The art of letting go… @work
Never give 100, my sister told me.
And she told me that because I was on a "very dangerous" path
She told me because I was on the dangerous path of becoming a "control freak", in my specific case I was someone who only followed orders and constantly sought to please others. So everything they asked me for, everything they invited me to, I did or was there.
Being constantly present is very demanding of energy, time and effort.
I wanted to be a high-performance player on many courts, and that simply led me to suffer burnout.
My process to be able to cope with this situation that I built for myself, was to heal it with therapy, and the most important thing I learned was that at the moment in which I began to let go of responsibilities that were not aligned to my role, at the moment in which I dropped 5 of the 8 objects I was "juggling" with and focused on the remaining 3, that's when I regained the feeling of being in control.
Well, there is a phrase that my friend Veronica told me years ago: "Mony, when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority."
The idea of “when everything is a priority, nothing is” was conceived in 1909 by the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto. He conceived it as the 80/20 rule, where it is established that 20% of the effort generates 80% of the results. To better understand this principle, Brian Tracy, a leading sales instructor and advisor to more than a thousand companies around the world, motivational speaker, and author of more than 70 books on Economics, History, Business, Philosophy, and Psychology, explains the following about the Pareto rule:
“20% of your customers become 80% of your sales”
And it suggests that in your work it can happen that compared to a list of 10 activities, two are classified as priorities, the latter are distinguished by certain elements: they may be those in which there is more money invested or greater projection for the company, for this reason it is advisable to allocate time to them, because they are worth more than the other eight, and because usually the activities are not distributed fairly.
Thus, the only thing to do to put this principle into practice is to be informed about the client portfolio of the company where you collaborate.
My perspective is that when I’m faced with a long list of activities to complete and my intention is to complete them fully, it is most likely that I will make mistakes in some of them. Knowing myself well, the first to be disappointed would be me in front of the failures. The ideal strategy is to analyze the tasks in detail.
I will give an example: when I observe the waiters in restaurants, I think that if they tried to maneuver with seven plates in both arms they would have difficulties, but their strategy is to arrange them on a tray so that they can be loaded and quickly delivered to the clients. Now, let's think about how to apply this strategy with work activities. Let's discuss which ones we can start with and how we will balance our tasks. In the end, the waiter achieved 80% of his goal by arranging the dishes and using only 20% of the effort it would have cost him; by applying strategies we can do the same when working.
Although there are people out there who are capable of handling various topics, tasks or projects at the same time, in my very particular case I have to be strategic, informed and know where to aim my efforts during the day. I have had to become someone who has to constantly practice "active listening" instead of reactive, there are tasks in which you can always ask for support from someone else or delegate.
It is important to remember that there are things that simply cannot be controlled, but we can control how we react to them.
The psychologist Ellen Hendricksen wrote for the Scientific American magazine that not all control freaks are created similarly, she mentions that there are two levels of control, the primary and the secondary and defines them as follows :
"In short, primary control is changing the world to suit you, while secondary control is changing yourself to suit the world."
Either of the two levels can predominate, and both have their benefits, however people who practice the secondary level of control tend to be more satisfied with what they achieve in their lives since they master the exercise of making sense of circumstances, unlike people who practice the primary level of control who master circumstances through the pursuit of goals.
Well they say out there, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.
I even wonder if it's worth reaching many goals during the week, and spending a weekend in bed, exhausted from the effort I put on myself without being able to enjoy my free time doing things that recharge me with energy.
The most interesting thing that happened to me when I let go of responsibilities that I identified as unnecessary, was that I became a more recognized contributor, and I really hope that the same thing happens to you who are reading this.
This article was translated by @ross.gspr
Disclaimer: The views expressed are personal opinions of the authors and do not reflect the views of affiliated organizations. The information is for informational purposes only and not intended as professional advice.
References:
How Office Control Freaks Can Learn to Let Go. (2014, August 7). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/10/how-office-control-freaks-can-learn-to-let-go
Aranda, M. A. (2021). Nunca des el 100, me dijo mi hermana (Spanish Edition). Universo de Letras.
Romm, C. (2017, March 3). How to Take Control of Your Inner Control Freak. The Cut. https://www.thecut.com/2017/03/how-to-take-control-of-your-inner-control-freak.html
