How shit on the bathroom floor reinforced an important business lesson for me.

Minutes before we left our apartment to celebrate my wife’s birthday, the toilet broke and our bathroom was flooded.

It was awful.

The plumber told us later, that something got stuck 9-feet into the sewage system. As a result — after an unknowing (and well-intended!) flush — a good amount of feces and urine was forced out of the toilet bowl and onto the bathroom floor.

I usually don’t spend time thinking about unpleasant sights; or subjecting my readers to such (shitty) visualisations… BUT… this will be a powerful analogy for what I realised for myself at the end of 2015.

I reviewed my “personal systems” as part of my ‘Personal Annual Review’; and one of these systems — was ‘Management & Delegation’.

I was extremely dissatisfied with my lack organisation and productivity in 2015. And I realised why…

… My “Personal Task Management & Delegation System” was broken — not unlike that choked toilet bowl.

Here’s what it looks like:

First of all, I didn’t even visualise this ‘System’. I unknowingly created and accepted tasks — without an efficient system for tracking them, and for completing them.

I ended up with many tasks, coming from many people, through many channels. And I didn’t have a strong, organized team to support the work I was doing.

I was committed to doing a lot of important things. But I didn’t have a system to manage and fulfill my commitments.

And so my 2015 suffered from lack of good, timely plumbing.

Big lesson for me. I hope this story is useful to you.

I’m working to set things up well for 2016.