Ep#191 Deep Work - Your Highest Value Contribution

[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout Recovery Podcast where I teach professionals to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.

[00:00:22] Hello my friends, and today on the podcast let's talk about deep work. This is your highest value contribution, and I'd observe at opening burnout never comes from doing too much meaningful work. It comes from doing too much meaningless work. It's the product of a scattered mind, trying too hard to please: shallow, busywork, noise.

[00:00:51] Truth is you will recover from burnout by embracing deep work your highest value contribution, the work only you can do. The work they hired you for, that moves the needle. If you don't protect this, no one else will, as you have, of course by now discovered. Busywork saps your motivation. It grays you out.

[00:01:18] Your mojo cannot survive this onslaught of senseless and unstimulating trivia.

[00:01:26] Can it?

[00:01:29] Think Simon Sinek, Start With Why. Deep Work must connect to your purpose. Otherwise, everything just feels like stuff to do. In the book, Simon builds a sales message, a persuasive origin story, and I invite you to think about yours right now.

[00:01:47] What do you love to do? Who are you? If you follow Simon, you'll know already that Why underpins every story he tells, his decision making process and his work persona. When you remember your purpose, you plug back into your personal source, your truth.

[00:02:12] We live, of course, in a distracted world where multitasking is glorified, but that's really just rapid switching, which science shows us, makes us less effective and less fulfilled.

[00:02:29] Deep work means choosing focus over dispersion, choosing to be single-minded instead of fragmented. Choosing to deliver on big thinking instead of just rushing to meet deadlines. It needs creative space. -play time. Of course you won't want to do this. You'll be pushed back by doubt and fear. You could make excuses, but don't. You're suffering enough as it is.

[00:03:04] Retrain your mind to accept being quiet and orderly, working towards a complex goal until it's complete. Give your mind credit for its expansive solutions and coherence, and then let it off the leash to do what it does best. This is really about being an eagle, not a budgie.

[00:03:28] As a leader, your true value is in your applied intelligence, and tight focus is what allows you to deliver this work that actually matters. In burnout recovery, it's one of the best ways to unearth your passion and start feeling alive again. When you know why you're doing what you're doing and it matters, you will give it your full attention and create magical results.

[00:03:57] To choose this, of course, you need confidence in yourself and the willingness to back yourself. In burnout, running around as you probably are in circles with your hair on fire and also just jumping through hoops, you're much more likely to feel like an imposter. That needs to be fixed. For this, I recommend and I teach also the skills in Essentialism by Greg McEwen, how to ground yourself back in your essential, fundamental worth.

[00:04:30] For example, my client, Dan partner in a top accounting firm, move to work for a not-for-profit. Immediately floored when he got there. By the chaotic culture, he really couldn't believe how disorganized they were and he wondered how he was ever gonna make it work. Coming in a little bit heavy handed, he did lose a few key staff members, and then he was in an even worse mess.

[00:04:57] He started having panic attacks and he was laid off work for a little while to recover. Coming to me, fear infused his every thought. We sat down and we worked through the panic. We centred back on his extensive professional skills. He's a really bright and capable guy. He's just unused to the not-for-profit sector, even though he moved into it because he wanted a role that would make a difference.

[00:05:28] So here's what we did. We adjusted together his expectations of himself and his team while he got in and got used to it. And then he went back to work with a more collaborative mentoring approach, teaching staff to take ownership of new processes that they worked through together. And lo and behold, he started having fun.

[00:05:53] And very soon the monthly reports were ready on time, and his staff began running like a well oiled machine. This story I'm talking about was back in 2019 when his passion was just coming back and I looked him up today and he is still working there now, so that's worked out for him. So really, that's a little bit about why you might think about returning to your passion, returning to deep work, getting embedded in the real juicy goodness of your work experience and skill.

[00:06:27] So that's the why. Here's the what. Ask yourself, what is the work that only you can do? Gay Hendricks calls it the Zone of Genius, where your greatest strengths meet your passion to create the biggest impact. For a CEO, could be your growth strategy. For a doctor, it could be patient care. For you, perhaps it's, I don't know, creative problem solving or building inter-team trust, or left field innovation. Whatever it is in burnout, you've quite likely lost touch with your genius, and that'll help you see yourself now as weak, defective, hopeless. But that is an illusion. And when you create a return to your core values, that vision of yourself will change. It'll shift by itself.

[00:07:25] So let's look at that.

[00:07:28] I am thinking now about myself in my thirties as a software engineer. My mind was very sharp. Every new challenge was an adventure that bristled with opportunity to dazzle. Problem solving was a blast as my naive self-confidence conquered everything, and I was hugely successful at really rapid fire solutions leaving other people in my wake.

