Perspective

I sat last night thinking about all of the things I'm not getting done every day.  About the Next Actions list that's 300+ tasks deep, the things I need to do to develop my team that aren't being done, the emails that are stacking up, the deadlines that are barely being made or not made at all, the management books that are half read, the strategy papers that need to be written, etc., etc., etc.  I felt I needed to get better with priority management and delegation and that I needed to find a way to wring just a few more productive minutes out of my days.  I feel like I never get anything important done.

This morning one of my remote directs called me before I even started my workday.  I was expecting something to be drastically wrong as I knew she had a huge deadline to be met today.  Instead, she thanked me.  She thanked me for all the things I do to help everyone get their job done better.  She thanked me for helping them figure out what their priorities should be and for giving top cover for the stuff that wasn't getting done.  She thanked me for giving them "permission" to stop responding to email and picking up the phone for a few hours every day so they could get some things done.  And she thanked me taking the time to talk to each of them, individually, once a week.

The point of this is that while we're all here listening to Manager Tools because we're trying to be better, it's easy when doing that to be too hard on yourself.  Before you beat yourself up about what you're not doing, take a step back and realize that if you're even following 2% of the guidance here, you're probably doing better than most in your position.  So good job, M-T practitioners.  Stay frosty, keep trying, cut yourself a little bit of slack, and have a great day.

--Steve