After the Show — Part 2: The Notebook Problem
by Chad Pickard
You're home. The notebook is open. It may feel like a motivation problem but your day didn't get any longer because you attended a dealer event.
Barry Schwartz wrote about this in his book The Paradox of Choice. The short version: more options don't produce better decisions, they produce paralysis. If you haven't read it, the TED Talk is sixteen minutes and worth every one of them. [Link] The same dynamic that freezes a customer in front of a wall of helmets is freezing you in front of three pages of notes from a two-day event.
You came home with ten good ideas. Maybe fifteen. Every one of them felt urgent in the room. None of them feel actionable on a Tuesday morning when the service queue is backed up and your parts order didn't come in.
So nothing moves.
Most events will send out slide decks or session recordings after the fact. When they do, point your staff to them. Give them an hour. Let them see what you saw or at least get exposed to it. You might be surprised what lands differently for someone who wasn't in the room. You might also find someone on your team who wants to own one of those ideas. That's delegation with context.
The notebook isn't the problem. Treating every page of it as equally urgent is the problem.
Pick one thing. Two at the most. Write them down on something that isn't the notebook. Give each one a deadline. Not a soft "I'll get to this" deadline. A date. This week or next. If it doesn't have a date it isn't a priority, it's a wish.
Remember that person you met in the hallway. The one running a similar store two states away. They went home with a notebook too. Send them a message. Tell them what you picked. Ask them what they picked. Check in with each other in thirty days. You already did the hard part by having the conversation. Don't let it end with a LinkedIn connection you never use.
James Clear wrote about this in Atomic Habits. Schwartz tells you why you're stuck. Clear tells you how to get unstuck. Get one percent better every day and you are thirty-seven times better by the end of the year. Get one percent worse and you are nearly zero. The math is unforgiving in both directions. One idea executed is worth more than fifteen ideas that never leave the notebook.
Come back tomorrow for Part 3. We're going to talk about the filter problem. Picking one thing is the right move. Picking the right one thing is the skill.
Schedule a call. We'll figure out what you do with what you brought home.