The Proposal Was Due Thursday
The proposal was due Thursday, and it was all I could think about. First thing in the morning. Through every meeting. And after dinner, when the house finally went quiet enough to make real progress.
That’s when my daughter walked in. She’d just gotten home from practice and wanted help studying.
“Okay, I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, already turning back to the proposal.
I meant it. Thirty minutes later, I looked up. She’d worked through it on her own and was getting ready for bed. The window I said I’d be there in a minute for had closed, and I hadn’t even felt it close.
Some nights it’s studying. Some nights it’s cookies, or baking bread, or playing a game, or something she just wants to show me. Over the years, I’ve missed or delayed nearly every version of that moment at least once. Not because I decided to. Because I said “one second,” and then I didn’t stop.
What “One Second” Is Actually Protecting
It’s rarely one thing pulling me away. It’s the weight I’ve been carrying since the first meeting of the morning, waiting for an opening to shift back into the gear the work actually needs. That opening doesn’t show up again until after dinner, once the house is quiet and my headspace feels less foggy.
There’s a choice before the headspace ever clears: where is my focus “after hours”? When I set an expectation, my focus becomes more reliable. But if I don’t set the expectation, I’ll go wherever my head takes me.
“I’ll be right there, let me wrap up this one piece.” I’ve said some version of that more times than I can count, then kept working without stopping. In the moment, finishing the piece always feels like the responsible thing to do. Wrap it up, and then I can close it down. But good enough keeps getting pushed off.
It rarely is. One night, I actually closed the laptop instead. I knew my brain was already toast, that nothing I produced after that point would be any good. So I left it, and picked it back up the next morning: rested, coffee in hand, actually able to do the work instead of just sitting in the chair pretending to.
The quest is quality, not more and not perfect. And quality doesn’t show up at 7:43 on a Tuesday after a full day of meetings. It shows up at 6 am, with coffee, before the day has asked anything of you yet. And it shows up when your tank is full from spending time where you most need to be present.
The One Second You Say at Work
The same “one second” shows up at work. It just wears a different outfit. To my daughter, it’s “I’ll be there in a minute.” To my team, it’s “Sure, I’ll get that to you tomorrow.” Then three days pass, and they’re still waiting. They’re not moving their own work forward, because they’re waiting on mine.
I can picture people on past teams who used to bring me the big ideas: the ones who wanted to show me something, the same way my daughter does. Over time, some of them stopped. I got a few of them back, because somebody finally asked what happened. Others, I didn’t. Team members usually don’t want to bother the boss, so they keep it to themselves.
In our local county government, this dynamic made headlines recently. One leader asked another leader a question. When it went unanswered for 28 days, he sent another inquiry. Kids went to school without air conditioning because both leaders sat on the communication.
If my team watched me on a Tuesday night the way my daughter has, more often than not, they’d see someone who knows when to close the laptop. I think I get this right more than I get it wrong. I don’t always trust that about myself, though, and neither do the people I lead, unless somebody tells them so.
One Thing to Ponder
Have you asked your team whether they’ve ever felt like you were putting them off?