Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less

by Tiffany Dufu

if you want something you’ve never had before, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done before in order to get it.

Our Lone Ranger syndrome causes us to focus more on our output and less on cultivating the relationships that are just as critical to our career advancement. We go it alone, expecting to be recognized based on our own merits, without asking the right stakeholders to advocate for us.

In all fairness to women, when we have a lot on our plates, delegating tasks just feels like more work. So we soldier through. But this impulse mutates into a dangerous habit, one that holds us back and keeps us down in other areas of our lives, especially at work.

the root cause of burnout is not that we have too much to do, it’s the feeling that the things we do aren’t meaningful or don’t reflect who we really are.1

All women have a list of responsibilities they feel they need to fulfill—and too often, our sense of identity is wrapped up in doing them ourselves.