I thought I was done. At this point there are hundreds of documents in my process wiki that outline and explain every conceivable thing that could happen.  There is a staff who help each other and get things done so things happen without me knowing about it. 

Then I had an unscheduled call with Max. I was looking to hire someone new to add to the team, and my plans were derailed.

Through the course of the call, I began to think back and look again and found that at least 50% of the tasks I am focusing on shouldn’t be on my plate and I could get rid of. 

What I realized is when people around you think you are the best at something, it’s easy to have no one to compare yourself to.  The place it’s easiest to fall is when you are in first place. It’s so much easier to have the carrot showing you where you can go and the call with Max was my wakeup call.

We see this in music with Paul pushing John and in tech with Steve pushing Johnny. Each team furthered themselves because someone was pushing them to achieve more and better than they thought possible. 

The interesting thing is that I am automating different things than before and pushing for higher level tasks to come off my plate. These higher level tasks are different and more complex than before but feel just as painful and blind as the first things I handed off over a decade ago. 

What is stuck on your plate that  should not be? 

Where have you gotten complacent assuming you’ve reached the limit?