On Reclaiming my Impulsivity

Allowing myself to be impulsive is how I do my best work, and how I've learned to live in the unknown

I have spent most of my adult life trying to fight the impulse to be, well, impulsive.

My impulsivity got me in trouble as a kid, whether I was shouting out an answer instead of raising my hand, blurting something out that was easy to make fun of, or otherwise reacting before thinking. It took a while, but I learned that my impulsivity was a problem that needed addressing.

I’ve been caught between two realities for most of that time. On the one hand, I like to know what is coming, I like to have a plan, I like to be predictable. On the other hand, I like to follow urges in the moment, need space to let parts of my life unfold, and find a too-rigid to-do list stifling.

There are days when this feels impossible to navigate. It’s part of what makes (and has always made) the typical institutions in our society so difficult for me to hold myself to.

Give me a sheet of math homework every day, I might struggle to turn in all five (or might be doing them in my time between classes). Give me five sheets of math homework due Friday, I’ll knock them out when my brain says “it’s math time”. Sometimes that would be on Monday, sometimes scattered across the week, and yes, sometimes on the ride to school Friday morning.

The same patterns held for my full-time work and even my Substack. I love the predictability of certain tasks, but loathe anything that needs to be done at a specific time. I try to create a content calendar, but by the time I’m “supposed” to write an essay I was excited about three weeks ago, the excitement is gone and nothing gets published.

I fight the impulsivity even though it’s so obvious that my best work is done when I follow those pulls. And so, I am reclaiming my impulsivity. That doesn’t mean following it blindly, but it means following thoughts and ideas that do seem to be serving me, and discerning when I need to take a beat, when I should plan, and when I should ignore an impulse altogether.

This duality within me is one of the things that has made me so nervous to go out on my own, but it’s also the thing that I think will make me successful (if I am successful). I quit my job with an idea, but not a plan. “I want to use my experience in some way and consult”. Great idea, shit plan.

Deep down, I knew the idea would come to me (or it wouldn’t and that would mean it’s not the right idea). But I also knew it would not come to me if I didn’t give myself the space to experiment, think, test ideas, and yes, dream. I knew I had to quit my job first — a job that took a little too much out of me and left little room at the end of the day for said dreams.

I quit my job to catch up on laundry

It has been two months and a week since my last day of work, and I’ve finally been able to narrow my focus on what I want to offer. I was only able to do that because I listened to the ideas that popped into my head, that seemed random, and let them fester. I followed the impulsivity when it showed up, but didn’t force it when it waned. I trusted the process.

I’ve felt like I’ve been in a (literal, actual) fog for the past two months. I can see my feet and the brick I am standing on, but I have no idea where the rest of the path leads. All I know and have known is that there is a path in front of me, a path which will reveal itself in time, brick by brick. Sometimes I get lucky and can see two bricks at once, sometimes I have to take a step without seeing anything, the only thing I know is that there is a brick to catch my step.

It feels like I have a need-to-know relationship with my future right now, which is terrifying and exciting. A more practical-minded person might shove down that reality and might force a path, but they might also not see the other paths out there. Fortunately, I’m not a more practical-minded person and am leaning into that identity more. Thankfully, I’m embracing my impulsivity.

A few weeks ago, while on a run or journaling or staring into space, three words popped into my head. Customer Product Operations.

“Ok…” I thought to myself. “Those are the things I’ve done. And??”

I didn’t understand why those words popped into my head. I’ve been trying to figure out my place in this world as a generalist, someone who’s had a career in Product but also in CX and who’s worn all the hats in between. I’ve been touting my ability to help ‘fix things’ and work in ‘product, comms, cx, operations, and special projects’ at startups, which is admittedly bad self-marketing. It’s not niche enough, it’s a mouthful, and I’m asking people to decide what they need, instead of sharing what I can actually offer.

Customer Product Operations. It echoed again. I Googled it, thinking I’d uncover a discipline or niche I could latch on to. Instead, I got a lot of information about Product Ops, a discipline that has always felt like something I could do but felt too limiting, and two outdated job postings: one for a “Customer and Product Operations Associate,” based in Singapore, and one for a “Customer/Product Operations Lead”.

I was admittedly frustrated. I know what I’ve done, I thought. But that’s not a thing.

Another lightbulb, another impulse. Before thinking, my fingers zoomed to my trackpad and placed my cursor in the address bar.

I type as quickly as I can: customerproductops.com.

“This domain cannot be reached”.

I sprint to GoDaddy and buy the domain. I do nothing else.

Worst case, I’ve wasted $12.99. I can still call it a tax write-off.

I think about this domain and about this phrasing time and time again over the next few weeks, but nothing else comes to me. I know there is something there, and the fact that it hasn’t come to me feels frustrating. But I decide to stop forcing it, stop spinning my wheels. Que sera, sera.

Until yesterday.

