Why working harder isn’t always the answer (and what to do instead)

This blog started life as an episode of my podcast. If you prefer, you can listen here.

Today I'd like to introduce you to Barbara and Margot. They both have a lot to do and they're both feeling the pressure. They need to deliver something to a client. They have calls booked in their diaries and they need to create a landing page for a new thing that they're offering in their businesses.

And as with so many of us, their inboxes are overflowing, and there are many notifications that they haven't yet responded to in their socials.

Let’s spend a bit of time with Margot first.

Margot wakes up and immediately grabs her phone and starts to scroll to see if she's missed anything interesting. She knows she's got a lot on her plate. She's feeling a little bit stressed already, so she decides to skip breakfast and jumps in the shower.

She grabs her laptop with her towel still on her head, heads straight into her inbox and replies to a few messages that have come in overnight. She hops onto her socials to see what's going on there.

Then she looks at the time and realises that she only has 10 minutes before her first call of the day. She rushes off to dry her hair, falls into her seat and fires up Zoom just in time for her call. 

After her call, Margot has another quick check of her inbox and socials, puts the kettle on and shoves a slice of bread in the toaster.  Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, she checks her notifications and responds to some comments on LinkedIn.

Back at her desk, she decides to start working on the things she’s promised to deliver for her client. Part way through, she needs to grab an attachment from the email her client sent her. So she heads over to her inbox, and spots an email from one of her business buddies asking for her help with a dilemma.

Margot figures it won’t take long to respond, so hits reply. It actually takes a little longer than she anticipated, because she decides to share some resources with her friend and needs to track those down.

Before she knows it, half an hour has gone by, her next call is coming up son and she hasn’t prepared for it yet. So she stops what she's doing and shifts gears to get ready for that call.

Once the call is over, she has a few bits and pieces to action and does them right away before she gets. Then it’s right back to the client work she stated earlier.

Looking at the clock, Margot realises she hasn’t had lunch. So she grabs something to eat, at the same time as responding to notifications and scrolling her socials. Then it’s back to her desk, and another quick look at her inbox.

She's now really starting to feel the overwhelm and is finding it hard to focus. But she knows she needs to sort this thing out for her client because she'd promised to get it to them today. She does her best, but before she knows it, it's time to collect the kids from school.

Margot spends the evening with her family, but once the kids are in bed she’s back at her laptop, so she can keep the promise she made to her client. The landing page she’d wanted to work on for her own business didn’t get a look in, and she ends the day feeling exhausted and defeated.

Now let’s meet Barbara.

Like Margot, she has some work to do for a client, calls in her diary, a landing page to work on and emails and notifications coming out of her ears.

Barbara wakes up and heads for the shower. She makes breakfast and sits looking out the window whilst sipping her coffee.

When she gets to her desk, Barbara looks at her calendar and at the list of priorities she wrote at the end of the day yesterday. She takes a few minutes to decide how she wants her day to unfold.

She can see she has an hour before her first call, and decided to work on her landing page during that time. Then, after her call, she’ll spend a little time in her inbox and socials before prepping for her next call. After that, she’ll remind herself what needs to be done for her client. Then she’ll stop for lunch, take a walk, get some fresh air and settle her brain.

After lunch, Barbara’s plan is to finish the work she needs to do for her client, and then look at her inbox and socials again before heading out to pick up the kids.

Now she knows what she’s doing, Barbara settles into her day. It doesn’t go perfectly – there are a few moments where she gets distracted by her inbox – but because she’d actively chosen what she wanted her day to look like, on the whole it panned out as she’d intended. In the moments where she got distracted, she knew was she was supposed to be doing and could get back on track more quickly.

By the end of the day, Barbara is feeling a real sense of achievement. She's delivered what she’d promised her client, chipped away at her inbox and socials, knowing that the most important things had received a response. And although it was far from finished, she’d made a start on her landing page.

The thing that made all the difference

Even though she was busy, instead of diving right in Barbara took the time to slow down and actively decide how she wanted her day to look. And for the most part, that worked out well for her.

Margot, on the other hand, was bouncing around all over the place, never fully present with anything she was doing. She mistakenly believed that when you have a lot going on, the best strategy is to dive right in and barrel through it all. But she ended up getting less done and feeling rubbish as a result.

If that was just a one-off, it might not be so bad. But Margot is so bought into the idea that when she's busy, she needs to work harder and sped up, that she moves through every like that; jumping in with both feet, not giving herself time to think.

And so days, weeks, and even months can go by without her focusing on the projects that she says she wants to be working on, but never makes time for.

Barbara, on the other hand, is in the habit of slowing down and taking a pause to make intentional choices about what she's going to do. As a result, she gets more done and is making a bigger impact.

So are you more Barbara or Margot? 

Can you see how ploughing ahead with your head down and never pausing for breath is actually counterproductive?

And how by slowing down, you can actually speed up and get more done?

It might seem counterintuitive, but I promise you that when you slow down and get proactive about what you are working on, it becomes so much easier to spend your precious time on the things that are important and impactful.

What small change can you make today to help you be more Barbara?