When I was young and adorable, I imagined the day after a big event would be the best vacation day ever ... Image courtesy someecards.com
I remember the very first big event I managed. We worked so hard in the weeks leading up to the event, our tiny team of 2 staff surrounded by amazing volunteers. During the event we rose at dawn and went to bed … at dawn.
“As soon as this is over, I’ll have a nice sleep, read a good book, and stay in my pyjamas for a whole day,” I told myself. I put everything I had into the event.
The day after my first event finally came … and I rose at dawn and worked through the night again. There were thank you cards to send, phone calls to return, credit cards to process, gifts to deliver, and reports to generate.
I told myself “I’ll get caught up in a week or two, then I’ll take a few days off and relax.” Fast-forward ten years, and I’m still not caught up. I’ll never be caught up. And I’m just learning to handle that.
I had no idea that success makes life busier. I equated struggle and challenge with the process of climbing out of our start-up hole. I assumed things would get easier once we had more money and had more staff. I was dead wrong.
Each and every success I have been part of has made things busier than ever before. When you start to build a track record of success, more people reach out to your charity asking for help. When you raise more money, you get to know more donors and want to spend time with each of them. When you receive more grants, you have to build more/ bigger programs to implement your amazing ideas. When your profile starts to rise, you get more requests to speak or meet. Once people know who you are, the emails don’t stop. Success. Makes. Things. Busier.
This is an important lesson, and one that I am still internalizing. It’s not just a matter of “balance” or managing workflow effectively. It’s a mindset, a strategy thing. It’s crucial. Here’s the lesson:
If you manage your project with the goal of making things “easier” or “less work”, you’re managing your projects headlong towards failure. Because the only way the emails slow down, the phones stop ringing, and people stop being interested in what you’re doing … is when you’ve failed. I meet a lot of people who think their goal is to make the work easier. They strategize about how to eliminate pressure or stress. I think instead the goal is to make work more and more effective. Have a bigger impact today than you had yesterday. Live your mission. And don’t be afraid of “busy”.