It can be hard to stop working at the end of the day. We all want to make sure that presentation is polished, the email worded just so, and get ahead on that report that's due Thursday. It's even harder knowing that when you check in for work tomorrow morning, your plan for the day might be disrupted by just one email from your boss reassigning your time.
One colleague of mine refers to their "to do" list as their "infinity" list - it'd be cute if it wasn't true. There's a never-ending demand for our time, but our supply is undeniably finite. With the steady stream of tasks, requests, and performance indicators, how does anyone leave their desk at the end of the day?
Perhaps there's relief in reframing the problem: The list of things I need to do never gets shorter. The reframe is: Since it never gets shorter, it doesn't matter if I stop working today at 4 pm or 11 pm. There's some freedom in the idea that you can never catch up. If that's depressing, and not hopeful yet, please read on.
Photo by Blake Cheek on Unsplash
Imagine your to-do list, your infinity list, as a waterfall. It just keeps coming. It might dry up seasonally, but for now it's your responsibility to cup in your hands every drop of water from the waterfall. It's laughable, right? You could spend all day and night holding your hands out and never hold all the water flowing over this waterfall. You can catch some of it, but you're going to watch most of it pass you by, observe how quickly some of it is moving, note how some gets caught in an eddy for a while, even invite a friend to stand under the mist with you and laugh. You can interact with this waterfall in many ways, but you can't hold all the water passing over it.
Your to-do list is the same. You can interact with it in many ways, but you can't do everything on the list. There will never be an end to what you're expected to hold in your hands and pay attention to, so the only option is to choose a little bit to hold in your hands, then just watch most of it pass you by, observe how quickly some of it is moving, note how some of it gets caught in a cycle of meetings that don't go anywhere, and definitely invite a friend to stand next to you and laugh at the futility of it all.
I'm not saying you don't have an impact, I'm saying ensure your impact is focused and strong by doing less. For most of you, a LOT less. Like, take what you're trying to accomplish and try to do only 10% of it. If you must do 15% of your list, make sure you do the additional 5% only "good enough." For many of you, it's technically someone else's job to pare down what's expected of you, and that person is not doing that very well. It's because their own waterfall has them overwhelmed, too.
Ensure your impact is focused and strong by doing less.
So we can cry and grind our teeth over how we can't get it all done, and we can work til midnight and take our laptops to soccer games, or we can agree: we can't get it all done. The agreement might feel like a deep breath, might feel like sorrow, or it might feel like immense relief. I'm hoping it feels like relief. I wish you relief.
What about the rest of the stuff, you ask? I know, it's a lot. In practice, each of us must determine which water to catch in our hands as it flows over the waterfall. If your supervisor can help you get down to just 40 hours of work a week, that's fantastic. Capitalize on their help: tell them how long things take and what sort of help you need; be honest. Do not do the extra stuff that doesn't fit in the 40-hour week.
If they can't help you (because you're the boss or you make the decisions or because they haven't mastered their own waterfall yet), then decide on priorities for yourself. Set some criteria using your organization's mission and recent missives from leaders. What are they saying are the "priorities?" If there are more priorities than hours in your 40-hour week, you'll have to set additional boundaries. What are the things you can contribute to most meaningfully? What are the things that matter to you based on your core values? What are the things you can do that support your sleeping well at night? What can you effectively control? If you haven't thought about them lately, I've got a core values exercise I'd be happy to share with you to help you name your core values. Contact me and I'll be glad to send it along.
When new things arrive at your desk, try to default to "no" or "let me think about it" - you can always go back and say "I've thought about it for a couple days, and I actually do have time to take on that project you asked me about Tuesday," but the reverse is more difficult and weighted with meaning. If you're in control of the decision to take on more work or not, employ the Eisenhower matrix (feel free to google), apply the criteria you set based on where you can contribute meaningfully, and be sure that more than 50% of new items end up in the Delete quadrant. When Tuesday's tasks come in, you'll be glad you didn't overcommit on Monday.
If these seem like questions that are more about you than the work you've been assigned (or assigned yourself), that's true. Paring down your work to 40 hours a week is more about you than you probably want it to be. It can take time to work through our feelings about saying "no," and often, much of our self-worth is tied up in what we can accomplish. Engage a coach or a therapist depending on the type of feelings you're having and the level of complexity.
If you find it hard to step away at the end of your work day or you feel like you're constantly playing catch up, I hope you'll try a couple of these techniques: reframing, setting your own priorities, saying no. Let me know how things go. I've been there and I'm on this journey with you.
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