Leaning Into Work You Love

Hi there,

Guess what? This is the 6th official edition of the Within newsletter. 

It’s been my greatest joy to share the concepts, practices and inspiration that mean so much to me with you.

If you’re vibing with what I’ve been writing about, it would mean so much if you’d consider forwarding this newsletter to someone you think might enjoy it too. 

Today we’re talking about a topic near and dear to my heart: joyful scope evolution for founders and leaders. This is something I REALLY wish had been more on my radar when I was in the startup founder seat. It’s something with the power to prevent burnout big time.

So, today’s newsletter will cover:

• What is joyful scope evolution and why is it important?

• What it means to be in your ‘zone of genius’

• How to conduct a time audit and more importantly, what to do with the findings

• An expander whose post-burnout growth helped her make a brave decision to prioritize her wellbeing in her work

By the way, I had so much fun on the Newsletter Operator podcast chatting about everything from newsletter growth tactics and mission-driven companies, to navigating burnout, new beginnings and how I’m thinking about growing Within. You can listen here.

Alright, let’s dive in. 

🌊 Where we go deep on a topic at the intersection of entrepreneurship and personal development.

Joyful Scope Evolution

DOING WORK YOU ENJOY IS ESSENTIAL FOR SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS

One of the major contributors to the burnout I experienced in my last startup was that I didn’t love my scope. 

I was the Head of Operations, Finance and Growth, a role that made sense given my background in finance, my logical thinking, my analytical nature… or so I told myself. Truthfully, I felt weighed down by many aspects of my role — especially on the finance and ops sides of things. Hours of my weeks got filled up with admin, bookkeeping, and payroll, when my time could’ve been much more impactfully focused.

Not only was I spending time on energy-draining tasks, but there were strengths of mine that weren’t being used as often as they needed to be to feel lit up by my work — my creativity, my strategic thinking, my coaching skills. Eventually, the fact that a not insignificant portion of my focus was on energy-draining, lower impact tasks, caught up with me. It wasn’t the only reason I burnt out, but it certainly contributed.

The truth is, you can implement all the time management, calendar optimization, Pomodoro method, Eisenhower matrix-esque tactics in the world, but if you don’t enjoy a large portion of your work, you will eventually burn out. 

Burnout doesn’t just come from the volume of hours that you work. It goes much deeper than that. 

In my opinion and experience, burnout is a message from your soul that there is a fundamental misalignment between what you’re meant for and what you’re doing. 

So that means the cure for burnout isn’t necessarily to reduce your hours (although that can help in some cases), but to fill your life with the work, people, places and experiences that light you up. 

WHAT IS JOYFUL SCOPE EVOLUTION 

So how can we do that with our work?

It’s not reasonable for most people to simply drop what they’re doing in pursuit of a perfectly aligned opportunity. That’s not what I’m advocating for today. (Although, there’s absolutely no shame if the right path for you IS to take a step away — that was true for me.) 

Instead, what I want to introduce today is the concept of Joyful Scope Evolution.

Joyful Scope Evolution is the process of reflecting on what types of work give you the most energy and have the most impact in your company, and then using that information to intentionally evolve your scope over time. 

The best thing, both for you and your company, is for you to be working on the things that not only have the highest impact, but also give you the most energy. These tasks fall in what Gay Hendricks refers to as our zone of genius. 

THE ZONES

ZONE OF GENIUS

According to Gay Henricks, author of The Big Leap, we gain more fulfillment and happiness when we spend more time on activities in our zone of genius AND our businesses need us to be operating more in our zone of genius for it to be successful. Ideally in your work and business, these activities will bring in the most money for you. Maybe not directly, or maybe people don’t pay you for these exact activities. But they’re part of your unique way of doing things, so your business is unique or better than the rest in some way. 

For me, my zone of genius activities include coaching, writing, strategy & innovation, and design. Note how far out of my zone of genius I was as a finance professional.

What’s in your zone of genius?

ZONE OF EXCELLENCE

Zone of excellence activities are all the things you’re great at. You probably enjoy doing them somewhat, you’ve spent a lot of time getting good at these things, but you don’t love them enough to become truly excellent at them because you’d get bored of them if you spent all your time on them. The zone of excellence can be dangerous because others likely appreciate the work you do in this zone and are incentivized to keep you here. But know that if you stay in this zone alone, eventually you will burn out.

My zone of excellence activities are: strategic finance, analysis, and growth strategy. This is how I got stuck in my role at my last startup. I had lots of experience and training in these areas, but spending all my time in them ultimately didn’t light me up enough.

What’s in your zone of excellence?

