EMILE DURKHEIM AND SELF HELP:
Occasionally I am asked for advice on productivity and how not to let your mistakes get in your way. I often answer with Emile Durkeim.
Who? And why?
Emile Durkeim was French Jewish sociologist in the 19th century, the father of modern criminology and a hero of mine. Why is directly relevant to our mistakes and sense of embarassment and shame around them.
Durkeim gave us two very important ideas (among many). 1) That crime is the problem of society and not just individuals 2) that problems are value neutral. They are simply there to be fixed. It does not mean our feelings about them are unimportant just that we work better if we view something we do badly (aka the problem) as say, a leaky faucet rather than a character flaw. It’s easy to fix a leaky faucet if you don’t get caught up in what having a leaky faucet says about you as a person.
Crime therefore, is not the failing of individuals but a checklist of what society can do better. And fixes are value neutral.
Therefore, not being able to say, get to work on time says nothing bad about you as a person. It is a leaky faucet ready to be tightened. So tighten it, be proud you are the person who saw the leaky faucet and fixed it. But let go of the fact that it is leaking. Faucets leak sometime. That is life not you not being able to do life.