Paralyzed By a Weather Map (A Cautionary Tale)

Yesterday was a lost day.

I spent most of it staring at the TV, watching the KSDK “5 on Your Side” Weather Team point at maps and tell me when and where the tornadoes would hit.

For those of you who missed the news last year, an EF3 (160+ mph) tornado direct-hit my house in St. Louis. Leveled the backyard. Broke every window on the back of the house. Tore the roof off.

Melissa and I (along with our crazy-doodle, Moose) have lived in a temporary rental since then. We hope to get back in our house by August — assuming it’s not hit by another tornado…

…which is where yesterday comes in.

I woke up to weather reports that conditions were “extremely ripe” for severe storms. Large hail. Flash floods. Twisters. St. Louis was in the threat-zone bullseye.

The first tornado siren began blaring at 12:33 p.m. They only sound that siren if they spot a tornado (or cloud rotations that indicate one) in the vicinity.

The KSDK “5 on Your Side” Weather Team guy advised everyone in the warning area to get to their “safe place.”

Melissa, Moose, and I trudged to the basement.

In the dusty, dim light, we watched on my iPad as the weather guy told us about inversions and inflows and all the other reasons that orange and red mass on the radar map meant we might soon blow away to Oz.

It was mesmerizing…

…and terrifying.

After 45 minutes the show was over. The warning had lifted. We trudged back up stairs. And I sat at my desk — not working.

I kept watching the TV. A new tornado warning in Jersey County. Another one St. Clair. Ill winds blowing in Wentzville.

Then the siren sounded again in our neck of the woods.

This pattern repeated over and over and over again until the last of the bad weather crossed the Mississippi and tormented our neighbors in Illinois and beyond.

All in all, Melissa, Moose, and I made five trips to the basement — waiting and wondering, bracing for the worst.

It’s no way to live — bracing for the worst, focused only on things you can’t control.

All that time I spent doom-staring at the TV — it didn’t change anything. It didn’t make the storms weaken or change direction.

It just paralyzed me. Kept me from being productive. Wasted time.

A lot of business owners do the same thing — just with different storms.

They obsess over the algorithm. The economy. What competitors are doing. What prospects might think. “Market conditions.”

All things they can’t control.

Meanwhile, the stuff they CAN control gets ignored.

The email they didn’t send. The follow-up they didn’t make. The story they didn’t tell. The offer they didn’t sharpen. The client they didn’t take care of.

You can’t stop the storms.

You can only decide what to do between them.

Today the sun is out in St. Louis. I’m at my desk. Writing this. Doing the work I can control.

I hope you’ll do the same.