Welcome to another Wednesday Wisdom. Every week, I share with you what I’m thinking about life, work, and leadership. This week we’re talking about performance.
When I started my consulting business in 2014, things were tight. I had two young kids at home, a mortgage to pay, and a husband on apprentice wages. Every fortnight was a financial and logistical juggling act as I put in crazy hours to get things off the ground.
Fast-forward five years, and we were no longer battling the bank. I had a steady flow of clients and I’d published my first book. I was on the speaking circuit, known for my expertise in strategy and change. So, I should have been working fewer hours and feeling a lot less stressed… right?
Ha. Nope. That’s not how it works. I was busier than ever, and I’d become an insufferable control freak in the process. A workaholic, a shocking delegator, and battling to set good boundaries around my time and energy.
I’m far from healed. It’s an ongoing job, but I am getting better. More importantly, I work with lots of people facing the same kind of frustration and overwhelm – they’ve hit their goals, they’ve got what they wanted… yet here they are, busier and more stressed than ever.
The problem is when we accumulate responsibilities and tasks, without letting anything go. We’re holding more in our heads and hands than ever, and if we don’t have the skills and confidence to let things go – by automating, delegating or cancelling regularly – then we’ll quickly hit capacity.
It can be hard to see a better way. Everything is important, and everything needs doing. It’s particularly difficult to see a better way when you’re so bogged down in the operational stuff that you can’t zoom out.
As a helpful start, I often ask my mentees to keep a time and energy diary for a week. An accurate one, with no lies. Track what you’re spending your time on, but also mark with a little arrow what gives you energy, and what takes it away. Then, go back through at the end of the week and highlight the stuff that made a real difference to your work and life. Odds are, there are some clear themes in where the value lies… and you’re probably not doing enough of those things.
You’ll always be busy. But if your days are gobbled up by $10 tasks and you don’t have the space to develop new ideas and build important relationships, you’ll spin your wheels in the same place, in perpetuity, until you eventually slide backwards.
This stuff doesn’t happen by accident. Space is always hard to make, and it doesn’t get easier with time. But if you don’t do it now, you won’t ever find it. So give it a go.
Track your time, track your energy, make some space to think about it… and let me know how you go!
Til next week.
A
PS – for more on the skill of perspective in tricky times, check out this interview on Medium. It’s a long one, but a good one.
Medium – Five things you need to be an effective leader in turbulent times
