Putting on the Brakes

Reflecting on my early career, I let my ADHD-fueled “Ferrari engine” brain drive me to work long hours with a big consulting firm. I didn’t set boundaries. And it took me too long to realize nobody else was going to set them for me! This led me to take on more tasks or projects than I could reasonably do well, or accept work without understanding the full assignment. Details like due dates were never a top question on my mind. If it was important, I assumed someone would mention that. That led to either doing everything while ignoring other responsibilities, or setting aside this new assignment. By setting it aside, I could forget to make incremental progress and need to rush to completion when it came due.

As I advanced in my career, I began to see the downsides of the Ferrari engine with bicycle brakes. Through different seasons of life, I’ve learned to balance work differently. Much of that is thanks to “strengthening the brakes” as Dr. Ned Hallowell would say.

Strengthening the Brakes

This non-exhaustive list covers a few ways to protect the boundaries that serve us in professional spaces. What works for you?

🗣 Asking for help

Early in career, it is harder to delegate work to anyone, but you are best positioned to ask for help. You can ask peers for how they would tackle a problem, or turn to a more senior team member to learn how they would approach a specific aspect of the task at hand.

Advancing through your career, you’ll start to see more options open up when it comes to asking for help. What could be seen as offloading a task you don’t want can be reframed as a learning opportunity for someone more junior looking for experience in that type of work. There are trade-offs – you might need to spend more time teaching and supporting them, but it might free you up and help you protect your boundaries a bit.

🔌 Unplugging

Sometimes our workload can sneak up on us. We have an idea of some things we want to be involved with, but before we know it, we take on quite a bit. Even if we can manage most of the time, there will be other times when something’s gotta give.

At one point in my career, I held a fulltime job managing a large leadership development product portfolio, was building my coaching practice in the evenings, sat on a non-profit board, volunteered regularly for two organizations important to me (read here why volunteering is so important to me), and I juggled all this while being a parent and partner.

At times, unplugging (at least, from a few commitments) was the best choice. I can easily give too much of myself to everyone else. If anyone allows this to happen too much, for too long, burnout is very likely. It is much better to intentionally dial back before hitting those burnout moments.

This looks different for everyone. For me, I made it clear to my non-profits that I was staying on the email list, but I wouldn’t actively volunteer for two months while juggling some other priorities.

📊 Understanding urgency and importance

If I treated everything as a burning priority, I could work around the clock. But, work emails can usually wait until tomorrow, and if I don’t sign up for a volunteer shift one month, the organization won’t collapse.

Our Lead with ADHD program spends time digging into prioritization tools to gauge urgency and importance, and how to build to-do lists based on this.

Putting on the Brakes

Are you putting on the brakes when needed? If you have a Ferrari engine with bicycle brakes, let’s work on that together! If you struggle with asking for help or delegating, prioritizing, or unplugging, coaching may help break that pattern. Let’s talk!