You're Not Getting Ahead If You're Just Getting By
What really happens when you're not selfish enough.
[Unobstructed Issue No. 050]
Focusing on quality is what creates abundance.
When you only focus on increasing your pace, your quality suffers.
It was 1:52 a.m.
And I’d been staring at a glowing screen in a dark hotel room with my jaw clenched, eyes burning. My mind had clearly been trying to tell me something.
The words, “you’re not selfish enough” were blaring in my head.
No, I definitely didn’t have time to flip through this highlight reel of uncomfortable conversations. Yes, she’d had a point. And my brain seemed hell-bent on reminding me. So I gave in.
Sitting back, I’d exhaled and tilted my neck from side to side.
Snaps, crackles, and pops sounded off like a bubble-wrap roll call.
High-performance isn’t a measure of output, it’s a measure of quality.
The conversation was a fresh one in my memory bank.
A few months back, a mentor had asked to meet, one-on-one. We’d rescheduled our last regular check-in. Twice. Well, I did. Work had been nuts, my team was implementing a new software platform and I was overseeing the project.
When we finally found time, something was different.
Through her firm gaze, I’d watched her eyes soften. Like good mentors do, she was giving me feedback. And I was trying to listen.
My blank stare had probably sounded something like “ummm…what?”
So she’d continued.
“You keep letting other people manage your time”
That’s when she exhaled and sat back slightly. I’d stayed rooted to my seat, focused on facing this hard truth head-on. In her tone, I could sense traces of exasperation. It wasn't frustration or pity; it was…investment?
She wanted me to get past this hurdle. I could feel it.
And, she’d been right. I knew that as soon as she’d said it.
Your priorities determine your performance.
Back in the hotel room, I’d looked down at my laptop in front of me.
Somewhere between the sixth and seventh test email, I’d asked myself, for the third time in the last five minutes, “will they even read this?”
I looked at subject line:
[TEST Preview]
Marketing & Sales Leaders — Enablement Program Launch.
Nope, they certainly wouldn’t be reading it.
That much I was sure of.
Cool.
I’d been at it for hours. Rewiring automations, fixing user permissions, relabeling content properties in the software…
Writing and rewriting that fucking email.
Sending test, after test, after test to myself.
Checking to see how much from the subject line and preview text would show up in their inboxes. Each time, calculating the odds of them opening it.
I’d spent months building and rebuilding ways to make day-to-day life easier for their teams. The bulk of it done after hours, since my actual work days were spent in back-to-back meetings. You know the drill, keeping the train moving for the rest of my own team and such.
Now, the thing standing in the way of me and going to bed was figuring out how to tell them why they should care about this latest round of updates.
Frustrating? Yes. But the part that bugged me the most?
I was being watched.
Just to make sure I’d go through the motions.
They weren’t going to read it—I’d have to share all of the same information again on the leadership call. And in 1:1’s with those who couldn’t make it. And then a few more times for the ones who wouldn’t watch the recording(s).
And you know what, I couldn’t blame them. They had busy lives and full plates of their own to deal with. They’d been working the same late hours, pushing a different boulder up the hill like me.
We’re collectively oversaturated with information.
At work AND at home.
And on the commute to work.
And on the way to pick up the kids.
But my name needed to show up in their inbox tomorrow anyway.
We’re taught to keep up but expected to over-deliver.
Looking away from the light of my laptop screen, my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room. The red numbers from the clock on the bedside table floated fuzzily.
You know; the same clock, with the same blocky font, that seems to be in every room, at every hotel, everywhere?
I sank—physically and emotionally—when it displayed somewhat smugly that it was now past two. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do this again.
But here I was.
She’d been right about letting other people manage my time. I’d even made an identity out of being dependable. Well, out of trying to be dependable.
Spoiler: “sure, I can handle it” is not a sustainable plan for being dependable.
Oliver Burkeman talks about “deciding in advance what to fail at” in his book Four Thousand Weeks:
“You can’t get to everything—it’s impossible.
So choose what to drop, or life will choose for you.”
Saying yes to everything creates chaos.
Without making time to do what you've said “yes” to, it won't get done.
