Forced Focus

It has now been a month since my freak accident followed by surgery, rehab, pain pills, lack of sleep, the general fog of all that and the like. (for more details see my personal blog at www.davetravisnow.com)

I had often wondered if I were to be knocked out of commission due to illness or accident what would happen to my team and how I would respond.

Now, I would say that this has not been the major outage I had worried about, it is still a huge change from my normal way of working.

My normal way is to have a huge page each week of calls, memos, blog posts, connections and other to-dos on my list. And I would derive great satisfaction from the sheer VOLUME of work I thought I was getting through. I would also plow through multiple books each week. Some to endorse, some to blog about but mainly just because I like to read. Add onto that a usual full travel schedule to get out and talk to clients and staff which I really enjoy.

Unfortunately my fatigue and treatments have led to limited time, energy and focus. For the past two weeks I usually could generate three good hours a day of work at best. I pushed it to 6 hours one day but I must confess that some of that was fairly unproductive time wasting stuff.

My condition has forced to me a very Focused engagement with my work which has resorted my usual work styles. Here are my strategies.

1. I have a wonderful team that usually handles most of the day to day management of our larger Leadership Network team anyway. I have had to just trust their judgments and instincts all the way. Even more, they have stepped up to intentionally take things off my plate to handle. I have often said to our board and our CEO “I really don’t want to overfunction as the leader.” Now I have to live that.

And I haven’t had the energy to add any worry to my plate so I have just gone with the flow there.

Will they do some things that I probably would have chosen a slightly different direction? Probably, but I trust their instincts right now more than mine clouded by the pain and pills.

2. Let some stuff ride.

I get lots of requests from folks outside our organization wanting comments, advice, counsel, connections and the like. I try to give those things as liberally as possible.

In addition I have some requests from our staff for similar things.

Now the staff knows my current condition and has been warned off for the most part. Outsiders, less so.

Some things I just let sit there in the in box including some things from our staff. If I viewed it as a low priority I just didn’t respond. If it comes around again, I probably would. Other things I placed on my calendar at a future day when I hoped to feel better. “Can’t talk right now due to an illness but will probably be able to next Thursday when I am feeling better.”

For some folks that worked fine. Others just moved on. Either way, it worked.

I was able to get it out of my mind and attention and focus on it later.

3. Got serious about budgeting my energy and focus.

For the most serious time I realized that I had enough space, energy and focus to pull off perhaps three things each day.

1. A focused call – I had enough energy to carry on a meaningful conversation once a day. For that call I planned what I needed to say and ground that we needed to cover. I focused only on important things.
2. A focused writing piece – sometimes that was an email response to a staff member or a memo of length with instructions for future action. Writing was particularly challenging due to the damage to the arm so it took twice as long.
3. 1 “yellow pad” session – this is where I have my yellow pad and I am thinking or planning one specific thought. It could be a blog post, a memo, a call list, but it is very focused on topic but trying to write down as many thoughts as possible onto the pad.

Basically I could give those three discrete activities 100% for that day. More would mean less focus and energy.

I could take more calls, and some days I did, but they weren’t calls or online meetings that got my best or even 60% of me.

I could read through the non critical emails, scanning for anything important, but the rest were put off.

I let the blogs and twitters go for awhile or just skimmed occasionally and then hit “mark all as read.” Am I missing some conversations and action? Probably. But right now just not in my energy and focus budget.

The mix could change a little and my plan is to add a little each week back to the to-do list. On days without therapy, I might add a call or writing piece for example.

So, if your dog pulls you off the deck and puts you out of commission for a month, what's your plan?

Dave Travis

Managing Director

Leadership Network