Strategic Discipline Blog

CANCER CURED – Chapter III - 2011 Workaholic – Karoshi

My journey through Acute Myeloid Leukemia continues with Chapter III from CANCER CURED - Why Did I Get Cancer?

(Previous segments from CANCER CURED are available here: CANCER CURED – What do You Feed?, CANCER CURED - Fear Not - TURNING POINT, CANCER CURED - CHAPTER II - LIFE INSURANCE, CANCER CURED - Texting – A New Environment, Refractory Period - Monosomy 7 – Doug Loves a Challenge, CANCER CURED – CHAPTER III - Why did I get Cancer?, CANCER CURED – CHAPTER III - Spontaneous Remission, CANCER CURED – CHAPTER III - The Darkside – Guilt, Shame & Blame)

This is the fourth section of Chapter III

In 2004 I read The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr, and Tony Schwartz. The book looked at burned-out professionals and compared them to the athletes Schwartz and Loehr had helped succeed.  Their study found business professionals' work far exceeds the demands athletes face. Professionals fail to rest and use their energy efficiently.   As valuable as I found the book, I couldn’t translate their methodology into a comparable model for myself.

One trap I continually fell into was the feeling if I wasn’t doing a work-related task, I was not being worthwhile to my customers.  When I started working as an E-Myth Coach after each meeting I would write notes for my customers, summarizing our discussions, accomplishments, and outlining what was expected for the next meeting.  This was very time-consuming. It was a way to add value and increase the perception of the work we were doing together.  It was also an attempt to increase my self-worth.  My goal was to earn $250K a year.  In 2011 I nearly reached that level of revenue falling just short of hitting $240K. My days would start at 6 AM packing 4 or more meetings a day, rarely finishing before 6 PM.  If there was a way to squeeze another meeting in, I would somehow crunch it in.

In 2011 I had 39 customers, between E-Myth customers, and my Scaling Up coaching. While many of the E-Myth Meetings were just an hour, it was trading time for dollars, not a very efficient model since I always put in time making notes too.   

Switching to working with mid-sized business owners in my new business model from Scaling Up from the E-Myth, I still believed I had to supply the same amount of effort, detail, and communication I’d been providing for my small business customers.  I had been doing far more than required by providing notes to my E-Myth customers. No other E-Myth coach supplied their customers with notes after each meeting. I was committed to providing each customer with as much value as I possibly could. Often, I would invest 30-45 minutes after each meeting typing up my notes to be sure they had no excuses for not being well acquainted with the materials to be sure they would do the next exercise.  I was taking too much accountability for their performance.

In a blog post in 2013 Time Management: Use It or Lose It, sharing the ideas about karoshi, my cognition of how much effort and time I was putting into work didn’t register with me until after I had cancer.

PRINCIPLE 2: Energy Capacity Diminishes Both with Overuse And Underuse.  We Must Balance Energy Expenditure with Intermittent Energy Renewal, is shared in the article, along with this powerful idea:

Emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually we need to expand our capacity and recover.  This principle is called Oscillation.  Energy is the capacity to do work.  Oscillation is the fundamental pulse of life.

Unfortunately working at a feverish pace without breaks can be an addiction.

The Power of Full Engagement suggests learning to establish stopping points in our days inviolable times when we step off the track, ease processing information, and shift our attention from achievement to restoration. In Japan they have a term for death by overwork: karoshi. In fact, the Japanese government’s Ministry of Labor began to publish statistics on karoshi in 1987.  Here’s some frightening statistics.  The number of Japanese workers who put in more than 3120 hours a year (an average of over 60 hours a week) increased from three million (15% of workforce) to seven million (24%) from 1975 to 1988.  No comparable research exists in the United States, yet America is the only country in the world in which employees work more hours per week than the Japanese. 

Can taking breaks to recover help you perform better?  One example in the book (William D.) began taking a break every 90 to 120 minutes. He would eat something, drink some water, and take a brief walk.  On this change alone within two weeks he estimated a 30% increase in his energy each afternoon.

In 2011 I had yet to apply these principles to my life, consequently, cancer may have developed.

While the doctors and nurses were probing, testing, and determining the treatment for me, I was adjusting to the hospital routine.  With the help of Kevin Heckman's approval of my working in the hospital, I began to look ahead to developing a work routine and making sure the hospital’s regime would fit around or adjust to my working with my customers.

My assistant, Mary Barnes, reached out to my customers to schedule the week ahead. By the end of the very first week, I had scheduled appointments and made decisions to allow me to work productively from my room.

I remembered this quote “Worry is a sustained form of fear caused by indecision.”  It sparks decisiveness.  When you decide to do something about your worry, you immediately feel a spark of energy.  The energy funneled into your decision results in action! It frees you from constant worry. You are no longer controlled by fear. By taking decisive action you overcome it!

Call to Action

Challenge your team, your business, yourself.  Contact Positioning Systems to schedule a free exploratory meeting to challenge, inspire, and ignite purpose and passion in your business!   

Create an environment where everyone is inspired to give their best.

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

What happens when you work too hard? Often because you’re not allowing your body to restore itself, the body sends you a message – illness!  You can see it as something bad, or you can be healed by it.  Next blog, how a flood can be a healing.   

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG – CANCER CURED – CHAPTER III - A Flood Can Be a Healing