STOP.
How to Make the Margin that Makes You a Better Leader
Hello friend.
Thank you for being here today. There is a bigger conversation taking place on how character leaders form True, Brave, Kind, and Curious communities that transform culture. Join us here.
At my company, Arable, we work with many organizations, each with wildly varying leadership styles and unique challenges. While this keeps our work exciting, we are always on the lookout for patterns across contexts, time zones, and personality types.
We care deeply about the specific issues each client faces, and our coaching addresses those. But much of the content we create is aimed at patterns that show up again and again.
One of the most common is the struggle for Margin.
Rarely does a week go by without me or my team hearing some version of the same refrain:
“There is no time to lead. No space to grow. No room for my health. Not enough margin to apprentice my team.”
Leaders feel constantly squeezed by the urgent and the noise, finding themselves tyrannized by someone else’s agenda with little room left for their own.
Since I encounter these complaints so often, I’ve developed a highly sophisticated coaching technique for dealing with it. I’d like to share it with you now:
STOP!
Seriously, just stop.
STOP, and then learn how to stop.
In all sincerity, in a culture that imposes perpetual motion and endless demand upon you, you need to be Brave enough to stand your ground. To say, “enough!” And to make the space that will reveal the business you should actually be about.
If you’re anything like me (or most of the leaders I coach), you probably struggle with the feeling that stopping would halt your momentum. You fear that if you took the time to take stock of your life, your opportunities would dry up, your business would fall apart, or—perhaps most daunting—you would finally have to face yourself.
Making margin is perhaps the most important conversation we can have and the most vital leadership skill you can develop in a culture rigged against it. In my experience, the further you want to go and the better you want to be, the faster and noisier it gets. Therefore, the skills of reducing motion and turning down the volume become more necessary, not less.
So, STOP.
I know that's easy to say, incredibly difficult to do. So, here are three imperfect steps to help you navigate the chaos and find the pockets of margin you need.
Step 1: Start with Your Yes
If you don’t know what you are for, you will be for everything (which is, ultimately, for nothing). You will live life “on call” for people with clearer agendas for your time—agendas that are not necessarily what’s best for you.
Without margin, you lack the filter to decipher the urgent, the important, and the non-important. You need space to sift the gold from the distraction.
What is the big “YES” that you need to make so compelling that you can defend it with a thousand “NOs”?
What MOVES you, FITS you, and FILLS you? Asking these questions and revisiting them consistently before you go out to face the noise will provide the filtering system you need to create margin and protect your purpose.
I acknowledge you need some initial margin to do this. See my precursory advice above: STOP.
Even if you only stop for 30 minutes to identify that big YES, you will begin to naturally filter the unnecessary commitments from your life. Those “NOs” manifest as margin—room for further refinement, commitment, and the execution of your purpose.
Step 2: Work from Rest
I am increasingly of the opinion that when it comes to overwhelm, stress, and burnout, before we can ever address the psychological, emotional, spiritual or relational dynamics, we must address the physical realities.
We’re children of the enlightenment. We think we can think ourselves to health. Your thoughts matter, but positive thinking is no match for your overtaxed nervous system, the tension in your neck, or the five hours of sleep you got the past three nights.
Many of the leaders we work with would benefit tremendously from the boring basics: exercise, quality nutrition, greater hydration, and better sleep. All of them need more rest, better rest, and consistent rest.
You need rest that is more than just recovery. Rest that becomes recreation (re-creation) and stands a chance of helping you re-imagine a better way forward.
So, trade the hours of 9-11pm for 5-7am.
Set yourself for the day by remembering who you are, why you are (your YES), and how you want to be experienced.
Take one day off each week, no work, no email, no check-in, no prep, just rest. Sundown one day until sunrise two days later. Do nothing but that which gives you life.
Draw, play, pray, read, run, do the things that energize you. You will resent it at first, and then you’ll wonder how you ever neglected this time.
Well rested people do exponentially more productive work in less hours than those who do not protect their rest.
Step 3: Ruthlessly Choose The Best
I can’t see your calendar, but I know what’s in it.
A ton! It’s packed.
I also know that the constituent parts of the lot are not equal. There are some musts and some shoulds and some coulds and some would-like-to’s. My team and I are using this as a prioritization tool. I’m sure you’ve encountered it. If you haven’t—or if you have—try it.
MoSCoW
Must do’s
Should do’s
Could do’s
Would-like-to-do’s
Ruthlessly choose the Must do’s, and eliminate anything that is Could or Would-like-to. The already densely packed life cannot accommodate Could do’s and Would-like-to’s. Because they come at the expense of the rest I mentioned in step two or the YES I mentioned in step one.
Until your well-rested self can fully carry your YES, your life cannot carry coulds and woulds.
So, STOP.
Ultimately, you need margin to lead well, but you must be willing to fight for it. Remember: you have more agency than you often let yourself believe.
By setting yourself up with a clear “YES,” prioritizing rest, and ruthlessly choosing the best, you reclaim the space necessary to thrive.
You will not do this perfectly. But if you give it your best shot, your leadership will be healthier, your team will be grateful, and your life will be better.
Sincerely,
Karl
P.S. I’m practicing this in my own life this month. I’m carving out time for my rest and for my YES—which, in this season of my life, is writing my next book. For the month of August, you won’t see any Substack articles from me. I encourage you to run your own margin experiment. What “thing you can’t cut” might you cut anyway for a period of time in service of your YES? And while I’m away, you can still connect with my team on our August cohorts, where we are training healthy leaders and leadership coaches. Apply for your spot in the next Coaching The Arable Way cohort here.