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What kind of organisation do you work for? Is it the kind where people expect you to turn up well before your paid start time, and play ‘the person that leaves latest is most diligent’ every evening? As a leader, have you fallen into the trap of showing your team that the only way is the burnout way? I’m here to help you lead by example and avoid burnout today!
In the early 20
The efficiency argument
Have you ever noticed, if you have something specific you really need to get done, and you know you have a very limited time to do it, you focus? You make sure that every minute of your time is being used efficiently (unless you are a procrastinating writer…) If you have a never-ending list of undefined ‘work’ ahead of you, where just to keep afloat, you are arriving early every morning, and leaving late every evening, something changes. This is when your working day is no longer 8 hours. This is when it has stretched to 10 or 16 hours, day in and day out. When this happens, your time at work becomes something intangible, you have hours to burn as you know you will still be there when the cleaner is vacuuming around you. Your focus fades, and you are happy to spend, perhaps an hour lost in unimportant inbox cleansing, or discussing some vital future work project for another hour by the water cooler. If you are running out of time today, no matter, there is always another 12 hours tomorrow right?
Thomas Edison famously said, “seeming to do is not doing”… Here is where I would make the argument that each of us has roughly the same amount we can give genuine attention to in any 24 hour period. Princeton University give their principles for good time management here, and identify that if you can’t commit to a task, you shouldn’t put it in your schedule! I would also suggest that time with loved ones and looking after our own mental health is perhaps the most important way we can spend any time at all. So, wouldn’t it be great if you could achieve the really important things to an exceptional standard, and still avoid burn out?
Doing what you are asked to do
Since we were children, we have been told to do things by people in an authority position over us. Teachers told us to write this or read that. Parents told us to go here, tidy this or study that. Then we entered work, and employers gave us objectives, targets and directions. Our default setting in most cases, has always been to add the next thing we have been told to do to our to do list, and if possible, just get on with it. So, is the answer better time management, so we can fit in all this stuff? Well…
Giving yourself piles
Author Fergus O’Connell describes the stuff we need to fit in to our lives in his book, What you need to know about project management. He says to imagine a physical pile of stuff of the things you must do, like your job, the shopping, mow the lawn etc. Then place a second pile of stuff on top of the first, these are the things you like to do and would like to do more of like hobbies etc.
Then add a third pile of stuff on top of that one, the things you hate to do like paying your taxes or queuing at airports. Then, finally add a fourth pile on top of the former three, these are the things that you were put on earth to do, if you didn’t need to go to work, you would spend your time doing. Things like learning a musical instrument or sail around the world! This massive pile of stuff is towering above you, reaching up as far as you can see into the sky. Now, he suggests we imagine a second pile of stuff stood next to the first. These are the things we will actually do. This pile is many times shorter than the first, as we have limited time and energy available to us.
Doing a time management course is not the only answer. Yes it will help, but it will not fix your impending burnout problem for one simple reason. If it is a good time management course, it will have the affect of increasing the number of things in the second pile. It will not however change the fact that the first pile is still many times higher than the second.
It is time to reclaim your focus
The only way we are going to reduce and reorganise the first pile of stuff into something that we:
- Have control of
- Can actually achieve
- Gain satisfaction from doing
Is by becoming ruthless. This doesn’t sound much like you does it? Ruthless just isn’t me! Well hear me out. You are not achieving anywhere near the quality or quantity of things in either your personal or professional life that you think you are if you are working burnout hours. You are not helping yourself, and you are not giving the best possible version of yourself to those around you. There are three skills that if you take the time out now to master them (it won’t take long) will make your productivity and health soar! Sound good? Let’s look at them now:
Skill #1 – Learn when and how to say no without causing offence
If you are anything like me, you feel like saying no is a failure and will cause a conflict situation between you and whoever is asking you to do something. Well, it does not have to be that way. Think of it like this, if you keep saying yes, you are doing them a massive disservice. If you can’t give something the attention it deserves, then you are simply setting you both up for grief further down the road. So, Learn and practice the art of saying no, nicely.
From the corner of your eye, you see someone approaching you at work. You are already at capacity and have employed the next two skills I am going to share with you, so you know that whatever this is, you haven’t got time for it. Focus hard on your computer screen or the paperwork in front of you, like you are trying to melt the text off the page with your eyes. When they start to speak (they will as they are used to you being receptive to everything all the time) don’t immediately look up, keep looking at what you are doing and then after a few moments, look at them and say any one of the following: “I am really involved in this at the moment, could you come back in an hour or so…?” – this one is great for serial interrupters who like to talk out their problems with you in real time. Often, once they have been bounced back at this stage, they will sort out the issue themselves and may not come back…
The same applies if you say, “Hey, I’m stacked right now, could you email me with that and I’ll get to it when I can..” This is a favourite technique of IT help desks. It’s essentially saying, take a ticket. Again, often they won’t be bothered to email it to you and will sort it out for themselves. “I can do this for you, but then I’ll have to substitute it for this job for so and so.. perhaps check with them if that is OK?” – this substitution technique prevents your pile of things building up further, and also places the asker in a psychological indebtedness to the person whose work was removed from your list. Most people won’t want that and will find another way of having the task completed. “What is the absolute deadline on this one? I have a lot of work on at the moment, so I’ll need to schedule this work in for a little later” – Again here you are showing willing, but you are clearly communicating that the work they are giving you needs to be very important or it will be bumped further and further down you priority list.
