I have learned that I have a dysfunctional need to take on more responsibility. I know that through my actions and intentions I can become a magnet for responsibility that quickly fills my waking moments.  And it is all my fault.

I have read articles on work-life balance.  I have taken training and seminars on maintaining balance. Through all my learning it is clear that there is no magic answer to how to set your boundaries.  There is, however, an objective way to look at setting realistic bounds that form an acceptable “zone of normal expectation” that is both healthy and effective.   Finding your balance requires attention to your personal priorities, understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and what you allow to push you out of balance.

Follow my logic… There are times when working more than a 40-hour week is a necessity.  Maybe a looming deadline forces this necessity or maybe a sudden change in responsibility requires you work multiple roles.  In these cases, yes, you can work overtime.  Unfortunately, the productivity of overtime is debatable, with data showing diminishing returns from the additional hours you work.  Still, there are times in your career that you will face that necessity and short-term change in priorities. To help maintain your balance and keep yourself aligned to the habits that keep you performing at your strongest, I propose you have a “Best 40 hours” of effort that you can contribute to the success of your organization.

Best 40 hours:  Look at How you invest your time

I recommend dividing your job into multiple tracks: Work, Focused Investment, and Self Development.

• Work – The things you must do to fulfill your responsibilities such as attending meetings, approving timecards, status reports, and other ‘investments of low return”.
• Focused Investment – The things you do to make a difference such as mentoring others, shaping strategy, and driving initiatives that result in significant change.
• Self-Development – The things you do to improve your value to the organization. This can include taking training, seeking a mentor, networking, building relationships, and when needed getting caught up.

Work: The Things You Have to Do

Now the hard truth: Work needs to be less than 20 hours a week.  Especially as you gain more responsibility in an organization, it is vital that you keep the tasks you “Have to do” managed to the fewest hours as possible.  This work does not differentiate your abilities, does not grow your skills, and does not provide value that has the greatest impact for the organization.   But this work is necessary.

Keeping the Work to under 20 hours forces you to delegate, forces you to say “no” to new responsibilities, and forces you to focus on these tasks in an efficient and effective way.  It encourages you to delegate work that matters to team members seeking more responsibility.  It helps you understand your personal dysfunction when it comes to focusing your responsibility where you can make a difference.  And it teaches you to invest in the present, avoiding distractions that make you less effective and less efficient. Ever sit at a meeting, distracted by your email or some other item, and realize you have not been paying attention long enough that you forgot you were in the meeting in the first place? Many of us have been there, we either needed to invest in the meeting or delegated that meeting to someone else.  Otherwise you are just taking up space.

Focused Investment: The Things You Should Do, Given the Time

The best constructive feedback I have ever heard was from a customer encouraging us to be more, “I need you to be a heads-up partner, not another heads-down vendor”.  Your differentiation is the value you bring through your insight, guidance, and thoughtful direction.  If you measure your value by your ability to accomplish a large volume of tasks, you are probably guaranteeing a long career doing exactly what you are doing today.  At bare minimum, you are making yourself indispensable in your current role, limiting the opportunity for you to move up in an organization.

Focused Investment is about getting your head up, understanding the impact you can have, understanding the impact the organization needs, and driving that impact. When you leave your organization, what will be your legacy?  Will you be known as someone who made a difference for others?  Will you be known for building great teams? Will you be known for driving a strategic change that revolutionized the business?  Will you be known as forward thinking and key to driving a strategy that mattered?  Or, will you be known as a hard worker?

In the last sentence of the previous paragraph, “OR” is probably the most important word.  You need to decide how you bring value and drive the organization around you to capitalize on that value.

Self-Development: Increasing Your Worth

I have worked for companies that truly valued investment into training and educating their employees.  I have also worked for companies that made sure you completed your compliance training but were not very keen on investing much more into you. Maybe you have heard the hypothetical debate between the CFO and CEO about training: CFO says, ‘Can you imagine if we invest all this money into training for our employees and they just leave!’  To which the CEO responds, ‘Can you imagine if we don’t make that investment and they stay!’  It is always easier to blame your organization for your lack of development, but make sure you are taking advantage of resources and services offered to you.

You Need a Mentor

Take the initiative to find a mentor (or a few).  Mentors need to be able to tell you when you are wrong and you need to accept that feedback.  They need to be able to tell you when you are stagnating or spinning your wheels.  They do not need to be senior to you.   A mentor’s job is to encourage you to put into words what is important to you.  Their job is to help you perform an honest assessment of your strengths and gaps.  Their job is to help you understand how well you apply your strengths in your organization (Focused Investment).  Their job is to force you to raise your head and look around.

Yes, a mentor can bring skills to the table you may lack.  That is great, but that is not the purpose or the value of a truly impactful mentor.   A truly impactful mentor pushes you to be yourself, in spite of the challenges in front of you.

