This Ain't Your Final Crisis

There will be times when so many things are going on at once - some rocking, some rolling, and some crushing and sinking hard and bad.

...and those that aren't working so well will get worse, take up more time, more effort, and you can't seem to get a handle on any of it.

Don't worry. This too shall pass.

Breathe and remind yourself: this won't be your last crisis, your problems aren't unique, and there will be another crisis after this one, and another after that.

One minute everything is running like magic, visits flowing, leads coming in, and users acquired. Then the next minute everything has gone to shit - your site is down, users are logging off and writing in with issues. Or maybe it's external: a campaign that didn't land as hoped, negative reviews, an announcement that didn't go the way you wanted, or...

...it never ends. Or it sure seems so.

But this crisis will end. And another one will come along in the near (or far) future.

In the meantime, accept that it's not forever - and use the time to get in there and experiment, keep digging, and ask more questions of yourself, your users, your internal teammates, anyone involved.

You'd be surprised: even in a crisis, you can gain a lot of ground by investigating in real-time, watching what's happening, understanding why and how it happened, and learning enough to either avoid it next time or at least mitigate it better.

But - if there's a fire burning, your first priority is to put it out. Not to watch it burn, burn, burn :)