You get to decide how to spend your energy.
This can mean giving everything you have for one big push to a launch.
It can also mean looking at the landscape of issues in front of you and saying “This is not a fight I’m willing or able to take right now.”
The tricky part of these choices is reckoning with the consequences. If you give one thing all your energy, you may need to hand the next push to someone else. If you choose to not take on a fight that is actually important to you, then you have to deal with the outcome of a missing the disagree part of “disagree and commit”.
If you are like me and often give equivalent energy to every single thing you care about because you care about ALL THE THINGS…there will be consequences, including but not limited to:
1) People will not know when something is extremely important to you because you show passion for so many things
2) Often, in a group, everyone will just wait for you to take the lead because they know you won’t let even trivial things fail
3) Inevitability you will sometimes run out of strength right when the biggest decision needs you to put up a fight
A few years ago while building a site and leading 15 teams a friend said to me, “Leah, you cannot take every single thing on with the same intensity. It’s too much. For them (the team). And for you.”
What helps me is getting really clear on what is important…to me. What are the dealbreakers? What are the things that are annoying but I can live with? And when does overwhelm take precedence over ownership?
When you know this, you can…
Raise your hand to volunteer or keep it in your lap
Pick your battles or lay down your sword.
Say nothing or speak boldly
Draw a line in the sand or just plop down and build a sand castle
Congratulations!
You have become the keeper of your energy. Own it. Embrace it. Save yourself.