3 Simple Shifts to Escape the ‘Always Rushed’ Cycle
Stop the Madness
This is
- your weekly guide and shortcut to mastering emotional intelligence through the power of empathy. I talked recently about why teamwork can feel impossible, and how to get alignment.
It's noon, and you are about to take a bite out of your sandwich when your phone buzzes. An urgent Slack message is coming through to tell you that four slides are due by the end of the day.
What should take a day will be condensed into 4 hours.
Well, shoot…this is not going to go well.
You are now going to buckle up and rush. That sandwich no longer seems as appetizing. That coffee from the morning, which is now cold, is not going to give you a magic boost to type faster.
But you are probably going to have to push through this one.
But how do you escape this type of fire drill and stop it before it overtakes you?
We take the shifts strategically and pre-emptively, long before your Slack goes off.
Deadlines Aren't the Enemy—Unrealistic Ones Are
If we did not have deadlines, would we be motivated to work on something, whether it be for our job or pursuing our passions? One of the first pieces of advice you see in the myriad of advice on pursuing your goals is to set a deadline and a timeline to get there.
But what if the timeline is so crunched that it is only possible to accomplish if, say, you 3 arms? The bad news, the majority do not. Even if we had more arms to type, we still have one brain.
In a work setting, we have less control over our deadlines, but that does not mean we have no control. Set your deadlines schedule. Set what is realistic for you. Set this by being open about it and how you work best.
Heck, I have even been open in the interview process that while I can jump on an urgent task, I do best with a little bit of planning time. If something is due on Friday, I prefer to be told on Tuesday at the latest to allow me to move anything pre-existing around, brainstorm, and do the hands-on work. With this type of cadence, I might just get it done even sooner on Thursday and overdeliver.
Push back with unrealistic deadlines if you feel safe doing so. No, you probably will not do this if the CTO comes up right to your desk or DM's you. But in most circumstances, you can. If you are in a position to push back on an unrealistic deadline for your team, do so.
I recently pushed back my project team's turnaround to one day. I implored the Project management and Executive leadership team to triple this time to three days by tapping into their empathy.
I never mentioned the word empathy. I framed the situation and gave them a picture of one of our team members trying to get through their task, scrambling to move around company demands, and burning away late into the night. This type of setup would not be successful and would not get the results the team wanted. Leveraging my relationship management, I knew my audience cared more about the project's success than sticking strictly to a timeline.
Without a fight, 3 days were allocated for the project team to complete the task assigned.
It's okay to push back on unrealistic deadlines. Deadlines are reasonable, just not the unrealistic ones that make us rush and not do our best work.
The Real Productivity Hack? Working at the Right Speed
Going faster does not mean better. Have you ever rushed through a task and wondered what you were thinking when you looked back on it? You kick yourself for the dumb mistakes you made.
Let's think about something.
Let's say you do a task, especially something more focused like coding, and finish your work in 2 hours instead of 4 hours.
The 2 hours allow you to go on to the next item on your to-do list.
But does it save you time?
You skipped some details and now need to go into a half-hour meeting next week to explain it. Then, you have to troubleshoot, which takes about 15 minutes. Then, you have to resolve the issue, which takes another 15 minutes. You then get additional feedback that a requirement was missed. Now you have another 10-minute quick chat and about 50 minutes to accommodate this change. And there you are…you have just spent 4 hours after all.
Would you rather have had the 4 hours of deep, focused work, which was the ideal time to get your coding done, or do the 2 hours and have the continuous pushback?
You say there will probably be a meeting after the 4 hours? Probably. But there will most likely be less follow-up and rework after the fact.
Your self-awareness is the best judge of what speed works best for you. This combines knowing your distractions, your need to do the work, and any roadblocks you foresee.
There are no real shortcuts. But working at the right speed for you is an easy hack to leverage.
Cut the Noise—Why Fewer Priorities Lead to Bigger Wins
I am one of those odd people who loves crossing out items on my To-Do list. In fact, a To-Do list is not just for my memory; I get some satisfaction from crossing it off the list. Anyone else>
But, too long of a list becomes noise. It's like that cartoon character where the voice is muffled, and all you can hear is "womp, womp, womp, womp, womp." The list is jumbled, and I no longer take any joy in crossing it off because the priority list is too long.
There is a reason if you feel the same way. It feels like you are not getting anywhere. Crossing off one time on a list where 29 remain can be discouraging.
Personally, I like to chunk my priorities. I wish I never had a list of more than 7 items daily between meetings and follow-ups, but I often have at least 12. So, I chunk them into 3 categories: Meetings, Tasks and Movers. Movers are those bigger items where I usually need to take time to focus and be heads down and work.
I cut the noise, made the list smaller, and chunked it, and it seemed less overwhelming.
Setting a goal to finish the list in the day feels less overwhelming. Goals are good. According to this study, employees who set goals are 14.2x more inspired to work.
Goals are not the problem. If they are noisy, they are. So cut the noise.
With a little self-management, you can determine the correct number for you. I like 3 at a time.
The phone buzzes, but you can eat
It's lunch, and you have your favorite sandwich. You eat it quickly, not because you are in a rush, but because you are just used to eating quickly.
Your phone buzzes, but it is just a push alert from one of the one-to-many apps you have on your phone. Maybe you should uninstall the one that sometimes keeps buzzing when trying to disconnect.
You head back to your desk. Your to-do list is a little over halfway done. You have a big project due in two days, but you are chugging along just fine.
You are not rushing. You have escaped the rush cycle.
You have implemented pushing back on unrealistic deadlines, knowing your right speed, and setting the right number of goals. The madness is over.
Congrats—you're running your schedule, not the other way around.
✅ What I’ve been Analyzing this week (reading, watching, listening, etc.)
📖 I’m reading The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment (Management on the Cutting Edge) by Eric Siegel, and learning how not getting to the root of the problem being solved can destroy a ML model before you start building it.
ℹ️I checked out this infographic on the SMART goals technique, as a way to better think through my goals
✍️ I commented on a post by
and on the ways to tackle burnout. Coincidentally, it got me thinking on the rule of 3, and helped inspire this post on tackling goals in a non-rushed way.
Want more on Empathy and Emotional Intelligence to Elevate your career? 📈
I empower💪tech people to elevate their empathy, to accelerate their careers
Thanks for the restack @Ame
Loved reading this. I do find it easier to work with fewer goals that deliver high results rather than create more unrealistic (and stressful) goals.
I like how it reminds me of the principles covered in the book, Slow Productivity, by Cal Newport, that emphasise doing fewer things, work at natural pace, and obsess over quality.