Good Days, Bad Days, Impossible Days

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Last night I was talking with Mark Ferlatte about the advice we have given our respective companies in this pandemic era.  He shared with me this link, on how to salvage a disastrous day.  It’s a good link: you should read it.

My favorite part: “Your feelings will follow your actions.  Just do it.”

The hardest part for me is, “Book-end your day.  Don’t push it into the midnight hours.”  Ugh.  I really, really struggle with this because my brain takes a long long time to settle in and get started on a task to the point where I feel like I’m on a roll with it, and once I’m on a roll I do not want to stop until I’m done.  Because god knows how long it will be — days? weeks?? — until I can catch this wave again, feel inspired again.  But it’s true, if I stay up all night working I’m just setting myself up for a fuzzy, blundery tomorrow.

The advice we gave Honeycombers was differently shaped, though similar in spirit.  I’ve had a few people ask me to share it, so here it is.

We formally request …

First, we would like to point out that what you are all being asked to do right now is impossible.  Parenting, homeschooling, working, caregiving, correcting misinformed neighbors, being an engaged citizen … it is fifteen people’s worth of work.  It is literally impossible.

But hey, it has always been impossible.  We have never been able to do everything we want to do — there isn’t enough time.  There was never enough time!  We succeed as a company not by doing everything on our list, but by saying no to the right things; by NOT-doing enough most things so we can focus on the few things we have identified that matter most.  That was true before COVID, it’s just truer now.

So: let’s all focus hard on our top priority.  Shed as much of the other stuff as you have to.  Shed more.  Ask your manager for help figuring out what to shed, until you are down to an amount you can probably manage.

And speaking of focus:

You aren’t operating at full capacity.  We all get that right now: none of us are.  And nobody expects you to.  So please spend zero energy on performing like you’re doing work, or acting extra-responsive, or keeping up a front like things are normal and you’re doing fine.  That performance costs you precious energy,  while doing nothing to get us closer to our goals.

What we need from you is not performance or busy-busy-ness but your engaged creative self  — your active, curious mind engaging with our top problem.  I would rather have 30 minutes of your creative energy applied to our biggest problem today than five hours of your distracted split-brain, juggling, trying to keep up with chat and seem like you’re as available per usual today.

So when you’re figuring out your schedule, please optimize for that — focused time on our biggest problem — and then communicate your availability to your team.  If you’re a parent and you can only really work three days a week, calendar that.  (If you’re not a parent, remember that you too are allowed to feel overwhelmed and underwater.  Just because some have it even harder, doesn’t invalidate what you’re going through.)

In Summary,

Take care of yourself
Take care of your loved ones
Say no to as much as you possibly can
Focus on impact
No performative normalcy
Remember: this is temporary

We are incredibly fortunate — to be here, to have these resources, to have each other.  It’s okay to have bad days; this is why we have teams, to carry each other through the hardest spots.  Do your best.  Everything is going to be okay, more or less.