Episode Summary

Do you ever feel like you’re just spinning your wheels in your business? Perhaps you’re constantly “maxed out,” but you’re just not growing like you feel like you should.  

In today’s episode of the Make Space for More podcast, Melissa Swink discusses the concept of the invisible workload that many business owners face. She explores how the mental load you’re carrying, including all the little details that are constantly running through your head, can hinder your daily productivity and long-term growth, and offers practical strategies to alleviate it. 

By understanding the signs of an invisible workload and implementing effective delegation, automation, and communication boundaries, you CAN create a more balanced and fulfilling work life!

Key Highlights:

• Your invisible workload can impact your energy and clarity.
• Keeping track of details in your head adds to your mental load.
• Being the primary problem solver on your team can limit your growth potential.
• As the CEO, you need to step into your strategic leadership role.
• Project management tools can help you empty your brain and delegate.
• Establishing processes and workflows can also help lighten your load.
• Use automations intentionally to relieve manual work from your plate.
• Delegate tasks effectively so you can establish true ownership over them, to others.
• Set communication boundaries to avoid distractions when you’re working.

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast, where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're gonna talk about the invisible workload that's holding you back. But before we dive into today's topic, I just wanna welcome you to the show, whether you are a faithful listener and you tune in every week, or if you're brand new to the podcast, I am just so grateful that you're here.

If you could take a minute, hit the subscribe button if you're interested in information that will help you work smarter and not necessarily harder and build your business in a way that allows you to have a more fulfilling and balanced life. That's really what I'm after here. I am not into really high level, very, very complex ideas for growing businesses. This is more about simple

and practical things that are immediately actionable. That's the world that I enjoy most and that's what I try to share on this podcast as well. So if you don't mind hitting the subscribe button, I would really appreciate your support as we continue to bring you this content each and every week. So all of that aside, moving on to today's topic, I have a reflection question for you, a couple of them actually. So do you ever feel like you're just spinning your wheels?

and not actually moving your business forward. And I don't even necessarily mean like you have a million to-dos on your plate. Now that's certainly the way many of us operate at least from time to time. But I just maybe I'm thinking more from an emotional and an energetic standpoint. Like sometimes you're just like, I'm doing the things, I'm in the business every day.

and I feel like we are not moving forward in areas that I want to move forward. Or I feel like at the end of the day, I am just too exhausted to put together that new revenue stream or to launch that new service offering. There might be opportunities that you know that you could be doing, you just don't have the energy to do it. Or maybe you feel like...

You are just busy on the hamster wheel every day, and it's not necessarily increasing your revenue, where your business really isn't moving forward in the direction you want it to go. Another thing that you might want to think about here when we're kind of reflecting is do you feel maxed out? Even if your calendar isn't particularly full. I know sometimes I have this where my calendar looks pretty reasonable for the week, where there's not back-to-back calls, where there's a little bit of breathing space.

But yet I still just feel like I just can't seem to get things done or I can't seem to get enough done. Like there's never enough hours in the day or maybe I'm not moving forward on things as quickly as I would like or maybe I just feel like I'm just kind of stuck where I know there's something that I want to be doing or I have an idea but I'm just not moving forward on it. So if you can resonate with any of this, I encourage you to continue listening in here because we're going to talk about

What exactly is the invisible workload? We're gonna talk about signs that this might be present in your day-to-day life as well, but most importantly, we're gonna talk about what to do about it, how we can get unstuck and feel lighter so that we are inspired and have the mental and energetic capacity to do the things that we wanna be doing in our life and our businesses. So diving in, what exactly is the invisible workload?

This could be at a very high level described as kind of the behind the scenes thinking. So if you have an idea for a new revenue stream, or maybe you have an idea for some new team members that you're looking to onboard at some point, just all the things that are kind of swimming around in the back of your mind at any given time, all time, maybe. Sometimes our brains are just super, super active. This could even look like

context switching where you're constantly you're working here and then you're turning your attention over here Attempting to multitask. I know we still talk about this in today's world about you know, women are better at multitasking or you know the ability to multitask I can't tell you how many times especially early on in my career gosh, maybe like 20 years ago now at this point Maybe I'm dating myself that the ability to multitask was actually like a skill

on a job description. I don't know if that's still a thing. Fortunately, I've been self-employed for 13 years now. I don't know what job descriptions look like for administrative assistants anymore. But when I was starting out, that was a thing. And I say multitasking attempts because science has proven nobody's really good at multitasking. It's just your brain, forcing your brain to like switch focus constantly, like multiple times, many, many times a minute, depending on how quickly you're trying to do. This can also look like

the emotional or the energetic pulls, the things that are just taking away your energy, having to deal with this crisis or to solve this problem, coordinating things that don't necessarily show up on a to-do list, like a range for this thing for that person where maybe it shows up as a to-do, but this goes a little bit beyond that. The to-do might be, here's an example. This is a personal example.

