Leverage Your Time and Energy - Untie Your Shoes!

A while ago, I wrote a short post for small business executives and managers called “Building a Sustainable Infrastructure”. In it, I touched briefly on the idea of leveraging your time and energy by addressing problems and challenges from the standpoint of sustainability, or how to solve problems for good, using the least possible amount of time and energy. This seems to be a topic of great interest and value for many of my clients, so I thought I’d finally give it some of the attention it truly deserves.

First of all, the central issue here is learning how to build your business infrastructure in a such a way that the problems and challenges you address cease to be problems and challenges. This seems simple enough, but in practice, how often have you invested time and energy to solve a problem or address a challenge, only to find that very same problem or challenge popping up again a few months later, as though nothing you did made any difference at all?

From my point of view, sustainability is the natural result of leveraging your time and energy in such away that the problems you solve now stay solved, and the issues you address today cease to be issues at all. Let’s face it, time and energy are precious resources. I’ve never worked with anyone in small business who has extra time and energy to spend revisiting issues they solved once already, and yet this is one of the most common barriers I see that prevents small businesses from achieving long-term success.

Why? Because small business leaders often opt for short-term comfort at the expense of long-term sustainability. I use the word “comfort” here loosely. There’s a kind of comfort that comes from the familiarity of constant suffering. Like a moth that’s drawn toward the flame. There’s a prevalent notion in small business that if you’re not completely overwhelmed, you must not be working hard enough. This kind of culture discourages long-term thinking and problem solving. In companies where the comfort of constant suffering has taken root, being overwhelmed is a status symbol, everyone is constantly running to put out fires, and productivity is measured by the completion of as many tasks as possible within a given time frame, regardless of the long-term result or the impact on health, morale, or strategic vision.

In contrast, sustainability requires short-term sacrifice and favors long-term thinking and planning. The net benefit is exponential. Say, for example that you can solve a problem in two hours, but in order to keep it from occurring again next month, you would need to spend twelve hours developing a sustainable solution, documenting a protocol, and training people to use the new protocol. The long-term, sustainable solution requires an immediate sacrifice of ten hours. So the immediate net benefit is negative ten hours. No one in their right mind has an extra ten hours to spare, right? Let’s factor that out over time. At two hours/month, the net benefit would reach zero after five months. Six months later, you’d have a net benefit of twelve hours. The question is, what do you do with the time you end up saving? If you re-invest that time in the development of other long-term, sustainable solutions for other recurring challenges or problems, the benefit starts to grow exponentially.

When I talk about this with clients, I use the example of running a marathon with your shoelaces tied together. No matter how fast you run, your stride will only be as long as your shoelaces will allow. Unbeknownst to you, a whole new realm of speed and power is available from untying your shoelaces and allowing your feet to move freely, but you have to stop running in order to untie them.

“Stop!” I say… “Stop! For the love of God, stop and untie your shoelaces so you can run so much faster with so much less effort!”. “Great!” they respond, “that’s brilliant! This is going to be incredible! Add it on the list. We’ll do it just as soon as we can, but not now. Right now we’re in the middle of a marathon!”.

Creating a sustainable infrastructure means doubling the length of your stride simply by stopping to untie your shoelaces. This approach to solving problems and addressing challenges requires a shift in thinking. You have to be willing to take a step back from the issue in order to identify the source of it. Once you understand the source of the problem, you can design a sustainable solution.

From the standpoint of sustainability, the questions you should ask yourself when solving a problem are:

How can I resolve this issue so that I never have to think about it again? What system, structure, or protocol can I put in place to ensure that I never have to deal with this issue again? How can I resolve or manage this issue such that it ceases to be something I have to think about or remember to do? How can I completely resolve my concerns about this issue so that they cease to exist as concerns?

While these questions can be difficult and time-consuming to answer, answering them is the key to leveraging your time and energy and creating a sustainable business infrastructure.

If you’d like to read more about leveraging your time and energy or building sustainable infrastructures, or if you have questions or comments about anything I’ve said here, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me by email.

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