As any lifeguard will tell you, if you unexpectedly fall into a cold body of water, the best thing to do is to float or gently tread water, staying calm and conserving resources while the cold shock goes away. This is actually much easier said than done: if you are like most of us, your first instinct will be to start swimming hard, treading water with all your might. In fact, this is such an issue, that the Royal National Lifeboard Institution (in the UK) launched a campaign that says “fight your instincts, not the water.”
Please bear with me, in case you were wondering when this became a blog about water safety. My point is: the same is true for when you drown figuratively – in work, that is. If you are a hard working, ambitious, driven person (like the high potential leaders I work with), your first instinct when faced with a pile of work will be to double down and work hard. Here is why you should fight your instinct, just for a short period of time, and take a step back instead.
My client, Anna (*not her real name), struggled with managing her time and, as a result, managing her stress. The demands of her job had recently increased: she was doing such great work, that she was recognized (as it often happens) by being given even more responsibility and an enlarged team. She used to be on top of her email inbox and her customer calls, never missing any follow up. All of a sudden, the volume of email and the number of calls ballooned. Her reaction was to work harder, pushing through the expanded volume of work with dilligence, as she always had. Now she was working evenings and weekends, and the problem was that she still could not cover it all. She was constantly stressed about what she may have missed in the email that she did not get to, and anxious about disappointing her boss and her team.
Here was Anna drowning in work, and her instinct to handle it by working harder was not working out.
Anna and I talked about changing strategy altogether, and instead of working harder to cover everything, taking a deliberate step back – i.e. 5-10 minutes of reflection and planning – every time she felt overwhelmed. These 10 minutes allow you to:
- “Download” your brain. The stress we feel is sometimes the result of our brain just turning round and round the 5 things we are afraid we’ll forget. Writing them down creates space and allows our brain to let go.
- Prioritize. Take a look at your to do list and put it in order, so that you ensure that you do what’s most important and urgent, first.
- Pick up the phone to inquire about the details of that “urgent” request which just came through–understand the actual level or urgency, how long it will take, who else can help with it, etc.
- Make an informed decision about whether you should actually go ahead with that “urgent” request yourself (and deprioritize something else), push it to someone else, or say no to it altogether.
It often happens that stress comes from the feeling of lack of control – “Am I missing something important and I don’t even know it?” “Am I spending too much time on this and I won’t have any time left for X which is really important so I’ll have to stay up all night doing it?” The first thing I tell my coachees about stress is: Sit with the stress:
- Why am I stressed?
- What is under my control? What can I do about it?
- Go ahead and do it (if you can).
Upon a bit of self reflection, Anna identified that the thing that was really stressing her was not following up immediately on her customer calls. This was essential to her professional success, and yet she was putting it off because of urgent menial demands on her time. Once she made this a priority, she was less stressed. She started working smarter, by focusing first on what really mattered most.
I don’t mean to sound overly simplistic about this topic; sometimes managing competing priorities really *is* much more complicated than this. But sometimes, you know, it really *is* this simple. Take a step back. Sit with your stress. Then act deliberately, and not instinctively.