Seek Knowledge

I exercise every morning and have recently switched from listening to music to listening to audio books and leadership podcasts while I exercise. When I am commuting, if I am not on a call, I am listening to audio books.

I have colleagues who commute by train and take advantage of this time to utilize online learning forums like LinkedIn Learning and TED.com to broaden their skills and inform their points of view.

A leader I respect greatly at my previous company used to have a lunch date every Thursday with himself and his laptop to watch TED Talks and online lectures on leadership.  He felt this was every bit as important as investing that same lunch period with his team.  This made him stronger and set an example that seeking knowledge was key to success.

Who Do You Admire?  What is their Regiment of Learning?

One of my favorite interview questions, “Who do you admire as a leader and why?”

I always follow that question with, have you taken the time to interview that leader and understand the road that brought them to where they are today?  So many people admire leaders that are near them, but don’t take the time to reach out and understand what brought them to be who they are.

Getting Off the Soapbox, How Do I Apply This?

Don’t be hero.  Our society likes to make heroes the stuff of legend, but who really wants to be one? They are only called when everything goes wrong, only they can save the day, and they often die a hero’s death. At some point in life, you need to realize you cannot succeed at everything.  Likewise, you need to recognize you cannot be all things to all people.  Given these limits, saying “No” to a request of your time is not a bad thing.  Measure your accomplishments by what you complete, not what you start.  Measure your legacy by those you have developed through good mentoring and delegation, not by the amount of work you have accomplished yourself.

Maintain a prioritized list of tasks you need to complete.  When someone asks for your time, weigh their request against the prioritized list of items.  Share the list with them and discuss the relative priorities and why you have assigned them.  Regularly review the list as potential growth opportunities for your team members.   Delegating is not “pushing your responsibility to someone else”, it is anointing them with faith and confidence that they can accomplish the task well enough that you can focus elsewhere.

Who are you? What are you good at? Have you ever made a list of your own strengths and weaknesses?  With new mentees, I ask them to write down their 3 greatest strengths and one biggest weakness as they see it.  I ask them to repeat the task with their perception of what others think of them.  Then I ask them to set up a few short meetings and review what they have written with a few of their colleagues.  There are plenty of tools available to help you identify and discuss key strengths and competencies.  Many organizations have clearly defined competencies that they expect their leaders to demonstrate.

Often, you take for granted the value you bring to others.  You don’t look at it as a strength. A great way to build a brand is to capitalize on the perceptions others already have of the value you contribute.  Volunteering for or selecting tasks that leverage your strengths will reinforce that brand.  It will also sharpen your skills in areas that are already strengths, increasing your impact.  Be careful to prioritize these activities to fit into your best 40 hours.  This may mean delegating other tasks to afford time to accomplish these activities.

Choose a winnable game. I can recall several times I accepted or was assigned responsibility for outcomes that I couldn’t really achieve, couldn’t control, or didn’t know how to measure.  Worse yet, I thought if I tried harder, I would eventually succeed through perspiration or inspiration.  When taking on a new responsibility, define how you are going to measure success. Get buy in for success.  Report on your progress toward success.

Lastly, if success is not possible or undefinable, stop.  Admitting defeat now and moving toward your next success is better than delaying defeat and not freeing up the time to succeed at other activities.

PostScript

I have a dysfunctional need to take on more responsibility.  My wife understands this about me.  Fortunately, I have a good partner in life who lets me know when I am tilting toward imbalance and she reminds me to focus where I should.  She also knows when I need to push for more responsibility.  Might have something to do with me “Fixing” things around the house.

We had a child after 13 years of marriage.  She is our only child and she is beautiful.  We are her parents, playmates, story tellers, traveling partners, and most importantly, wound healers.  When I work from home, my daughter understands that I am working and provides me with the privacy necessary to focus on the work at hand.  But I also recognize that there are times when she will come into my office with an important need.  In the work world, a coworker would typically come in and ask for assistance on something or a status update on something else.  For my daughter, she asks for a snack or where Mommy is at that moment.

For me, my bounds are clear.  I am a dad and a husband first.  If my work life asks to interfere with my family life, I measure the impact and make the decision.  Notice I said “If my work life asks to interfere”.  It is your choice to set reasonable bounds, to flex those bounds, and to protect what is important.  Never forget that it is your choice!

Post PostScript

I am eternally grateful to the many people I have met through my professional career.  I have mentors with a wide variety of backgrounds.  For preparation and editorial assistance of this composition, I want to extend special thanks to Nevin Phull.  I have known Nevin for 5 years.  I seek counsel from Nevin on difficult matters that require his special skills and abilities.  I know Nevin struggles (as do we all) with focusing on his Best 40 Hours. I also know he reserves enough of his Focused Investment to help others be better versions of themselves.   Thank you Nevin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nevin-phull-7764822/)