I’m settling into my day, doing some freelance work, when I suddenly remember my domain. Again, without thinking, I open a blank note on my laptop and start typing:

your cx and product strategy don’t need to be separate. in fact, i’d argue they shouldn’t be. yet organizations everywhere have two distinct functions, at best these teams are meeting 1x a week, and usually it’s a similar format: product shares updates or anything that might cause customers issues (and things customers might see or ask about), cx shares trends, reports, feature requests, and bug reports. but what would a more symbiotic relationship between the two look like? what if your cx informed your product strategy and vice versa? what if you had a system that gave equal weight to both, that deeply understood these needs? that wasn’t secretly in favor of one over the other, that didn’t have a favorite child?

enter customer product ops.

More lightbulbs, more impulses, and a few hours later, I launched a website and figured out my offer.

I hit publish, posted on LinkedIn, and shared on Substack. I’ll be honest — if someone books a call with me tomorrow, I have no idea how it’ll go. I haven’t given much thought to pricing, other than what I roughly want my net hourly rate to be. But again, I followed the impulse and trust that I know everything I need to know right now.

I have thoughts of where this can go beyond just consulting, but I’m going to let them come to me organically, like everything else has. Right now I’m throwing my idea at the wall and seeing what resonates. Is this a problem? I think so, but having been in these spaces, I also know it’s something teams just deal with. I worry about getting buy-in, and am unsure if this is a problem people want to spend money on. But I won’t know what’s next unless I take a first step.

I’m going to write more on what Customer Product Ops actually is soon, in hopes that next time someone Googles the phrase, my words come up.

But this essay isn’t about the discipline. It’s about reclaiming my impulsivity.

Impulsivity is what made me launch my Substack three years ago. It’s what led me to, on a whim, rebrand my Substack to “This Might Be Cringe” a year and a half later, and is how most of the essays I’ve written were born (including this one — I was working on a whole other draft when this one started to come out, and I realized it was its own essay).

It gave me my year-long Be Cringe series, which boosted paid subscribers. It’s what (coupled with a gift from my husband), finally kicked me in the pants to start my podcast, and what gave it its name (also Be Cringe, which is sometimes confusing, but it works for now¹).

Impulsivity is what made me start running after very much not being a runner for most of my life (and what made me sign up for two half marathons, which in turn kept me running). It’s what made me finally admit that I wanted to quit my job (obviously, that one took planning…but even getting to the planning felt impulsive). It’s what made me start posting on LinkedIn and Threads² — most of the posts that are my best performing fly into my mind, and I post them as soon as they arrive.

Return to Running: The Whim of All Whims

My impulsivity led me to schedule what I’m calling a WATER COOLER COFFEE CHAT, after realizing Substack was abuzz at 9 am, wanting to just chat with my friends, and reading a reply from Amanda Jackson that confirmed — we’re all just settling into work as we would in an office, and I realized I want to do that in community.

Taking a moment to break the fourth wall! If you want to join us at the water cooler, we’re meeting Friday, May 22nd (tomorrow) at 9am EST. If I have a good enough time, I’ll do it again. Maybe a lunch hour too, so the PST folks can join. We’ll see where the impulsivity takes me. Sign up here →

The part of my identity I used to think was something to fight or change is now the thing I am trying to embrace the most. It has given me so much, and everything I’ve described is mostly in the personal<>professional development space. Impulsivity helps me figure out what I want to eat, guides me to text our daycare group chat to let them know we’re headed to the playground (which sometimes turns a sleepy Saturday morning into a playdate with 5 kids), and leads to my most productive cleaning blocks.

Sure, sometimes it keeps me up past my bedtime to watch one more episode, or is what causes me to drink a 2 pm cup of coffee I’ll later regret, but I am realizing I can lean into impulsivity while also being more discerning about it at the same time.

I still have a desire to plan and to know how things will work out. I’m still uncomfortable in the unknown, but leaning into my impulsivity (and yes, my intuition) makes what I don’t know feel intentional, and it’s what makes it almost bearable. I’ve accepted I am an ‘impulsive planner,’ an identity that feels like it is at odds, but if I squint, I can see that they’re just two sides of a scale needing to be balanced.

Being in a need-to-know relationship with my future sometimes takes a toll on me. There are moments when I want all the fog to lift, where I want to see every brick, where I want to meticulously plan and figure out how I’ll get to the end, where I want clarity of what each stop along the way looks like.

But I’ve started to understand that I’m not that person. Right now, I don’t get to see the bricks or the stops, and I need to exist within the fog. I can fight it, like I have in the past, but that will leave me standing on the same brick until frustration forces me to create a new path, one that I can see, without knowing what I’m leaving behind.

Or, I can lean into the impulsivity, allow the path to unfold for me, and trust that each step builds off of what came before and is in support of what’s coming. Some bricks are big moves, some are lessons in what doesn’t work or feel right, but all deserve their place on my path.

1. maybe if I wasn’t so impulsive, a new name would’ve come to me. But also, if I didn’t follow the impulse, I might still be waiting to start a podcast, so…

2. Of all places???