Outside the Lines -The Business Edition

Ever think you’re working too hard?

In my Coaching for Great Work courses, I spend a fair amount of time talking about the value of being “a lazy coach.”

I’m not talking about being slack. I’m talking about not overworking the work you’re doing.

Part of the challenge of doing more Great Work is that you have an ENORMOUS amount of Good Work, in fact an endless amount. What complicates this is that most of us come to all we do with a determination to do an excellent job. (Personally I blame the need to get “A”s at school.)

And “excellence” is more often a curse than something useful.

Abandon “excellence”

Most of the work we do doesn’t need to be excellent. It needs to be adequate.

And by over delivering on what needs to be just OK, you pay a price. You spend too much time, energy, focus and effort on work that doesn’t matter. And in doing so you lose the time to invest in work that does matter, your own Great Work.

Brad Bird, the genius mind behind Pixar’s The Incredibles (pretty much one of my favourite movies ever and Ratatouille addresses this when he talks about his ability to create movies that are not just complex and brilliant but also on budget and on time.

“Not all shots are created equal. Certain shots need to be perfect, others need to be very good, and there are some that only need to be good enough to not break the spell.”

(You can buy a copy of this article here or find a free summary of the interview here.)

What’s the easiest thing to do?

So what “shots” are you taking? And, thinking about which of these shots need to be perfect, which need to be very good and which need to be adequate?

==> Where are you over delivering?

==> Where are you under delivering?

I’m a fan of these two questions:

==> What’s the easiest thing to do?

==> What’s the fastest thing to do?

And to give you a little inspiration, here’s a brilliant role model

If I had to recommend just one resource

Bill Jensen’s, The Simplicity Survival Handbook is a practical guide to focusing on the work that matters. Worth getting just for its tips on managing your email.

Don’t take my word for it

Smart folks thinking out loud about doing just enough to get the job done.

“It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?”
-Ronald Reagan, American President

“A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.”
-Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss writer

“Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify, simplify!”
-Henry David Thoreau, American philosopher

“Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.”
-Floyd Dell, American writer

“Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.”
Walter P. Chrysler, American automaker

“Efficiency is intelligent laziness.”
David Dunham, American actor

“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.”
-Andy Rooney, American writer