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27 Jan

”Trying your hardest” - how hard is that?


Datum: 2025-01-27 08:59
A hand holds a tape measure extended against a blue background.

There are so many things we feel we need to suc­ceed in. The new orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture needs to work, the sales goal needs to be reached, the project needs to be com­plet­ed, the assign­ment needs to be suc­cess­ful, you need to close the new client account, and so on. If you are the one respon­si­ble for the suc­cess of what­ev­er it might be, you are like­ly to be the kind of ambi­tious per­son I often meet who has promised his- or her­self, and oth­ers, that they will do every­thing in their pow­er” for the task or project to come together. 


For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the Done!” pod­cast:


Con­stant­ly in a hurry

This ambi­tion is an expres­sion of quite an admirable engage­ment and a strong sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty, but for many peo­ple with this ten­den­cy, it also has a high price they inevitably have to pay. They feel that they work a lot, if not all the time, and in spite of work­ing as hard as they can, day after day, week after week, they sel­dom man­age to do what they had in mind and often feel they would have want­ed to accom­plish more. Did they real­ly try their hardest”?

When you become clear, you can become done”

If you are respon­si­ble for sev­er­al areas or projects on which you feel you need to work as hard as you can” to be suc­cess­ful, you risk feel­ing more than a lit­tle inad­e­quate — from time to time or all the time — regard­less of how much you work. This is so since work­ing as hard as you can” is a mea­sure­ment that is way too ambigu­ous. It is too vague part­ly because the expres­sion does not imply a lim­it oth­er than a some­what extreme one: As long as you are on your feet you should be able to do more. Part­ly it is too vague since it is insa­tiable: Even if you have done more or less every­thing you can in a cer­tain area, you have not done every­thing you pos­si­bly could in all the oth­er areas you are respon­si­ble for as well.

If every work­day feels like a con­stant marathon in which you are run­ning at top speed and you sel­dom feel you have done enough, make it clear to your­self (if to no one else) how much every­thing you can” is for every area, project, or assign­ment you are respon­si­ble for. Not until you have done so will you be able to go home at the end of the work­day feel­ing con­tent and sat­is­fied with your input — even if not every­thing is per­fect in all areas or projects yet.

Do this

If you want to feel a high­er lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion after com­plet­ing a day at work, then do this:

  1. Make a list on a note or in an app of what areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty, projects, assign­ments, or oth­er things you are work­ing on right now and where you feel and believe you have to work as hard as you can” or give it all you got”.
  2. For every item on the list, esti­mate how much every­thing you can” is equiv­a­lent to this week, or rather, how much it is rea­son­able for you man­age”. How? Express it in the num­ber of hours you work. Mea­sur­ing time has its lim­i­ta­tions since time can be con­sumed by vir­tu­al­ly any­thing, but if you are the ambi­tious kind of per­son who wants to give some­thing all you have got, I am guess­ing you spend most of your time doing pro­duc­tive tasks. That is why we can make an excep­tion this once and I think it is safe to mea­sure your exert­ed effort in the num­ber of hours you work.
  3. Now take a look at the sta­tus of the projects or areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty right now. How should you dis­trib­ute your time? Which one should dom­i­nate your week? Is next week sim­i­lar to this one or will you need to shift your focus then?
  4. For the rest of the week, reg­is­ter an esti­mate of the time you spend on the var­i­ous areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty (per­son­al­ly, I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the time-track­ing app Tog­gle at the moment). When you reach the pre-defined lim­it of what is rea­son­able to expect from your­self, you have the right to feel pleased and that you have done what you could. You have done what you con­sid­ered enough to suc­ceed, at least for now. If the actu­al result was still not enough in your eyes, you might need to increase the num­ber of hours for this area next week and reduce the hours allo­cat­ed to anoth­er area.
  5. How would your sit­u­a­tion at work and your expe­ri­ence of what you achieve change if you were able to track how many hours you spent on dif­fer­ent areas, projects, and so on every week so that you see how much as much as you can” actu­al­ly is and also know how much time you actu­al­ly have for new engage­ments and assign­ments? Per­haps you should open a new spread­sheet and cre­ate an overview to give you the hard facts to rely on from now on?

Feel­ing content

If you make it clear to your­self and oth­ers what you actu­al­ly mean when you say you will do every­thing in your pow­er” and how much work that actu­al­ly implies, you can expe­ri­ence the great feel­ing of hav­ing done enough often, per­haps even every day. There is no longer a lump in your stom­ach and your con­science is clear. What could be bet­ter than that?

What’s your way?

How have you ensured that you know if you have done enough when your areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty, projects, and assign­ments are so exten­sive that you rarely fin­ish in a day? Feel free to email me to share your experience.

(By the way, have you tried this trick to keep your work­load in check?)


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