Need More Time? Choose what’s important, not alluring.
If you are following this series, you're working on taming your perfectionism, and you've let go of some tasks or projects and entrusted them to someone else. Super!
These are good steps and represent solid partial solutions. Love me some partial solutions!
Honestly, we need to get past the notion of a single solution to almost any challenge we face. Whether it's homelessness or the climate crisis on one end of the spectrum, or improving our fitness, making friends in a new city, or managing our household budget on the other end, we need multiple partial solutions that compound to make real progress.
So in this spirit, I'll be sharing a few more options for addressing the time pressures and overwhelm Loving Leaders struggle with in my next few Notes for Loving Leaders. Remember, the goal is to create more capacity for your efforts to create a more Loving workplace.
This brings me to today's strategy: Disciplining ourselves to choose what's important over what's alluring.
What's alluring: We humans are naturally pulled toward getting things done. In fact, we have a draw to getting anything done! This is why we are easily lost in our inbox, trying to cull it down. And it's why we turn to the quick-to-complete items on our to-do list.
Checking these off gives us a hit of dopamine - woohoo! Granted, sometimes we need this easy win. But all too often, instead we are sucked down the quick-win rabbit hole and never get to what's really important.
We end the day overwhelmed by the fact that the things that matter most on our list are still untouched. These untouched things are probably the reason you took this job. So what to do?
What's important: In contrast, we each have substantive and meaningful work to do. We want to work on our strategic priorities and have our workdays count toward the bigger vision. So rather than try to quiet the mental and emotional chatter of all those alluring quick tasks, we can flex our choice muscles and do first what is most important.
If first thing in the morning isn't your sweet spot, then do the quick, less important tasks first. But either way, set an alarm and a calendar block for your “prime time” and actively choose to shift your attention fully to those things that matter most. Guard this and honor this and see what shifts when you do.
Let me know how it goes. What is working? What combination of strategies are helping?
And, with a little less overwhelm and a little bit more capacity, what are you doing today to grow love on your team? Because ultimately, THAT is most important.
