We find ourselves running in a rat race, working at an impossible pace only to fall into bed exhausted and wake up the next morning running again.
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It’s been almost 20 years since I got the news I had cancer. I remember the look in the resident’s eyes when she connected my dots: married, no kids, now no kids ever. At the same time she looked away, the curtain on my wilted life was pulled back to show the toxic environment in which I worked, the long hours, my commuter marriage, and now the potential of a childless future. (Fortunately, I had a good surgeon who preserved my choices!) I was running a million miles an hour and had absolutely no idea where I was going. So—with a lot of hard work, discipline, and support —I stopped running. Time stood still for a moment as I reconciled that I had been neglecting my health, becoming just like my father who had died of a heart attack in his 30’s. I took stock of what was most important to me.
What’s most important to YOU right now? Landing that big client? Launching a new product line? Developing your team? Finding time to be with your family? Exercising? Finishing that pet project? Are you prioritizing it (him, her) with an investment of your time? You might as well, because the mental energy you are spending on thinking about what’s most important to you —consciously or unconsciously—is taking significant cognitive resources away from your ability to be present to what’s going on in your life. You will be more effective, more productive, and more at peace by taking the time to determine your top priorities and then allocating time to those priorities.
In an earlier post, I talked about the increasing complexity of our workplaces and how the world is literally speeding up. All of us are finding our plates fuller and fuller—so the mere thought of slowing down seems ludicrous at best and painful or selfish at worst. More is expected of us now; more information is coming at us than ever before. And we “know” as leaders, it’s our responsibility to be able to manage it all well. We continue to “suck it up” and take on more responsibility but become more ineffective and exhausted.
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We find ourselves running in a rat race, working at an impossible pace only to fall into bed exhausted and wake up the next morning running again. We don’t know how to slow down and we are afraid because we fear that if we do, our competitors will take our business away, we won’t get that promotion, or worse. Yet what might we gain if we could, even momentarily slow down, to identify our priorities, work more productively, to allow time to focus and plan? What could this mean to our organizations? Our staff? Our family? Ourselves? More energy? More rested? How might we approach work differently? How do we step into the possibility of even greater business or professional results and increased personal satisfaction? Our priorities can help us step into life or save our lives.
Prioritization starts with identifying our top three priorities. We all have more than three, yet given our multiple stakeholders, nonstop connectivity, and competing pressures, limiting our absolute priorities to those we are ready to commit and willing to protect. We then set more realistic expectations and are able to know our boundaries.
One way to begin identifying our top three priorities is by using the Four D:
- Developing Self,
- Developing Staff,
- Developing Relationships, and
- Developing Revenue.
Chances are you will find your top three in one of these four categories. One way or another, we do set priorities. Ideally, we choose our priorities proactively, and intentionally. Yet some of us wait until we receive an unexpected wake-up call.
I didn’t stop running for long, mind you. Just long enough to reprioritize what was important to me: health, husband, and my contribution to the world. I took Tai Chi, my husband and I moved into the same house, and I took started a new job in an organization of similar intensity yet significantly heathier culture where my contributions actually made a difference. I needed to know what I was running toward.
We must slow down to speed up. David Rock, says: “as you become more senior in an organization your brain gets noisier and noisier from the increased stress, from the increased number of thoughts you need to process per day.” If you want to retain information longer, you brain need more time in between times of learning? This spacing effect also increases the survival rate of brain cells in the area of the brain responsible for longer-term memory.
When we make time to pause, we retain more information, become more productive, and store greater cognitive resources for the moments when they’re most needed. The most successful leaders have mastered this: they are the ones who get great business results, have talented teams, and delegate well. They know their top priorities and focus on them relentlessly.
Scott, a client and partner, in a Big Four consulting firm loves his work. He’s relational, a natural business developer, and a workaholic. He wanted to move to the next level, yet had no idea how, knowing the hours he was already putting in. He loved time with his clients and didn’t want to lose touch, yet something was going to have to give if he was to advance. A senior partner recommended something that sounded completely counterintuitive: “Cut your client hours in half. Double your book of business.” He realized this approach would actually give him the opportunity to do more marketing, meet with more clients, and network more with other partners. It would also provide new client relationship building opportunities for those who had previously been on the periphery. In effect, he would be creating a “wake” for other partners and staff to develop while still leveraging his own strength of relationship building. He was energized! He felt like he was cheating when, in fact, he was being strategic. He needed to step back, assess, think through, and plan in order to identify his top priorities and come to the realization that he could advance his career and increase the capacity of the organization at the same time without adding to his own workload. Until that point he never realized he had choices and had been running without a clear sense of direction.
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Looking back, I can see I didn’t believe I had choices either. I bought the lie that I had to work in that company, be in that position, log ridiculous hours, and continue to traverse the countryside to see my husband. I was enslaved to my own thinking and, ironically, it wasn’t until I found out I had cancer that I figured out my priorities. My hope for you is that you don’t wait until a traumatic incident hits to realize what’s most important to you. Give yourself permission today to identify one key priority in your life: one to which you’re willing to commit your time and energy. For today, it may be choosing to move a meeting and using that hour to focus on the project you are so close to finishing, or it may be choosing to turn your mobile off for a few hours and have a quiet dinner because you’ve recognized the importance of your own well-being. Whatever it is, choose. Pause, reflect, and then begin moving forward with your priorities in place. You may still be running but at least you will know what you are running toward.
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Photo credit: Flickr/Sebastien Wiertz