The day my career changed.

Parkinson’s law says that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. What does this mean for doing what you love? It means that your core job responsibilities will fill the entirety of your day if you let them, leaving little-to-no room for carving out your niche, doing more of what you love and less of what you don’t, and thinking infinitely.

The day my job changed was the day that I decided that I was going to do my core responsibilities exceptionally well in less time. In fact, I was only going to spend 60% of my week doing them instead of 100%. What that meant was that I was suddenly going to have 40% of my time to put toward something, and I chose to put that towards doing more of what I love to do.

It’s a conscious choice. Few are the jobs that are so structured that your work will fill 100% of your day. I don’t buy it. I think the majority of us can make the choice to do the same work in less time. So why don’t we?

First, I think we fear losing value. If I’m not “busy,” what does that say about my worth to the company and/or my value-add. Second, if I did have 40% more time what would I do with it? We’re often not sure how to actually do what we love more often during the workday so we default to the path of least resistance which is to continue working within the finite structure defined for us by the organization, our job description, and the managers we work for.

What’s interesting is that the 40% of what I loved to do actually expanded to take over the 60% of what I was expected to do and my job changed to be more like 80% what I love and 20% what I’m expected. Why? Because when people saw me do the 40% that I love, and because I earned credibility doing the 60% I was expected to do, I was freed up to do more of what I love because of the value-add to the organization.

By the way, lest you consider yourself too busy, here’s a statistic for you: 100% of the 300+ people I’ve coached over the last 6 years who don’t have time actually have time. And 100% of people who are too busy aren’t too busy.
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Deciding to do more of what you love is as simple as making a choice — shift your mindset now.