If Friday leaves you feeling like you have an anvil hanging over your head and Sunday evening feels as if you’re standing under the shadow of a grand piano – like some kind of cartoon sad-sack – you might want to try thinking about work a little differently.
Secret #3
Your Company Isn’t Paying You For Inbox Zero
If you’re like most of us, you spend a lot of mental energy trying to figure out how to get it all done. I blame primary education for that because, heck, what’s easier than that? Seriously though, we are taught in school, and at home, that completing everything assigned, or eating everything on our plate is the key to being done. Right?
You know you’ve finished your work for the day, the semester, or the year when everything is complete. There’s nothing wrong with that – except when you get into the working world, there’s no clear definition of done and the tasks before you change every hour. If you have an instant messaging system at work, the news is even worse…the list is changing every second. All of that can leave us feeling dejected, stressed, overwhelmed, or worse yet, like failures.
You are never going to be caught up – and it’s OK.
Let’s face it. The goal in life and at work isn’t to be caught up. We all have different goals in life overall, but for sure, your goal isn’t to just stop doing stuff. Your goal in life and at work probably looks a lot like engagement. At home, that means staying present with your people, being curious and doing the things that have great meaning for you.
If you don’t know what your priorities are, I feel you. I have a fabulous exercise that can clear that up for you in an eye-opening way. Schedule a free 25-minute session and I’ll take you through it. It would be my honor. https://rockyourdayjob.as.me/FREE
At work, engagement looks a lot like bringing your best self to the job and tearing into the stuff that will have a significant impact on your company, your team, your boss and yourself. And before you fight me on that, really think about where that stack lines up.
You want your team and company to succeed – of course, you do. So does your boss. What nobody wants is for any of us to spend all day distracted from the most important work and delivering on the urgent but not important.
What does that look like? One word answer, baby.
RESULTS
So start asking yourself what is that thing, that if you don’t do it, nothing else you do will matter? Check your answer. If you answered every email, but you didn’t do that one thing, would anybody care that you answered all those emails?
On our team, we denote that on our priority list with a row of stars -like this:
- The Big Thing
- ****************************
- Everything else
That way, we all know that anything below that line is in play. Anything above it is the top priority. It doesn’t mean we slack off, don’t respond to emails and generally muck around. Of course not. We take pride in our work and so do you. What it means is, we don’t beat ourselves up for not hitting everything all the time.
When you start to judge your own performance on the results you’re delivering and not your ability to swat at a barrage of incoming information – you start to own your time.