The corporate world is confronting a major burnout epidemic.
Most leaders and their teams today face workdays that seem close to impossible.
Many find themselves waiting, sometimes with bated breath, for the weekend—just to be able to breathe. Yet, their weekends are often busier than their weeks, with unfinished work projects, and family commitments looming.
Each minute on the clock that we’re just trying to “get through,” is a minute we’ll never get back.
How are we living our moments?
The frenetic, unfocused pace and consistent corporate ADD in today’s organizations is taking a real toll on the quality of our lives and the quality of our work.
We’re trying to address this challenge with everything from meditation to medication, but unless we change the way we work, the current epidemic of burnout, stress and chronic disease will continue to skyrocket.
But there is hope!
While the solution is not complex, it is difficult, because we’re talking about the corporate world, and the solution asks us to rethink our priorities and our behaviors individually and collectively.
It’s impossible to make the needed changes as a lone ranger.
We work in more and more collaborative ways and are deeply interdependent. So, to tell my colleagues “I need to say ‘no’ to three meetings this week in order to get my core commitments done,” doesn’t work—unless my colleagues have committed to the same solution and understand the value of “productive no.” And that’s true, not just for me, but for the organization as a whole.
By adopting shared, disciplined behaviors in how we choose to allocate our precious time, we can focus more on what matters most, and less on what matters least. We can take back control and decrease the noise enough to feel human again. In doing this, we’ll create a more sustainable way of working and will produce far better results!