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One of the top 3 hardest moments of my life happened the summer I was getting ready to head off to university. I was working at my dad’s Serta mattress factory when he called me into his office. “Take a seat on the couch, the doctor called.”
After this, I don’t remember exactly what my father said to me. All I can remember is the pain I felt thinking what my dad must have been going through as he told me that I had the same cancer that killed his mother when he was a child.
Fortunately, I caught my melanoma very early. The only treatment I required was having the malignant moles removed. I was very lucky. This in itself is a story worth telling - how important it is to trust your instincts when it comes to your health. But that’s a story for another day.
Getting cancer at such a young age gave me a deep appreciation for life and the understanding that none of us know how much time we’ve got on this planet. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I’ve been so obsessed with living life to its fullest. At the heart of this was an insatiable desire to master the management of time. To be more and more productive every day.
To say that I’ve forgotten more about time management and productivity skills than most people ever learn would not be an understatement. I’ve read the books, practiced the systems, mastered the software, and taught the classes.
And yet, just like you, I struggle to get it all done.
Like so many people today, I often feel overwhelmed with the volume of tasks I have on my plate any given week.
And then I read the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The magic of this book was the insight that productivity has a paradox. There’s a trap. The better I get at time management skills, the more work I have. Becoming more productive allows me to reply to more emails, call more prospects, complete more projects. But the faster I get at replying to emails, the more people email me back. The more prospects I call, the more meetings I books, and so on… The more productive I get, the more work I create for myself.
And it gets worse… the technology we have to enable this trap keeps expanding exponentially.
This paradox leads to what psychologists would call a double bind. Whether or not you improve your time management skills, the outcome is more overwhelm in terms of the amount of work to get done.
So what’s a person to do? Is there truly no escape?
As with most important things in life, the answer comes from accepting the reality in front of us. In this case, it’s about accepting that there will always be more to do, no matter how efficient we may become.
And this is the main message of Four Thousand Weeks, we are all human and we all have limits. We can not outrun the universe. The universe will win every - single - time.
Once we accept our universal limitations we are then able to escape the double bind. We do this by accepting that our solution comes not by doing more, but by doing less. By saying no.
In other words, if you want to get more done, then the only option is to master the art of simplification.
In EOS, one of the key tools we teach our clients is the Five Leadership Abilities. This is the first tool we teach because it is the foundation of everything else. And the first Leadership Ability? You guessed it, SIMPLIFY.
If like me, you want to achieve something great and you find yourself overwhelmed with the amount of work on your plate - then pause - and make a choice of what is essential and what is not. Learn to say no.
To go deeper in this topic I recommend the audiobook version of First Things First by Stephen Covey (it’s about an hour long). It’s available for free on Spotify for premium members (link) or you can buy it from the publisher here (link). Pay specific attention to his concept The Clock and the Compass. In short, the compass is your North Star - your vision - your V/TO if you run on EOS. Use that to guide your choices of what you say yes to - and more importantly - what you say no to.
The choice is yours. But you must choose.
And as always, if you’d like my help, please reach out. I’m crazy passionate about this stuff and it would be my honour to help you achieve more by doing less.
Simple. Not easy.
The Indiana Jones fans among us will appreciate this scene. Choose wisely my friends!
About EOS
EOS is a simple, complete and proven system for running a truly great organization. As an EOS Implementer, I help my clients create organizational alignment, execute with accountability and discipline, and work together as a healthy team.