Overwhelm and Hard Restarts
A couple of years ago, I had a client who was increasingly frustrated at work. So much so that she was ready to quit.
In our coaching session about how she would execute her exit, she casually mentioned that she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in three months. After she confirmed the sleep pattern on her smart watch, the conversation changed. Rather than talking about how to quit, we talked about how to get 20+ hours of sleep over the weekend.
And when we talked the next week, she had a totally different outlook. Quitting wasn’t so urgent, and she could see new paths to change her situation at work.
I tell that story (with her permission) because when we’re overwhelmed, it sometimes feels like there’s no way out of it. And that can sometimes stop our problem-solving. We say things like:
That’s just the way things are here.
Everything I have going on is important.
We’ll focus on that big problem when we get a break from these small problems (which of course, never comes).
In those situations, a “hard restart” may be required to break that thought pattern. It’s like when tech support asks, Have you tried turning your device off and back on again? A break can give us the perspective we need to see new paths forward.
One tactical example is how Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, uses “fire breaks” to get himself out of overwhelm and into a focus on what matters most. He described this on the Tim Ferriss Show:
“[A] thing that happens sometimes is what my assistant Paula and I call ‘fire breaks.’ Every once in a while, it’s just too much, and you have to go back and say, ‘I know what I was supposed to do on Tuesday, but clear it because I need some time to get back up on my feet and read a few things.’”
Obviously, it’s easier for the CEO to clear his schedule than for the rest of us, but I admire the sense of awareness and agency over his time.
The U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual also contains an anecdote about doing a meeting restart as a tool to create the right operational procedures:
“The division’s new chief of staff was surprised at how much time subordinates spent at meetings; it seemed they had time for little else. After observing the way things work for two weeks, the chief did away with most of the scheduled meetings, telling the staff, ‘We’ll meet when we need to meet, and not just because it’s Friday morning.’”
The chief of staff also did a process restart:
“Each staff section did a top-to-bottom review of procedures that had been in place as long as anyone could remember. Anything that couldn’t be justified was thrown out.”
The point is things don’t have to be this way. And when we recognize that, completely power down, and start from scratch, we can often gain the space and perspective we need to find a new way.
Leadership Wisdom
Chip Edens, as quoted in Lead Yourself First, on the importance of silence and solitude when things around you are noisy:
“You need creativity. When you’re being chased by a bear, it’s hard to stop and invent the wheel, to find a better way to solve the problem. But you need to turn around and look at the bear—because it might not be a bear.”