The flu had better timing than I did

I was supposed to present to Leo Babauta's audience today.

I wrote most of this from bed, where I’ve been since last Tuesday with a fever that hit 105 and sent me to the emergency room. A pretty yucky upper-respiratory infection.

I’m getting back on my feet now, slowly. But the timing of all this was uncomfortable in a specific way, and I want to share a bit more about it.

Today I was supposed to give a presentation to Leo Babauta’s audience about growing on Substack with a community-first approach. It’s a room full of people I was really excited to support and to get to know. I’ve known about it for weeks. I had four hours blocked on my calendar for last Thursday to prepare.

You can probably see where this is going.

I didn’t prepare early because I told myself I wanted it to be fresh. That I’d do it right the week before. That waiting made strategic sense. I believed this well enough that I put the block on the calendar and stopped thinking about it.

What was actually happening is that even after many years of doing this work, there is still a part of me that doesn’t fully trust myself to speak with precision.

I can speak from the heart. That part I trust.

But there’s still a gap in me between what I know and the belief around whether I can make it land the way I want it to land for a room of people.

That discomfort made the calendar block feel like enough.

Two or three weeks ago, I noticed I was doing this. I noticed and kept the block instead of prioritizing an earlier time on my calendar to get started working on it.

This is the same pattern I often name for clients. The justified delay. The reasonable-sounding logic that puts the uncomfortable thing just far enough into the future that today feels fine. It doesn’t feel like hiding when there’s a calendar block involved.

I’m not doing the presentation today. I reached out to Leo’s team, and they graciously rescheduled me for next week. The right call, because I have no voice. Every sentence triggers a coughing fit that would be useless to an audience. That’s the actual reason I won’t be there today.

But as I watched my mind this week, I noticed the other things were also there. The unease about precision. The unfinished preparation. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Some decisions look like avoidance and aren’t.

Learning to tell the difference is part of the work, too.

Carolina and I help people to see that the knowledge-action gap isn’t always a knowledge problem. It’s also very often a body problem, a nervous system problem, an identity problem. The task manager doesn’t need more features. The calendar doesn’t need a better time-blocking strategy. The thing that needs to happen is usually already obvious, and what’s in the way isn’t a planning failure.

I know this, and still found myself living the other version of it.

I share this because this is an actual condition of doing this work. Patterns don’t disappear because you can name them.

You just can get faster at catching it. Sometimes.

With Love,

Phil

---

If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar place, wondering how to bridge the gap between knowing and doing, let’s explore it together.

Take our free Harmony Map Assessment to uncover the patterns that might be holding you back. It’s the first step toward aligning your inner and outer worlds.

---

---