Once Every Week or So, You Need to Schedule Time to Think

I know being a manager is overwhelming because I've been in your shoes. The work is constant: meetings, 1-on-1s, performance reviews, nonstop emails, Slack messages, questions from team members, etc.

There's so much going on at any given time that it's easy to think your job as a manager is to crank out work. After all, many companies implicitly reward that type of behavior by applauding the people who work weekends, send emails at 11 p.m., and constantly seem "busy."

But as IBM founder Thomas Watson once said, "Being busy doesn't make a company grow; thinking about how to do things better does."

If you've modeled your career to be the person who's known for responding to unimportant messages within seconds, I hate to break it to you...

That won't actually help you get ahead.

It may make you feel better about yourself, and yes-it may even help you "look good" in front of the boss for a little while. But busyness doesn't build careers. Achievement does.

"Never mistake activity for achievement." -John Wooden

You might be wondering...what's the difference between the two?

Here's a quick breakdown:

It is ALWAYS easier to gravitate toward the tasks in the "Activity" column. Why?

They're easier. (They take less mental brainpower.)
They make you feel good about yourself because you can pound them out.
They're often more tangible or measurable than the tasks in the "Achievement" column, so they make you feel like you're working "harder."

But the tasks in the "Activity" column aren't the ones that will really move the needle. They won't save your company millions or improve your team's workflow. They won't make you better at leading and strategizing. They won't help you develop new skills or become a more valuable manager.

Counterintuitively, the most productive thing you can do as a manager is often to take a step back from what you're doing to ask the deeper, more strategic questions:

What are my team's biggest issues? How can we incrementally improve?
Am I (and my team) working on the right tasks and projects?
What's the one thing we can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary? (Credit: The ONE Thing)
What do I want our team to look like in one year? How can we start building toward that future?

Yes, the best thing you can do as a manager is to put on your thinking cap.

Now that you're a manager, you're being paid to make the system better—not to just pound out more tasks. Your job is to think at a higher level.

Have you fully embraced that new calling?

Yes, you still need to respond to emails and Slack messages. (Sorry, folks!) But it's not enough to just pound through menial tasks. You also need to carve out time—preferably every week or so—to focus on the big picture.

Do yourself and your team a favor. Set aside time to do the following:

🤔 Block out time to think

🚶 Go on walks to stew on difficult problems

📈 Invest the time to build scalable and repeatable processes

🎯 Consider the big picture: Where you need to be in X years

🪜 Make sure the ladder you’re climbing is leaning against the right wall