1
One time I took a new job halfway across the country. After I arrived, I discovered no one had told me - apparently because no one knew - how little preparation had been made for the first key, four-month project we would undertake, for which I was primarily responsible. In fact, I didn't discover this myself until the morning of the first day I reported for work, when the project began.
To say I felt overwhelmed would be an understatement. I had no time or opportunity to go to my colleagues and seek their aid, especially their solutions to the problems that had suddenly become urgent... (After all, they had gotten us into this problem to begin with.) I did tell my boss. I didn't expect any advice from him since this was not his field but mine, but I did need his support.
I scambled around to do what had to be done that very morning myself. It should have been a task for a team of two or three, but I cobbled something together, based on past experience working with others in similar situations. Then I had a moment or two to investigate how similar projects at my new place had been managed in the past. There was one key clue there, a part-time temporary employee who had filled in to cover a couple of the gaps.
My boss was surprised this young woman had not been lined up before opening day, and he also put in a good word or two for her good sense and abilities. Thank goodness I reached her immediately by phone. She could report for duty tomorrow morning.
That adequately addressed about half of the project-long difficulties that had become evident about 8:30 a.m. As for the other half, as I broke it to my wife at dinner that night, for the first four months I was going to have to put in some more hours than we had planned. I had been able to move one of the full-timers with an apparently lighter load than anyone else into another gap by assuring him that I would personally take over one of his lesser assignments (in addition to my own routine duties).
What a first day that was! And the work got done, at least as well as it had the last time before they brought me in. That didn't seem good enough, but at least we had avoided lasting damage.
2
This was my first supervisory or leadership position. I'd been looking forward to the new opportunity to make a difference for the better not only in my own work but in the work of a whole group of people. That first day had been an unexpected challenge, and it was troubling too, revealing how more fundamental work than expected would have to be done to get our little team running efficiently and effectively.
Just about every day in that first week or two, I discovered more such basic work that needed to be done. My feeling of being overhelmed didn't lessen, although now, at least the urgency had eased somewhat.
Every morning as I considered all the separate projects that seemed to need doing, I found myself saying to myself, "First things first." Prioritizing seemed not just a key to a good job; it seemed like the only way I could survive. One of the first things to do, I thought, was to lay the groundwork for avoiding repetitions of the crisis of my first day. That involved every member of my group, and it involved the group as a whole too. Where to begin? (Or which "thing" should come "first"?)
In other words, in order to cheer myself on, just about every day I kept reminding myself I didn't need to do in that one day all that should be done eventually (not to mention that I couldn't do it!). Instead, "First things first." That became kind of a slogan.
3
Facing tough challenges was fun, I have to say, and I was actually enjoying myself even when what I had to do was mainly putting out fires and solving crises. In between, I seemed to be actually getting some of the longer-range work done too.
But eventually, I got tired.
Working at top speed 12 or 14 hours a day, even if it was kind of a rush... was exhausting. It could not last.
Also, here my wife and I were living in a new town, with much to explore - right down to which was the nearest tolerable supermarket - and my poor wife was having to face all of it all by herself. She was getting tired too, and besides, she was getting sick of it.
As I tried to find ways to cut back a little, it began to dawn on me that everything that needed doing at work just could not be done in my first five or six months. I shouldn't let myself feel overwhelmed every day, even as I reminded myself to do "First Things First." I had to realize that enough was enough.
Wait a minute, I thought. I should not have one slogan, but two: "First Things First" should be complemented by "Enough Is Enough." They were a pair, like bookends.
4
Those two slogans helped me get through not months, but years of challenging, interesting work, despite continuing surprises and temporary crises. When faced with a volume of challenges I just could not overcome in the foreseeable future, I would begin by reminding myself: "First things first." Then, tired at the end of the day, frustrated at what I didn't get to, I reminded myself of slogan two: "Enough is enough." That did not mean I was fed up or I was giving in. It meant that what I had been able to accomplish was enough, not just enough for one day, but enough to go on just fine. Enough!
But, over time, it began to dawn on me that I also needed a deeper challenge. It was not okay to be satisfied with just making progress, especially when it was merely progress climbing slowly out of a deep hole. It wasn't enough to settle for mediocrity.
Like everybody else, in my little departrment and in our organization as a whole, we should all be aiming higher than that... We should hope, expect, and plan to get better.
...Which led to the third slogan: "Good enough is not good enough."
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