Can you think of 10 more ways to tactfully and politely say no? What about plain old, “I don’t have time to do that at the moment – sorry” There are lots and lots of ways to do this and as long as you are polite and firm, and give them the clear reason that you have a lot of work on, you are very unlikely to offend. Practice this skill, set yourself targets to say no every second time you are approached, or at least 10 times a week. Make a game out of it. The more you do it, the more natural it will become. Remember, we are doing this so that the work that we are doing is great quality and your mental health is protected.
Skill #2 – The only real way to prioritise – ruthlessly – here is how
That massive pile has a lot of stuff on it. How do you know which to do first, which to do later and which stuff will inevitably get bumped? You ask one simple question. List everything down on a piece of paper in no particular order, then ask yourself, “If I only could do one thing on this list, just one – what would it be?” Transfer that item to the top of a second list and put a number 1 next to it. Scrub it off the first list. Look at your list again. Ask the same question. Take the resulting item and transfer it to the next spot on the second list and write a number 2 next to it. And so on. Then for each item ask yourself, “Is this task wildly important?!?” – If the answer isn’t a resounding yes, examine your list again from the start. Now, here is the hard part. Identify your own supply and demand level. I describe this in more detail in this article. You must use what O’Connell calls a Dance Card for calculating your availability. Try this for your workload now:
- Choose a period of time that you want to calculate your supply and demand for, then list all the newly prioritised tasks and estimate how long each will take.
- Add in time estimates for your ‘business as usual’ tasks – you know, meetings, meeting preparation, report writing, inevitable interruptions, dealing with emails, site visits / trips, training / coaching, holidays, managing people, recruiting people, phone calls, firefighting, filling in for people and new stuff!
- For each of these lines on your list, estimate a number of work hours you spend on them over the given period you are assessing. Add them all up, to give you a total number of work hours that you now are committed to delivering
This is your demand. Now for your supply:
- Calculate how many hours you actually have available over that given time period, usually assuming an 8-hour day and a 40-hour week having deducted all the time estimates for each of the things you have listed above.
Your demand will outweigh your supply significantly, this is just a fact of life. Now… cut off the list of tasks that you are prioritising at your 40 hour week supply level. Anything below the line DOES NOT GET DONE. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? Remember where we talked about focus?
Now, when you do this, there are going to be disappointed people, probably including your boss. So obviously, you now need to have a frank conversation with your boss, which will start something like, “Hey boss, how will you and I know that I have done a great job at the end of this year?” – then sit down and show them your list.
Discuss how you have prioritised it and calculated your supply and demand. Give them opportunity to discuss reprioritising the list if they wish but try and keep your supply and demand calculations firm. Approaching this in a reasonable and clearly thought out way will give you credibility to show why you can’t do more than you have on your list.
Skill #3 – Project manage every task – here is how
In this article on project management I went through how to manage projects of any size. The general idea though is to:
- Ensure you have a firm (not fluffy) goal, so you know when you are done
- Ensure everyone involved agrees on the goal, so you all agree when you are done
- Carefully estimate how much of your time it will take to complete
- Identify any part of the task that is reliant on the completion of other tasks or people and list them
- Build a plan of how you will accomplish it – include as much detail as possible
- Add in contingency in your timing estimates, so you are being realistic
- Lay out the tasks in a simple Gantt chart and show where it fits against your other work commitments
- Think hard about where things might go wrong and plan for them
- Review your plan regularly
Through taking this approach to all your work tasks (it really doesn’t take long when you get the swing of it) you will avoid firefighting unforeseen disasters and work far more efficiently.
Now – commit to giving your absolute best
You have your list of priorities which has been honed carefully. Each task has a time allotted to it and you have planned these into your calendar. You have identified how best to approach each of these tasks and planned them out carefully. Here is the secret to focus… In the time period you have allotted for a task, now you are confident that it is a serious priority and you are doing the thing that absolutely deserves your time… give it your absolute all, like your life depends on it. Focus hard, and bask in the awesome feeling that you are doing the right thing in the right proportion right now! Switch off any feelings of guilt! By doing this, when its time to knock off, and go and spend some quality time with loved ones, or just get some good quality sleep, you can be confident that you will have achieved every bit as much as the guy who is working burnout hours!
It’s not just work
These methods, well the first two, work absolutely just as well with your personal life too. Take the time to look at your out of work schedule and commitments and identify the real quality ones. Give them priority. Plan them into your life proactively, and pre-book them into your calendar. If spending time with certain people has a positive effect on you, book that time in with those people now, as much as you can. Prioritise your mental health and your work life will benefit immeasurably!
Over to you!
Have you got any suggestions for golden tips for avoiding burnout? As you can see from the post, at letsworkhealthy.com we are giving simple practical help to people wherever we can. We would love to hear your thoughts on the tips in this article, so it would be great if you could leave some comments below! How about subscribing to the mailing list so you can be kept informed whenever we publish a new article or release a new resource for leaders? Simply add your email address to the subscribe box and we’ll do the rest. I promise not to spam you or give your details to anyone else at all.
See you for the next article!
Greg Bennett is a Public Health Professional and
Leadership Coach
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