I’ve been striving for decades to convince people that they should learn and adopt practices that will enable them to do a better job every single day of following through. Well, I’m embarrassed to say that it wasn’t until very recently that it occurred to me that maybe – just maybe – I’ve been barking up the wrong tree.
Physical health as a metaphor
Please allow me to take the scenic route to my point by using physical health as a metaphor for the ability to follow through.
Medical experts do their best to discover things that people can do on their own to achieve and maintain good health and to encourage people to do those things consistently. But experts recognize that:
- not all people will choose to invest in preventing preventable health problems, and
- some health problems are simply not preventable.
That’s why we’ve created a healthcare system to address health problems that we know will occur despite our best efforts.
What if you don’t need to follow through all the time?
So, here’s my point: I’ve been concentrating on equipping people with the knowledge, skills, attitude, and habits that would enable them to do a better job of following through on their own good intentions all the time. I’ve recognized all along that for a person to get better at following through all the time, he or she needs to make a significant investment in learning and practicing. As wise an investment as this may be, not everyone – in fact, far fewer than I had hoped — will choose to make it.
What I realize now is that people who don’t choose to invest in their ability to follow through all the time should have access to something analogous to urgent care. In other words, they should be able to get help when they need it to meet specific follow through challenges that are staring them right in the face right now.
That’s all I’m ready to say for now. I’ll be back with more after I’ve put some meat on the bones of the Follow Through Urgent Care concept.