[00:07:56] But as I was promoted up the ladder, that became a problem. I was a tough leader, unwilling to release power, and I had to learn the hard way how to mentor a team. It took time for me to adapt to an effective style of leadership, and for many of my clients, this is their crunch moment too. Moving from solo technical brilliance, to being a multiplier of team success, it often doesn't come too easy.

[00:08:30] Here's the trap. Most professionals spend 60 to 80% of their work week doing something that somebody else could do. Emails, admin, endless meetings. Really, they're so used to taking sole responsibility that they simply don't know how to let go of the small stuff. This is why delegation and "stop doing" lists are so powerful, because they're clear space for your real deep genius.

[00:09:02] Your value doesn't come now from being busy. I would argue it never did. It comes from forging the contribution that only you can deliver.

[00:09:12] So what then is the discipline of deep work? How do we do it? 

[00:09:19] Cal Newport calls deep work, the long stretches of focused undistracted time spent on meaningful tasks. Greg McEwen says it's the discipline pursuit of less but better. I agree with both of those. Jim Collins argues for the hedgehog concept where the biggest success you can create comes from relentless focus on the one thing you are best at, passionate about, and that drives results. So the principle really is the same in all three.

[00:09:55] Deep work takes discipline, and this is about saying no, setting boundaries and military scheduling. All of those must become core skills, and here are a few practical ways that I often teach to encourage them.

[00:10:12] So firstly, block out a 90 minute focus session on your calendar, and when you see those there on your schedule, guard them like gold.

[00:10:22] Commit to any goal that you will achieve during each work hour. So commit to a goal rather than just nominating the activity you're going to do. Because what this does is it really spotlights any time that you are indulging yourself in research or procrastinating or chatting, and you can work on eliminating all those distractions. Helps you focus very tightly on the job in hand.

[00:10:51] Create a stop-doing list every week, not just a to-do list. Particularly limit who can assign your calendar appointments or send you emails or co-opt your time in some other way.

[00:11:07] Delegate or unsubscribe from anything that doesn't connect to your why directly.

[00:11:12] Have no "open door" policy, "appointments only". I'm talking about phone calls and messages and emails as well.

[00:11:19] So when you're thinking about these constraints, ask yourself every day, am I solving the biggest problems or just staying busy? Or another way to ask yourself this is: Am I doing the challenging task or just the easy, comfortable stuff? The quick stuff?

[00:11:38] Deep work is also about leadership. If you feel that your team are letting you down, another very common thing for people in burnout.

[00:11:46] Your highest value contribution here might not be finishing the project yourself. It might be mentoring your staff, your team, to multiply your impact. As a technician, you might never have been taught this really deeply rewarding skill, so learn it now. Try it now, practice it now, because here's the kicker, deep work isn't just productive, it's energizing. Shallow work drains you, feels empty. Deep work rewards you, feels fulfilling.

[00:12:23] So here's my challenge to you this week. Identify one piece of work that only you can do, your highest value contribution, and give it your full undistracted attention for 60 minutes per day for the week. Even if you're not currently being asked to do this thing, pick a task that can unequivocally add value and find an hour for it every day, because for sure you will be leaching an hour out of each day and not really achieving something. So tighten that up a little bit. Say no a little bit more, make a bit of space, and commit to one hour a day and see what happens by the end of the week.

[00:13:06] If you are reluctant to do this, imagine you've been brought in as a specialist consultant to do this one task and then ask yourself: If I only did this kind of work all week, would I feel proud and energized? Turn down the noise, say no to what doesn't matter. And be sure to do this right, if there's one thing I'm gonna say is do this, respect yourself completely.

[00:13:33] Sounds hard, uh?

[00:13:35] Deep work isn't just about productivity. It's really about reconnecting with your why and when you do, not only do you perform better, you feel more alive in your work and your leadership and by extension your whole life. So choose to say yes only to what directly contributes to your long-term vision.

[00:13:56] In time, if you do that, it'll become clear how you can direct your career to give more freedom to your why. For example, many physicians I've worked with have moved into this sweet spot. Appointment pressure charting misery and performance plans are not the only way. More entrepreneurial roles exist, and you can see or create them as my clients have.

[00:14:24] So, where do you want to make an impact? Spend your daily focus hour developing that. Deep work is both the cure for burnout and the path to extraordinary results.

[00:14:39] So that's what I have for you today. I hope this has resonated with you. If you found value in this episode, please share it with others who will benefit and rate or review the podcast.

[00:14:50] This is after all a No Fluff podcast. I never share pipe dreams. I only talk about strategies that work for me and for my clients. So tune in next week for a few more. I truly wish you a fulfilling and enjoyable work life. And if you want that, book a consult with me at dexrandall.com and let's make a plan together to move forward.