Boundaries give us space.
And they give others clarity.
Because being clear is being kind.
Saying “yes” to everyone else means saying “no” to yourself. If you give away all of your time, you’ll have none left for yourself.
So be selfish with your time.
And generous with your effort.
You don’t need more tools, you need fewer headaches.
To solve problems, we instinctively add more stuff.
More tools.
More systems.
More strategies.
But we don’t need more stuff.
So often, we think the new thing is what will solve our problem. We wrongly assume we just haven’t found the right thing to fix our problem yet.
It’s not that we haven’t found the solution.
It’s that we haven’t learned how to get results with the solution we have.
We convince ourselves the shiny, new thing is the answer.
But the ugly truth is that it isn't. We run on fumes because we can’t keep up. So, sure, a new solution might help. BUT not without first acknowledging that:
Overcommitting is how good people get stuck.
Duct-taping things together isn’t sustainable.
Hustling to add more isn’t effective.
If you've got an awesome team, great product, and tons of expertise...but you still spend your nights working because your days are filled with back-to-back meetings?
Please don't add more stuff.
Simplify your existing tool box.
Clean up the mess before you add to it.
Do yourself a favor and start looking for:
More intention.
More subtraction.
Less stuff to maintain.
Less stuff to complicate.
Trying to get ahead by keeping up doesn’t work.
There’s a cruel irony to this whole thing.
You get praised for solving problems no one else can solve. As you should. That’s valuable and you deserve it. But be careful, it can start to feel like a trap when it becomes expected.
And nobody’s handing out trophies for burning out.
So you need to learn to manage the guilt of dropping the ball—even and especially when it’s someone else’s ball.
Stop trying to outwork bad systems and start looking for the bottlenecks.
I let the darkness consume me as I closed my laptop.
The email was scheduled to send first thing in the morning. Hopefully, I’d still be asleep. Unlikely, but why not dream a little?
“Good enough”, I reminded myself.
Since my mentor had shared that feedback with me, I’d been on a mission to make my work visible. I’d been documenting everything. The problem was, our department didn’t have a great way of monitoring capacity or bandwidth. Getting a look at everyone’s workload was impossible.
How could that be…
YES! Exactly. We had way too many tools. And everybody seemed to prefer using a different one.
So, I’d been keeping track of my work, my teams’ work, the project health, and our overall progress. The goal, aside from organization and collaboration, was to be able to put one, centralized task queue in place.
That way, when a new request came in from up top, I could confidently push back for myself and my team with, “Happy to help. Here’s everything else that’s a priority. Which should I get rid of to make room for this new one?”
By all accounts, this approach works…unless, seniority feels it’s a problem of speed, not systems.
Then the answer you get is, “do more.”
Getting ahead starts with what’s getting stuck.
Most of the leaders I’ve worked with want to do meaningful work.
And all of them are chasing some version of freedom.
Scheduling freedom.
Financial freedom.
Creative freedom.
The group who’d see my name in their inbox that morning?
They were really brilliant people dealing with priorities they’d inherited, too. Who also had no room to breathe.
Your ambition can’t beat bad systems.
That’s something they don’t tell you.
So, I stopped focusing on their bad systems and started focusing solely on the roadblocks. It’s what I could control. Because, really, what I’m obsessed with isn’t growth—I’m obsessed with what happens when an intentional system works like it’s designed to (which is never, just so we’re clear).
And if I could find a way to get rid of stuff from my to-do list without removing results? You bet your ass I was going to.
One thing was certain: no one else was going to do that for me.
And I needed to figure out how to do it while they piled more in.
I used to think “high performance” was about output.
Now I know better.
Focusing on doing it faster makes a mess.
Focusing on doing it well makes progress.
So if you’re feeling stuck, start with asking yourself:
Where am I trying to speed up when I really need to slow down?
What’s clogging this process that used to feel simple?
What am I holding together that I shouldn’t?
Because you can be the most ambitious person in the room, but if the structure around you can’t support it?
You’re not getting ahead.
You’re just getting by.
onward.
-dmac
Unobstructed Issue No. 050
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