Stop the ship from sinking first.

Many times I've heard teams complain about an unfavorable situation in their codebase or organization with a variant of: *"If only we had/hadn't done/followed/bought X, then we wouldn't be in this situation"*, and of course an implied *If only we had listened to me*.

While you might be correct, the fact is you're currently in a sinking ship, so unless you have access to some sort of time travel device, that's not going to help you get out of the situation.

So if you're currently struggling with technical debt, organizational chaos, or any other sort of bad situation you can't escape, take a look around and ask: What's the negative effect this is having and how can I stop it from happening. Once you do that, you'll find you have more time, energy and space to tackle the problem at its root.

It's much easier to plan and design a better ship when you're not currently sinking. So, stop the ship from sinking first.