Have you Bit Off More than you Can Chew?

The past two months have been a whirlwind for me. I’ve had eight trips in nine weeks that spanned eight cities, eight states, and three countries. There has been a healthy mix of work and play with conferences, board meetings, presentations and personal vacations. Despite the back-to-back nature and daunting task of schedule management, I was excited about every trip as this stretch began, and now that they are all complete, I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I got to experience a few new cities, have some incredible meals and connect with amazing people. From time with my family, experiences with my fellow Footers team members and conversations with many of you from the mibecommunity, I left each of these trips feeling a sense of joy and felt reinvigorated by the people in my life.

Of course, there were also the stresses of travel and I have an even greater appreciation for those of you who do it frequently. It felt like every other text I got was from United Airlines telling me it was time to check in or some other update about my flight. I got to know the Denver Airport like the back of my hand, although I had a brief struggle to find my car when I went to the area I parked during a previous trip. And then there was the challenge of constantly waking up in a new time zone.

My biggest mistake, though, was assuming I could continue with my normal workload through all of this. It sounds silly for me to write, but I figured I’d get things done during downtime on flights, waiting in airports and in hotel rooms. Needless to say, that wasn’t the case. I found myself falling behind on projects, dropping the ball on tasks and I won’t even get started with the current disastrous state of my email inbox. I had a superhero mentality that I could manage all of this travel and still thrive in the other areas of my life - and man was I wrong. It’s not that everything fell apart, it was that I had to make sacrifices and settle for “just ok” on things that I typically have higher expectations for. These sacrifices left me feeling guilty for letting others down, and disappointed in myself about the average results.

This stretch of travel has been amazing and at the same time if I had to do it again, I would do a few things differently. I would have asked for more help. There were certainly things I kept on my plate that could have been delegated. Whether guilt of putting my work on someone else or the pride that I could do it all, I should have put ego aside and asked for support from the people around me. I also would have pushed myself to set more realistic expectations. There were deadlines that should have been extended and projects should not have been started during this time because I wasn’t realistic about what I could accomplish. Finally, I would have been more stringent about what I said “yes” to during that time. In my attempt to please everyone, I was reluctant to say “no”. Had I done so, it would have served me well and allowed me to have more impact on the things I said “yes” to. As the holiday season comes into full swing, there is an increased demand on our time and resources. As leaders, we can all benefit from asking for help, being realistic about what we can accomplish and saying “no” when it’s not a “hell yes”!