Welcome to the June edition of The Inbox Coach, a monthly email to bring you a little bit of coaching to your inbox and help you to make time for your personal development. This month I’m going to be discussing what it looks like to create an impactful personal development practice.
For The Inbox Coach topic this month, I want to think about how your career development activities can have the greatest impact in your work. Last year I ran a survey to find out what people found challenging about career development. The biggest issue people had was struggling to make enough time for their development. We all have busy lives and multiple pressures at work, so making time for personal development that will further our careers seemed to be the thing that slips to the bottom of the list. I believe that not only is your development the most important thing (because if you aren’t continuously learning you are missing out on being your best self) but it doesn’t need to take up lots of time to have a big impact.
That time I burnt out
In 2010 I burnt out in part because of my job. I had been under a lot of pressure at work and at home and it all got too much. I ended up with a chronic illness and as a result found myself with a lot less energy. Whilst my health had suffered, my ambitions for my career were still there, so I decided to find a way to do my best at work with what little energy I had. To move my career forward I had to approach my work differently. I couldn’t do everything so I started to ask myself what tasks and activities were going to bring me the greatest reward. Which things needed to happen to move my career forward and which things could I let go of.
It was hard at first, we think everything we do is important and must be done to the highest possible standard, but when you just don’t have the energy, something has to give. The thing that surprised me was that when I focused on what was going to have the greatest impact, I started to get more done. I was more effective in the tasks I took on and ended up achieving more than before I had burnt out.
The need to let go of perfection and doing everything actually showed me that I hadn’t needed to do those things all along as they weren’t moving me forward towards my goals. I started to ask, “Is this good enough?” rather than “Is this the best it can be?” Not everything needs to be the best, and I saved my energy for those things that did need to be done well.
Fast forward 11 years and working smarter not harder is an approach that I have refined ever since. I think about the impact every task I do at work will have and I apply the same rules to my development.
Focus on the impact
Focusing on the impact you want your development to have, rather than on the tasks you need to do will help you decide what is going to be the best way to reach your goals. It is very easy to get caught up in the task rather than the outcome. You might think you need to do a course, or attend a workshop or read a certain book to take your next step, but have you really questioned the impact it will have for the time it will take you to do it?
As well as focusing on what you do, you can also start to weigh up the time you spend versus the impact it will have. 10 minutes of reading or research each day might be more effective (and achievable) than setting aside an hour each week to do the same tasks.
Reflection
*If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when you are going to do them and add this email to your calendar
Aiming for the greatest impact in your work and development requires you to question everything you do. It might seem overwhelming to have to constantly think about it, but those few moments thinking about being intentional with how you spend your time will allow you to be so much more effective. When you are considering what to do next with your career development ask yourself:
What am I trying to achieve?
What actions do I need to take to reach that aim?
Is the task I’m about to do going to help me with that?
What is the best use of my time to get to that goal?
What can I let go of that isn’t a must have?
Think about what answers come up for you when you are asking and answering these questions. Spend a few minutes writing in your journal about how answering these questions makes you feel and how you approach your work after completing them.
Action
When I am working with my coaching clients, I find that they have a lot of assumptions about how things must be done that, when challenged, don’t stand up. We all do it, it would be exhausting to interrogate every assumption we make all of the time, but sometimes our assumptions are stopping us doing something a better way. Assumptions are easy to spot, if you find yourself saying things like “I have to do this” or “I need to do it this way because” you are probably making some assumptions.
Task
The next time you find yourself saying you “have to” or “need to” do something a certain way, get curious about it. Challenge the assumptions you have about how you need to do your work and see if there is a different way to do things.
If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when you are going to do them and add the prompts in this email to your calendar.
Inspiration
“When you can’t find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example.” Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator, and her eloquence, humour and honesty in her work makes me hold myself to a much higher standard. Her book Bad Feminist, which is where this quote comes from, is a collection of essays about Roxane's personal experiences and what it means to be a feminist today. In her TED talk Bad Feminist she acknowledges the challenges that comes with the label feminist and how we all need to keep looking at the choices we make every day to see if there is a better way to do things or changes we can make to have a greater impact on the world. You can watch Roxane Gay's TED talk here.
Having the greatest impact at work is a topic I am very passionate about. Over the last 12 months my chronic illness has flared up, and my fatigue and brain fog is worse than ever. I’ve had to rest more and do less than I normally would, but because I have been able to build an impactful practice in both my development and my work, I’ve been able to keep everything ticking along. I’ve felt comfortable lowering my standards so that things are done and off my to do list, rather than creating a back log of work. It has been tough, with a lot of frustration that I can’t do more, but prioritising what is most important has felt good. I’ll be back next week with more thoughts on how to have the greatest impact at work
