November 8, 2022
Pruning
Extension professionals often embrace and/or are entrapped by something that our retired colleague Stacy Warner referred to as our culture of busy-ness.
Our proclivity to not say 'no' to opportunities -- and the notion that human development work is never done -- leads us to believe that we must work not only during office hours, but also evenings and weekends to do our job. We end up doing too much and hardly any of it well.
In his concurrent session, “How to Thrive in Times of Change,” at the 2022 K-State Research and Extension Annual Conference, keynote speaker Jones Loflin used an analogy of an apple tree to illustrate this problem. If an apple tree is too busy feeding nutrients to its branches and leaves, what happens to its apple productivity? It decreases. How do you fix that? You prune some of those 'extra' branches and leaves.
How can you tell if you are entrapped by busy-ness?
Do you ever feel that you are getting a lot of things done but nothing is done very well?
Have you ever caught yourself in a state of 'stress-laxing?' Stress-laxing describes when you become more stressed when relaxing because you aren’t doing the work that is stressing you.
Are you so distracted by your busy-ness that you forget to do important personal tasks?
If you answered yes to any or all of these, perhaps it's time to start pruning your work-life tree.
How do you prune your work-life tree? First, be honest with yourself that you have a busy-ness problem. Review your Program Development Committee’s or your unit’s needs analysis. Talk to your supervisor(s), mentors and colleagues about the situation, and work with them to prioritize your upcoming tasks by both impactful importance and relative immediacy.
For those tasks that rank low in both categories, consider dropping them from your to do list. For those tasks that remain, ask yourself whether a colleague or trusted volunteer is better situated (note, better situated, instead of more capable) to do some of the tasks. Empower them to do that work.
Our goal is to provide impactful, high quality, research-based education programs that enable the people of Kansas to make decisions that improve their lives, livelihoods and communities. Trying to do too much often reduces the impact and quality of our programs and our professional and personal wellbeing.
When that happens, don’t be afraid to prune your work-life tree.