"So you're focusing on hand hygiene for your quality improvement project?"
The two medical fellows nodded.
"And you've got your metrics defined already?" I asked.
They walked me through their very detailed project plan focused on the bone marrow transplant unit.
"And what have you considered for balancing measures?"
They stared at me blankly. Training mode activated.
"Ok, let's take it to an extreme just to make this fun," I told them. "Pretend my goal is to have 100% of people who enter the BMT unit practice proper hand hygiene. I'm totally committed to my goal, and there's nothing else in the world that I want. What would I do?"
"You could personally stand outside the unit and watch every single person," one fellow replied. "You'd have to hire a back-up for when you needed to use the restroom or eat or sleep. But if you stood there yourself, I bet you could make sure no one passed through the anteroom without being compliant."
"Perfect!" I responded. "And what might be the consequences of this, outside of perfect hand hygiene?"
"Well, your legs would get tired," one joked. "You'd be spending a lot of money on this project with your salary. I guess there'd be some opportunity cost because you wouldn't be doing whatever else you do as a manager." (Yes, I did other things.) "And maybe this would affect your engagement. It's probably pretty boring."
"Bingo," I responded. "Cost... Engagement... You've got the makings of some great balancing measures!"
As I sat down to write today, I felt like an imposter. After several posts discussing self-care, I let my own go down the drain for weeks.
One of the challenges I've faced developing my business is prioritization of tasks. Much of what I've been doing has come with a decent amount of time pressure. Moreover, because I've got a real soft spot for start-ups, I've taken on a fair amount of "risky" work, meaning I can't easily predict what the long-term impact will be of what I'm doing. As you can imagine, a lot of prioritization decisions have felt like a gamble, so I did what I thought a good risk manager would do: all the things (and very foolishly at once).
Then I got a video. My four-year-old nephew spoke into my dad's cell phone telling me that he loved me.
It occurred to me that it had easily been a month since I'd seen him. (In "toddler time," it seemed I'd missed about a decade because he'd somehow transformed into a miniature adult- and one who happens to look exactly like me.)
Even though I'd been triumphantly checking things off my professional to-do list, I realized I'd lost sight of my personal balancing measures.
The experience was startling enough that I decided to make some immediate adjustments. I started by asking for one extension that wouldn't impact any customers. I then asked another client if we could postpone a meeting by just a few days. Just like that, I found some slivers of time that allowed me to swing and make Play-Doh mustaches with my nephew, have lunch with my mom on her birthday, and sit on the porch with my dad on Father's Day.
So, for those of you who share my hustle, I invite you to pause with me for just a moment:
What might the oldest, wisest version of you say is actually urgent and important in your life today?
When you look at how you're defining success and utilizing your resources, is it yourself that you see?
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