#7 You are NOT indispensible to your job but you are to your family -- prioritize well.
There is a meme out there that states "Your job will be posted faster than your obituary" and while it gets a laugh, I wonder how many people ACTUALLY realize this is true?
Systems, organizations, cultures -- all the big picture forms -- are created to NOT collapse upon the loss of one person. They simply cannot be created that way.....but we are raised to think that to make ourselves indispensable is the responsibility of good employees.
There is even more pressure if you strive to be a "good" leader.
But our efforts to make people reliant upon us, to make us the holder of unique and vast knowledge, to become indispensible, leads us to a more and more unhealthy relationship to work.
And while our team mates, our own leaders, and organizational leadership may thank and appreciate our efforts (or maybe not but that is the topic of a different post lol), the organization, the system is neutral to our efforts.
No amount of extra hours we put in will cause an organization to hesitate to replace us if we suddenly cannot be there.
Read that again.
We have created this fantasy as a way to monitor and evaluate our performance -- which may also be reflected in our formal performance reviews -- but this has absolutely no bearing on your replaceability.
So what do you do with this information?
You recognize it for the truth that it is and you begin to divest yourself from the belief that the more you work the more important you will be to the organization.
You realize that all the extra hours and efforts, the sacrifices and losses, the missing out times, are NOT worth the result.
Your disconnection from the one place where you ARE indispensable == your life == is TOO high a price to pay to an entity incapable of reciprocating.
So, begin to disengage from the volume of extras you do. Yes, continue to do an excellent job at your job, but without the sacrifice of time, energy and health.
Step back from overachieving
Step back from relentless hours
Step back from trying to be the Golden Child.
You will start to see how being great in your life outside of work will suddenly translate into a better, fresher, more creative you at work.
Best of all, you will find that your life, your family, your friends, your hobbies, your pets, will all suddenly spring back into a fresh relevance and you will begin to experience joy again.
The shear joy of being not of doing.
Time to listen to your heart.
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Chris
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