The Most Important Thing That Leaders Protect
Last week a client who leads HR for her company said to me, “I did a hundred things today. Why didn’t anything happen?! I got insurance cards out, reset logins, answered emails, sat through meetings…but I don’t think I drove any meaningful progress.”
Ah, the tyranny of the urgent, the whirlwind of demands. It’s a reality that so many of us can relate to, and one that prevents us from doing the things that truly create impact and make a difference.
That’s why leaders with the greatest influence protect one thing, perhaps more than anything else: They protect time for what matters most.
These leaders consistently replace the verb “have” with “make.”
Instead of saying, “I don’t have time,” they say, “I make time.”
Here are three ways you can make time for what matters most:
- Take a solid-flexible approach to scheduling. Priorities have to get scheduled. Work backwards from what matters most in your life to determine the highest value actions, practices, and events that need to occur. Get them all scheduled or stacked into your routine. Ironically, this allows more presence and creativity — because you’ve made the space for it.
Be careful not to be too rigid or legalistic. Discern wisely whether your scheduled time should be moved or modified. In other words, be solid and flexible. At this moment, I have several people waiting for important things from me, but this is my time set aside to write. The practice of working out my ideas in public matters to me so I protect it. That said, I thought carefully yesterday about whether and when the best time would be to do it today.
- Quickly move past paralysis. Do you ever feel so befuddled by demands that you don’t even know where to start? In many cases, paralysis rather than busyness inhibits productivity. The reason is that paralysis breeds fear and fear breeds reactivity and reactivity isn’t thoughtful. Reactivity is doing the thing that’s right in front of you, attending to the person you’re afraid to disappoint, or being controlling rather than collaborative.
- Challenge your assumptions about what you need to do. Last week I attended a 24-hour retreat designed to gain spiritual, emotional, and mental clarity. It looked fine on the schedule four months ago. The day prior it looked crazy. I needed to go to my son’s baseball game. I needed to review and send proposals. I needed to coach a team member. I needed to. I needed to. I needed to.
Guess what? I went on the retreat and it was all fine. In fact, other people were happily capable of stepping up. It reminded me that I’m really not as important as I think I might be. Ask yourself, “Do I really need to be the one to do that and does it really need to happen now?”
Don’t let a hundred things get done without doing what matters most. When you catch yourself saying, “I don’t have time,” remember that the most influential leaders make and protect time to do what matters most.
How well are you protecting the time to do what matters most?
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