Productive Living: Span of Control, with Carey Lohrenz – TPW365

Understanding what is within our span of control and how to prioritize thing important things is a large part of being productive and making a life that matters. In this latest episode of our 2021 Productive Living series, Navy fighter pilot Carey Lohrenz and I talk about formulating a plan for success, avoiding multi-tasking, and coping with task overload. Leadership, span of control, and productivity Carey Lohrenz is a highly sought-after leadership speaker, business consultant, military aviation pioneer, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who’s been featured in notable media outlets such as NPR, Time, CNN, NBC, and CBS. She’s also a wife and a mom to 4 kids! At one time, Carey was one of the U.S. Navy's first female F-14 Tomcat fighter pilots. (For people who are not familiar with aviation, an F-14 is the same plane that Tom Cruise flew in the movie Top Gun.) The cockpit of an F-14 is one of the most demanding environments on earth and where Carey learned some of her most unforgettable lessons, not just in flying, but also in life and leadership. When Carey was in the Navy, she was fortunate to work with outstanding teammates and had lots of opportunities for coaching and improvement. For the last 15 years, Carey has worked with Fortune One through Fortune Fifteen companies helping leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, and even athletes not only build their own leadership skills but build and grow high-performing teams as well. While doing this, she is also a mom and business owner--similar to many other women in the TPW community. She is always juggling several glass balls, hoping to not drop the most important one. What is a span of control? Carey has written about leadership in the past, but her new book, Span of Control, is about navigating stressful times by focusing on what you can control. To Carey, the phrase "span of control" refers to an idea, mantra, or framework that is determined by the number of things you can and should control at any given time, with the understanding that everything else is just a distraction. The biggest challenge and opportunity is for us to learn how to overcome our circumstances instead of being overwhelmed by them. In Carey's book, she shares her "span of control" framework as a tool and a resource for helping us to determine what we can and should control and to help us solve the problems caused by chaos and uncertainty. Her goal is to help us meet our commitments and accomplish our goals and dreams. The way forward to being productive in any situation or circumstance is to focus on the things you can control.  There is so much going on in the world right now that we can't control. Focusing on what we can control can really make a big difference. Although we may never find ourselves in the cockpit of a fighter jet or leading a business, or even consider ourselves to be a "leader", we are all living in an age of overwhelming chaos and the uncertainty can take a toll on us. Most of us are facing more demands than we can handle. Task overload happens when the number of things we are being asked to pay attention to outpaces the information processing capacity of our brain. This can lead to overwhelm and burnout.  The good news though, is that if we take a second to understand that our goal should be to do anything possible to prevent task overload, we will still be able to function at a high level where we're present and serve ourselves and others. There is a path forward and that's the important thing to know. Carey's advice for handling task overload When it comes to handling task overload,