What is the most valuable thing you can do today? What will you let go undone to make that happen?
I used to believe that job success came from working harder and getting more things done. But that didn’t scale. Once I was working 100 hours a week, it wasn’t physically possible for me to work harder, and I eventually burned out.
So how do you have more impact without working more hours?
Focus on the most impactful work that only you can do, and stop doing everything else.
I used to feel that I had to respond to every email and message and meeting request because if I didn’t, people would be annoyed at me. But that meant that I had implicitly decided that keeping other people happy was more important than getting valuable work done. No wonder I burned myself out without having much impact!
A CEO I know was working on expense reports one day when his advisor came to visit. His advisor was aghast – the CEO was spending his valuable time on doing expense reports?! The CEO said “But they need to get done!” The advisor asked “Are you really doing $80/hour work when you could be doing $8,000/hour work?!”
I love that framing because it illustrates an opportunity cost mindset.
Early in our career, it’s a helpful mindset to think “If I can do it, I should do it”. Doing more work leads to increasing scope.
But as we get more experienced and capable, we can do lots of things! We have far more to do than we can ever get to in any given day or week. So to keep expanding our impact, the mindset must shift to “Is this the most valuable thing I could be doing right now?” Because our attention is limited, we must stay focused on the activities that will drive disproportionate impact.
That insight is what drives my Maven class, Scale Your Leadership with the Executive Mindset. The next cohort starts tomorrow, January 15th, at 9am Pacific.
If you feel stuck in reaching that next level of leadership, working harder and harder without getting the promotion and scope you want, you are working on the wrong things, as I was before I burned out. This class will help you sort out where to focus your attention to have the impact you want.
Sign up for the class with the code LASTCALL to get 20% off:
https://lnkd.in/g44Zm26Z