transformational insight. You realize, “This tedious, repetitive work is not a given.” You begin to let go of the narrative that the hard work is what counts and slogging through drudgery is a sign of commitment. You begin to question whether a constant hum of anxiety is truly a sign of care.

As you identify and reevaluate the assumptions you’ve been carrying, you see what you can do differently that you didn’t see before. As you do things differently, you gain the perspective that allows you shed another layer of assumptions. The tactical tweaks and mindset shifts are two aspects of the same cycle of growth. This is how you get past a plateau.

And, as always, if I can help with that, let me know.