Does your life feel like an endless list of to-do items, tasks and email replies?
If you said, “yes,” believe me, you are not alone. The pace of our modern life and workplaces feels like a blur. One project rolls into the next one, and one event bleeds into another. Just when you feel like you’re gaining ground – bam – you’re hit with a pile of new items to deal with.
New technology, designed to make our lives easier and more productive, seems to have accomplished just the opposite. Workdays no longer have a start and end time and weeks never give way to the weekend. Our generation has coined oxymorons like ”working lunch” and “working vacation.”
New research has begun to uncover something that we all probably know. The human brain and body is not designed for a 24/7, 365-day work-life. Stress and anxiety can contribute to illnesses like hypertension, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
That device buzzing in your pocket right now may be adding more to your life than convenience.
Let me ask you a question.
How are we supposed to work at optimum capacity if we never give ourselves time to recover?
Think about it, entertainers aren’t on stage every minute of everyday, athletes don’t play their respective sports every minute of every day, and most of them are being paid a lot more than the rest of us. People in both of those professions take time to process what they’ve done, look at film, dissect their performance so they can improve and perform better the next time.
Wow, what an amazing concept!
When was the last time you actually took the time to review the work you just completed, really analyze what went well and what you would do differently the next time? If you’re being honest, it’s likely been a while and you probably don’t do it very often. Yet we continually ask ourselves to put out our product better and faster.
Look, I get it. Our lives move fast and our businesses move even faster. That’s true. It’s also true that if we choose to, we can start allowing the game to slow down a bit and start using our smart technology to make smarter decisions.
I don’t believe success is an accident. I believe success leaves a lot of clues. The problem is with our “check the box and move on mentality,” we never make the opportunity to learn anything from those clues, and therefore we make the same mistakes over and over again. Sound familiar?
It’s time to put an end to the “Done, done and onto the next one” type of workplace environment and start putting realistic goals and deadlines on ourselves and our businesses. It’s time to start taking time after we complete our tasks to review and improve, and maybe even celebrate success for a couple of minutes. Your life is a lot more than a list of to-do items.
This week ask yourself:
Where are you employing a “check the box and move on” mentality in your life?
How’s that working for you?
What are you going to take the time to review and improve upon this week?
Where and with whom will you celebrate success?
Where do you plan to put some boundaries on your workday and week?
Thoughts for the week:
Beware the barrenness of a busy life -Socrates
Sometimes our stop-doing list needs to be bigger than our to-do list. –Patti Digh
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? –Henry David Thoreau
Strange, what being forced to slow down could do to a person. -Nicholas Sparks
Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast-you also miss the sense of where you are going. –Eddie Cantor
I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back. –Abraham Lincoln
Have you ever noticed that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you how busy they are? – Bob Talbert
They call it “business” because it does not become successful by a person’s idleness. Go get busy if you want to do business; but be busy for the right reasons. – Isrealmore Avivor
Looking forward to our next conversation
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