Hard Work Doesn't Always Work

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Early in my career, I worked extremely hard. It didn't matter what was being asked of me, I would do it without question. I worked long hours day after day.  My day officially ran from 8AM to 5PM, but in reality, I would start reading and replying to the email as early as 6 in the morning. It wasn't uncommon to continue to work until 10 or 11 at night. To put it mildly, I was overworking myself, or as the idiom goes, I was burning the candle at both ends. 

This was an unsustainable way to live. Not only was I doing the work of two people, but I was also slowly losing connection to my personal life. By working such long hours, I had no time left over for my family or friends. I had no time to focus on myself and what made me happy. My entire life was defined by my work. This lasted for some time before I began to suffer from anxiety and stress. I was always at work and always working on the next project.  I knew something had to change.

I began to study different ways of working. Ways to be more efficient. Ways to be more assertive. I looked at how I could more effectively say no and prioritize my work to the things that really mattered. Over time I got better and better and working efficiently and saying no to work that didn't push my goals or those of my department ahead. Now I have a much less stressful work environment with more free time to myself. My day starts at 8 and ends at 5. I rarely need to do any work outside of those hours and I have time for lunch and breaks throughout the day.  

Here are some tips that you can use to ensure that if you work hard, it's toward the things that really matter. 

You Teach Other Pople How to Treat You

Other people will treat you in the way that you have taught them to. For Example, if your boss calls you late at night and on weekends to ask you for additional work and you always say yes, they will learn that that behavior is OK. You may be upset and angry towards your boss for this, but you must understand that you allowed this environment to occur. Understand what your personal boundaries are and make it clear when something is not OK.

Forget It It Doesn't Matter

Does your boss appreciate your work?  Yes.  They hired you and have kept you around.  Stop worrying about if they appreciate your work.  Go out every day confidently and do your best work with confidence.  Your boss should be worried about how they’re going to keep you happy and on the team.  There are plenty of jobs and opportunities you can go to and they know. 

Here’s a simple test you can take to determine if you should be worried about something: 

• Is someone dying? 
• Is someone pregnant? 
• Are you going to jail? 

If you answered no to all of these, then it’s not a big deal.  Don’t worry about it for another second.  Start focusing on the future.  Those “problems” will fade away and become speed bumps you passed right over on the road to success. 

Focus on the Right Outcomes

Many companies today focus on the behaviors, not the outcomes. This sounds like the right thing to do. if I just identify the right behaviors and set those out as what I need to see my employee doing, I will consistently get the best results. These organizations don't focus on sales goals or targets. They believe that if the employees consistently execute the right behaviors the results will be the output of those behaviors. 

This may sound like a great plan, but it ignores something fundamental about people. People are individuals and individuals think feel and react differently in different situations. The only way for a management system that is highly focused on behaviors to work is to hire people that think and act the same way consistently. That creates a tremendous challenge for the recruiting department and the manager in identifying and hiring for those specific traits.

The opposite approach, however, is much more consistent and can be applied more easily. Rather than focus on the behaviors, focus on the right outcomes. Identify what the goals of the team or organization are and communicate those clearly and effectively to your team. Ensure they know how to check their performance and know when that goal is to do. Follow-up with them regularly to discuss their progress as well.

Why does this work better than behaviors? People are, again, individuals that work, think and act in different ways and so are your customers or the other teams that you interact with. For example, If you have two salespeople in an automobile dealership that are both high performers that consistently meet or exceed their goals, as a manager you would be very happy. However, if you had a requirement that every customer test drive a vehicle before talking about payments and financing because you believed that was a necessary step to achieving good sales, you would need to coach to that. If one of your high-performing salespeople failed to do test drives, you would have to hold them accountable, even though they are achieving the sales targets. As the manager should you care if they are doing test drives if they achieve the results ethically and legally without doing the test drives? No! You should be focused on the outcome. Focusing on the outcome makes it simple and allows each individual to find the path that works for them. 

You don't owe an explanation

Unless it's your boss, you don't owe anyone an explanation for why you aren't going to say yes. The reality is that you can invite trouble by offering explanations. Saying something like "I can't do that because I'm overwhelmed with this other project right now.", just invites them to come back when that project is complete. Don't fall into that trap. It's OK to be super direct and sometimes even a little rude. Remember they're asking for your help, you don't owe them your labor for free. 

The Benefits of Reducing Cognitive Load

This process of relaxed work followed by intense work and then back to relaxed work has allowed the brain to get into an intensely focused workflow where it can stay highly focused. By only doing this for a short period of time and then moving to more relaxed work, you allow the brain time to cover. Similar to a weight lifter doing an intense set of high weights followed by a recovery period, you allow the brain time to relax and prevent cognitive overload. If you were to go out for a run but decided to sprint the entire way, you would quickly become exhausted and be forced to walk or even stop completely while you had time to recover. This downtime would ultimately slow down the overall pace of your run. If however, you jogged and occasionally inserted short bursts where you sprinted for 50 meters you would find that you were able to maintain the jogging pace throughout and your overall time increased.

The same thing will happen when you work. When you allow yourself to work in a more relaxed state with short bursts of high-intensity focused work, you allow yourself to become more productive without becoming mentally exhausted. Remember when you were in school and would leave studying for an important exam until the night before? You would spend hours and hours studying intensely for the exam the following day. It would leave you utterly exhausted and at some point, you would no longer be able to effectively study. You know intuitively that studying for a short time every day would yield better, more sustainable results.

The shorter periods of work or learning followed by a more relaxed workload are directly applicable to that better study habit. By working intensely and then in a more relaxed state you not only allow your brain time to recover from a heavy cognitive load, but you also allow time for your brain to put your thoughts together, more effectively commit ideas to memory, and consider new ways to attack problems.

I used these methods to reduce my workload, my stress and improve my work-life balance. What have you done to get a better balance?  Tell me below or contact me!