Most of the leaders I work with are highly motivated, ambitious, and creative. They nearly always have a vision or set of goals that they are pursuing. Nearly always, that vision or set of goals somehow includes some form of growth. Growth, when you get practical about it, nearly always includes some element of more. More locations, services, staff, market share, impact, etc.

In spite of this vision, the biggest and most immediate issue that comes up with leaders is “being too busy”.

Reality check: If you are too busy, right now, how do you expect to lead more?

You Can’t Let Yourself Stay Too Busy

Most leaders that I work with have valuable visions. Important ones. It doesn’t matter where they lead: Business, non-profits, or government. The vision of these leaders is nearly always some form of seeing a problem or a need and finding a way to resolve it.

In other words, they see ways to add value to the world around them. This is important. It’s what makes great communities. It’s what allows healthy societies to be built.

But your vision isn’t likely to be anything but a vision if you stay too busy.

Everyone will go through busy seasons. But if your busy season is the norm, then it isn’t a season. It’s a problem. There is a direct correlation between how well you manage your time and priorities and accomplishing your vision.

The Five Reasons Why You Are Too Busy

1. Your vision isn’t as clear as you think: Many leaders have their vision in soft focus. It provides a general set of directions. But not a specific set. I have often found that leaders whose vision is a little vague or out of focus basically work harder than others. And achieve less.

The clearer your vision is, the easier and more simple it is to:

• • Explain it to others
  • Enlist/delegate the support of others
  • Make decisions
  • Determine priorities
  • Find and allocate resources
  • Track progress
  • Make changes

When there is a lot of work going on, and not enough sense of progress, it’s often because the destination isn’t as clear as everyone thinks.

2. You lack clarity in your immediate direction: Some leaders have a very clear vision. But they aren’t sure what they are supposed to accomplish this week. Or today. Or this hour. If it weren’t for meetings on the calendar, they wouldn’t have a strong sense of what they were doing that day.

But their purpose for each of those meetings is often not that clear either. As a result, they are frequently led by whatever is most urgent or demanding. Or whatever’s “next.”  Or even worse, they are led by patterns and habits.

Your immediate direction should primarily be your next step towards your vision. If you don’t know what it is, you wander. You walk a lot more when wandering.

3. You have taught people to interrupt you: Many leaders have taught their people to make their urgency the leader’s urgency. Every knock at the door, every phone call, text, or e-mail becomes more sacred and important than…well, anything else.

You attend meetings that have no purpose other than to prop up someone else’s sense of purpose.

You spend time solving problems you’ve hired other people to solve.

You waste time checking the work you’ve hired professionals and experts to do.

You’ve taught people to take their sense of urgency and give it to you. You take their priorities and make them your own.

Stop it.

4. You aren’t ruthless about your priorities: There is only one of you. In your organization, there are certain accomplishments that can only be made by you. Those are (or should be) your priorities.

 You need to be ruthless about protecting those priorities. Don’t let other people hijack them.

Get out of meetings and obligations that don’t contribute to those priorities.

Protect your time, your creative energy, and the space you need to move your team or organization forward.

You are too busy because you are doing too many things that you shouldn’t be doing, and not enough of what matters.

You need a “NO” list, a list of things you won’t do.

Along with your to-do list, write up a list of everything you’ll stop doing and won’t start doing. Be faithful to that list. Say, “No.”

5. Undealt-with fears: This is often at the core of why people get too busy. Many leaders are afraid of failure or afraid of looking like they don’t know something.  As a result, they develop a pattern of time- and energy-wasting behaviors:
   • Being a perfectionist
   • Being controlling or micromanaging
   • Controlling information / forcing all decisions to run through you
   • Inadequately delegating authority
   • Inadequately making use of the skills and abilities of people around you
   • Not learning new methods or technologies
   • Developing a better method
   • Creating a more precise plan
   • Holding one more stakeholder meeting, just to make sure everyone has buy-in

The list can go on. But it’s all about fear.

Here’s the flip: Let’s flip everything above, around. This leader:

• Has crystal clarity on the vision he or she is trying to build
• Knows exactly what they need to accomplish in the near term to move towards that vision
• Creates and protects blocks of uninterruptable time for focused work or learning
• Is absolutely ruthless and about pursuing their priorities and arranges everything else to fit around them
• Recognizes and deals with limiting fears and “stuff” as it emerges
• Gets help as needed

This new leader will likely never describe themselves as being “too busy.” But they will probably be doing more and accomplishing more.

Too Busy Is A Choice

I’m writing to leaders who have control over their schedules[1]. If you do, then how you spend your time follows your priorities. It just does.

If you are chronically too busy, get clear (and honest) about your actual priorities. Because your busy-ness is the sum total of your choices.

The good news: You can turn this around when you decide to make that choice! I help leaders do this all the time and usually, the turn around happens far faster than they anticipated.

But you have to choose the change.

Take good care,

Christian

[1] Many of my readers are front-line or in middle management. It is possible that someone else is controlling your schedule and priorities. That’s a different issue. (Read here for ideas of how you can handle this.)

Would you like my help for yourself, your team or board to get a clear vision of 2020?  Don’t leave it to chance. Give me a call 907-522-7200 or e-mail me.

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