In his book "High output management" Andrew Grove (former CEO of Intel) wrote a phrase that stuck with me: "A manager`s work is never done". What he ment is that whenever manager is working, he or she is in a constant flux of never ending tasks. Manager gathers info, manager controls and manager teaches. This stream never ends as long as the company is alive. And in never shrinks. If a manager grows, the tasks get more leverage but never diminish in number.
It is opposed to the builder role, where you usually have one task ("build the thing") broken down to finite number of subtasks. Complete them all - and the thing is built, you`ve finished. A manager never has such luxury.
As many entrepreneurs come from builders, they are often face that task - switch from builder to manager. Yesterday you`ve sold room painting, you`ve taken the brush and you painted - order finished. Now you manage sales people, you manage painters and you manage the accountants. Orders are finished - somewhere - but the management does not diminish. And that can become a huge source of frustration and imposter syndrome, especially for someone who was a successful builder. It can even lead to thoughts like "if I am that inadequate that the work is never done, maybe I should go back to 9-5 and forget all this business stuff".
I also met this problem. Frustration was palpable and to let the steam off I started to log into gamed mid-day or scroll Facebook much more than I would have normally. I also lost my sleep - falling asleep jumped from 15 minutes to 90 minutes according to my smart alarm clock.
And then during one night I saw a solution in my dream. And it saved me.
Usually we are trying to tackle the chaos with to-do lists. List all you need to do and then just cross out all those tasks. I also used Todoist for that. And that fateful night I was having a nightmare. I saw a Todoist today list in front of me with 10-15 tasks. I was working hard and I was crossing those tasks one by one. But each time I crossed the task out, 1-2 new tasks were added to the end of the list. No matter how hard I tried - the list kept its length. And then I saw a solution. I stopped crossing the tasks in my dream. Instead I took a piece of paper, wrote a header "anti-todo list". And each time I completed the task - instead of crossing it I started to write them in the anti-todo list. And that list started to grow, outgrew and eventually defeated the to-do list.
When I woke up - that was the first thing I did. Instead of Todoist I opened a simple notebook. I wrote a date. I wrote on the left side a list of tasks for today. And once those tasks were done - I wrote them on the right side. And more - when "one minute tasks" arose as they always do - I also wrote them once they were done. By the end of the day my right side of the notebook had much more elements then the left one.
And you know what? I feel calm now. I feel adequate. I see those tasks. I can sort them. These were the tasks that moved the needle. These - eased the work for tomorrow. This will bring $3000 and this will bring $5000. This one would not have arisen if I had this SOP here. So tomorrow I will do the SOP.
It gave me my sense of control back. Sense of adequacy. A bit of that builder`s pride of completion.
So if you have the problem like I had - give it a try. I really want to know your experience.
It is opposed to the builder role, where you usually have one task ("build the thing") broken down to finite number of subtasks. Complete them all - and the thing is built, you`ve finished. A manager never has such luxury.
As many entrepreneurs come from builders, they are often face that task - switch from builder to manager. Yesterday you`ve sold room painting, you`ve taken the brush and you painted - order finished. Now you manage sales people, you manage painters and you manage the accountants. Orders are finished - somewhere - but the management does not diminish. And that can become a huge source of frustration and imposter syndrome, especially for someone who was a successful builder. It can even lead to thoughts like "if I am that inadequate that the work is never done, maybe I should go back to 9-5 and forget all this business stuff".
I also met this problem. Frustration was palpable and to let the steam off I started to log into gamed mid-day or scroll Facebook much more than I would have normally. I also lost my sleep - falling asleep jumped from 15 minutes to 90 minutes according to my smart alarm clock.
And then during one night I saw a solution in my dream. And it saved me.
Usually we are trying to tackle the chaos with to-do lists. List all you need to do and then just cross out all those tasks. I also used Todoist for that. And that fateful night I was having a nightmare. I saw a Todoist today list in front of me with 10-15 tasks. I was working hard and I was crossing those tasks one by one. But each time I crossed the task out, 1-2 new tasks were added to the end of the list. No matter how hard I tried - the list kept its length. And then I saw a solution. I stopped crossing the tasks in my dream. Instead I took a piece of paper, wrote a header "anti-todo list". And each time I completed the task - instead of crossing it I started to write them in the anti-todo list. And that list started to grow, outgrew and eventually defeated the to-do list.
When I woke up - that was the first thing I did. Instead of Todoist I opened a simple notebook. I wrote a date. I wrote on the left side a list of tasks for today. And once those tasks were done - I wrote them on the right side. And more - when "one minute tasks" arose as they always do - I also wrote them once they were done. By the end of the day my right side of the notebook had much more elements then the left one.
And you know what? I feel calm now. I feel adequate. I see those tasks. I can sort them. These were the tasks that moved the needle. These - eased the work for tomorrow. This will bring $3000 and this will bring $5000. This one would not have arisen if I had this SOP here. So tomorrow I will do the SOP.
It gave me my sense of control back. Sense of adequacy. A bit of that builder`s pride of completion.
So if you have the problem like I had - give it a try. I really want to know your experience.
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