You Don't Finish the Work, You Finish the Day.

Your work is finished here. Does that really ever happen anymore?

You’re in retail leadership, is your work ever done? No. There will always be something more to do, another task to take on, another call to make, an additional location to visit. Whatever it is, it can be overwhelming to think that you’re not done. If you feel that way…you are not alone. Welcome to retail leadership. Not being ‘finished’ is not a failure. We all have that challenge. There are ways to reframe and overcome the feelings that can come with knowing there is always more to do.

We don’t live in a ‘done’ world. No leadership jobs really have a ‘finished’ point for all the work. There needs to be a mind shift away from thinking, “I am done,” to more of, “this is what I have accomplished.” When we reach a point in each day when we can say, “I am complete with this day, and here is what I have accomplished.” Without that, we will (and probably do, or try) to work long into the evening forsaking other activities we could or should be doing for ourselves or with friends and family.

Stop trying to finish what cannot ever be finished. That will only lead to a continued feeling of overwhelm. Our retail world is always going; there will always be something more to do. Measure what you've done, not what you missed.

Are there steps to take to manage the overwhelming feeling of not being done?

There are steps you can take to work through these feelings and recognize the great work you are completing. Here are some ideas to try to help you see more of what you have accomplished, and worry less about what is still to come.

Be Realistic

This goes with almost anything related to goal setting, project management, or activity tracking. You need to be realistic with what can actually be accomplished. Most of us assume we can do more than realistically possible, especially within shorter time frames. Keep your list of daily activities to a reasonable level, walk through the likely scenarios, and determine whether your list is doable.

Track Your Lists

There are many ways you can track your work, all aspects of it. Managing a to-do list may seem simple, but this is a case where the more you manage it, the better you will become in knowing what realistic looks like. Regardless of what tool you use, you’ll want to have three components to it.

What needs to be done This is your list of things to do. This allows you to see it all in one place, begin to prioritize, and sort the activities you need to accomplish.

In progress Keep a list of what you are currently working on. You can break this out in different ways. You may want your “in progress” list to be for this week and then you can break that down to a daily list to ensure you can finish each day, rather than the full project or all the work.

Done Going back to the mind shift I mentioned above, keep track of what you have accomplished. I still struggle with this at times. I forget to review the things I have done consciously. Even though I cross stuff off throughout the week, I leave out the step of going back and celebrating the amount of work that was completed.

Many task trackers will allow you to do all three of these steps above. Kanban style boards are popular for the simplicity and visibility of being able to manage these three steps. You have one board (or column) to track your inbox or backlog of items to accomplish. A second board or column shows items in progress. And, a third for items done. The beauty with most of these is the ease in which you can move/drag from one column to the next. It progresses from left to right. It visually shows you the progress of the work you’re doing, and you can easily see what you have completed.

Trello is a free application and online tool that is great for Kanban style tracking.

Track your time

I have written before on how time tracking can be beneficial to seeing how your work is progressing, as well as understanding where you are spending your time. This is another great tool to see what you have accomplished. It can also help with staying realistic with your timing. As you build your time log, similar future projects now have a reference point for how long it might take. This is great for planning, and being confident in the time commitments you’ll need to make.

You can also celebrate the time you’re putting into longer projects and goals, along the way. Big projects or longer goals can feel as if they are static if you do not have a way of seeing the progress you’re making. Tracking the effort going into those items allows you to see when you’ve achieved a time milestone, or the actual checkpoints along the way.

Avoid perfectionism

This may be the most challenging element of these mentioned. Perfectionism can hold back many things from being marked as complete. It can feel as if there is just a little more to be done; thus it is incomplete. Fighting the urge to be perfect every time is a must for avoiding the feeling of overwhelm. Before you begin a project or activity, establish what done is. Start with being realistic. (Sound familiar?) Understand that good enough, is sometimes, indeed, good enough.

We all want to feel a sense of accomplishment when we complete our work. The problem is, we define our work so broadly that it often cannot actually be completed. Instead, if we reframe our mindset to be that I can finish each day, and not the work, we can celebrate what we did accomplish for the day, and begin anew the next day. We must begin to see what we have finished as the real achievement, not all the other things that still need to come next. This will help to fight off the feelings of overwhelm and allows us to feel good about what we are achieving and the difference it is making.

How will you shift your mindset to finish the day, and not the work?

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