Rachel (not her real name) was buried. As an Engineering Director approaching her first year at a new company, she couldn’t keep her head above water. When I began coaching her, she shared that her boss had repeatedly encouraged her to uplevel her leadership and focus on more strategic work and cross-functional relationship-building. Her team, however, was struggling and needed more direction and support. Spending time in one area seemingly meant neglecting another. When really overwhelmed, she found herself nearly paralyzed about what to do.

Rachel is not alone. In working with hundreds of leaders at Intuit, Pinterest, and Google, I’ve found that one of the most consistent challenges they face is that they don’t feel like they have enough time to do everything that is asked of them. This sense of time poverty has only been exacerbated over the past few years as the pandemic and a myriad of social, political, and economic challenges have stretched our time and attention to the brink.

The feeling of not having enough time has real consequences for leaders. When we feel pressed for time, we become overly focused on what is most urgent, a phenomenon Scarcity authors Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan refer to as “tunneling.”

Unfortunately, what is urgent is often not important, and tunneling leads us to sacrifice or ignore bigger long-term priorities for the fire drill of the moment. For Rachel, the pressure to address immediate needs like responding to emails, preparing for meetings, and fixing a client issue led her to deprioritize critical longer-term priorities like setting a vision, restructuring her team, and building stronger relationships with key stakeholders.

When leaders feel strapped for time, they’re also more likely to multitask. While tunneling contracts our focus, multitasking dilutes it. In an effort to get more done in the same amount of time, leaders spread their focus across multiple domains simultaneously, often affecting their attention, productivity, and creativity. I can personally (and regrettably) relate to this. I’ve observed that the busier I feel, the more likely I am to multitask during meetings. Inevitably whenever I do this, particularly on complex or creative tasks, I am less effective.

Finally, a sense of time poverty affects our well-being. Research by Laura M. Giurge and Ashley V. Whillans has found that the subjective feeling of time poverty had a stronger negative effect on well-being than being unemployed. While this sounds extreme, if you’ve ever gone through a long period of feeling constantly rushed or behind in your responsibilities, you can see how this is possible.

Fortunately, there are a few strategies to ensure a sense of time poverty doesn’t negatively impact your long-term thinking, attention, and well-being. Instead of sharing time management techniques, which abound, I’m going to discuss some ideas to help you think differently about time so that you can lead effectively even in the midst of a busy schedule.

TIME TRAVEL

If time poverty leads us to tunnel and overfocus on the near term, one way to gain perspective and make better long-term decisions is to connect with your future self. Studies show that when we feel deeply connected to the future person we want to be, we’re more likely to make decisions in accordance with that person.

As a leader, you can do this by imagining it’s years down the road and former colleagues are describing you as a leader.

• What are they saying?
• What did you do?
• How did you make them feel?
• What impact did you have?

The more vividly and specifically you can describe this, the better. Write the answers to these questions somewhere you can regularly see them. The ability to actively reconnect with your long term priorities in the midst of short term pressures can help you stay grounded and aligned with what is most important.

GIVE TIME

The sense of being rushed often causes us to neglect or underinvest in longer-term priorities. In this state, many leaders, like Rachel, deprioritize relationship-focused activities such as coaching and developing their team and proactively building connections with stakeholders and peers. However, research suggests that spending time on others actually increases our sense of time affluence.

If you’re a leader who tends to become very task-focused when you feel short of time, consider pushing back on this instinct and maintaining your service and support of others. Not only will you be doing the kind of relationship-focused work that is often a hallmark of great leadership, but you may actually feel less rushed in the process.

PAUSE TIME

One of the reasons time poverty can be so damaging is because it puts us in an automatic, reactionary way of working that can be exhausting and make it difficult to lead with intention. Over 40% of what we do each day is habitual or unconscious. If we don’t take breaks throughout the day to pause, even briefly, and recenter ourselves, we risk becoming a victim of the moment and degrading our well-being.

Look at your calendar and take note of any small (10- to 15-minute) breaks you have during the day. Use this time to deliberately recover and re-align to your goals. Consider connecting with colleagues, meditating, taking a walk, or listening to music. Research has found that even a brief break, when used intentionally, can increase well-being and attention.

If a 15-min break feels unrealistic, take note of the “in-between” time you have each day like the time between meetings or the walk to get lunch. In these moments, take three slow, deep breaths, following your breath in and out. Feel your feet on the ground. When you’re done, ask yourself one question: “What is my intention at this moment?”

Great leadership requires thoughtfully balancing your time and energy. Hopefully one or more of these ideas can help maintain your long term perspective, attention, and well-being even in the midst of a busy schedule and important competing priorities.