The Destructive Nature of The Hero Syndrome.
Do you begin the day with twenty, thirty or more tasks on your to-do list? Does it make you feel proud to have so many tasks to do?
These are symptoms of what is called, in the productivity world, the “Hero Syndrome”. You overload yourself with stuff to do because you believe (erroneously) that being busy and overwhelmed is a positive. It’s not. What it does, though, is lead to burnout and breakdown. They are not very heroic places to be.
One of the leading causes of Hero Syndrome is not knowing what is and is not important to you. You cannot do everything and shouldn’t want to, so there is a need to prioritise what to do today based on what is important to you.
Leaving work commitments aside for a moment, what is important to you? Perhaps your answer would be your family and friends. It might also include your health (and fitness), or it could be a hobby or a sports team you are involved in. The question, then, would be, what are you doing about these areas of your life? How much time each week are you spending on these “important” areas of your life?
Sadly, the latest statistics suggest that spouses in a relationship for over twenty years spend less than two hours a week in real conversation. That indicates that people are not being entirely truthful when they say their family is the most important area of their lives. If all they can find, out of the 168 hours they get each week, is two hours for their so-called “life partner, “ something is wrong.
A two-minute test.
If you want to know what is important to you, look through your calendar and see where you spend most of your time. Working 60+ hours in the office might seem heroic to your boss, but what does that do for your relationships outside of work?
What are your rules?
If you want to be more in balance with yourself and your commitments, setting a few rules is essential. For example, it might be heroic to have eight or nine back-to-back meetings in one day, but how will you feel at the end of the day? How much conversational energy will you have left for your partner and kids? Perhaps limiting the number of meetings you will allow each day would be better. For instance, my limit is four. I find that is about my mental maximum.
I am often under pressure from clients and partners to squeeze in an additional “urgent” meeting, but if I do that, two things will happen. I will not be able to give my best in the meeting, leaving me drained and exhausted at the end of the day, so I let other areas slip. I perhaps don’t close down the day properly or clear my actionable emails and messages, which leaves me with a backlog of work for tomorrow.
The problem is not you; it’s time.
I am sure you would love more time to complete your work, sit and talk with your partner over a nice glass of wine or head out to the park with your kids in the evening. The trouble is time is never going to work for you. It’s stubbornly fixed, and you only get twenty-four hours each day. In that time, you need to sleep, eat, work and spend time with your family and interests. It’s not enough time if you have overloaded yourself with low-value tasks and business meetings.
To overcome this, you can start by identifying what is important to you. Establish what I like to call your “Areas of Focus”. These are the eight areas we all share but define differently. These eight areas are:
Family and relationships.
Health and fitness.
Finances.
Career/business.
Lifestyle and life experiences.
Personal development (education).
Spirituality.
Life’s purpose.
Defining each of these categories means writing a sentence or two about what they mean to you and the habits and behaviours you would like to follow. It then involves you pulling out a few activities each day, week or month that will keep you in balance with them.
To help you with this, I have put together an Areas of Focus workbook, which you can download for free here.
When activities from these eight areas dominate your daily activities, you will find yourself more in tune with your life. You will feel fulfilled and balanced at the end of the day and a lot less stressed because what you spend your time on each day matters most to you.
Your work is just one part of your life. It’s not your whole life. But if you did the experiment above and noticed that most of your time each week is spent on work-related tasks, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your priorities. Your work should consume no more than fifty hours a week. If you take work home with you and neglect other important areas of your life, things will eventually break. Don’t let that happen to you. Don’t be a hero.
Thank you for reading my stories! 😊
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