Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been a kid who gets bored easily. I started playing one sport and then, after 2 years, I moved to another. Then, I started taking English lessons, and before going halfway through, I wanted to learn another new language. Restless again, I started playing a video game and, after a short while, this process of chopping and changing was no longer much fun.
This turned out to be a need for new things after getting to a certain point, the need for improvement. I didn’t understand this when I was younger of course, but after these behaviours started repeating in my adult life it became pretty clear. No matter where I worked, I would stay there for a year before looking elsewhere. In the rare cases where I stayed, I would become unhappy, dissatisfied, and eventually depressed. You learn everything, every day becomes the same and you enter a never-ending circle. Nothing to improve on, no new things to do, just do your job.
I watched as other people got their lives together, some friends found stable jobs that they actually enjoyed, and some of them had kids. They had enough time for everything, and then there was I. Always lost, with never enough time to find myself. No idea what I wanted to do with my life, starting things that I would never finish, and genuinely unhappy…
But one thing that has always kept me going is my positive attitude — No matter what happens or how bad things become, there is always a way to fix them and eventually make them better. Which I did. I kept a positive attitude, I kept working hard, and boom.
A friend of mine told me about a community she came across called the Fixers. She sent me an article explaining their ideals and I was amazed.
Sooooo.. Let me introduce you to the Fixers P.E.N.T.S. approach — Passion, education, narrative, transparency, and structure.
If any of these are lacking in your community, it will become difficult to sustain it. I can tell you this from personal experience. Even though I am only 23, I have worked for at least 5 companies. All of them were lacking at least one of these pillars, but if I am being honest usually more than one. The other example would be me, starting my own things lacking pillars 4 out of 5. If I had the passion, I was missing out on education. I had no idea what kind of structure I needed to create, and if I’m being honest narrative and transparency didn’t even cross my mind. If I had education, it was regular schooling system education that I finished and didn’t even like so the remaining 4 were missing and I always ended up with just the idea.
Passion is the first one for a reason. If you are planning to do anything and you don’t have a passion for it, don’t do it. There is no point. Leave it for somebody who has the passion for it and find yours — It will turn out 100 times better. We are all so different and we should do something that makes a positive difference to the people around us.
Education is what I thought would be the tough one but it actually isn’t. I was always a good student with all or mostly A’s but I hated school. After high school, I went to university and after 2 years I was just miserable. I passed all the tests but I felt like I had wasted 2 years of my life for nothing. I was convinced that if you want to be an expert in any field you need to finish university, a master’s degree, or post-graduate studies but things didn’t turn out quite like that. It’s definitely a good idea if you found what you wanted to do for the rest of your life at the age of 18, but most people at that time in life have no idea what they want.
I discovered that if you find something interesting, you like it, are proactive, and have a good support network around you, then you can literally learn and do anything. Education is for a lifetime. It’s not a university you go to for 4 years, it’s from cradle to grave. Unless you fight to improve yourself, the passage of time will crush you. Especially here, in the 21st century where the speed of change constantly picks up pace, leaving formerly revolutionary technologies and ideas obsolete in a matter of years.
Narrative is the one pillar in the PENTS approach that I still find difficult to apply to my communities. My brain is moving a bit too fast sometimes. I want to focus on one thing but then 20 ideas pop up in my mind and then I lose track. Luckily, now I work with a whole team of amazing individuals who are also team players and are there to help me out, and I can’t thank them enough. Even writing this article helps, since it is a narrative in itself. At the Fixers, we learn by doing, and encourage community members to do the same.
The next pillar is “Transparency”, which before I encountered the PENTS approach had never seemed particularly important to me in a community. I mean, who is transparent these days? So many things are always happening behind closed doors and they affect people’s lives. I always start with myself, so I asked myself a question: “Would you prefer a world where you have the opportunity to know everything and get proper information or a world where you are left in the dark?” Simple answer, right? Unfortunately, most people and companies decide not to be transparent. But I get that. Probably they do have things that they would rather hide…But shouldn’t those that don’t have anything to hide be more deserving of our custom and trust? If you let previously hidden conversations become visible, allowing the decision-making process to be opened up, this builds trust and respect among your community. When difficult times come, as they always do, this credibility will serve you well. And I try to remember that we cannot change the world, but we can for sure start with ourselves as individuals with agency.
The last pillar in the PENTS approach is Structure. To be honest, this is the one I didn’t like that much at the beginning since it seems strict and kind of boring! But actually — it just makes sense and does make implementation of the other pillars far easier. When you create a structure where everyone knows what they are doing, where you have all deadlines under control, there is a lot less stress and drama. Creating a structure that allows a community to self-propagate requires a special kind of structure, and that’s what we try to achieve in the Fixer communities we build. It’s definitely not easy to create a good structure but when you do — Congrats! You’ve done half of the work already.
If you would like to learn more about the PENTS approach, check this article — https://omuldoon.medium.com/introduction-to-the-fixers-dd7d70d80c0e,
It has really helped me grow my communities!
