If task or project management was Dungeons and Dragons, I would be a Grand Master.
Right now, I’ve said “yes” to more things than I should have. I’m overcommitted, stretched thin, and really feeling the consequences.
Being a Grand Master project manager, everything is moving forward. I haven’t dropped any balls, and seemingly everything is still going smoothly.
But the problem is when I’m overcommitted, I prioritize the work I owe others and deprioritize the things that are important to me:
- My health (sleeping, eating, working out)
- Building new aspects of my own business, Unreal Collective
By deprioritizing some of the initiatives for growing Unreal that I have planned, what I’m losing is opportunity cost. The problem is, I don’t feel the pain of opportunity cost.
Since I don’t know the full extent to what could be, it’s hard for me to really know what I’m sacrificing. Whereas if I missed deadlines for work I owe other people, I would feel that pain of failure and disappointment.
But the opportunity costs for not building Unreal are very real (see what I did there?). And since creating assets generally have a compounding effect (e.g. finishing a product now would not only mean $XX more 6 months from now, but also $2XX 12 months from now), I should feel that pain more than I do.
That’s the risk of not focusing, specializing, or saying “no” more often. If you’re not considering the opportunity cost in saying “yes,” pause and make yourself feel that pain!