Do you ever have days when you shake your head in frustration and think “I’m just not cut out for this job?”
No matter how hard you work—or how many hours you put in—are things STILL “slipping through the cracks” and you’re not making the expected progress on your projects and deliverables?
Are you not able to keep others happy, whether it’s your boss, other leaders or your colleagues? Or job performance is negatively affecting outside business relationships like those with clients, customers, vendors or partners?
Or do you feel consistently rushed, reactive and REALLY behind, and others are noticing? Or worse, they’re frustrated, because your performance is affecting their performance, and it’s holding them up from making the progress THEY need to make?
When you or others feel your performance isn’t meeting expectations, it’s natural to start questioning your talents and expertise, and wonder if they’re measuring up. While these SHOULD be reviewed to make sure your competencies are up to speed, there is ONE more set of skills that many people overlook when they want to improve performance. Yet this should be the FIRST place leaders and professionals look for the solution.
What’s Really Happening in Your Workday
You may be very happy in your job and certain that you’re in the right role, because you have the right experience, expertise and education, but you still struggle with performance and progress.
You may be striving to take on more responsibilities or aspire to become a superstar, but when details get mixed up, mistakes are made or you can’t seem to hit your targets on time, you wonder what’s going wrong and if you’ll EVER get ahead.
You don’t have the answers right now and you’re not sure where to look to get the answers, but this much you know: things are just NOT running smoothly in your workday…
- You’ve been late to meetings
- Deadlines have been missed
- Tasks have slipped through the cracks
- Follow-ups have been forgotten
- Business relationships have been harmed
- Information has been lost or misplaced
- You’re always putting out fires
- Projects have been delayed
- You feel scattered, disorganized, unfocused and reactive
- Mistakes have been made
- You’re always running out of time
- Completion of tasks and projects is usually last-minute
- You’re always looking for things you need, but can’t find
- Making progress is like walking through glue every day
- Results and outcomes are not consistently delivered on time
When one or more of these situations occur, you naturally feel less efficient, less effective and less productive as you believe you could or should be. You become frustrated, you start to lose motivation and you begin to believe that how things are going is “as good as it gets.”
Then feelings rise to the surface that chip away at your confidence and cause your stress to go up—both of which can cause performance to spiral down even further.
The following is a list of feelings that have been expressed by real professionals just as experienced and capable as you are, but who were feeling the same frustrations from workdays that were NOT working…
- Out of control
- Anxious
- Inadequate
- Unsatisfied with progress
- Overwhelmed
- Stressed
- Pressured
- Unhappy
- Like I’m a failure
- Like I’m not good at what I do
- Like I’m not reaching my full potential
- Incompetent
- Inept
- Not confident I have everything under control
- Embarrassed
- Tired
- Exhausted
- Frustrated
- Drained and worn out
- Not accomplished
- Nervous and uneasy
- Unsuccessful
- Lazy and sloppy
- Scattered and unfocused
- Guilty
- Like I look bad
If you identify with any of these feelings, too, you’ll understand you’re not alone.
But here’s the thing. When you feel frustrated in your current role and you’re wondering, “Am I just not cut out for this job?” take a closer look at WHY you feel that way. What’s causing these feelings?
Is it the WORK itself and your capability in doing it? Or is it HOW you’re working?
What’s REALLY Affecting Performance
HOW you work is just as important as DOING your work.
DOING your work means using your expertise. It’s what you do best and it is the very best use of your time.
But the “HOW” of the workday is often getting in the way and stopping you from working most efficiently, effectively and productively.
The “HOW” is like the operating system that should be running quietly and smoothly in the background of your workday, but for many professionals—and perhaps you, too—it’s not working that way.
You may be struggling with some of the most common HOW questions…
- How am I going to prioritize and accomplish everything I need to do?
- How am I going to get the time I need to work on my most important priorities?
- How am I going to get through all of these emails?
- How will I ever catch up and stay on top of my work?
The HOW is getting in the way of maximizing efficiency, because when a workday doesn’t work well, a lot of time, energy and effort are lost, causing you to miss out on productivity, progress and results.
So, instead of questioning your level of expertise, question HOW you’re managing your workload, including tasks, time, email and information.
These are workload management skills and it’s the ONE set of skills that many leaders and professionals overlook when looking for performance improvement.
You may never have been taught any workload management skills. You might have been left to figure out how to manage your work on their own. You created your own way of working over the years and as the years go by, you might wonder if what you’re doing is really working.
When you take a closer look at how you’re managing tasks, time, email and information, you may discover opportunities for improvement, which can make all the difference in the world between slogging through molasses—making little progress and feeling frustrated, demotivated and unproductive—and zooming along on an express train—making powerful progress that gives you feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction at the end of the day.
If you’re a leader of others, you may be noticing this from a different perspective. You may be convinced that a person on your team is in the right role, because they have the right experience, expertise and education, but they still struggle with performance and progress. If that’s the case, it’s time to have a conversation about their workload management skills.
If you’re a leader, take a closer look at what’s happening behind the scenes with your team members and find out HOW they’re working.
This is extremely important to do, because unfortunately, many leaders assume that everyone on their team KNOWS how to work efficiently, effectively and productively, but that’s not necessarily true. It’s a faulty assumption leaders make—and it’s a costly one—because NOT everyone knows how to work efficiently, effectively and productively. And that means professionals are consistently losing time, energy and effort, and they’re missing out on productivity, progress and results.
Where to Look FIRST for Productivity and Performance Improvement Opportunities
The engine of progress is productivity and productivity is all about getting things done. It’s about finishing what you start. It’s about achievement, accomplishment and completion of tasks, no matter how large or small.
But when you’re not able to complete tasks and finish what you start, it’s because you are not able to take certain steps efficiently or effectively relative to task management.
These include not being able to remember what to do and when to do it—which is all about planning and prioritizing—and not being able to find information you need in order to complete a task, whether it’s an email, an attachment, an e-document, a paper, a file or something else.
When either of those happen, you aren’t able to…
- Finish a task or an email
- Make or return a phone call
- Give a response or answer a question
- Make progress on a project
- Meet a deadline
- And more.
These challenges will SLOW you down or STOP your progress every time, causing you great stress and frustration.
In order to turn this around and put an end to the reactivity, reduce stress and fire up your productivity, you need to centralize tasks into ONE system. Why?
Because tasks are coming from more than TEN different sources in your workday. Email is just one of them, but there are many more sources, such as meetings, phone calls, hallway conversations, social media, the papers and files on your desk, and many others. And when a to-do list is created on paper, it becomes yet another source.
Professionals try to keep up with all of these, but end up spinning their wheels, because they don’t realize that it’s actually impossible—IMPOSSIBLE—to efficiently and effectively plan, prioritize and accomplish tasks by trying to manage them ONLY from their sources without missing, losing or forgetting something—or a LOT of things.
It’s EASY to forget to do a task or a follow up that is sitting at its source, e.g. in the email Inbox, on voicemail, on social media, in the physical inbox your desk or on a legal pad.
But when you establish ONE central, digital system for ALL tasks—no matter their source or when you’ll take action, you’ll have 100% awareness of your responsibilities. You’ll have clarity about what you need to do and when you need to do it. You can plan and prioritize more accurately. You can make smart decisions about how to spend your time. And you can accomplish tasks faster and easier, and make tangible progress on what matters the most.
So here’s what you can do…
Get all of your tasks into the Task List in your email system on your computer. Avoid using a little task app on your phone. That’s still a stand-alone to-do list. It’s like a digital version of a legal pad, and while it’s digital, it’s not going to serve you like the task list in your email system, where all components are connected: tasks, calendar, contacts, email and notes.
As you add each task, be sure to describe them as VERY small action steps. These tasks should take you anywhere from 1 minute to 30 to 40 minutes, tops. Then give EVERY task an action date—or DO Date.
As you add tasks, start prioritizing by choosing different dates for accomplishing different tasks, using the task-time connection to determine how many tasks to tackle on any one day. You only have so many hours in a day, so this process should steer you toward choosing the most important tasks to accomplish sooner than later, while you let other tasks wait for another day, week or month.
After you add EVERY task you can POSSIBLY find into your new task list, you will not only have 100% clarity and awareness of ALL of your responsibilities, but you’ll also be able to synchronize the list with your phone or tablet.
Next time you wonder if you’re just not cut out for the job you’re in, start by looking at this one skill set you need for success that is often overlooked. Yes, you can certainly review your skills and competencies in the area of your expertise, but you most likely have all of the talent you need to do the job you were hired to do.
Instead, start by looking at your workload management skills—the ONE set of skills that supports the work you do, the success you achieve, and the progress you really want to make.
