Choosing what to care about

Avoiding overwhelm and staying sane through the noise

For a long time, I thought the answer was caring more.

More attention. More effort. More standards. More involvement.

The problem here though…

Caring too much about the wrong things takes a lot of energy, potentially leading to burnout, anger, resentment, despair or all of the above.

My perspective on this is as the owner of a service-based business. By it’s very nature, we are motivated to want to help clients, and for a long time this was reflected in my personal mission - help others, make people happy, have fun and make the most of the opportunity.

It took most of my early 30’s to realise ‘hang on, I can’t make other people happy. It doesn’t work, and if times are challenging (e.g. Brexit, COVID, cost-of-living crisis) relying on other people’s happiness to fuel my own, is not a path to sanity.

Caring about the wrong things…

I mentioned caring about the wrong things, so what might sit in this category?

For me, this is simple:

• Can I control it?

  • Yes - care / do something about it

  • No - let it go

This took a long time to realise all the things that technically belong in the ‘no’ pile for whether I should care or not:

• the news

• traffic / bad drivers and commuting

• other people’s feelings

• litter

Now, in reality this is far more nuanced… and it’s not a binary yes/no decision for many of these. Do I care what clients or the team are thinking? Of course. Do I care about the feelings of my kids, family, friends? Of course. Do I care about the environment / state of the world? Definitely. Do I wish that verges weren’t full of litter? Absolutely.

Can I control / affect all of these things, right now? Hmmm, well that’s tougher right…

My point is more about not letting that define your attitudes and feelings, particularly if it’s over days, weeks or months. If you let external factors get you down, then you can’t show up and do your best work.

Also, if you are too consumed with trying to make other people happy, then it’s sometimes difficult to make the tough decisions needed to run a business, and you’ll actually end up doing more harm than good in the long run.

Choosing what to care about

Now in an entrepreneurial role, you typically have to care about more things in work than most. I’ve found the most important things are:

• Cashflow

• Budgeting

• Reputation, sales and new business

• Team expectations

• Client communications and clarity

• Overdelivering and delighting clients as much as possible, without burning out

Some things deserve regular, focused attention, but one of the harder lessons I’ve learned from running a business is that you can’t care about everything equally forever. Not without paying for it in energy, clarity, or momentum.

Caring is not free.

Every decision you agonise over, every detail you polish, every responsibility you hold onto carries a cost. Early on, that cost is manageable. Later on, it becomes the constraint.

Progress doesn’t come from caring less overall.

It comes from caring more deliberately.

For me, refinding focus has meant learning that what I don’t care about anymore is just as important as what I do.