There is a bridge in our biggest project of the year. It connects two pieces of software that were never meant to talk to each other, and every year, on launch day, it breaks. Sometimes an API changed under us. Sometimes a security setting moved. You do not know which until you flip it on and watch what falls over.
So I plan for it. I keep launch day clear. I tell the team ahead of time to have a manual plan B ready, because the bridge is going to do what the bridge does. This is not pessimism. This is simply learning after multiple years of the same appointment.
This year it broke again. I sent the warning, asked for the backup plan, and then heard nothing for hours. So near end of day I sent the question I actually needed answered: do I need to buy five Monster energy drinks because I am fixing this by hand all night, or do we have the bridge working?
The replies came back in two flavors. And they are the whole story.
The panickers
One group was already spiraling. Is it still broken. Oh my gosh. This is bad. Everything is on fire. You know the energy. It fills a thread fast, and it is loud, and it is genuinely convinced the sky is coming down this time.
There is a grandmother saying for these people. A friend of mine grew up in Mexico, and her grandmother used to say peor estaba ... it was worse before. Whatever you are panicking about now, there was a harder version you already survived. For the spiraling group, that phrase is medicine. Dude, it will be fine. We fix this one every year. By tomorrow you will not remember it was broken, because it will not be broken. That is not dismissal. That is perspective handed to someone who has lost theirs.
The shruggers
The other group was calm. Too calm. It is better than last year. That was the whole message. Not, here is what broke and here is the root. Just, it is better than last year, so let us not go digging.
And here is where the same saying flips on you. Peor estaba is medicine for the panicked. For the calm, it is anesthetic. It is better than last year is how a broken thing survives multiple years. It is the reason the bridge is still a manual triage every single launch instead of something we actually fixed. Nobody is upset. That is exactly the problem. The comfort of “at least” becomes the ceiling nobody names.
The part the grandmothers say with a laugh
There is a funnier version of this saying, and it says the quiet part out loud. Peor estaba antes, que ni novio tenía. Roughly, it was worse before, when I did not even have a boyfriend. You say it with a shrug about a mediocre situation you are keeping because the alternative feels worse than settling.
That is the calm group’s real position, said honestly. It is not only that the bridge is better than last year. It is that a broken-but-familiar bridge feels safer than the work of tearing it apart and building something that holds. Better a bad boyfriend than none. Better the process you know than the discomfort of fixing it. “It is better than last year” is often just this, dressed up in a status update.
What the saying is actually for
The saying is a tool, not a temperament. Same five words, two opposite prescriptions, and the leader’s job on launch day is to know which one a person needs.
The panickers need peor estaba poured over them like cold water. It was worse before. You will survive this. Now breathe and fix the thing. The shruggers need the opposite. They need someone to take the comfort away, to say yes, it is better than last year, and we are still going to find out why this bridge breaks on the same day every year. Hand the calm to the panicked. Take the calm from the comfortable. That is the whole move.
A question for you
Where are you telling yourself “it is better than last year” as a reason to stop looking?
Reply and tell me what your bridge is. I read every one, and I answer.