It’s not enough to be busy. So are the ants.
What are you busy about?
–HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It’s not enough to work on what your brain says and what your heart intuits. The proverbial rubber meets the road when you act. This chapter suggests actions to forestall burnout, to break through unwanted habits, and to build resilience to refuel, recharge, and reclaim what matters. I consider this the equivalent of putting your hand to the shovel and starting to dig away.
We can’t begin to control our energy and time if we don’t know where it is going. We can’t set up boundaries for different parts of our life if we don’t realize how many ways we allow, invite, or ignore trespassing actions and people. We must decide just what of our life’s perimeter we need to guard, or at least have a proverbial gate that opens only by invitation. Without that knowledge, it’s difficult to get our energy in alignment.
It is time to get busy—purposefully busy and not busy work. Putting your “hand” into motion is essential because challenging and getting Ahas from your thoughts and feelings are not enough to create momentum for a breakthrough. As I have said repeatedly, “Action is the antidote for anxiety.”
I am going to recommend a series of actions. You decide, at this period in your life, what actions you must take first. I want you to have plenty of breakout thoughts so you can channel your energy where it is needed at this time in your life. I want you to feel a breakthrough—Ahhhh.
First, if you are not really clear on where this precious thing called life (your energy and your time) is going, you might consider a CAT scan. That’s my acronym for:
CHECK what claims your time
ASSESS why and how. Is it of value?
TAKE action (what can you amend, avoid, alter, or accept)
Here’s how it works. Get a notebook (or use your journal) and make three columns. Label them time, what, and who. For the space of seven days, keep a log from the minute you get up until you go to bed. As you go through your day, briefly write down what you are doing, the amount of time you spend, and who is involved.
Guess what? All activities—for some strange reason—normally happen in fifteen-minute blocks. It might take you fifteen minutes to take a shower and get dressed. That’s .25 on your log. It might take 1.25 hours (seventy-five minutes) to drive to work—while you are probably talking on the phone. Another .5 hour (thirty minutes) to hunt for the email you need to answer, and so on. Okay, I can hear you now: “Say what?! You’re nuts, lady. I’m not doing that!” Understand this exercise is optional. But I’ll bet that after just three days of doing this, you will find you engage in patterns of behavior that are energy draining, that you have some people in your life who suck you dry, and that you are complicit in allowing and enabling this to happen.
The first time I applied the CAT scan process to my life, I discovered things I had no idea I was doing. For example, I spent a ton of time trying to find a file I needed. Clue: My office really needed organization. I had no idea how much energy/time I was giving to a board position on a nonprofit. When I assessed how much time I was giving, I resigned. I realized that it was not of value to me for where I was at this point in my life. I needed to set up a fence, for now, and get out of that activity.
I also had no idea how much time I was spending with an elderly widow who had lost her husband a year or so earlier. Jeanne and her husband had never had any children, so my Bill and I watched out for them. However, his death brought out a mean-spirited streak in her. Nothing I did could satisfy her negativity and fault finding. No, I did not abandon her, but I reduced the amount of time I gave her so I could concentrate on my marriage and family. That was a big Aha that lead to an Ahhhh—breakthrough!
Easy to say. Harder to do. Developing horse sense means gaining the ability to say “neigh” or “not now.” We are like bobblehead dolls. We say yes to any and all requests and find ourselves fried in the bargain. Grace yourself with the gift of declining requests. Many of us, particularly women, have a hard time saying no. When I’ve asked audiences why that is, I hear responses like:
“I’ll feel guilty.”
“It will reflect badly on me.”
“There’s no one else to do it.”
“I can’t delegate it to anyone.” (Really? Or does this mean “by the time I teach him how to do it, I might as well have done it myself ”?)
Our ego gets in the way of setting boundaries. Perhaps we feel important or superior because we can take on so much, because we relish being the “get it done” person. Remember: this thought is what kept Hamza going at a frantic pace.
