I have a long list of backlogs in my to-do list tracker. These are full of things that I didn’t get around to doing:
- 4/12 Micro Distributing SOP
- 4/29 Tefi’s Admin questions
- 5/10 Schedule backup and shut down of Pantheon
- And many more…
In your business, these tasks will focus your attention on the here and now. Many of them have to be done or there will be consequences. Of the items above, two of them are important and when I found them in my backlogs, I thought, Crap! How did I lose track of that!?
There’s always lots to do.
The gut reaction to this pressure is to focus your attention on the here and now. This introduces a problem though: what got you here won’t get you there.
You can’t grow to the next level by just moving faster and faster. Efficiency has a horizon where you stop getting a return. And you won’t get there.
I have a friend who has been working fourteen to sixteen hour days, often seven days a week, all winter and spring with urgent task upon urgent task. This resulted in him in Urgent Care because he was having heart attack symptoms. He had a stress-induced panic attack from over-work.
Rather than moving faster, some percentage of your work life needs to be spent in the future. In the future, you can anticipate problems and circumvent them. You can find resources that you’ll need. You can make structural changes that will smooth out operations or expand capacity.
When you’re small, like a one-person company, you’ll probably only spend a small amount of time in this strategic work. As you grow, you’ll need to spend more and more time looking ahead. Whether it’s 5% of your time or 90% of your time though, you need to commit some percentage of your attention to future focused work. Even if it means losing track of some of today’s urgent needs.
Because the alternative might end up with you on your back in an emergency room as a doctor examines your EKG.