Generally speaking, how do you feel at the end of the day?
Do you feel overwhelmed and overworked – overcommitted and overtired?
Do the pressures of work, family, friendships, and commitments leave you drained? Are you completely exhausted?
If that sounds like you, let me ask a follow-up question: "How good are you at creating margins?"
Margins are wonderful things.
Cambridge dictionary defines a margin as: "the border of empty space around the written or printed text on a page."
And I like that definition. A margin is the "empty space" around an object. You can picture a margin in a book or on paper. Margins allow space to take notes and process thoughts. They allow your eyes to rest between words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Life, like sheets of paper, needs margins. Without margins, there's no space to think, reflect, process, and rest.
In his book about margin, Richard Swenson says it well, "Margin is the space that exists between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating. Margin is the opposite of overload."
Margins create space to breathe, regroup, and attend to the most important.
If you are feeling exhausted today, consider how to begin building margin into your schedule.
A straightforward model I use is the ABCs of margin.
(A) Awareness - Building margin starts with awareness of their necessity. Awareness of your need for margins will automatically position you to begin setting these boundaries in your calendar. For the reasons stated above, creating boundaries is paramount to satisfaction, perseverance, and high performance.
(B) Build a 20% Margin in Your Schedule - The wisdom of the Pareto principle states that 20% of what you do yields an 80% return. Applying this principle to how you structure your time could pay incredible dividends in productivity, creativity, and life satisfaction. For example, if you are awake for an average of 16 hours per day, that means leaving roughly 3 hours and 10 minutes unscheduled per day. Perhaps that's getting up a little earlier, leaving an extra 15 minutes between meetings, or taking an extra half hour before or after mealtimes to think. Be as creative as you'd like with this. And if a margin of 20% seems too high to start with, start smaller and work your way up. Aim for 10% and set a goal to get to 20% by the end of the year. Can you imagine how many of life's unexpected challenges you'd be able to tackle head-on if 20% of your time was unscheduled?
(C) Continually Evaluate - Schedules are like lawns in the summer. Without proper and continual maintenance, they get overrun. Appointments creep up like weeds, tasks get overgrown, and pests always try to burrow in (ok, that's a bit dramatic, but you get the point). Priorities can sometimes shift and get lost in the whirlwind of leadership. And leader, as your responsibilities increase, so does your need for margins. So how do you fight against this? Well, a leader must have a regular rhythm of evaluating the calendar and ridding it of clutter. Weed it out. Fertilize it with free time and the margin. You never regret taking control of your calendar. If you don't, someone else will.
Leader, don't burn the candle at both ends. That's how you burn out. Instead, fight to put margins in place and keep them as invaluable appointments with yourself, so you can grow, thrive, and ultimately last in leadership.
More than ever, this world needs good leaders. So we need you to stay in the game. Leaders who last have margins.
You can become happier, healthier, and more productive at work and home through awareness of your need for margin, building a 20% margin into your calendar, and continual evaluation. And if you use these ABC’s, you'll have more time to do what's most important to you. Sounds pretty good to me!
For your growth!
