I know, who am I to say? I dont know what you do in a day. A mom of three, full time business owner, exercise enthusiast, apparent customer service specialist, sales manager, product engineer, HR consultant, and race car driver. The list is long, and it's strong, and it's bound to get some freak shi.. Sorry wrong context.
You are busy, we get it. If you just had a few more hours in your day, you could get it all done. But the truth is, you'd just treat them like the other 24 and that's the root problem. Grind culture is real thing. The glorification of just pushing through, the weakness of resting. No days off, team no sleep, these things all have way better rings to it than team 8hrs of sleep, and team 1 month off every year. But I can promise you one is going to save your life, the other is going to end it.
The meeting showed on the schedule like most meetings would. It was a referral from a client outside the gym space. The tech sector, the name was vaguely familiar, and the cryptic non-answering of all the questions should have told me all I needed to know. This person knew they needed help but was afraid of being vulnerable enough to get it.
“I'm dying” is how the conversation started. Unrattled, I asked “are we talking right now, next week, month, year?” “I have two months, and I have 500 employees who have no idea, and won't exist without me”
While this story might seem novel, it's not, because we are all dying. Some of us have the misfortune, or fortune of knowing when. The rest of us waste time as if to think we are immortal. This person was not an anomaly. He worked 7 days a week, 15+ hours a day, he was technically married and technically had kids, but barely had time for them, but he did provide financially. Having amassed a large amount of wealth in exchange for this grind was his legacy, as he was not worried about the family. “They will be fine, they have funds, and the life insurance alone will ensure they don't need to work” he replied, as if there was no significance of his presence, or being a father.
His concern, on his death bed was the company. Assuredly you likely consider him a monster, typical corporate monster. But you'd be wrong. He grew up poor, self-made, and unfortunately until our work together, he believed if he could do just one thing it would be to make sure his children have as different a life as he. This was not about experiences and memories, it was to give what he didn't have, opportunity and money. That was complete to him, what wasn't was the company. These affairs were not in order, because no one thinks of death as the exit, only the payoff.
His request was getting his company to a place of acquisition before the end, and to do so before anyone knew he was ill so that it wouldn't affect the value of the company. To which I committed, but the work I informed him would not be done on the company at all, it would be done on him. Aghast he replied “Me? Did you not hear me, I'm dying. The company needs it, not me” and his sentiment was understandable. “I understand your confusion, who then can we get to run your company better than you, who's available?” I asked. “Well, no one I know of” he gruffed. “So, we have two months to find, replace, transition, and sell you company? Wouldn't it make sense to invest in the best asset the company has, which is you?” He began to understand.
That was two years ago. The company was sold 6 months later. Yes, he is still alive. He has also come to appreciate that money is not his legacy, he is his legacy and now he and his entire family spend pretty much all their time together. And I know you are wondering, but how, what about his illness?
Releasing tension and replacing with intention is the remedy. No, Im not a miracle worker and I didn't set out to save his life. However, I knew that I could improve his final stages, and in doing so he would become a better businessman, father, and human. The cure was just a bonus. He began to respond to treatments and beat his cancer.
His results are not that uncommon, but rare, nonetheless. So many people who end up ill as the byproduct of their decisions rarely consider the decisions in the prognosis, and only the symptoms and illness.
But this isn't about curing disease, this is about curing your disease of poor time management and ensuring you don't work yourself to death.
If you are a reader, by now you know our focus on setting intention. High performers have energy like few others on the planet. This is either their gift, or their curse. In that they can work for longer and harder than most, but whether they should or not is rarely considered. Worse, they are convinced and believe that not only should they work harder, they are supposed to. And then they end up like that guy in class who just makes shit hard for the sake of making it hard but isn't really getting any fitter for it. You know the type.
Getting your life back means looking in the gray areas. We cannot tackle the tasks, as those are vital at least at this point. I can't likely tell you to stop doing x with no consideration on who will replace you, because simply put someone has to do it. The question first is how many X’s are there that are vital, how long it takes to do them, and most importantly what is the transition cost to do so?
With our coaching clients, step 1 is always getting back to the why and vision, but step 2 is where the work begins, and that step is almost solely about setting and protecting intention. Once we find out in step 1 who they want to be and see themselves as, and the business of course. We then make sure in step 2 that their actions and intentions are in alignment. Sadly, this is almost always not the case. Most high performers are so busy fighting dragons, they never stopped to consider just sealing the cave. They are lost in the distraction of WHAT they are doing and forgotten about WHY they are doing it.