Shop for a birthday or pick out a birthday present for so-and-so. Well, okay, so taking a step back, what all goes into choosing a gift for somebody? You have to think about the person. You have to think about maybe your budget, how much you wanna spend, and then you have to do a bunch of research and figure out what you might wanna get them. Depending on who it is on your list, maybe some people are easier to buy for than others, but it's not just.

buying a gift for so-and-so, it's all that mental stuff that needs to happen that's not necessarily written down on a to-do list. You could have one or two or three things on a to-do list in a given day, and they look relatively simple and straightforward, but it's all that mental stuff that has to go before it in order to get that thing done. So this is, again, talking about that mental load, all the things that you are just holding in your mind throughout the course of a given day.

These are the things that maybe wake you up at two o'clock in the morning and all of it. So some more examples here of this mental load. gave you some, but just to share a few more, keeping track of details in your head is another one where this looks like. So I was talking about more actionable, like to do things like all the stuff that's gonna go into that one thing, but this can also look like...

keeping track of like team members, like for an example from my own business, owning a virtual assistant services company. I know that this team member is best at these types of tasks. And I know that this team member works great with these types of clients. This is not written down anywhere. This is just something that I have floating in the back of my mind all the time. This could also look like, I know that client is in that industry and they casually mentioned to me that they're looking for referrals.

to this type of a business or this type of professional, just all the random stuff that I know and are in my head, but not necessarily put on a physical plane somewhere or some sort of in a digital place that can be looked at later. It's just all the things that I carry around. Another one can be, are you the problem solver in your business? Are you the primary problem solver for your family where...

when something isn't working or somebody's feeling frustrated or they're upset, they bring it to you and they kind of drop it at your feet. And then you're the one who's got to really do the mental work of thinking through, how do we fix this? What are the solutions? What are we going to do? And then just kind of falling in line with that, managing all the things. I'm talking about the planning, the strategy, the people, the projects. You're just carrying it all. And it all begins up here in the mind.

So what I'm here to tell you is the invisible workload is absolutely real. I don't think I have to convince you of that because you are living in it the day to day, just like I am, like so many of us are. But the reality is, and the truth is, that this has a huge impact on our energy. It has impact on our clarity, ability to focus, and really at the end of the day, the results of growing our businesses or organizations. So...

A few more signs that you're carrying too much, or maybe these are some signs where that mental load that you're carrying, that invisible workload is causing some issues when it comes to the overall growth of your business and your overall happiness and peace in your life can look like interruptions if you're experiencing a lot of interruptions. I'm talking about

We started talking about what this looks like from a mental perspective. These are some of the outward signs that this is happening. Interruptions. I know if my phone goes off or if somebody pings me and says, hey, I need your help with this sort of thing. Or if you're having trouble focusing where maybe a situation has kind of blown up and you need to think about the best way to deal with it and now you're trying to

write your email newsletter for the upcoming month. It's hard to focus on the newsletter that needs to get done so that can go out to your audience because you're busy thinking about this thing over here and spinning your wheels and trying to solve that problem. This can look like decision fatigue. I know I experienced this at the end of days, certainly because we're just trying to make decisions or we're trying to give directives to people and just the decision fatigue is real.

Also, it can look like being the bottleneck of certain things in your business. Maybe you are the sole person responsible for client communications where your team is working more behind the scenes, or maybe you're the only person who can perform this particular type of strategy work. Whatever this kind of looks like for you, being the bottleneck for certain services or certain tasks that need to get done in the behind the scenes of your business.

This can also look like avoiding growth initiatives because you're just buried in the day to day. And the idea of more things coming into your life and into your business just feels like it's going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. So here's another reflection question. And with all of that being said, and I know this has certainly shown up in my own life many times as well.

