Time, alongside with health, money, and social networks, is one of the core human resources. Each of us individually decides on our own priority split in between the given four. One can say health is more important than money, and the other would choose a social network as paramount among all. At different ages and in different circumstances the importance of each resource might be seen differently.
Several American studies have shown, when deciding between time and money, a prevailing majority votes for money. In the meantime, the follow up studies with the individuals reveal that those who picked more time were more satisfied with life.
As a matter of fact, time is a fundamental resource and might be compared with the importance of oxygen for a human being. While we have time, we can make a lot of things and in particular we can make a change: a change of our mind, a change of our attitude, and ultimately a change of our life. However, when our individual time is over, all the rest doesn’t make any sense for us anymore. We might be healthy and reach financial stability, but sadly may find ourselves in a fatal accident or at war. Thus, it is obviously important how and for what we spend our currently available and priceless resource – time.
More than 40% of our net-time
(excluding sleeping, personal hygiene, commuting)
we spend working
If our professional environment meets our values, promotes our aspirations and helps to apply our strengths, we get energy out of it. This 40% inspires us and gives good chances to be happy with the rest as well.
However, when we are frustrated with our job, work under a manager who makes things very unexciting, and we have to keep working there to cover our consumption needs, we’ve been becoming more emotionally exhausted. At a certain point of time we have options to leave a job, to take a holiday or to get used to it and try to accept the given environment as a new normal.
At any case a difficult condition at work requires psychological compensation. And this comes usually somewhere from the rest of our roughly 60% of the net-time left. In other words, when we are consciously or unconsciously dissatisfied with what we do at work or with those managing us, our brain asks for an emotional compensator. Some of us might partially receive it by doing regular sports, meditation or by talking about the working pressure with a friend or a psychologist. But the others, in contrary, find the compensation in eating more and often, increasing their screen-time, or drinking alcohol to get rid of the gotten stress. We try to hyper-compensate the internal struggle at work by means of consumption or even destruction of our private life. If the work-related root causes are not properly fixed, it might be getting more and more messy both professionally and privately.
Alongside with losing our engagement, motivation, energy, and maybe even health, the negative consequences are even broader. An organisation we are working for loses productivity, competitive advantage, and business sustainability. If we work directly with customers, they might feel our mood as well. Our family may suffer from the emotional exhaustion. And society loses an ability to get more public value out of unfulfilled disengaged talent in our face, who might bring more contribution otherwise.
This can all be accompanied by emotions such as sadness, fear, and anger. And the emotions by default speed up even more the passage of time.
"What is the way out?" you might be asking
As it goes essentially about the working time and about potential negative outcomes to a wide group of people, the answer depends on which chair you are sitting on.
Let us have a quick look at 3 major chairs below and try to generate rational answers to each of the given categories.
Employees
•Start thinking carefully about your time now. Raise why-questions, e.g., “Why do I spend my most valuable resource working here? Why do I believe it is the best way for me to invest my time?” Do your best to give honest answers.
•Stop damaging yourself, your health, and your family because of a psychologically exhausting job.
•Improve your understating of where your goals and values are matched with goals and values of your company, and how (except a compensation part) would you maximize a win-win benefit out of it.
Mid-Level Leaders
•Start asking yourself such questions as “What is my purpose to lead? What meaning do I bring to my people? What to do with my power to attach it to a meaning? What if my team(s) would be fully engaged and inspired to do great things? Am I properly empowered by the senior management team?”
•Stop holding “monitoring” conversations with your team members and move to “aligning” ones. Stop only delegating, make a step further to empowerment. Stop just thinking on formal individual goals, but focus on your direct reports’ aspirations, and how you can help them to get there.
•Improve and actualize your self-awareness. Promote feedback culture by your own example.
Founders, Board Members, Senior Leaders
If revenue, profits, costs, or risks of your organization depend on more than 50% of people, you should think about the following steps:
•Start managing individual performance through aspirations, building an engaging culture, helping leaders of all levels to discover their own leadership purpose, and enhance their self-awareness. A CEO (not HR Director) should become a Chief Cultural Officer. Take into consideration the same recommendations given above to the mid-level leaders.
•Stop putting a burden of managing performance on mid-management and HR departments only. It turns into a formality and an annoying waste of time from all sides.
•Improve the process of managing performance by means of proper implementation of a cadence, showing an evidence of its true value for all the parties involved, and minimizing documentation.
P.S.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative nurse who took care about patients in their last days, perfectly described in her famous book of the same name “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, namely:
1) I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2) I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3) I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4) I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5) I wish I had let myself be happier…
The great news is that we (still) have time. The question left is what should be done now in order to avoid any of the above mentioned regrets in future.