Everyone is so Terribly Busy, But We Cannot Postpone the Important Topics Forever

Everyone is so terribly busy. People feel like they can only attend to their top 3 priorities. Everything else just falls by the wayside…

What those “top 3 priorities” are varies from person to person and from business to business. But it’s mostly about sales, marketing, or funding.

What alarms me is not that these topics are prioritized so highly. They’re critical for any business. Not tending to them would be a terrible mistake.

What alarms me is that we’re not tending to any other topics anymore. We’re so stressed that we push other, lower priorities to the sidelines; and they stay there, indefinitely. Forever waiting to receive at least a little bit of time and attention.

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I’ll give you an example from my own life as an entrepreneur. If you’ve read any of my writing and/or know anything about me, you will know how strongly I believe in the importance of leadership training and team building.

Even so, I’d never claim these topics should become the top priorities for founders and leaders. This would be unrealistic. I’ve been a founder myself for more than 20 years. And I know that sales, marketing, and funding (or, depending on the circumstances, instead maybe engineering or product development…) are what founders and leaders need to focus on.

But I see more and more founders dedicating no time at all to other topics anymore. Priorities 4 to 10 are practically non-existent. Especially “softer” topics like team building, leadership training, or one’s own health run the risk of going extinct.

The surprising thing is: when I talk to these founders, I don’t have to convince any of them that these other topics are important. They already know (to stick with the examples from above) that leadership training, team building, and a focus on their own healthy are essential.

But they don’t seem to be aware that there are consequences when we neglect these topics for too long:

• If we don’t continuously work on becoming better leaders, then the many little problems in our organizations and relationships will pile up, fester, and become dangerous.
• If team building is neglected for too long, then conflicts, frustrations, and mistakes will rise. And commitment, collaboration, and productivity will suffer.
• If we don’t keep a close eye on our recovery and wellbeing, then we and our colleagues will burn out.

By the way, these consequences are inevitable. Compare it to cleaning your house: if you skip doing it for too long, dust and spiderwebs will start to cover everything.

But what can we do?

To say it again, I don’t suggest changing our priorities altogether. That’s just not realistic. But we can’t push those lower priorities on the back burner indefinitely. We need to make room for them in our busy work lives. Not much. Just a little bit.

We don’t need heroic bursts of activity. Those aren’t sustainable. Instead of overconfidently investing weeks and months, it’s the little steps — performed regularly, over a long time — that will keep both us and our organizations thriving.

It’s like in the Chinese proverb: “Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.”