Edition 1  |  August 25th, 2024

Welcome to theDL

Managers deserve more. That’s our starting premise.

Not “more” like more trainings, processes, frameworks—no. More space. More help. More time to really focus on their teams.

Instead, they keep being asked to “do more with less.” To which we say: Nah. Do Less.

Do Less! And be more effective. theDL will show you how. 

“K but I can’t just ‘do less.’ I’ll get fired”—we hear you. You can though.

Because when you find responsible ways to cut busywork and you revamp your workday with smarter-not-harder tactics: You are better.

You’re better at your job, by doing less. You’ll see.

Each edition of theDL will feature tips, takes, and TL;DRs for overwhelmed managers who need to claw back some space and sanity to be their best.

Here’s to doing less and getting more for it.

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Just so you know 😒

👎 An average manager has 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage

👎 59% of managers report spending a significant amount of time on “work to do work”

Source: “Managers Are Cracking — And More Training Won’t Help”

On that note...

When’s the last time you pruned your calendar? Guarantee there’s at least one meeting in there you don’t need to go to. 

Take a look. Pick the least useful meeting. Decline/delegate.

You could say:

“Hi [Meeting Host], I’m auditing my calendar to make more time to get work done. I don’t believe I’m needed in this meeting and am [declining for now/asking [person] to join instead]. Feel free to pull me back in when/if needed.”

Do it right now. Could you even do it for a recurring meeting?!

Turn your brain off

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Zoom out

“Look for single decisions that remove hundreds or thousands of other decisions.” Think about all the stuff on your plate right now. Group things into categories. Now think about them on that level: Can you make a high-level decision on one category that makes all the small related decisions obvious? 

Is there an opportunity for a “blanket policy” the eliminates decisions altogether?

Example: You’re a product leader. Your team is short-staffed and you’re constantly making trade-off decisions. Is there a workstream that you could enact a blanket “not this quarter” policy for? 

Sure it may be unpopular at first, but it gives your team (and you) breathing room and focus. It will help prevent burnout for all of you. Positioned like that, it’s not such a hard sell.

How can we help?