This will only take a minute

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Back when we were both working startup exec jobs, we had a house rule. Six months of hypervigilance.

The four words themselves weren't as powerful as the several concepts they shorthanded. The first being that yes, sometimes you'll need to go fully into the tank. You might keep ridiculous hours, or respond to emails with a newborn asleep on your chest. You may need to live the caricature version of startup life. It happens.

Within that six-month period, the other person's job is to say soothing and supportive things. To bring empathy and understanding because at some point, they will be in their own six months of hypervigilance. That's ok. We want to be the kind of house that supports ambition and makes space for the busyness of growth.

The rule is a shared commitment to grace. At least for a time. At the end of the six month period, the role shifts. The job is no longer empathy nor understanding. The job is extraction.

Crunch is not a lifestyle

You can't live in hypervigilance. Well, let's rephrase that. You can, it's possible. But it's unpleasant to be around someone who has stayed in that state for too long. Unpleasant to share a house with that person, sure. But also, and perhaps as importantly, really unpleasant to report to someone in that spot.

The problem for a lot of bosses is that we don't have anyone on the extraction team. Worse, our work militates against picking our heads up after long periods of intense work. The cycle looks like this. We're working hard. So hard that we fall behind on a set of tasks. Typically, they're not the most important things so they fall to the bottom of the list. But when we get to the end of a major push, we still have this to-do list full of stuff that haven't happened. So we jump directly into the digging out from the major push. And, spoiler alert, that digging out has the exact same cadence as the push that came before it.

That cadence is good for crunch-based execution. Grind it out. Do the damn thing. Get it across the finish line.

That cadence is terrible for thinking. And given that so many of us are getting paid to think clearly, for ourselves and our teams, this is a big problem.

Two minutes after the hour

Whenever bosses come into a zoom room with us, they hear the same thing. Grab a glass of water. If you haven't eaten anything today, go find a snack. We're gonna get started two minutes after the hour.

We design our programs like this because we know what our people are coming from. Hypervigilance. The wall of meetings scheduled on top of each other. The calendar gods say that one meeting ends at 10:00 and the next one starts at 10:00. And, if you're lucky and no one runs over time, that's how your day goes. The zero seconds between is almost enough to disconnect from one room and join another without needing to apologize for being late. Almost.

It's not that we couldn't use those two or three extra minutes. There's a lot to cover, and an hour goes by quickly. But some work can't happen from a rushed place. And whatever we might put into that time, the pause is more important.

Occasionally we'll talk with a leader, often an executive, who has the time to think. Who has figured out how to make that time a priority. But more often we talk with bosses who feel like they've been "digging out" for a very long time. And as fast as they can take work down, there's more. The problem isn't that it never ends — there are relatively few knowledge work jobs that ever actually, like, end. The problem is that they feel like they're behind. Like they're barely keeping up as it is, and the pile is growing.

This isn't great. On one level, you're a human being. Regardless of your title or role, you are worthy of work that doesn't wreck your health, or your happiness, or your ability to enjoy lunch away from your webcam. On another, if you're a manager, you're responsible for the work of a team of other human beings. If you don't have the time to be thoughtful about your own work, the odds are very high that your team doesn't either.

In the best case, you might be a caring, communicative leader who tries to give your team that mental space even when you don't have it yourself. But this best case is still not you at your best. It's you in the weeds. Reactive. Saying no, more often than you want to. Or saying yes to work you feel like you can't decline, and adding another evening to your own workload. And when your team members ask about their future in the org, you try to say something that sounds thoughtful and deliberate. Even though you can't remember the last time you could be thoughtful or deliberate about that stuff.

House rules

So. For a few months of hypervigilance, we've got you. If you need us to say soothing things, we can do that. If you need us to understand that sometimes it takes hard work to do hard things, we understand. For a few months, you can do all of this and we'll have your back. But how many months in are you? And when do we start to talk about rebalancing, or extraction?

Because you do need time to think. You need time to put down your tools and look around. You need time to sit in silence for a minute and think about whether you're doing work you're proud of. You need time to be creative, and consider other angles, and reflect. There's nothing magical about six months per se, it's just a reasonable safety brake. Because the longer you go without a chance to pick your head up and reorient, the more sort of... shrivelled, you become.

And here's the thing: the time that you need will not come after the work is done. If it's been more than six months, you are past the point where working a little bit more is going to clear your plate. The time you need isn't going to be handed to you, you're gonna have to take it. You're gonna have to take it even though you have other, important things to do.

The people who do this well use very physical, almost defensive language. They talk about carving it out. Protecting it. Committing to it. The details of the time itself vary a lot. For some people it's the gym three days a week, for others it's a week away every quarter. Some people want that time with their whole team, some definitely do not. We can't tell you what your time should look like, we can just tell you what you already know. Which is that you need it.

And yeah, the work still needs to happen. We're not pretending it doesn't. We're just saying the other thing needs to happen, too. So grab some water. If you haven't eaten today, go find some food. We'll get started in a few minutes.

- Melissa and Johnathan