The blog

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?)