“Honey, it’s time for dinner”, announced my wife

“What?  I can’t possibly stop, I have too much work to do”, I responded in my mind.

I was working in my home-based office busy trying to successfully launch our first business.  Decades ago in a little rented house on the outskirts of town I deeply felt the pressure of launching a business to generate enough income to sustain our young family.  Not only did I have lots of work that could be done, I had lots of work that needed to be done.  The future of our family depended on me being successful with this business.

Or did it?

The future of our family depended upon how I would respond to this scenario.

After my initial thoughts raced through my head declaring my need to keep working, I had two more thoughts that significantly impacted the trajectory of my business and my family:

“There will always be more work to do”, and, “I must learn to simply stop.”

Have you ever met a leader or entrepreneur who got to the point of not having anything more to do?

As a leader, have you ever arrived at that nirvana-like state of having nothing more to do?

Of course not.

The nature of leadership requires us to continue to move forward, to press onto greater things.  There is always more work that needs to be done.  That is why we need to learn to simply stop.

So, what did I do at this pivotal point in our early corporate and family development?  Thankfully I stopped for dinner. After dinner I played with the kids, bathed them, put them to bed, chatted with my wife, and then went back to my office and got a little more work done.

If we do not learn to simply stop we will end up sacrificing all that we hold dear on the altar of work.  Work and responsibility can be harsh taskmasters.  Leaders who do not learn to simply stop can often sacrifice marriages, family, personal health and relationships in the name of responsibility, work, busyness, promotion, and money – i.e. “success”.

Leaders oftentimes realize too late they have sacrificed that which was truly valuable for those things that seemed so important at the time, but in retrospect were cheap imitations of true success.

A successful bookkeeper shared a story with me of a humorous moment she had during tax season.  She had been working extremely hard to get all the year ends done for her clients.  She needed to file their financials before the CRA deadline.  She was working many late nights from her home office.  She was not recognizing how drained she was becoming until she did something ridiculous and completely out of character…

She opened up the fridge to look for her hat.  As she was searching the shelves of the fridge she called out to her husband to ask if he knew where her hat was.

I have no doubt it was with some degree of input from her husband she realized she needed to simply stop.

We all understand there are times when we have deadlines to meet and sacrifices have to be made.  However, it’s when that attitude and modus operandi becomes commonplace that we need to make some changes and earn to simply stop.

Do you really want to trade your marriage, family, personal heath and relationships for “success”?  Of course you don’t.   Deep down we recognize these things are key elements of real success, but we must remind ourselves of this on a daily basis.

There will always be more work to be done.  There will always be demands to keep you busy.  We will never arrive at a place where we have no more work.  Wise leaders learn how to simply stop.  This is a critical component of creating a good work/life balance.

Don’t make “busyness” your objective; make “significant contribution” your objective.  Endeavor to be a significant contributor in your work and leadership.

When someone asks you, “Are you busy?”, why not reply with, “That’s not my objective.  I am endeavoring to make a significant contribution through my work and leadership.”

“And, I am learning to simply stop.”