An efficiency-enhancing trick for your leadership toolbox

In the aftermath of the pandemic and now the gradual return to the workplace, people are working harder and longer hours. The sudden shift to remote work (and all the chaos and stress that ensued) was a sprint that became a marathon with the intensity of a sprint. Workdays lengthened by around 2.5 hours on average. Microsoft Teams data found meetings more than doubled, chats increased by 45% and email increased by 40B per month during the pandemic.

We sprinted in a crisis because we had to — but now we’ve all just kept going, without a water break or cheering section in sight. Between the endless Zoom meetings, overflowing email inboxes, and blurred lines of our work-life that have become nearly invisible, maintaining that sprint velocity and intensity has left workers completely burned out. We’re desperately missing the sanity-saving, performance-enhancing white space — periods of open, unscheduled time in the workday — that allows us to reflect, assess, focus, create and do our best work.

But why keep up this intensity if it isn’t serving us well? There are several factors at play, from the desire to preserve our jobs by doing more, to the ambiguity-induced anxiety that causes us to cling to email like a liferaft, to the workaholics among us who have doubled down on their addiction to deal with isolation and boredom.

However, the most pernicious driving factor is that all this busyness and urgency has been normalized. We’ve been in hyperdrive just long enough that we’re used to it — and that’s why it’s so dangerous. It’s going to take significant, purposeful disruption to break free and get back more of the thoughtful time in the workday that supports success for individuals and organizations.

So, what can you do as a leader to improve matters for both yourself and your fried workforce? A simple but highly effective technique for reducing drag in your organization is something I like to call “The Yellow List.” Here’s how it works:

Step 1 — Create your Yellow List

Create an easily accessible document (or several) on your phone or computer with the names of people you work with closely. (Think: employees, assistants, colleagues, etc.)

This will be a place where you collect all questions and matters in relation to these individuals that aren’t urgent. You might choose to keep one document per person or a master list separated by name.

Step 2 — Collect all non-urgent items

Have an idea, a question, an issue to address with someone on your team? First, take a wedge of white space to stop, reflect and ask yourself, “Is this urgent?”

Levels of urgency fall into one of these three categories:

• Not time sensitive — Yes, this exists! Some things simply aren’t urgent.
• Tactically time-sensitive — When speed to action is tied to a business result, going fast is legitimately warranted.
• Emotionally time-sensitive — When the compulsion to prioritize something streams from an emotional need like worry or curiosity. (Hint: not actually urgent.)

If the item is truly urgent, by all means, share it or take action. If it’s not, throw it on the list and save it for later! This will help tremendously to cut back on unnecessary emails and interruptions, both for yourself and your team members. You can even use the list as a place to collect your own ideas and allow them to simmer.

Step 3 — Share your Yellow List with others

When your list lengthens and the time feels right, schedule a few minutes to share it with each person during a quick download meeting or recurring one-on-one. You’ll be amazed at how much faster it is to address things verbally in one efficient meeting rather than over the course of multiple email threads and workday interruptions.

Once you and your team can learn to stop yourselves before sending an unnecessary email, chatting with a person, or dropping by someone’s office to ask a question, and instead just park it for a while, the Yellow List becomes absolutely transformative. It forces us to slow down. It makes us reconsider what’s necessary and what’s just a habit. That’s when you really start reducing both the quantity and speed of work that’s overwhelming your workforce.

By controlling our craving for immediacy and additive behavior, we can create a ripple effect that inspires our entire organization to shift from a culture of busyness and urgency to thoughtful, measured action.

Are your workdays full of meaningless tasks that take up the majority of your focus? Are you overwhelmed by a constantly full schedule? The answer to our collective busyness is to reclaim our days by freeing up time to think, process, and create. Juliet’s Busyness Test will help you take a closer look at your day-to-day activities and habits to help you learn how to uncover more of this crucial space for creativity and strategic thinking.

Juliet Funt is the author of A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work, coming August from Harper Business. She a renowned keynote speaker and tough-love advisor to the Fortune 500 who is regularly featured in top global media outlets, including Forbes and Fast Company. Funt is a warrior on a mission to decrapify work and as the founder and CEO of The Juliet Funt Group, helps business leaders and organizations to unleash their full potential by unburdening talent from busywork. She has earned one of the highest ratings in the largest leadership event in the world, and she has worked with brands such as Spotify, National Geographic, Anthem, Vans, Abbott, Costco, Pepsi, Nike, Wells Fargo, Sephora, Sysco, and ESPN.

Check out Juliet’s interview on the Leadership and Loyalty Podcast.