Recently, I was meeting with a CEO who is experiencing the frustration of feeling like she has too many things to do and not enough time to do them.
We’ve all been there, so I completely understood when she told me, “I’m having trouble remembering everything I need to do. And with so many things to do, sometimes it’s just overwhelming so I procrastinate.” That, of course, just compounds the problem. The entire situation is making her feel stressed and anxious most of the time, and she said it is beginning to affect her as a leader.
I reminded her of David Allen (the productivity guru and author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity) and his guiding principle of writing down everything that’s on your mind—as soon as it comes to mind. Allen says that simple habit gives him the immediate satisfaction (and peace of mind) of not having to worry about mentally keeping up with everything. I know another person who, every night before going to bed, creates a list of things to do the next day. This habit is scientifically proven to reduce stress and improve sleep. This kind of regular or running list, I told the CEO, might be a first step in reducing her own stress.
Writing everything down can also help when trying to decide what to do yourself; what to delegate to others; and, perhaps most importantly, what to not do at all.
But creating this kind of list is simply part of a larger process. And having lists like this sometimes requires patience and flexibility.
Completing tasks is rewarding on so many levels! But sometimes accomplishing things on your list is not so straightforward. Sometimes tasks create more tasks, and that means more work. Sometimes there are unexpected consequences.
This is called a “boomerang effect.”
I recently read about this concept in Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project. Gretchen wanted to stop procrastinating, so she decided to write down everything that she needed to do. But as she started completing various tasks, she realized that some tasks ended up “boomeranging.” Not only did they remain on her list of things to do, but they also required more and more steps to complete them.
One example she gives in the book is about a faulty light in her New York City apartment. She contacted the building maintenance person who came and looked at it and said she needed to call an electrician to fix it. She contacted an electrician who came and looked at it; he said it was broken and needed to be repaired before he could do anything. So, she took the light to a repair shop and got it fixed. Finally, the electrician came back and reinstalled it. What she thought was a simple task that could be completed with a single call boomeranged back several times before completion.
It stands to reason that the more things you do, the more likely that things might come back to you. For instance, if you send a lot of emails, you’re going to get a lot of emails back.
But lights need to be fixed and emails must be sent, right? We all love to accomplish things. We need to accomplish things.
The key is to be ready for the boomerangs—to try to avoid them in the first place and if you can’t do that, then be ready to handle them.
For example, you might delegate a project on your long list of to-dos to someone else in your office only to have them come back and ask for clarification. Then they start the project but come back to you with questions. There are emails and meetings and updates, and that task is still not done. If that task were still languishing on your to-do list, you wouldn’t have these issues. But it still wouldn’t be any closer to completion. So, what to do? Maybe you should have provided more detailed instruction when you delegated the project. Or maybe you just need to make sure you’re available and turn the back and forth into learning opportunities.
There are several ways to look at this that don’t necessarily include a lot of frustration—if you are prepared for the boomerang.
The good news is, more often than not, you’ll be able to mark many things off your to-do list without anything boomeranging back at you. But you must remember that the more you set out to accomplish, the more likely you’ll make additional work for yourself. It’s simply part of being highly productive.
Don’t let the boomerang principal get you down. Look at it this way: It’s just a part of doing what you do better.