Your Business Has Systems. But What About Your Personal Operating System?
You have systems for managing your customers, finances, marketing and projects. You invest time and money in making your business run efficiently. Yes?
But how much attention do you give to the person running it all? You.
You might have a perfectly organised business diary while regularly postponing your own needs. While you handle difficult situations, you move straight on to the next task and consider it all part of running a business.
It feels normal. After all, you are getting things done. Yet the way you operate personally, influences the way you perform professionally.
Consequently, your business will only ever be as healthy as you.
Why do we invest in business systems and neglect our personal ones?
When you start or grow a business, you are encouraged to establish structures. You need processes, strategies, financial controls, marketing plans and systems for managing customers.
All perfectly sensible.
But there is another structure supporting your business, and that is your personal operating system.
Think about how you use your time, protect your energy, manage your emotions, maintain your health and make decisions.
How much of that happens deliberately?
Entrepreneurs become very good at responding to business demands. You answer another email, accommodate another client, extend your working day or sacrifice another personal commitment.
Gradually, those adjustments become your normal way of operating. And because the business continues functioning, there seems little reason to question those adjustments.
Is burnout really a structural problem?
Recent LinkedIn discussions have been highlighting burnout as a structural issue. The argument is that business owners become exhausted because their businesses depend too heavily on them. There is considerable truth in that:
If every decision needs your approval, every problem reaches your desk and every customer expects your personal attention, your business structure deserves examination. Better delegation, clearer processes and realistic workloads can make a substantial difference.
However, there is another question worth asking:
What personal structure supports you while you are building and managing those business systems?
You might improve your delegation and still struggle to switch off. You might streamline your operations while continuing to work through lunch, ignore your tiredness or carry difficult conversations around in your head.
Both structures matter.
The World Health Organization describes burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.¹ That definition is an important reminder that working conditions and organisational demands must be addressed.
Personal routines can support your capacity to manage those demands, although they cannot compensate for an unsustainable workload.
What happens when you keep going without processing your emotions?
Consider an ordinary working week:
A client gives you difficult feedback. You listen, respond professionally and carry on.
An opportunity you were excited about falls through. You feel disappointed, then turn your attention to the next one.
A project takes longer than expected. You become frustrated, but there is too much to do to dwell on it.
You are managing everything rather well, aren't you? Perhaps. But have you given yourself an opportunity to acknowledge how those experiences affected you?
This is the subject of this week's Routine Reset episode: Emotional Health: Processing Capacity.
Emotional processing involves recognising, understanding and responding to your emotional experiences. Without adequate opportunities to do this, stress and repetitive negative thinking can continue occupying your attention.
Research has linked repetitive negative thinking with symptoms of anxiety and depression.²
For a business owner, this raises practical questions. Could the difficult conversation you keep replaying be affecting your concentration? Is yesterday's disappointment influencing today's confidence? Are you becoming impatient with people who have done nothing wrong?
These are patterns worth noticing before they begin affecting your decisions, relationships and performance.
What happens when your own routines get pushed aside?
I had a rather timely reminder of this after returning from holiday last week.
I had spent ten days away and intended to begin my first working day by reviewing where I was, getting organised and planning my priorities.
Instead, I thought I would quickly complete one task. It took longer than expected, then I moved on to another. Before I knew it, it was 7 pm.
I had accomplished useful work, including preparations for an upcoming business exhibition. But I had missed the opportunity to step back and consider the bigger picture.
Later that week, while also recovering from being unwell, I recognised something else in my journal. I had been doing a great deal, perhaps without giving myself enough rest (despite a holiday).
And this is coming from someone who teaches routines! It reminded me how easily established practices can slip when circumstances change. The important part was recognising what had happened and considering how to respond.
That is one reason journalling remains such a valuable part of my personal operating system.
How can you strengthen your personal operating system?
Within my T.E.M.P.L.E. Method™, I look at the five core areas of connected personal health, with Time Utilisation providing the foundation. Emotional Health is one of those areas, and processing capacity is an important part of maintaining it.
A useful starting point is to create a small amount of space between an experience and your next activity. You might spend ten minutes journalling about something that has been troubling you. Write what happened, how you felt and what you might need to address.
You could take a walk, have an honest conversation with somebody you trust or simply acknowledge an emotion before continuing your day. Research suggests that expressive writing can produce small benefits for some people, although results vary and it is no substitute for appropriate professional support.³
The objective is to develop a practice that helps you recognise what you are carrying and respond more deliberately.
You can also review your personal routines with the same attention you give your business processes:
- Are they realistic?
- Do they protect time for recovery?
- Do they still work when your circumstances change?
When did you last review how you operate?
You probably review your business performance regularly by looking at your revenue, expenses, customers, productivity and progress towards your goals.
When did you last review your own capacity to keep delivering those results?
You do not need to be exhausted, overwhelmed or approaching burnout to benefit from that question.
You might simply discover an opportunity to work with greater clarity, energy and consistency.
If you are curious about which personal operating pattern could be limiting your professional performance, take my free Hidden Bottleneck Quiz. Twelve short diagnostic questions will help you identify where to start.
Your business systems deserve attention. So does the person responsible for making them work.
Remember, a healthier you makes a wealthier you.
References
1. World Health Organization (2019). Burn-out an occupational phenomenon: International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). WHO.
2. Ehring, T. & Watkins, E. R. (2008). Repetitive Negative Thinking as a Transdiagnostic Process. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 1(3), 192–205. https://doi.org/10.1521/ijct.2008.1.3.192.
3. Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental Disclosure and Its Moderators: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823–865. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.823.