Working Hard?

Every day you are faced with an opportunity to succeed. Now, perhaps I'm catching you on a day when this statement sounds like wishful thinking. Perhaps work for you lately has just been something you have to slog your way through until suppertime. Perhaps you've been so overworked the last few weeks and months that your days are starting to run together.

But I am giving you permission today to expand your world, to go against the flow, and to shatter the boxes that may be making you feel frustrated and futureless.

Most people in most workplaces are married to the status quo. They want safety and simple answers. They want what was, what used to be and whatever path is the easiest to come by. And while that attitude is not good enough for even the common man, it is not good enough for the follower of Christ, who is called to a greater purpose.

I want to give you a few practical suggestions that can help you break new ground on the most average day at work, whether you're laboring in the plant, covering your sales territory, crunching numbers in the office, or whatever your workday entails.

It all starts with some new ways of thinking. These deliberate mind-sets will help you focus your energies on key goals and objectives without feeling constantly distracted and off mission. They will enable you to see your work in context, thinking outside the internal limits and boundaries that can grow inside of companies.

They will keep you from feeling isolated and ingrained, giving you the freedom to be creative, to grow your own leadership skills while also encouraging growth and leadership in others. They will help make success an everyday experience.

One of the most powerful tools available to you at work is your ability to prioritize. For many people, it's certainly not laziness that causes them the biggest share of their stress. Instead, it's the practice of working hard on the wrong things.

Activity is not accomplishment. As writer Tim Redmond has said, "There are many things that will catch my eye, but there are only a few things that will catch my heart." We should be doing with our day what makes the best use of our time and resources.

Choose your main events. Surveys show that many executives don't get to their most important tasks until mid afternoon. Why? They like the sense of accomplishment they feel from checking things off their list. As a result, they expend the best resources of their day in clipping through low-priority tasks.

How much better it would be for them--and all of us--to choose even the one "main event" of our day and invest our time into making sure this goal is accomplished no matter what else we do.

Use the 80/20 rule. Not every framework can be overlaid onto almost any situation and prove itself true. But one that can is Pareto's Principle. I summarize it this way: If you focus your attention on the activities that rank in the top 20 percent in terms of importance, you will have an 80 percent return on your effort.

For example, if you have 10 employees, you should give 80 percent of your time and attention to your best two people. If you have 100 customers, the top 20 will provide you with 80 percent of your business. Place your time where it holds the most promise.

In just about any organization, there is a gravitational force that tempts its members to think small. Rather than being able to bring fresh perspectives to problem solving or to imagine the possibilities of a new opportunity, the most natural approach to innovation and change is always retreat and roadblock.

Big-picture thinkers, on the other hand, expand the process. They place a priority on asking questions of others, and they use this information to enlarge their opinions and see things with clear eyes. They bring new ideas to the table that arise from a habit of focused, deliberate observation and study. They refuse to be a "small man made up of small thoughts," as author and playwright Victor Hugo once said.

You can start doing this today:

Read and listen. Henry Ford observed, "Most successful people get ahead during the time other people waste." That's one reason why I carry books and magazines with me every time I travel. It's also why I always keep instructive tapes in my car when I'm driving across town. Decide what you need to be learning about, and go to those sources where you can grow beyond your own knowledge base.
Learn from every experience. Not only is it unbiblical, but it is also unproductive to rest on our successes. They are valuable to us only as a way of learning from them. By God's grace and mercy, however, failure offers the same opportunity. Wolfgang Puck, owner of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in California, has said, "I learned more from the one restaurant that didn't work than from all the ones that were successes." When a person maintains a teachable mind-set, every obstacle introduces him to himself.
Get comfortable with ambiguity. This may not be a simple choice to make, but it's a must if you're going to move your workday out of the ordinary. Big, complex issues rarely, if ever, come with a set of instructions or a prescribed way of handling them. When we crave certainty and rigid uniformity, we too quickly recoil from living with any amount of flux and risk, and we draw the fresh air out of each opportunity.

Pat Summitt coaches the University of Tennessee's Lady Vols basketball team, which for more than 20 years has been among the elite programs in all of collegiate athletics. I had a chance a few years ago to be a "guest coach" with her team, sitting behind the bench during one of their games in Knoxville and seeing her method of shared thinking work firsthand.

During halftime, I watched as she left the players alone to analyze and share their reactions with one another, not being swayed or dictated by the coaches' input. While this was occurring, she and her staff were huddling to discuss what they'd seen in the first half's play and what adjustments they needed to make. By the time the two groups came back together, it wasn't just the players doing all the listening.

You don't have to be the one in charge to be a catalyst of shared thinking, working with others to give your whole team or unit a shortcut to success.

Value the interaction process. Some people truly have a hard time gelling with others in the workplace. The result is a lot of isolated activity with no cohesion and balance. I have experienced this. For many years, I tended to withdraw when I wanted to develop ideas, figuring that the best solutions would only come by getting my own thoughts together. But simply engaging in talking things through with others--not to complain and find fault but to move toward positive change--is a necessary ingredient in everyone's growth.
Have an agenda when you meet. When I make an appointment to meet with someone, I am very deliberate about knowing what kinds of questions I want to ask and what information I'm hoping to obtain. Much time is wasted in meetings where the purposes are not clear. Even when you're gathering in much less official settings, the practice of being prepared and knowing up front what you need to leave with can trim a big part of the frustration from your day.

Above all these tips, though, I still say that nothing outranks a positive attitude in making everyone's work a success.

Negative attitudes drain both those who embrace them and those who live and work in proximity to them. A positive attitude, on the other hand, not only allows you to remain upbeat through trying times, but it is also contagious to those around you.

Believers in Christ have absolutely no reason to slack off in this area. Each of us who claim Him as Lord can echo the prophet Isaiah when he wrote: "Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth He has made mention of my name. ... In the shadow of His hand He hid me; He made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in His quiver. He said to me, 'You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor'" (Is. 49:1, 2-3).

We each have a calling from God, whether it shows itself in performing medical work, handling a set of carpentry tools, or whatever task He has equipped you to do. We are instructed by our Creator to use the gifts He has given and to maximize them by bringing our best efforts to the office every single day.

At times, we can be tempted to pick up Isaiah's next train of thought: "But I said, 'I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing'" (v. 4).

We can choose to become discouraged by our circumstances, allowing a poor attitude to send us into a quiet corner to await retirement and take us away from God's purpose for our lives.

Yet what is due me is in the Lord's hand, Isaiah continued, and my reward is with my God (v. 4). As Christians, we know that no man truly signs our paycheck. God is our supply, and we work for Him and His glory alone.

You are not defined by where you are at this moment but by Whose you are--and by where He desires to take you as you persevere through difficult times and remain open to the many ways He can stir possibilities from the midst of every day's challenges. As I said at the beginning, every day is filled with opportunity. And today is as good a day as any to be looking for it.

By John C. Maxwell, author of The New York Times best-selling book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and the founder of INJOY, a firm specializing in developing leaders. To have him speak to your organization, visit maximumimpact.com/speakers, or call 877-225-3311.