Career
Cadence
The paradox of time management is that the less structure there is to the day, the less that gets done. Corporate training programs like to use the rocks in a pitcher example. If you put the small rocks in, the pitcher overflows before the big rocks can be dropped in. However, if you put in the big rocks first, the small ones find little spaces throughout and the water remains contained. A framework to guide the cadence of our day can be helpful in ensuring we do the right things, and that we have situational awareness throughout the day.
The 75 Hard program is challenging not because it requires an extreme workout load, but because it puts real time demands on your day, every day. You not only have to find time to read and slam a gallon of water, you have to find time in the morning and evening for a 45-minute workout of some kind. The failure point is often when participants are overcome by events. The list is too long when piled on top of their already established one. In truth, the daily requirements are the framework that moves you through your day.
If you wake up with a list of eight nonnegotiable, you have to have a clear strategy, and timing, for when you’ll get them done. Some may not be singular events, like drinking a gallon of water, and those push you forward through the day. Time is a finite resource, so to fit it all in, you have to make choices. That means waking up when the alarm goes off, working when you’re on the clock, and avoiding the endless scrolling. It’s not actually overwhelm, it’s the guardrails that you operate within.
A list of things that you must do every day has a greater intent. The items that make it on the list correspond to some specific objective that you have. For me, a daily walk is on there. Walking helps me maintain my health, but I also just feel better throughout the day when I wake up and get it done. The same goes for prayer. These are the big rocks, the important things that give me more than the time they take. They’re worth doing.
There can be little difference between rest and idleness. Rest is to serve a purpose, to recover from something. Idleness is just not doing anything. Rest is earned when the important things are already accomplished; idleness steals the benefits we sought to obtain.
Momentum is huge in every application. With the right list of nonnegotiables and a cadence that keeps pushing you forward, success is inevitable.
Pausing to Advance
I have a recurring to-do that pops up every Thursday that reminds me to complete a weekly review. This is a fairly standard practice, popularized by David Allen, that gives you an opportunity to take a 40,000-foot view of your work on a regular interval. You go through all of your inboxes and task lists, make sure that they’re updated to reflect your current priorities, and prepare yourself for the upcoming week.
My compliance with this recurring to do is poor. Most weeks I delete it from my list, without having done the work, sometime the following week. The reason is as simple as it is predictable. Something came up. The irony is that by not taking the time to get organized, by not pausing to ensure that my systems are maintained, I end up in a greater state of chaos.
Military historians use tongue-in-cheek phrases like “strategic retreat” or “advance to the rear” to describe retreats conducted by military units. There are many reasons to retreat, but the best is when you actually believe that by falling back, you can regroup, regain the initiative, and advance on the enemy. That’s precisely what the weekly review is meant to give me.
It’s easy to believe things objectively in the abstract. I know that eating healthy will give me more energy; I know that speeding shaves seconds off any journey; I know that saving money is its own reward. The problem is what Mike Tyson so eloquently articulated, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
It’s precisely in those busiest weeks, when so many projects are pressing for more time, that I should pause, reflect, regroup, and then advance to victory.
Priorities
Much thought is given to priorities, especially around the beginning of a new year. Whether we set them intentionally or not, priorities are guiding our actions. Even if you set out with a solid plan, it’s easy to become overcome by events.
There are seasons for everything in life; work, family, relationships, school, and play have rhythms that seldom sync up. It’s why we can have fabulously productive days at work and end the day with the house a complete mess. On that day, we prioritized work over cleaning.
The problem with priorities is when we let them take us away from our principles. A father who spends all his days focused on work will lose his family. An employee who spends their days at home cleaning will lose their job. We have to fight for balance in our lives.
Our bodies are magnificent creations; they tell us when we’re out of balance. We’ve all felt that terrible, inescapable feeling of being overwhelmed. We’ve experienced the physical manifestations alarming us to the toll that stress is taking on us.
Though the demands on our time are many and very real, the truth is if we spend some time each day tending to our areas of responsibility, we can get it all done. The house will never be clean, relationships always need nurturing, and work will never be done. But if we keep the kitchen counter clear, take time for each child, and be focused while at work, we can end the day satisfied with how we spent it.
Do it Well
Nearly 15 years out of college, I could’ve never predicted the arc of my career. I walked across the stage with a degree in Philosophy, a course of study that doesn’t lend itself to a neat career path. Rather, many doors were open for me and a few were closed.
I spent four years at a non-profit, expanding the program’s reach to underserved communities. It was in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, and although my performance was commendable, there was no money and no opportunity to promote and move me along a career within the organization. When Alison went into Residency, it was easy to walk away.
Through her three years of residency and the first three years of practice, I was an at-home dad to small children. I focused on my fitness, but I also wrote and built websites. I didn’t do it for hire, I just did it for me. It was a creative outlet. I started this blog, which is now on its 976th post. I wrote and self-published several books. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote.
In the fall of 2021, my friend asked me to help him with some writing projects at his job, then I was asked to help another friend, and a third friend asked for my help. I was working 10 hours a week, then 20, and now I’m reliably working 40–50 hours in a week. Out of far-left field came opportunities, and I was ready.
I did not build a massive business out of this blog or publish a weekly column read by the thousands. I quietly worked to develop my thoughts, build my skills, and practice my art so that, when the phone rang, I was ready.
Every job has its lessons to teach us, and connections to make, which carry us forward to our next endeavor. Whatever it is that you’re doing today, especially if it’s not the work you wish to do for the rest of your life, do it well.
A Job Well Done
There are plenty of ways to measure our work. Volume, quality, quantity, we’re never short on metrics. I think the best way to evaluate how you’re doing on the job is by the sense of accomplishment you carry away.
