I’ve had a lot of job interviews, but few left an impression on me like this one.
I was interviewing for a global role at Genentech/Roche. “What’s it like to work in this organization?” I asked one senior leader.
He answered, “Every day, I’m juggling many many balls, and know that some of them are going to crash on the ground. I just make sure they aren’t the most important ones.”
This was the first time I heard a leader admit it was impossible to get all their work done.
Throughout that new job, and in future ones, the image of the juggling balls stayed with me. In my imagination, the balls are beautiful glass with a tinge of color. When they hit the floor, there’s a big crash and a halo of shards going everywhere.
Since that interview, I’ve seen leaders getting even busier. Sometimes it’s a permanent grind and sometimes it’s temporary and exceptional circumstances.
What to do when it’s impossible to do everything?
The biggest lever we have – obvious but easy to forget! – is choosing what to spend time on, which balls stay in the air and which fall. Here are some ways to practice these choices:
1. Do the valuable activity first – even if it’s hard.
Recently, I worked with a leadership coaching client to reclaim their time and energy. The first step was making the distinction between activities that add value and “stuff” like answering emails. It’s not hard to tell the difference, but sometimes the valuable work is more complicated or amorphous, or even anxiety provoking, because more is at stake, so we put it off.
Here’s a way to get started on the valuable work even if you only have 30 minutes:
- Pick a task or project that’s really going to make a difference for you or your team.
- Decide on the first step. (That’s all you need right now.)
- Set a timer and work that long continuously on the first step.
- Note your progress.
- Then, if you need to, answer an email or something else to get that immediate gratification and dopamine hit. 🙂
Even a small increase in your time spent on high value work will be noticeable, and tends to get easier over time.
2. Find and drop the no-value activities.
The converse of high value activities are no-value activities. These are not the balls from my imagination that are beautiful, delicate, and make a mess on impact. Perhaps they’re smaller and bounce or roll under the furniture and no one notices? I guarantee you have several ongoing right now.
I started making a list of common no-value activities that leaders encounter, which then became a checklist, which then became a short “protocol” for how to identify no-value activities and get rid of them – which is shared here for you in this worksheet.
What n0-value activities can you drop, and how can the time saved make your work and life better?
3. Do a task badly.
I know, I hear the gasp of horror. Doing less than optimal work is not in the DNA of most scientific leaders, but many non-technical tasks can be significantly reduced in scope and effort. Look for a stopping point along the way and ask, is this done now?
Over the last few weeks, in the messy middle of a move, I let an important ball drop. In the spirit of building and maintaining trust, I acknowledged the task wasn’t done, apologized, and offered a remedy. Privately, I reflected on why I’d missed it:
- I didn’t agree on a delivery date or set one for myself.
- My offer was vague and I didn’t define the either the end goal or the first step.
- The task didn’t ever get on my to do list.
The dropped ball made me realize that during this intense period, I needed to pay even more attention to my organizational systems, not less. Just as an athlete wouldn’t skip their preparation and warmup on race day – so we knowledge workers need more support and attention to how we do our work during the busy, overwhelming times.
If you’re looking for advice or support, please reach out.