ZONE OF COMPETENCE

Zone of competence activities are ones you’re okay or even good at doing. You can do these things, but they don’t light you up at all and you’re not interested in getting better at them.

For me, this was some non-strategic finance work, growth & operations execution. 

What about you?

ZONE OF INCOMPETENCE

These are the things you’re not great at, perhaps because you find them incredibly boring or they just don’t suit you. 

For me this is… admin, some areas of ops/finance like tax, insurance, office mgmt, technology troubleshooting, coordination. I could be fine at these things if I forced myself to do them but mostly because I hated them so much I would always delay doing them and do a very average, if not straight up bad, job because I enjoyed them so little.

What’s in your zone of incompetence?

I’d encourage you to take a moment to reflect on which zones the tasks you do each day fall into. When I went through this exercise, it really reduced some of the shame I felt. It made me realize that some of the tasks that I really have to force myself to do even an okay job at, are just not for me. 

EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT THINGS IN THEIR ZONES

The cool thing about the zones is that they’re different for everyone, something that I didn’t fully appreciate. I wish I had more fully recognized that the tasks that I didn’t enjoy doing, could be tasks that someone else LOVES doing. I felt guilty delegating tasks I hated because I didn't want to put them on others, when really, those things could have been in their zone of genius! Instead I made myself suffer out of the assumption that I was doing others favors (hello inner people-pleaser!).

Before understanding the zones, I felt like I needed permission to work on the things that I actually loved. I thought “Who am I to get to do these fun activities?”, operating under the limiting belief that work is supposed to be hard. But the truth is, the stuff that you love to do is where you SHOULD be spending your time. It’s the best way you can contribute and have an impact at your company.

HOW TO INTENTIONALLY EVOLVE YOUR SCOPE

Now that we’re on the same page about the importance of doing work that’s in your zone of genius, I’m going to provide you with a tool for how to practically do this. 

This is a concept I took from Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time, which I highly recommend if you’re someone that’s nearing burnout or wants practical ways to maximize your effectiveness in your company. 

By the way, this is an activity I do with my clients! You’re welcome to use my free template and follow along.

TIME AUDIT

The first step in joyful scope evolution is to track your time for 1-2 weeks. 

Record how you're spending your time every 30 minutes throughout your day. I'd recommend keeping track for at least one week, and preferably two if your job varies significantly week to week.

At the end of each day, go back and indicate whether the activity is energy giving or energy draining. 

Next, go back to each activity and assign it a value/impact level using $ to $$$$. (If you're not totally sure you can consider if it would be cheap or expensive to hire someone to do that task).

THE DRIP MATRIX

Once you’ve tracked your time for 1-2 weeks, you’re ready to plot your activities on a DRIP Matrix. DRIP stands for Delegation, Replacement, Investment, Production.

The x axis of the DRIP matrix is how energy giving the task is, or how much it lights you up. The y axis is how impactful an activity is in your business. 

The title of each quadrant will indicate what to do with the activity that you plot in it. 

Delegation: This quadrant consists of tasks that drain energy. To be successful, consider delegating low-value tasks to others (an EA/VA, existing team member, outsource via Fiver/Upstart) as quickly as possible, allowing you to focus on higher-value and rewarding work. 

Replacement: Contains high-value tasks essential to running a business. These tasks may be more challenging to outsource than those in delegation but still need to be transferred to others (for example through hiring, bringing on a fractional hire or consultant, outsourcing to a qualified expert, or finding someone capable on your team to do them) to help you reach your potential. 

Investment: Consists of activities important for personal growth, relationships, and business development but may not generate immediate financial rewards.

Produce: Tasks that make you/your business money and energize you (aka zone of genius tasks). Focusing your time here creates a buyback loop, where you generate more money, in turn giving you more capacity to hire and take even more delegate/replacement tasks off your plate, freeing up even more time for you to do high impact high energy activities. 

Now that you’ve plotted your activities on the matrix, you can understand what to continue spending your time on (production, investment) and start to make a plan for delegating or replacing the rest.

IN PRACTICE

A few other suggestions to keep in mind when you’re completing a DRIP matrix:

Do it once a year: I would recommend doing this exercise every year to see how you’re feeling about what you’re working on in your business and what needs to change in order for you to continue to feel energized and fulfilled in your work. What better time than the end of this year? I’d also recommend doing this activity anytime you start to feel drained and unenergized when you wake up in the morning. 

Do it with your co-founders or leadership team: If you have co-founders or other leaders in your company, this is a great practice to do together ahead of conversations around team planning and hiring. It’s common for us founders to hire for where we see gaps on our team, when really, what’s going to make our businesses most sustainable for us to work in long term, is to hire for our delegation and replacement quadrants so that we can stay in our zone of geniuses as much as possible.

