Is this you? Michael generates an enormous output each day. No one gets it done like him!
And it’s just as well that he is highly efficient, because he constantly has too much on his plate.
- There are meetings and committee work he cannot get out of – or so he believes.
- There is deep work to push forward his prestige projects – for which he rarely finds the time. It’s nagging him.
- There are his people to coach as he delegates important tasks to them – he’d prefer to do these tasks himself, because his teams’ mistakes will make him look bad.
Michael is great at spinning plates…
He is efficient and highly productive. And he always walks the extra mile. He has the drive to go on working after a couple of hours of family time. He stops spinning those plates right until he goes to bed.
Michael’s superiors have always appreciated his ambition and performance, hence he has climbed the corporate ladder with ease.
But there’s another side to Michael’s shiny career.
Working late means that he cannot wind down and hence doesn’t get a good night’s sleep anymore. He wakes up tired. At home this makes him irritable and unfocused. His relationships suffer from that. So does his overall health and vitality, because he often misses his “regular” workouts and eats poorly to save time or to compensate for stress.
… at a high cost …
Michael might be efficient, highly functioning, but he cannot prioritise and that has slowly and unnoticeably started a downward spiral.
He’s lucky, because he caught himself on the downward slope in time to prevent a burnout. And he is willing to explore why he lets others pile up more and more work on his plate.
… that is avoidable
He explores his fear of saying no. Will that stop his career trajectory just before he’s made it to the very top? He’s willing to run small failsafe experiments to test his belief of what others expect of him and what he can expect from others.
He tunes into his vision of a life well lived and into his personal values. Where does he need to live them more, both at home and when leading his team or partnering with his peers?
Tuning into what he really wants and exploring his fears and beliefs that make him neglect the things and people he cares about, helps Michael to slowly move away from trying to make his work day ever more efficient to prioritising, delegating and setting boundaries around his time.
In this process of shifting out of his self-exploiting pattern, he practices to delegate more skilfully so that his team members can excel and deliver results that let the team shine.
Michael is lucky that he caught himself before his leaking tank has gone empty!
Over to you
- Do you need to start shifting from getting more done to prioritising what really matters?
- What’s keeping you from setting boundaries and making time for
- your important projects and tasks
- yourself
- your relationships?
