Why are we stuck doing things that aren’t a good investment of our time and energy?
In a recent post, I noted that if you’re like many leaders, you’re spending a lot of your time, energy, and money in three main areas that are holding you back from doing your best to lead people and achieve success: Firefighting, Things I Should Not Being Doing, and Things No One Should Be Doing.
Most people don’t want to spend their day doing things that aren’t a good investment of their time and energy.
We fill our days but feel like we got nothing done. We may know we would benefit from making a change, but we struggle.
Why Are We Stuck?
Stuck in Things No One Should Be Doing📵
We tend to spend our time doing things that aren’t productive or helpful for anyone because we lack motivation, purpose, or priority, feel frustrated, or are overwhelmed. We may feel stressed and turn to things that are easy and distracting. We often turn to time wasters when we are procrastinating.
Stuck in Things I Should Not Be Doing 🙅♂️
We often get stuck doing something we shouldn’t or taking on too much because we have a hard time saying “no” or don’t think to say “no,” which is tied to our core beliefs. We may think we are helping people when really we are holding them back. We often attend meetings or get involved in tasks because we were asked to, not because it is a good investment of our time.
Stuck in Firefighting🧯
One of the biggest challenges we face in changing from “Firefighter” to “Fire Prevention Officer” is that being a firefighter is exciting, rewarded, and highly valued, whereas preventing fires is typically not. We prioritize urgency over importance because it is usually easier to react to something we see than prevent something unknown. It’s easy to celebrate when we extinguish a fire. It is more difficult to quantify and celebrate things that didn’t occur.
Additionally, Wise Investments like thinking, planning, and building relationships are often undervalued and misunderstood. As a result, we may lack awareness, motivation, and confidence in doing things that best use our resources. It may appear reckless to calmly work away on fire prevention activities while so many fires burn around us.
Procrastination can also contribute to firefighting. Leaving things until the last minute can cause us to find problems or errors with little to no time to resolve them.
What kinds of things are keeping you stuck?
What thoughts and core beliefs keep you spending resources rather than investing them wisely?
Want to make some changes to the way you invest your most valuable resources? Check out How Do We Break the Cycle?