If you are very good at what you do, you will be asked to do more and more. I guarantee, few will know what it really takes to fulfill that request. Consider that by giving the task away, it might be done better. It might develop a new skill in your colleague, your best beloved, or your child. You will have another Aha that can lead to Ahhhh.
Part of boundary setting is putting a fence around the way technology consumes our time and energy. Cal Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University, has written two marvelous books. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World offers both rational and actionable steps for knowledge workers to focus without distraction.1 Imagine not having your energy dissipated by a frantic blur of social media, email, and calls. That’s how I am trying—not always very successfully—to write this book.
QUESTIONS
At this point in your life, what might give you more energy?
What matters most in your work?
In your relationships?
In your physical well-being?
And in your spirit?
Newport’s other book is Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.2 If Deep Work is for strictly cognitive efforts, Digital Minimalism is for everyday life. Newport relates that the common term he has heard about today’s digital life is “exhaustion.” Newport calls for digital “decluttering” and—take a deep breath—a thirty-day fast from all but essential emails, apps, social media, and the like. That means you don’t waste energy on liking Facebook posts, Instagram, or Twitter feeds.
Shocking. Scary. For some, such decluttering might feel like withdrawal pains from a narcotic. I dare you to try it—even for two days. Aha might become an Ahhhh.
Everything we are asked to do is like a three-legged stool: what is to be done; when it is to be done; and what resources can be used. Often one of those things is negotiable, but we don’t ask. The request for “right away” might really be “in five days,” but we didn’t ask. The request for helping at the school play might really be just handing out programs rather than building sets and making costumes. The two-hundred-page report you turned in with footnotes, charts, and graphs might have been handled with a two-page summary. But you didn’t ask, “Exactly what do you want in this report?” You get the idea. Stop nodding your head. Look. Listen. Then act!
This brilliant technique was developed by my colleague Bill Jensen (nicknamed Mr. Simplicity). Specifically, before you convene a meeting, send an email, make a presentation, or leave a voice mail related to work, ask or clarify these three things:
KNOW: What’s the one thing I want people to know, understand, learn, or question? Write it out.
FEEL: How do I want people to feel when I am done? Write it out.
DO: What do I want people to do as a direct result of my communication or meeting? Write it out.
I shared this technique with the finance division of a global consumer products company. They did this exercise and … breakthrough! I can’t tell you the number of managers who jumped up and canceled meetings because they realized these were a waste of time and energy. The other insight was that they had invited the wrong people to the meeting.
If you are on the receiving end of these meetings, emails, and so on, screw up your courage and ask these questions of the person who called the meeting or sent the email. Imagine the energy that can be focused and recharged on what matters!
In Bill’s book, The Simplicity Survival Handbook, you’ll find thirty-two ways to do less and get more done.3 Then you can refuel, recharge, and reclaim what matters!
Managers, take a clue from Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of The Huffington Post. She has created “Thrive Time” as part of the ordinary workday. This is not about vacations, but rather recognizes that it’s better to be proactive about preventing burnout from the start. Specifically, when individuals are putting in extra time, meeting deadlines, going above and beyond, they get to take time off to recover and recharge. It might be taking a few hours, an afternoon, even an entire day. In fact, it’s considered a good practice and necessary to keep the organization “thriving.” Not taking time off would be a risk.
Consider this. As reported by Business Insider, a Microsoft subsidiary in Japan reduced its workweek in the summer by one day, which led to a 40 percent boost in productivity!4 Not only did employees benefit but also the company found it preserved electricity and office resources. Electricity consumption decreased by 23.1 percent, and the number of printed pages decreased by 58.7 percent. This was part of Microsoft’s “Work-Life Challenge” trial, which will continue in the winter.
Other companies around the globe are also experimenting with a shorter workweek. A study in 2018 of nearly three thousand workers in eight countries by the Workforce Institute of Kronos and Future Workplace found that most workers said their ideal workweek would be four days or less.