1. Do you ever carry negative energy from one task to the next?
2. Do you ever feel depleted, but simply plow into the next task with no rest?
3. Are you losing presence and appreciation for life the further you go?
If you answered yes to any, let alone all. You are like most high performers. Lost in the transitions. These are the culprits that lead to the chasm between action and intention. These are the distractions that eat up not only time, but energy and leave you performing poorly at tasks. To correct your course, we must first clean up the gap, and to do that we have to mind the transitions.
To improve this action intention gap, we start first with protecting the asset, them, their future and best version. Once we know that. We work through what we call the CEO daily workflow, and time blocking.
The purpose of the workflow is to not do everything. Instead, it's to define the important things. The things that need to be done, daily, to ensure intention is maintained and that they are on track to become the person they envision, not stuck the person they were today. The workflow is a task list of “bare minimums” that need to be met each day. Things that are defined as the type of things my future needs me to do daily to become them. These are checkboxes so to speak that when they lay their head on the pillow at night, despite whatever chaos happened that day, they know that they still are on track to becoming, not responding.
Time blocking is where people get their life back. After we decide what's necessary in the workflow, its time to then protect the space to do so. When time blocking, its exactly what it sounds like. On days like this, at times like this, I do things like this. The key here is to not detail the minutiae. It is to create the space for minutiae. For example, from 8am to 9am I block my schedule for writing. Not what I write, not even the context. I can write personally, I can blog about business, I can make social media etc. But my future me determined that writing is important to becoming the person I seek, so I must make sure I write each day.
Most of you already do this with training. Carve out the place for other development too. Reading, learning, creating etc. The first blocks to carve out, are the investment and intention blocks. The time set aside for becoming someone. These are the “WHY” blocks. Truth is, if they aren't carved out first, they will be thought of last and most often there is no time left for. All high performers are self-aware of skill they lack, and as such are enthusiastic about skill development especially in their field of interest. When envisioning their future state, it is largely a conversation of the type of skill they will have in the future. This blocking is in pursuit of precisely that. Protecting the time today, to learn the skills to advance to tomorrow.
The next blocks are play blocks. Yes, I said it. Every high performer has a passion play. These are usually things of mastery that they seek and have little to nothing to do with career or field, but simply mastery. This can be things like musical instruments, outdoor activity and skills, becoming a pilot, etc. All high performers have this interesting trend in common, you should as well, block time for it. This also requires much less time, so it fits easier. Not only is this about mastery though, but this meditative practice of pursuing play is also vital to creating and maintaining clarity. This is often referred to as a clarity break. Time protected daily, weekly, monthly to time away from work. This helps refresh and renew focus on work and maintains energy levels to do so.
The last blocks are the “WHAT” blocks. The work blocks. The time spent doing the thing. These are always the first scheduled blocks by most people, and this is why most never succeed, instead they just stay right where they are on the treadmill. Why? Because they prioritized what they do, not why they do it. They never protected to space to move forward, and instead prioritized the space to do what they did yesterday. The work needs to be done and get done no doubt. What you will find is two things. The first is that after blocking one and two, there's far less time to get three done. Which is your work. But unable to move one and two, you will find almost immediately that when needed you can get far more “work” done in less time.
Most of us are just terribly inefficient and this was the case of my dying client. He was busy as anyone ever, but wasn't intentional, wasn't efficient, and wasn't mindful. Parkinsons law states that you will almost always wait till the last minute to do anything. This won't change. But when you decrease time duration, you still get just as much done.
The reason you will learn to get so much more done in so much less time is that your clear, you have clarity. By prioritizing blocks one and two, you aren't distracted with what you'd rather be doing as it's already been done. You are more mindful when working and more intentional, and far less distracted. Additionally, the primary improvement is in the transitions. Because your day will be split into just a few block transitions you will waste far less energy switching. This switching is energy intensive, and for most is done dozens of times a day. Having only two or three switches in a day restores amazing amounts of energy, all from intention.
Now you know your time is running out. We all are. Protect it before it's too late. You're not as busy as you think, you're just not very productive. Set intention first. Now you know the value of the daily workflow, and time blocking, set to work on protecting and setting them. If you would like help setting them, hire us as a coach we will help you in short order. If you are going to do it yourself, start first with why. What's your vision, what are your values, protect them, block them, backfill the rest with the what.
You are bigger than your work, but only if you prioritize it.