You can't do everything
What will you double down on?
For the first three years and seven months of my tenure at MarkManson.net, the summary of my role on our internal messaging platform read: “A little bit of everything.”
This morning, I changed it to “Newsletter & Website,” clicked Save, and felt lighter than I’d been in months.
This small but significant edit was the culmination of weeks of coordinated efforts between me and our recently-hired Head of Operations to define the scope of my role and make sure I’m not doing anything beyond it.
After almost four years of saying “yes” to every request, of putting my hand up for projects and tasks that needed doing with no consideration of whether I should be the person doing it, it felt strange to do the reverse, to let my colleagues know all of the things I will no longer be doing.
But I feel so much better now that the transition is over. My motivation to do excellent work has never been higher. And I wish I’d realised years earlier that “a little bit of everything” should never be anyone’s job description.
“A little bit of everything”
When I joined our four-person team almost four years ago, I was a Content and Research Assistant. My job was, literally, to assist.
So that’s what I did. Each month that passed, I took on a little more—tasks that suited my strengths, new projects that didn’t fall under existing department heads’ scope. And I took this gradual but relentless expansion of my role as a good thing, even actively sought it. The more work I did and the more departments I was involved in, the more valuable I felt, the more integral I became, the more secure my position in the small team.
As far as I was concerned, I was advancing in my nascent content career. More was better, and less wasn’t more.
By last year, my role had evolved so much that no one—least of all me—could say what my job was, so one day I asked my boss to define it for me. Newsletter & Website Manager, plus Quality Control (QC) was his reply.
I was over the moon. Not only was I no longer an “Assistant,” but suddenly I had three departments to manage: newsletter, website, and QC. I had always wanted to own a department. To be given three at once was more than I could have hoped for.
Fool that I was, I thought this was a good thing.
I can’t do everything
Here’s one harsh truth I learnt this year: it’s dangerously easy to delude yourself into thinking you’re doing a good job.
For the past six months, our newsletter arrived every Monday in the inbox of over half a million people with tightly-edited content and reader stories handpicked by me. Every week, I heard back from hundreds of grateful subscribers who said how my boss’ advice changed their lives, how inspired they were by the stories I’d chosen.
Every day for the past six months, tens of thousands of people visited our website, which I made sure was updated every month. Every week, I QCed dozens of pieces of content that went out on our social media, podcast, and YouTube. Each typo, mistake, missed punctuation that I caught added a plump feather to my cap.
For six months, I thought I was doing a good job. Everyone did.
But I wasn’t.
Six months after being named “Newsletter & Website Manager,” I still hadn’t made a single suggestion for growing our subscriber list, by far the most important goal for our business, nor fixed any of the SEO issues that a site audit had uncovered years back. Sure, I’d kept all the cogs turning, churning out excellent, typo-free content. But I had not generated growth or made improvements. Worse, my understanding of our newsletter and website processes was pathetically shallow. If something—anything—stopped working, I’d be lost.
Lacking both experience and training in the field, everything I knew I’d learnt on the job. And I hadn’t learnt nearly enough. To the point where, should I lose my job tomorrow, no other content creator of the same calibre would hire me to do the same job for them—and they’d be right not to.
“A little bit of everything” had served while I was an Assistant eager to make myself indispensable. But now that I have my own departments to run, “a little bit of everything” left me little time to do my actual job, to dedicate the requisite time and effort to becoming the best Newsletter & Website Manager any first-rate content creator could ask for.
So when my boss hired a Head of Operations last month and we began having conversations about my role and responsibilities, I had my request ready. No more QC, no more social media, no more podcast.
It took me six months, but finally I’d learnt that more isn’t better, and less is more.
I can’t do everything. And so I’m going to pick the few things I want to do well, and double down.
What do you think?
Have you ever felt you’re doing, or trying to do, too much? Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time to rid yourself of excess and ask yourself:
What will you double down on?
Please hit “reply” or leave a comment—I read every response and I’d love to hear from you. If you want, share this with someone who’ll thank you for it.
Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,
Val
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash