“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”
“I wish I could do more.” I hear that statement a lot from leaders all across the country. The demands on their time, their skills, and their presence are always escalating, always making it seem like there’s never enough of the leader to go around. More meetings, more mentoring, more decisions, more counseling, more vision, more, more, more. The escalation is in outputs. You know the “checked-off boxes” that make those around us feel better. We end up scheduling ourselves to the gills, increasing our activity while not necessarily increasing our accomplishment.
The more that we’re chasing after isn’t wrong. It’s the impulse that leaders have when they’re chasing their best. Growth ALWAYS increases your capacity. It’s part of our journey as leaders — As we grow, we expand our capacity, and with expanded capacity comes increased output. But increasing our output doesn’t correlate with increasing our impact—sometimes, to do more, we need to do different.
Imagine a day when you’ve worked non-stop, darting from one task to another. You might be handling issues as they pop up, addressing questions, managing schedules, and attempting to focus on a project or two. But all this movement can leave you feeling a bit like a ball in a pinball machine: bounced from task to task, with little control and hardly any progress. It’s a frustrating cycle – one where you may feel busy but not impactful.
This experience isn’t uncommon one bit, and it’s essential for leaders to understand that busyness doesn’t always equate to productivity. Just as a pinball gets ricocheted around without reaching a clear destination, we can lose focus and reduce our impact if we’re constantly at the mercy of external demands. To break free, we need to intentionally redirect our energy and focus toward actions that truly drive progress.
How do we go from busy work to moving the needle forward with more mission focused progress? I thought you’d never ask!
1. Prioritize Intentional Work Over Constant Activity: Impactful leaders don’t just move for the sake
of movement – they prioritize actions with long-term benefits. Start each day by identifying three to five
tasks or goals that align with your bigger objectives. This could include strategic planning, team
development, or initiatives that build a stronger foundation for the future. By focusing on high-value tasks, you begin each day with a purpose and mission, instead of simply reacting to what comes your way! I cannot express #1 enough how big of an impact this had on my leadership.
“Action is the foundational key to all success.”
– Pablo Picasso
2. Create Boundaries to Guard Your Focus: A clear schedule is one of the strongest defenses against the pinball effect. Block off time for focused work, and communicate your availability to your team. Let your calendar serve as a tool to help you prioritize the essential tasks over the urgent but less important demands. Setting boundaries not only protects your time but also encourages those around you to take initiative and make decisions independently. It also gets you in the proper headspace to focus fully on the task and goals at hand!
3. Delegate Authority to Your Team: Too often, leaders end up doing tasks that could be handled by others, simply because it seems faster or easier in the moment. But consistently tackling everything yourself leaves little room for tasks that only you, as the leader, can accomplish. Proper delegation builds your team’s capacity and frees you to focus on higher-impact areas. If you are an owner, founder, or senior leader, the only thing you cannot delegate is creating the vision for where you’re going and setting the tone for your culture. Everything else, there is somebody that can most likely do it better than you!
4. Reflect and Realign: At the end of each day, take five minutes to review what you accomplished. Ask yourself: “Did I make progress on meaningful work, or was I just busy?” Regular reflection helps identify patterns that lead to busyness without progress. From there, you can make adjustments to avoid similar pitfalls tomorrow. I personally reflect at the end of each day, and plan during my quiet time at the beginning of each day.
Remember that each day that the ultimate goal is progress, not just activity. We work hard today to make tomorrow easier. By making intentional decisions about where you invest your energy, setting boundaries to protect your focus, and empowering your team, you’ll go from being endlessly busy to making a true, lasting impact as a leader.
“When opportunity comes it’s too late to prepare.”
— John Wooden
I’ll land the plane with this… Have you been feeling the pressure to do more as a leader? If so, let me encourage you to intentionally invest time in expanding your capacity to act. Doing the things you should be doing, doing them beyond anyone’s expectations, and doing it daily is the key to expanding your capacity in ways you can’t yet imagine. I’ve said it for years and it’s still true: the world is not made better by our intentions; it is made better by our intentional actions. As leaders, we must do more, but we must do more of what makes us better. We must increase our capacity for helpful and productive action!