Have Mercy

Needless suffering. This is one of the things that makes me show up, week after week, blogging, coaching and reaching out. There are other things I could be doing with my time and frankly, after a long work week, I often ask myself if this coaching stuff is really worth it, and then, something like this will happen:

Me: “OK, and how do you behave, right then, in the moment?”

Client: “I fall apart.”

Me: “What does that mean? Specifically.”

Next, I hear something like this – they go somewhere safe – home, out for a walk, or just shut the door to their office – and they stop holding back their emotions. I’m not talking about cursing a little bit or needing a tissue. I’m talking about big, sloppy tears or explosive physical releases – emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion or both. Sometimes, they have to leave for the day. They have to cancel meetings, or they keep it together until they get home and then they lose it on their own time. Most often, they continue to work – literally crying or silently fuming while they continue to answer emails, write code, finish that report.

My heart breaks for my clients who go through this, not because I think they have been victimized at work. I’m heartbroken because the suffering is real, it’s chronic and it is needless.

I work with entrepreneurs, IT professionals, engineers, managers, healthcare professionals, and analysts. These are not people easily overwhelmed by life and the pressures of a career. My clients are uniformly smart, high performing, insightful people with a lot of drive. They are the people companies want most – and they are exhausted.

Look, nobody in corporate America is specifically trying to create workplace conditions that foster overwork, inefficiency, employee frustration, and exhaustion. I have never met a single person in authority who thinks it’s a good idea to foster a culture where people are afraid to go home, tied to ineffective teams and management and literally crying at their desks. Absolutely not. Most executives want staff to focus at work, be willing to deliver during project deadlines and figure out how to go home at a reasonable time.

Where is the disconnect?

Here’s my story:

I used to manage a convenience store for a major chain. I worked more hours than I can even speak to. I worked physically and mentally. I was working so much that I literally couldn’t keep weight on my body; I had to borrow clothes from a friend. My husband took a job in my store, just so he could relieve me. One evening, my father called me to say hi. My speech was redundant and non-sensical. All I could say is “I have to feed my son.” I repeated this over and over. My father, worried but out of state, sent my mother to my home. I remember saying to her, “I have to put him to bed. I need to get him ready for bed.” I remember not being able to stop. She had to take me by the hand and physically guide me to bed. The next day, the doctor ordered me out of work for a full week.

Here’s the thing. I worked myself literally to exhaustion. I was convinced everything I was doing was absolutely critical, vital to my success at work and the functioning of the business. And then, I was yanked out of the store for a full week. And you know what happened to the store?

Nothing.

Someone was sent to cover for me. Everything went on.

I was, in a way, irrelevant.

It was a humbling experience. It also made me vow to never work myself that hard again. All that suffering, all that work, had been for nothing. At some point, I had failed to notice the point of diminishing returns and just kept working. Now, so many years later, I can look back and see the cruelest part of all that – in that state of mind, with so few physical and emotional resources, I was never going to bring my store into a state of excellence. I was trying to hit standards, but what I needed wasn’t more labor. What I needed was time and space to network, learn and think about how to do that in a way that brought in revenue. I can tell you for sure, with my mind focused on how to get everything done so I could race home, sleep fast and hustle back to work – I was never thinking about the big picture. I was destined to kill myself in order to be mediocre. Ouch!

Here’s another story:

I used to work with a woman who over-worked herself daily. She insisted that everything with her name on it be perfect, meticulous. She was very unhappy and considering quitting. I remember asking her if she couldn’t just lower her standards for a bit. She was adamant that she couldn’t do a less than perfect job. She expected herself to deliver excellent work. She was unwilling to choose anything to leave undone.

She had a long commute so she rented a room near our office so that she could continue to work late. Her spouse remained at their home. Her unhappiness deepened. I asked again, why not just leave on time and see what happens?

She couldn’t bring herself to try it, even for a week. Instead, she left the company.

She basically drove herself to quit so she didn’t have to fail. The more perfect everything had to be, the further she got from the failure line, the less clear she was about how far she’d gone. She thought failure was one missing comma away when in reality it was a dozen minor details behind her. Diminishing returns are the most expensive.

Think about these stories. Can you see how the actions myself and my friend were taking were actually LESS helpful to our companies, families, and teams than if we’d given ourselves space to stop and take stock, regroup and refocus on what mattered?

Thought errors are easier to see in other people than ourselves.

That’s one reason we hire coaches. Nobody was making me scrub the floor under the shelves in my store on my knees. (Yes, I did that.) Nobody was making my friend deliver suitable-for-framing meeting minutes. Nowhere is this clearer than for my clients who own the business they work in. Everything they’re doing is literally up to them – and they too, suffer.

Even in endurance focused cultures where those who “sleep under their desks” are cheered, the rubber hits the road right under our own chair. Can we prioritize our work well? Can we tell people no? Can we accept some sub-par performance in less critical areas so we can deliver on the important stuff? Have we even stopped to think about what the most valuable work we can do today is? Can we just go the heck home when there’s still some work left to do? For many of us, we could, but we don’t. We want to please people, feel important and be excellent. Some of us are waiting for people above us in the chain to notice that we need relief and give us permission to stop the madness.

I’m not saying that we should never put in overtime. I’m suggesting that we set some guidelines for ourselves. I’m saying, figure out what you want to try, tell your manager what you’re doing and then do it. For a week. See what shakes out. And then try something else.

Don’t ask your manager to solve your work-life balance issue – quite frankly, they can’t. They can help, but in the end, you still have to do the important work and then get up and go home.

That, my tired friends, is having mercy on yourself –

And that? Is OK.

If you would like to have someone to bounce ideas off of – I’m here. Sign up for a free 25-minute session – Here. On me, no strings.