Have you maybe missed an opportunity or lost out on an opportunity for one reason or another? Maybe it's completely not your fault. Like you had an awesome potential client that was your ideal, would really elevate the next level of your company. Maybe they were looking at your top tier offer that you have and it was really exciting. And for whatever reason, it just didn't work out, which there are always reasons, but we'll get to that in a second, right? Sometimes our energy, the energy we're putting out there can...

send almost like an invisible message to the others around us. But I'm not particularly into woo. That's not what I talk about. But for those of you who are more on the woo and spiritual side, you know I'm talking about, right? Energy masters energy. Okay. I promise, I'll get back to the point here. So you, for whatever reason, missed out or lost out on an opportunity, or maybe you even declined one because

now is not the right time. It's a great opportunity, but now is not the right time. We've all said that one before. And you have secretly felt relieved where this was an opportunity that was great. You should have been really excited about, or maybe you were really excited about initially. But then when you started thinking about, okay, if this comes true, if this thing happens, I'm just going to be completely overloaded. Like I can barely manage things now.

And so adding this thing to my plate or my team's plate just exhausts me. And it's something that you would never actually share out loud, but sometimes like, good, we didn't acquire that client or we didn't take over that project. You know what I'm talking about. And ultimately, if you are listening to this and you're like, yep, I know I've got the invisible workload. I definitely have these signs showing up around me where

I'm the problem solver. I'm avoiding going into new directions with my company. Ultimately, this is limiting the growth of your business and you know this, but it's also limiting your ability to lead effectively. It's also hindering your ability to delegate effectively as well, to plan just because you're taking up so much mental space up here that you don't have room for even some of the creative things that you might want to be doing.

What do we do about all this? We know that the mental load is real. We know that many of us are dealing with it. We do have these symptoms in our day-to-day physical lives that are a symptom of this mental load and this invisible workload. But now we're going to move into, what do we do about all that? We're going to unpack this one step at a time. So the first thing that we're going to do is we need to step into our strategic leadership. So

We are the owners of our businesses. We are the CEOs of our companies. We are the executive directors of our organizations. Whatever your role is, you need to show up as the leader of your company or organization. So this means that you are the visionary. You are the strategist. And to be perfectly honest, your business or organization isn't scalable if everything has to run through you.

or certain aspects always have to run through you. So I know even for me in my own business, there's a lot that I've released to my team, which has been great, but this is also a situation where it's like new level, new devil. There's always more that eventually we need to kind of shed from our day to day and reassign to somebody else on the team. So if everything's running through you or significant things are still running through you, eventually you're gonna hit that point where

you cannot continue to grow without being able to step away and grow from some of the things that you're currently focusing on that are currently on your plate. So this is looking like making time to work on your business or organization, not necessarily working in it. And I think it's also accepting the reality that you don't need to know everything, you don't need to do everything. There are things that happen

in my company on a day-to-day basis, I have no idea, good, bad, otherwise. My team is just doing their thing. They're solving problems. They are working with clients. They are collaborating with one another. I don't necessarily need to hear about everything that goes on in my company. And depending on where you're at in terms of your overall leadership and what your team looks like, that can seem really, really scary. But if you think about

Some of the CEOs that you admire or the executives that you admire that have built incredible companies and organizations, they don't have their hands in every single aspect of the day to day because it's not physically possible. But if they insisted on having their hands in everything, they would not be at the level that they are at today. Their companies or organizations would not be experiencing the success that they are today. I remember a couple of years ago to another one to this point with

you know, talking about just growth in general and leadership, that the speaker was talking about the hardest thing for her and she was growing throughout her career was changing from being the knowledge leader to more of the visionary. So she had shared, I don't remember what role it was when she started out. It was a healthcare company. I don't remember if she was in, I think she was like in billing or something like that. And she started off, she was entry level.

and she got really good at her job in the billing department. And they promoted her to supervisor. And then she was department head. And she just kind of traveled along that path. And then at some point in her career, things shifted a little bit. So she knew billing really well, like the back of her hand. And then when she started taking on higher levels of leadership in that organization, she started leading teams.

that she knew nothing about the day-to-day work that they were doing. So while her background, in this example, I don't remember again exactly if it was billing, was something like that, customer service, I'm not sure, kind of your entry level, early 20-something job. But that was really hard for her because she suddenly had to figure out how to lead a team of people that she could not do their jobs. If one of them called in sick, she could not go sit in that chair and take over for them. She had no idea what they were doing.

