Winning Without Losing: Find your Oxygen Mask
Winning Without Losing, the CMI award-winning book as “the best book for New Managers,” explains 66 strategies on how to be successful in business, without neglecting your personal life. Martin Bjergegaard and Jordan Milne interviewed a variety of successful entrepreneurs, and through their search they found that the key to a happy and successful life, is a healthy work life balance.
Every Saturday for 7 weeks, we will be sharing unique strategies that aim to inspire how you can achieve success without sacrifice.
This week, the selected strategy is chosen from Winning Without Losing‘s ‘A New Mindset’ section.
#11 Find your oxygen mask
‘Today we will be cruising at an altitude of 32,000 feet. Please make sure your luggage is stored safely in the overhead bins.’ While sitting in the middle seat, jockeying subtly for the much-coveted elbow room on an Air Canada flight from London to Toronto, I heard the flight attendant begin to run through the usual safety routine:
‘In the case of an emergency the oxygen masks will drop from the overhead compartment in front of you. If travelling with a child, please make sure to secure your own mask before assisting them and others.’
These were words I had heard many times before, but today, for some unknown reason, they sounded different. Today they had new meaning.
The instruction is simple enough. Yet in a panicked situation you can bet that many smart, well-intentioned people would neglect it. When instincts kick in they would help their child first. In the heat of the moment many would forget to help themselves and thus put the child at risk.
It’s easy to understand why airlines emphasize putting on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. It is natural for a parent to want to protect their child, but if you don’t help yourself first, you wont be able to help anyone else in the future.
The instruction and the lesson it implies are clear, and they ring just as true in business, and in life in general, as in the confines of a 747. Just as you are better prepared to help your child if you are wearing your oxygen mask and not gasping for air, so too are you more capable of helping your business and those around you if you have taken care of yourself first.
Too many entrepreneurs burn the candle at both ends, work relentlessly and as a consequence neglect themselves. They let self-care slip and fall by the wayside, tumbling down the priority list until it is ultimately booted off altogether.
How many times have you skipped breakfast so you can keep up with your inbox, foregone basketball with your friends to finish up at the office or missed out on seeing your kid in a play because your meeting went late?
Common wisdom tells us that we must push our limits and work non-stop in order to get ahead. This attitude implies that we can work at full efficiency for an unlimited amount of time. We can’t. Henry Ford knew this in 1914 when he made an announcement that sent shock waves through the business community: he called for a reduced work week in his industry.
Today, even in longstanding professions like medicine, people are finally starting to question assumptions as arguments are made to limit the work hours of junior doctors. The airline industry is following suit. In 2010, the European Union stated its intent to limit the number of hours that pilots are allowed to work daily, based on the finding that fatigue causes up to a fifth of all fatal air crashes worldwide.
Experiencing fatigue at work may seem normal for many, but if other people’s lives depend on your work, you best be sure that you are taking care of yourself so you can take the best care of others.
We all know that taking care of ourselves is important, but taking care of ourselves first is the real key. This strategy is not selfish. Doing so simply enables us to function at peak efficiency when building our business, our lives and our ability to serve others.
If we fail to put on our own oxygen mask first, we are incapable of focusing on the task at hand, are preoccupied in meetings and, when pushed, are irritable to customers, colleagues, friends and family. Even something as simple as finding a matching sock can seem like an insurmountable task. Not only does neglecting ourselves make our own lives unpleasant, it is also detrimental for our business and ultimately for those around us.
With your own ‘oxygen mask’ on, you are definitely better equipped to deal with intangibles such as creativity and split-second decision-making.
We know it is dangerous to make decisions when we are not at our best. Even so, we often go in to work tired or hungry and think we can tackle big challenges. In many circles, pushing on in this self-sacrificing manner is seen as admirable. In reality, however, work done in this state is highly ineffective, even dangerous. So why accept it? Next time you are strung out and faced with an important decision, try taking an attitude of: ‘This is a really important decision, so I’m going for a nap and then I’ll make it.’ Or when faced with overload when you are not at your best, take 30 minutes for a walk around the block. People may consider you crazy, but they will change their minds when they see that you end up making better decisions and delivering results.
So what is your oxygen mask? What must you do to stay feeling good and working efficiently?
What is your Oxygen Mask? Examples could be exercise, naps, cooking, or spending time with your family. Whatever you feel is your Oxygen Mask, make sure to use it on yourself before you try to help others.
Maybe it’s something relatively conventional like exercise or a nap. During the Second World War, Winston Churchill would nap for about an hour in the early afternoon. As he wrote in The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his memoirs, ‘Nature had not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without the refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts 20 minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.’
Your oxygen mask may be something totally unique to you.
Many successful entrepreneurs have discovered their own individual oxygen masks – that particular thing that nourishes their body and spirit and sets them up to move on to the next task. It could be something that focuses and calms, or alternatively that excites and gets their adrenalin pumping. It could even be taking two baths a day, like the aforementioned Jake Nickell of Threadless.com.
Find your oxygen mask. And put it on first. Do this every day. And then go out and conquer the world.
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