External factors always dominate, but your personal pride is a wonderful barometer. Do you feel like you’ve done a job well done? Have you contributed your best work, your best ideas, and your best efforts to your team’s common goal?
Work is an important component of human dignity. It’s the ability to use your knowledge, skills, and abilities in a diversified economy to improve the lives of others. No matter what your role is in the division of labor, if you’ve done your best work and helped others, then that’s a job well done.
Bend, Don’t Break
There’s only so much work that I can do in a week. Every Monday, I enter into the new week with a set number of hours that I want to work. If I work evenly throughout the week, my template leaves me enough time for all the other things that I need to do, with the weekend free to boot.
The problem is that life is never that clean. Although a tightly regimented schedule feels right when written down on paper, it immediately gets mugged by reality when put into practice.
The truth is, no schedule can withstand the demands of our days. Kids wake up sick, urgent tasks percolate to the top of our lists, and my manicured email inbox gets wrecked as soon as everyone else gets to their desk.
Setting unrealistic expectations only increases the sense of drowning that we all feel, when in the moment we’re trying to decide the next thing to do, but there’s too much happening all at once.
The only way to succeed each day is to inject plenty of flexibility. There may be an “ideal” time to get something done, but there are also plenty of other acceptable times, too. Most importantly, there’s a limit to how much you can and should do each day. When you hit that limit, stop, defer everything to another day, and move on.
Bottomless Tasks
I start every Monday with a fresh set of hours to work, and a full task list. As the week progresses, more and more tasks are added and a few get checked off. My task list will never be empty, and the sooner I accept that reality, the better.
Although most of us work in the knowledge economy, our labor is a production line. Things are completed, new things are added. There is no end until you change jobs or retire. That’s a good thing in that it ensures our economic viability. It’s a bad thing when we act like just one more hour will get us to where we need to be.
Life is impermanent, always ebbing and flowing. By definition, you’ll always be ahead of your work or behind it. Adding more hours to your schedule will get more done, but is unlikely to have an overall meaningful impact.
The best way to ensure your productivity and success at work is to take care of yourself. Don’t sacrifice exercise or family time for work; it won’t pay off. Don’t let laziness steal work time away from you, you can’t get it back. Accept that your task list will remain full, be grateful for the blessings of work, and do your best when the clock is running. Then, when work time expires, leave the rest. It’ll be there when it’s time to clock in again.
Fruits of Labor
The feast of St. Joseph the Worker is an important reminder in our modern era of the holiness of work. As the pendulum swings back from the worship of workaholics, we’re in danger of losing sight of the fruits of labor.
In the past few decades, as the Internet changed the workplace, the lines between life and work became blurred, almost to the point of extinction. The pandemic of 2020 ushered in not only remote work, but a faux focus on mental wellness that looked a lot like laziness.
It’s true that working to excess, harming your other responsibilities, is bad, but so is idleness. As we try to reclaim balance, we can look to St. Joseph as our model.
St. Joseph was a tradesman who had a very hard life. He’d walk miles each way to job sites, work in the hot and dusty climate of the Middle Easy, and carefully craft raw wood into finished products using simple tools. He labored during the day, and rested on the Sabbath. Not only that, but he brought his son into his work, teaching him the trade. We can only imagine the conversations that they had. On the holiest day of the week, he prayed and rested as God desires.
Joseph’s example demonstrates the value of work. We fill our time creating products, experiences, and value for others. We then use our compensation to support our family and lifestyle. The virtuous cycle of the economy rewards us for work done well, and we can find a degree of satisfaction in days well spent.
Work is a good and virtuous thing, but we should be ever mindful of how too much of a good thing can have unintended consequences. When it’s time to work, do great work. When it’s time to rest, delight in rest. When it’s time to play, play with your family. When it’s time to pray, pray with your whole heart. In this way, we’ll follow in the footsteps of St. Joseph, who will always lead us to his son.
Work from Home Dad
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent more time working at the kitchen counter than I have working at my desk. In a way, that’s a shame because I have the perfect desk setup in our family office. The reality of my daily responsibilities means that for large parts of the day, I’m downstairs with the kids.
While working at the kitchen counter has been fine, I need more space. I’ve migrated from the kitchen to the dining room table. Now, throughout the day, the kids see me working away in the dining room as they play and get their work done.
It’s a daily challenge to balance my responsibilities at work and at home, but my children and I now share a special bond. I get to involve them in my work. They see what I do, got with me to visit customers, and get to share my love of aviation. I remember how special it was as an Air Force kid to go over to the squadron and hang out in my dad’s office, or walk out on the flight line and see the jets. Now my youngest daughter jumps with glee when I announce that we’re going to the airport.
Parents have plenty to manage when it comes to raising children; even more so when throwing work into the mix. It’s a special thing for me to be able to share my work with my kids.
Permission to Push
It’s easy to be overwhelmed with work. There are busy seasons, bad weeks, and times when illness or scheduling get you behind the power curve. When your inbox overflows with emails, your task list falls apart, and you feel completely overrun, it’s important to remember that you have a productivity superpower.
We underestimate just how much we can get done with 90 minutes of solid, quiet work. The number of overdue tasks and unread emails may seem huge, but the time that it takes to process most emails is miniscule. A well-used time block can go a long way to clearing the backlog.
The best way to get back to a manageable pace is to push due dates. There are some tasks that are true priorities, but most can be accomplished in the reasonable near future. Getting behind is normal, so rescheduling overdue tasks to be completed in the coming days is usually all you need to get back on top.
Good work is only possible when you’re in a good headspace. Flailing from task to task, while feeling overwhelmed, is a recipe for mistakes that will require even more work in the future. When you get behind, take a pause and give yourself permission to push off due dates. You’ll be back in control in no time.