1% – Drifting into Failure
A little scratch on the leg, maybe a dry nostril that cracked open just a tiny bit – we will never know what caused my husband’s leg to develop a severe bacterial infection last week. Despite several visits to the doctors and even a check-up at the hospital, the unlucky combination of his symptoms manifesting with delay in his blood results, Tobi’s eagerness to make his ski holidays count and medical practitioners not laying out the possible range of scenarios to pay attention to led to two surgeries and a week at the hospital.
I couldn’t help but notice the parallels to a book I am currently reading, called Drift into Failure (see section below for my review). Our bodies are in fact living organisms that represent all characteristics of complex systems:
- All components are highly interconnected, yet no part can be alive on its own. (Feel free to google “emergent properties” if you would like to dive deeper into systems thinking 🙂)
- Only a holistic view can begin to shed light on how all subsystems work together in a dynamic and non-linear way.
- Numerous feedback loops allow the body to self-regulate creating what is called homeostasis – a stable environment. It’s actually pretty damn awesome.
Yet, we don’t pay a lot of attention to the miracles that our bodies are working every day and tend to take our health for granted – until it blows up in our face. Do you know why things can get exponentially worse in complex systems?
Cause and effect are often not closely related in time or space: Bacteria can enter our body in one area and settle in a completely different region of our body. Tension can build up slowly and go unnoticed for a long time before it suddenly lead parts of our body to stop working properly.
In other words: a 1% shift becomes a mile down the road. That’s why this week I spent some time thinking about the little drifts that are pulling my health off-track, things I compromise without paying too much attention at first.
Here are some of my early-warning KPIs:
- How long has it been since I last picked up a physical book and read at least a couple of pages
- When was the last time I sat down to do nothing for at least 10 minutes?
- Do my nails look like shit? (They are never exceptionally pretty, but they tend to be the very first thing I compromise and one of the last things I invest in when I have extra time. So next time you see me you can use that as an indicator for how much slack time I had lately 😉
- Did my sugar consumption spike? When did I prepare the last meal that I truly enjoyed? (no, snacking the kids leftovers from the fridge does not count…)
Obviously, a slight change in any of those areas is definitely not going to take its toll on my health right away (especially the nails ;-). But all of them turned out to be excellent proxy metrics for my stress level and my health balance in general. Therefore, ignoring them for too long – especially in combination – usually leads to significant break-downs in other areas of my life sooner or later: migraines, shouting at the kids, losing focus at work…
What about you?
What are the very first things you compromise when you stop paying attention to your health? What are the little seemingly insignificant warning signs that you are slowly drifting into failure?
Wishing you a lovely weekend – the kids are asleep now, let’s see if I have the patience to sit through a 60-second fast-drying nail polish 😉
Tanja
This text was first published in my though-letter Tanja’s Butterflies (January Edition 2024). If you are interested in receiving the next editions in your inbox including additional resources such as inspiring quotes, books and more, you can subscribe here.
