White space

It’s a sunny Tuesday afternoon in July and I’m on my sofa with a book in my hand, reading and thinking about what I want to write. I’ve always been ‘a writer’ in the sense that writing comes fairly naturally to me – but a lot of the time, I don’t write, even though there is a lot I want to say.

I realise, as I sit here, that perhaps I don’t “need” to be productive today. I’ve just come out of the three busiest and most successful months of my career to date. Perhaps I can settle into the two hours I have before my next coaching call and just enjoy the space. This is a luxury that so many leaders I work with never get to have. And by ‘never’, I mean never. The people I coach and the teams I hold space for, regardless of the industry or sector they’re in, all have this in common. Everyone is always busy. With meetings, deadlines, projects and, unsurprisingly, emails.

When I start coaching someone, we talk about creating space for the coaching, both the calls themselves, and the space between the calls to reflect, notice and think. Years ago I read the phrase, “Slow down to speed up” (via Rich Litvin) and it’s always stuck with me. Life and work are so fast paced, particularly if you live in a city and/or have a family, and the more senior you become, the more responsibility you generally hold to manage and take care of other people and the more your calendar is blocked out with clashing meeting requests.

Good things happen when we slow down. Counterintuitively, it helps us to speed up.

No one appears to have the time to slow down because there is always so much to do, yet working at breakneck speed creates its own problems: burnout, making rushed decisions, being overstretched and unavailable to those around you. It’s hard to see the wood for the trees when you’re constantly on the hamster wheel.

So today, with ideas brewing and a sense that I ‘should’ be doing more, I’m choosing to put my feet up, jot down these thoughts, and take it easy for the next hour or two. Both so I can practice what I preach, and also because I deeply believe – know, in fact, from experience – that we are not supposed to be in perpetual motion. We are living organisms that, just like the natural world around us, need slowness and speed, movement and stillness, action and rest. Sometimes doing nothing is the exact thing we need to bring our best.

But it’s easier said than done, of course.

Rare is the CEO who is comfortable with people being paid a salary and appearing to not be ‘doing much’ (i.e. resting). Rare is the organisation that strips back its priorities to focus on The One Thing, on doing “less, but better”. There are many reasons for this: ambitious goals, conflicting stakeholder demands, capitalism (that old chestnut), and the system we live in which we “wear busyness as a badge of honour and exhaustion as a status symbol” (Brené Brown).

Resting and slowing down is also political, as Skunk Anansie sang. It’s also deeply rooted in race and social justice, as the brilliant Tricia Hersey talks about at The Nap Ministry.

And then there’s anxiety, another huge psychological obstacle to resisting the urge to be ‘crazy busy’ all the time. I don’t mean anxiety in the clinical sense, but more the psychological and emotional force that fuels us to stay in motion because of the discomfort that arises when we’re not. Just look at the objections to the four-day working week to see this playing out. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we are set on believing that more equals better. The very idea of allowing ourselves and each other more downtime, more rest, more space for reflection and being rather than doing, brings our self-talk and beliefs right to the surface: the ‘not good enoughs’ and need to prove that we’re worthy through doing things, even if what we’re getting done isn’t to the best of our ability because we’re exhausted.

Teams that can talk about this can make real headway, sorting the wheat from the chaff and exploring some of the unconscious fears and stories that, left unchecked, lead us down the rabbit hole of busyness and task without strategy or results. Holding space for teams to have these conversations is when I’m in my element.

So my challenge to you today is to carve out some white space. Whether it’s pausing to take one deep breath in between phone calls, taking 30 seconds to close your eyes, carving out five minutes to just sit with a cuppa, or marking out a lunch hour and actually taking it, I’d love to hear what you notice and what shows up when you slow down.

I currently have space for 2 new 1:1 coaching clients, and one spot open for leadership and/or team development. Drop me a line on elloa@epbconsulting.co.uk if you or your team is stuck and needs support.

Photo by Ilnur Kalimullin on Unsplash. Thank you, Ilnur.