How to be Strategically Unavailable
Readtime: 4 minutes
I would suggest that your most important work is not done in a meeting.
It’s probably not done in a Teams or Slack message.
And it’s definitely not done in a ‘water cooler moment’.
Our most important work is always done alone.
It is done in those quiet periods when we can think, review, and create.
But, how we work today allows very little time for this.
In today’s newsletter, I am introducing how you can get your most important work done by being Strategically Unavailable.
The problem
How we work has changed, terribly over the last few years.
We’re busier than ever.
But many of us end the working day wondering what it is we’ve actually done.
The problem is the non-stop collaboration and communication with our colleagues.
We’re always available to them.
Which means we then have very little time, on our own, for doing our most important work.
And this way of working is robbing you not only of your job satisfaction, but of how great you could be.
It’s why so many people are struggling with burnout.
And it’s why so many organisations are struggling with a lack of engagement.
Because it’s hard to be engaged when you can’t get your most important work done during the normal working day.
You wouldn’t design it like this, but this is how many of us work.
It’s not a great recipe for quality, happiness, or fulfilment.
The solution – being Strategically Unavailable
It is possible to get our most important work done during the working day.
And to a higher level of quality.
By being Strategically Unavailable for part of the day.
Being Strategically Unavailable means you are deliberately unavailable to your colleagues.
It means choosing specific times to focus solely on your most important work.
It means you are not available for endless update meetings, when the update can be sent by email or video.
It means you are not available for a quick chat when you’re in the middle of something important.
And you are certainly not available urgently because someone else didn’t plan properly.
Being Powerfully Available
We need to be Strategically Unavailable to our colleagues, so that we can be Powerfully Available to ourselves, to get our most important work done, alone.
But it also allows us to then be Powerfully Available to our colleagues, so we can help them more.
But only with their most important work.
It’s quality of help, not quantity. Because most things don’t require perfection.
We’re going to stop getting involved in things that would be just fine without our input. (More on how to do that here.)
This is real collaboration, where our expertise is actually required.
It’s a much better use of our time.
And when we all work this way, our colleagues need less help, because they can focus properly on their most important work too.
A call to action
Imagine this… most of us, most of the time, excited to go to work because we know we’re going to do at least some brilliant work – and that we’ll help our colleagues with the things that really matter.
We can get there by embracing a culture of being Strategically Unavailable for just part of the day.
So that we can be Powerfully Available to do our most important work, and help our colleagues with theirs.
And so that we can all be happier and more fulfilled.
That’s it!
In summary
Congratulations, you now know why you need to become Strategically Unavailable for just part of the day.
So you can get your most important work done, and help your colleagues with theirs.
On a personal note
I used to be a partner at KPMG. One of the world’s biggest accountancy firms. And I used to think that my most important work was meeting with board members from major clients or winning a big new piece of work.
But I was wrong.
My most important work was the time I spent on my own, reviewing the work that the team had done.
And I often used to do this most important part of my job in the evenings, and on weekends. Because those were the only times when I wasn’t in constant collaboration and communication with my colleagues.
I was doing my most important work in the evening when I was tired. Or on the weekend, when I’d probably prefer to be doing something else.
When I realised this, I started making myself Strategically Unavailable for part of the day, so I could get my most important work done during the normal working day.
Which then allowed me to be Powerfully Available to my teams and my clients for the important things they needed my help with.
One quote to get you going
“It’s not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.”
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