Your Constant Availability is Bad For Everyone
Jan 10, 2024Constant availability not only kills your priorities and wears you down, but also sets you up to inevitably disappoint your key relationships.
Let's dive into why this is bad for everyone, and more importantly, what you can do about it.
Why Constant Availability is Bad for You
Constant availability kills your priorities
Constant availability to others at its core is simply multitasking: you’re trying to work on your priorities and someone else’s priorities at the same time. The research is clear: multitasking (and the corresponding task switching) is terrible for your focus. The average person loses 25% (TWENTY. FIVE. PERCENT… 😬) of their available time to multitasking and task switching.
This means you’re much less likely to accomplish your priorities. If you’re like other Time Boss cohort alumni, you have a contribution you care about and priorities you want to make happen. This takes significant focus and significant time. Constant availability is killing both your ability to focus, and the amount of time you can give to your priorities.
Constant availability wears you down
In addition to the functional loss of focus and time from task-switching, constant availability is wearing you down. Every time you switch tasks, you incur a slight bit of cognitive load switching from one context to another, and this cognitive load costs you calories.
If you think of your brain like a finite battery that only recharges with good sleep, you only have so much brain power you can give daily.
Your constant availability is draining your brain power, and wearing you down. The more worn down you get, the less cognitive focus you have to give to your priorities, the less emotional energy you have to give to others.
Which leads us to why your constant availability is bad for your key relationships.
Why Constant Availability is Bad for Your Key Relationships
For the key relationships you're always available to, this approach is unsustainable and will eventually lead to problems.
Constant availability breeds unfair resentment
Each time you’re interrupted and prevented from moving your priorities forward you are likely annoyed or even angered. How do I know? You wouldn’t still be reading this article if constant availability wasn’t a problem.
Why is this an issue? If your key relationships are simply relating to you the way you’ve allowed them to it’s unfair for you to resent them for something you haven’t communicated is an issue. Eventually your resentment is going to boil over and you’ll react sharply, and that’s going to lead to broken expectations.
Constant availability leads to broken expectations
By being constantly accessible you’ve unknowingly trained your key relationships to depend on you for accomplishing their priorities in a specific way.
You are their path of least resistance. Of course they are going to reach out when they need something.
The problem is that a day will come when you've had enough and react sharply, establishing strong boundaries or expressing frustration. This sudden change can leave them scrambling to get their need met, frustrated by the lack of prior indication that this was an issue.
Why You Think You Need to Be Constantly Available, and Why You’re Wrong
So, how did you end up here? I bet you have three fundamental beliefs about availability:
1. You think your key relationships want their needs met NOW
2. You think your key relationships believe their priorities are MORE URGENT AND IMPORTANT than yours
3. You think you will get a NEGATIVE RESULT from making your key relationships wait
Your constant availability is a logical response to these beliefs.
The problem is you’re wrong.
What Your Key Relationships Actually Want: Empathy and Confidence
Spoiler: It’s not Constant Availability.
Let’s return to your fundamental beliefs and talk about what’s actually happening.
1. You think your key relationships want their needs met NOW
What Your Key Relationships Actually Want :: Your key relationships want CONFIDENCE that their needs will be met IN A REASONABLE TIMEFRAME.
Most reasonable people realize you’re not sitting around waiting for them to call/text/Slack/yell their needs at you. They simply want confidence that when they reach out you’ll meet their need in a reasonable timeframe that allows them to be successful.
2. You think others believe their priorities are MORE URGENT AND IMPORTANT than yours
What Your Key Relationships Actually Want :: Your key relationships actually want EMPATHY that their priorities are ALSO IMPORTANT, and if it is urgent it is treated accordingly.
Most reasonable people realize you have priorities as well, that are important to you and require your time and attention. They simply want to feel empathy from you that their priorities are also important, may possibly even be urgent, and you will work with them on their request accordingly.
3. You think you will get a NEGATIVE RESULT from making them wait.
What Your Key Relationships Actually Want :: If you give your key relationships empathy that you understand their priorities are important and confidence that their need will be met in reasonable timeframe, they will wait with no negative result.
In fact, their request to you is likely one of 20 things they are working on at the moment. They’ll be off and running on the 19 other things while you’re working on their request.
