What Position Do You Play in the Game of Work?

On the field of work, there are three basic positions we can play. Goalie, defense, and offense.

The Goalie’s role is to stay in the box and make sure nothing gets past. At work, it’s staying in that inbox and responding to messages as they come in. Emails and Slacks get answered right away.

The Defense protects falling behind, at any cost. At work, it might look like scheduling when to check email and blocking off deep work, breaks, meeting times and being diligent about sticking to them. Playing defense also might look like protecting our future self by saying no to things not worth our time–meetings, projects, clients, etc. Keeping those boundaries strict.

The Offense dictates the pace of the game. They’re the ones helping take the lead and control the outcome. At work, this is choosing to start with our hardest work first, making time for our big legacy projects throughout the month, and committing to deep work.

Throughout our day, we may need to play all three. Any good team does.

But our feelings and relationship with work are dictated by how we’re allocating our time among the three. A good goalie is crucial for not falling behind. But the goalie is not the reason we win. The goalie is not in control of the game.

We know of David Beckham and Mia Hamm and Abby Wambach and Wayne Gretzky. We don’t know famous goalies. We know and remember the players that are creating action.

The more we can control the pace and action of our own work “game” the better we feel about our relationship to work. What might that mean for our daily habits? What might that mean for what we start our day working on and at what point we decide that we need to start playing defense?

The only way we can get ahead is to play more offense.

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Caveday is a company aimed at improving your relationship to work. We write regular posts on Medium and send out monthly newsletters with productivity tips, life hacks, and recommendations. Sign up for the mailing list here.

Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.