My husband hates playing games with me. He says I get too competitive.
He’s not wrong.
I talk a little trash too. (Okay… a lot.) It’s part of my strategy. He, on the other hand, does not do well with trash talk. So anytime I suggest we play a game, he says yes… but very reluctantly.
And to be fair, I’ve won about 97% of the time. Tennis. Golf. Basketball. Corn Hole. Darts. I played competitively in high school and college. What did he expect?
The only wins I can remember him having are axe throwing and some car racing video game I barely cared about.
But the game that nearly ended it all?
Whack-a-Mole.
Now, if you’ve ever played, you already know that it isn’t really a “strategy” game at first.
It’s based on pure reaction.
A mole pops up, you hit it. Another pops up, you hit that too.
I have to admit that he played the lousiest game I’ve ever seen.
I’m talking delayed reflexes, barely hitting anything. Meanwhile I just needed one good round to get warmed up. And then I learned how to anticipate where the moles might pop of from.
And once I got going? The trash talk came out. He got so frustrated that he didn’t want to play another round after I won. So to this day, I’m still the reigning champion.
You ever get that feeling like you’re playing whack-a-mole at your desk? Emails. Tasks. One pops up, you knock it out, then another. And another. Just whacking tasks out one by one. Eventually we get so good at it, that that’s what we spend our entire day doing. Just reacting.
That is until our business starts growing, then we realize that there are more moving parts and more responsibilities. And then you feel like you’re in a permanent whacking stance. A game you can’t step away from.
We knock one thing down, and something else is right there waiting. It’s not sustainable and there’s no winning that way.
Because the whack-a-mole is designed for things to keep popping up. Staying in reaction mode might work for a while until it starts to get tiring.
However, what can change is how much of it lands on you.
That’s where systems and support come in. That’s what moves you from reacting to anticipating.
None of this happens all at once. But every small system we put in place is one less “mole” we have to keep hitting.
The idea is to put something in place that is enough for us to finally step out of reaction mode and start enjoying our business again.
Final Thoughts
Funny enough, we still laugh about that Wack-a-Mole disaster. He refuses to play it again, and I don’t blame him. Losing repeatedly isn’t fun. He couldn’t win without the right strategy, and neither can you.
I’m still refining this myself (including the trash talking). But I can tell you this, things got lighter when I stopped reacting and started designing how my business runs.
P.S. I’m still taking offers for anyone who would like to challenge me on a game of Whack-A-Mole.
Shamayne Brown is a virtual assistant and the founder of Camp Virtual Assistance.
She works with solo professionals and small business owners who are ready to invest in their business and need the support that she offers.
She specializes in creating email newsletters as well as other admin and creative design tasks.
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