I’ve seen many founders (myself included) delay getting an EA or VA, not feeling “deserving” of it yet, or not feeling they can afford it. Or thinking they need to prioritize hiring for skills gaps. In reality, it can be one of the most impactful hires if it gives you valuable time back to work on your product or service, sales, growth, strategy, partnerships, fundraising, and other high value areas.

One great potential option if you don’t have the resources to hire a full-time person is to complement your team with an outsourced EA or specialized skills hire. Oceans* is offering a great solution for this. Or for one-off projects and tasks, consider Upwork or Fiver.

It’s okay if you can’t hire right away: If you genuinely don’t have the funds to hire, going through this exercise can still help you make decisions around minimizing, eliminating, automating, delaying or bettering tasks.

• Automate: Is there a way you can use technology to automate this task so that you can set it up once and not have to do it yourself? Zapier is my favorite for this.

• Eliminate or delay: Consider if this task is absolutely necessary and if not, delete it. Or perhaps it doesn't need to be done now and can be shifted to next quarter or a point where you are able to delegate it.

• Minimize: Consider if you can reduce the burden of this task. Is there a way it could be less work than it is right now? Could you reduce your expectations on how good the product needs to be? Can AI do half the work for you?

• Better: If it absolutely needs to get done, can you make it more enjoyable somehow? Do it in a more positive setting? Do it with a nice cup of tea or glass of wine or to your favorite playlist?

🪞 Your turn to reflect. Take these prompts to your morning journal or talk it over with a friend or coach.

• Do I wake up most mornings feeling energized to go to work? Or drained? 

• What are the areas of my work that fall into my zone of genius? 

• How about the other zones (excellence, competence, incompetence)?

• For my three most low-impact and energy-draining tasks, what are some strategies I can use to delegate, replace, automate, eliminate, minimize or improve them within the next month?

🤿 If you want to go deeper than the deep dive, I curated these resources especially for you. <3

• Read: If you want to learn more about why you’ll succeed by hanging out in your zone of genius, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks is a quick and easy but quite profound read.

• Read: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell is an excellent read for any founder/leader that wants to set themselves up to build with joy, energy and impact long-term.

• Coaching: If you’d like to feel more supported in completing your own joyful scope evolution, I’d be honored to partner with you. You can book a fully refundable strategic coaching consultation here to explore working with me. If you’d rather do the time audit and DRIP matrix on your own, feel free to steal my template.

• Hire: If you’re ready to hire for your delegation and replacement quadrants and want to bring on an EA or a finance, ops or marketing expert, tap into Ocean’s highly experienced and motivated global talent.*

*To be fully transparent, this is an affiliate link, meaning if you purchase this service I’ll make some money too (everyone wins!). Just know that I’ll never recommend something I wouldn’t use myself. Personally, I aspire to be able to afford to hire talent from Oceans as my business grows.

💥 We’re not really about Forbes 30u30 over here. We’re shining a light on the entrepreneurs building from the heart and keeping it real.

Today’s expander is someone I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with on the topic of post-burnout spiritual growth, so I know she’s a real one, and that she deeply understands the importance of enjoying your work.

Madison Utendahl is a multi-hyphenate — she’s the Founder of Utendahl Creative, a public speaker, an advocate and writer. While Madison’s had an incredibly impressive career as a strategist and brand storyteller, what impressed me most about her, aside from her great sense of humor, her magnetism, and her depth, was how she’s allowed her own experience with burnout to be a catalyst for profound self-awareness and growth.

In her own journey, coming out the other side of burnout made Madison stronger and more in tune with her emotional and spiritual needs. According to her, “We gain a clearer perspective on what truly matters, empowering us to make more intentional choices that support our well-being.” 

On the panel, Madison spoke about how she is doing just that. She shared her recent decision to update her creative agency model from having full-time staff to moving to an outsourced network, because it felt more in integrity and supportive to her. This move is so brave in a world where many of us feel like the size of our companies determines our value and worth.

Madison also writes a very real and insightful newsletter about burnout called BURNT — I can’t recommend it enough. Oh and her Instagram is a fabulous follow for anyone that likes fashion inspiration mixed in with their expansion. ✨

• 1:1 Coaching: If you want to feel more aligned and less burnt out, you can book a 30-minute fully-refundable strategic coaching consultation to explore working with me.

• Let’s be friends: If you want to see the BTS of building Within and receive more tips and ideas on building with integrity, connect with me on LinkedIn and Instagram.

I’d love to know, how did this newsletter hit for you?

If you liked this newsletter, I’d be so grateful if you forwarded it to your favorite founder or leader in your life.

Have a beautiful rest of your week,
Roslyn 💚