Here’s What To Do Instead :: Retrain Your Key Relationships
The answer to stop being constantly available is not stiff-arming your key relationships with hard boundaries.
The answer is to retrain them how to work with you, in a way that is GOOD for everybody. Let’s consider how to do so realtime when you’re interrupted by a key relationship, as well as how to be proactive with this to limit the interruptions in the first place.
How to Retrain Your Key Relationships WHEN they Interrupt You
If you’ve been constantly available up until the moment where you’re reading this article, it’s likely that someone is going to interrupt you here shortly, maybe even while you’re reading this.
Let's assume a key relationship texts you something like this:
“Hey, can you shoot me the monthly report?”
You know this report is going to take you an hour or so, and you’ll have time later this afternoon to do so (If you’re a Time Boss, you’ll save it for your daily Whirlwind).
What should you do?
Remember: EMPATHY and CONFIDENCE
Here’s a simple response:
“I’m tied up on another priority at the moment, but I know that item is important for you (EMPATHY) and can get it to you as soon as I free up, no later than 3pm today (CONFIDENCE)”
Sounds easy, right? It is. This person feels heard that their need is important and has no idea what priority you’re working on, but assumes it’s important if you say so. Most reasonable people will simply accept this reply and check back in at 3pm if they haven’t heard from you.
Side note: if this is literally your boss reaching out, who knows all the things you’re working on, this is a simple messaging change:
“I’m tied up on the other project we prioritized, but I know that item is important for you (EMPATHY) and can get it to you as soon as I free up, no later than 3pm today (CONFIDENCE). If you’d prefer to have that sooner, I can push back the other project.”
What did you just do? You gave your boss context on how their request impacts your priorities. Instead of simply piling on more work in the same amount of time, you’re empowering your boss to determine what’s most important for you given your finite time. If I’m your boss, I’d be thrilled to receive this message, and it would increase my confidence in your ability to make priorities happen (aka a Time Boss).
How to Retrain Your Key Relationships BEFORE they Interrupt You
If you’ve been constantly available for a significant period of time, you likely have many key relationships that subconsciously expect you to respond immediately, and are planning their priorities accordingly.
Now, you can easily continue to respond realtime like the example above, but if you’re looking for true focus to make massive progress on your priorities, you actually want to redirect these interruptions to not happen in the first place.
Sounds impossible? Wow, you might love this then.
Send this to any key relationship you need to retrain:
Hi [Recipient],
I wanted to give you the heads up that I might be away from my email working on a few projects, however I wanted to be sure I was getting back to you on any important item in a reasonable amount of time.
If you have an urgent need, could you please call my office line at 555-555-5555 and I can support you, otherwise I will get back to any email/message by end of the business day.
Thanks!
[Your Name]
Hopefully by now you see the empathy and confidence a message like this creates.
What does this get you? You are retraining your key relationships that there are two classes of needs (Standard and Urgent), and you have a plan to deal with both.
Up until now, you treated everything as Urgent and dropped your priorities accordingly. From now on if you’re phone is not ringing there is no urgent need.
Bonus: this also means you can safely turn off notifications from email/Slack/text/etc because you are no longer being expected to respond realtime, giving you even more focus to make massive progress on your priorities.
Not only would I respect an email like this if I received it from you, I would FEEL respected that you are ensuring my urgent needs can get met.
If I’m your boss, the meta message here is even better: you are trying to make our shared priorities happen, and creating systems to ensure that’s the case, while still being responsive to other needs. That’s Time Boss material right there.
Experiment with Retraining Key Relationships and See What Happens
Your constant availability is bad for everyone: you and your key relationships. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Experiment with the simple steps mentioned above and observe the changes. Not only will you likely be surprised by the positive response from your key relationships, but you'll also notice a significant improvement in your ability to make progress on your priorities and your overall work experience.
Do you agree? Disagree? Are there scenarios where this approach seems unfeasible, and you're unsure how to proceed? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below or message me on LinkedIn. I'm here to help you achieve that crucial win in managing your time effectively.
If you’re ready to take a next step to lock in your time habits take a look at a 6-Week Time Boss Coaching Cohort or self-paced Peaceful Progress digital course.
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