How to stop overwhelm and get back control of your most valuable asset as a leader

In talking to many executives, business owners and leaders in organisations one of the top concerns is that of feeling frequently overwhelmed. 

A vicious cycle often ensues: You start feeling overwhelmed with juggling constantly ever increasing demands on your time, resolving complex conflicts, coping with competing priorities and ultimately feeling out of control. The more out of control you feel the higher the feeling of stress and overwhelm.

The ultimate cost to your overall quality of life can be high and can span over all aspects of your life. 

In this article, we will look at how to protect and gain back control of your most precious asset as a leader so that you can bring more control, focus and peace of mind in your “8-5” day as well as your “5-8”.

So how do you protect your most valuable asset as an executive/leader?

Before we look at this it’s important to understand what your most precious asset is.

The things that may come immediately to mind are personal leadership, professional relationships, money, investments, and even health and vitality. If however, we use renewability to screen how precious an asset is we probably can remove all the above from the list as they are arguably mostly renewable. There is, however, one asset that is not renewable and because it is so finite, it is more precious than any of the others.

The one resource that we have that is not renewable is time. Every second we use is a second that we cannot get back. Despite knowing this we mostly act as if we do not.   

Recently I was working with Jim* who was struggling through a company acquisition and the subsequent changes and challenges that such a transition brings. He found himself juggling multiple deadline driven projects. Jim’s fear of making mistakes, being judged, failure and potentially finding himself on the chopping block during the post-acquisition restructure, made him feel overwhelmed which in turn negatively impacted the following areas:-

• Performance and Productivity - Jim delegated less taking him away from what was more essential to the organisations strategic priorities. He increasingly found himself reacting to what was urgent and in front of him, attended every meeting, firefighting, and managing crisis.
• Relationship Building - Under pressure, Jim did not relate well with others because he was distracted and could not give his full attention. To add to all this, his marriage was under tremendous strain due to his long working hours and frequent time away from the family.
• Health and Vitality - Jim was not sleeping well, he lost his energy and vitality and most importantly no longer found this work fulfilling.  

Jim began to lose focus, feel overwhelmed and lose control of what was most important for him to be doing during this challenging time. He was, in fact, making poor decisions that cost the company money. 

So how could Jim get back control and particularly how he was using his time?  

One place to start is to measure how you are currently using your time by logging the details of your daily activities for at least one week (even down to 15 min blocks). It may seem a bit overboard but you will be surprised by your observations. Analyse your results and ask these powerful and insightful questions for each type of activity you are currently engaging in:

• Was this of strategic value?
• Did it have to be done?
• Did it have to be done now?
• Who else could have done it?
• Did it have to be done quite so well?

Next, you could classify your time use by using Stephen Covey’s famous time management matrix. This allows you to really look at what percentage of your time is being spent on what really matters, what is “important”, i.e. results driven and that which contributes to your mission, values and goals, versus what is “urgent” i.e. things that need immediate attention, things that act on us! 

Whilst you need to spend some time in Quadrant I (where you manage/produce), the more senior you are in an Organisation the more time you need to spend in Quadrant II which automatically reduces some of Quadrant I activities together with the accompanying feeling of stress, overwhelm or even burnout. 

This, however, requires more initiative, proactivity and conscious choice on your part. Being creatures of habit it’s sometimes far easier to gravitate around the other quadrants which are often more about other people’s agendas and priorities than your own.

Time is indeed our most important asset. Be sure that you treat it as you would any other. Measure how you use it. Analyse your decisions. Make new, more strategic choices going forward and do what it takes to set boundaries to execute those choices. Sometimes it’s simple and you need to just stop doing certain activities.

In the case of time, sunk costs are truly sunk forever. What are your collective sunk costs costing your organisation? Do you have leaders facing overwhelm due to change and challenges? We can help. 

At a minimum, our work together will result in greater productivity, performance, and organisational results. In many cases, results include executives getting their lives back – from saving their marriages to making more time for their children, making significant improvements in their health and vitality, sleeping better, and feeling recharged and fulfilled about their work again. 

*Jim - Name changed to maintain confidentiality