But what she had to do was listen, inspire, their suggestions for improvement and making the company better, and also encouraging them and casting that vision for what the department and ultimately the company could look like. And it was just a very dramatic change in the way that she was spending her day to day. Because again, she started with the knowledge leader, and then she became more of

the visionary. And so that may be a place in your business that you need to become in order to continue growing. taking the time to step into that strategic leadership role that your company or organization needs you to take on is going to be the first step to relieving this invisible workload is to reevaluate really truly what your role is in the company. But moving on from that, once we kind of make that mental shift of

I am not the one doing all the doing all the time. What we wanna do is we wanna look at strategies now to lighten that load. So reaffirming that you are the leader here. So what we wanna do is there's really four primary things that we wanna do to lighten that invisible workload. And number one is to empty your brain. Your brain does not need to be carrying all the things.

So what we want to do is we want to use tools to do this. One example in my own business is we use Asana for all of our project management. So all the tasks, projects, to-dos, all the things that need to get done, all the notes that need to be taken action on at some point, those all go into our project management system, no matter how big or how small, because we don't want to be carrying things around in our brains anymore.

The other thing, and I'm jumping ahead a little bit here, is that if you have like a written to-do list or if you have a bunch of written meeting notes with action items and it's sitting on your desk or sitting in a folder somewhere, it is not in a space that other people can see it or help you with it. So it's still 100 % yours and yours alone as long as it's not in a place where others can help you with it. So we want to...

bring them as much as we can into say a project management system. We also want to establish processes and workflows and get those documented. So I know I've shared this many times. A lot of people kind of shut down with this like, that's a lot of work. And yeah, it can be, you can make it hard, but there are ways to make this easy. One of the ways that I love to,

get my team involved in processes and workflows and getting those documented. Number one is to use a system like Loom, L-O-O-M, to record a screen share and just say, okay, I am performing this task. I am creating a recurring invoice in QuickBooks Online. Super simple example here. And I just record myself actually creating a real invoice so I'm getting the job done, but then I'm also showing how to do the job.

and it is documented in a way that anybody else on my team who has access to my QuickBooks Online, of course, can perform this task moving forward. Easy peasy, done. The other way that you could do this is have the person who's going to be taking these tasks over for you sit in with you, whether it be physically next to you at your desk as you're doing something and talking through it, or more than likely if you work with a remote team.

joining them, joining a Zoom call and screen sharing and talking through it as you're doing the work and have them taking notes on how the work needs to get done. There's so many tools, and this is not even including AI, there are so many tools out there now to help you with these SOPs. But the most important thing is if it's something that you need to do and you need to get off your plate, you have to take the time to do this, but there are ways to make it easier. The second thing that we wanna do in order to lighten

the invisible workload is to use automations intentionally. So I say this because sometimes when it comes to all the fancy bells and whistles and all the different software and tools that are out there, more is more is more is not necessarily true. And I feel like I can even think of a couple of clients right now. I love them. I love that they're excited about all these different tools and automations available to them.

but I feel like sometimes they sign up for all these different things and there's some overlap in terms of what these systems are able to do. But what the point is here is that we want to look at opportunities to leverage software and tools to automate manual work as much as possible. So this could be as simple as creating a welcome email drip or some type of welcome series.

for new clients that are getting started with working with you and your team so that they have the information that they need, but you don't have to have those same conversations over and over and over. So maybe somebody signs up with working with your company, they get a welcome email, here are the next steps, and then you drip out information about how to get the most out of your work together over the course of days to weeks. Maybe that's just one example there. So we wanna use automations intentionally.

in order to relieve manual workload, not only from her own plates and our own minds, but also our teams as well. The third way that we want to lighten that mental load is to delegate in ways that truly establish ownership and responsibility to others on the team. So it's not, hey, I just need you to take over this task for me. It's from now on.

I would like to have you handling the client billing for our company. Here's all the things that need to be done that go along with client billing. This is your baby. You own it. I'm going to show you the way that it's been done now. If you see better ways to do it in the future, once you learn the ropes, you are fully empowered to make those changes. We don't want to run into a situation where you're handing off work.

but then you're constantly reviewing it or you're constantly getting questions and you're having to micromanage another person on your team, you want to establish true ownership for some of these aspects of the day-to-day running of your company where you're not the problem solver anymore. And certainly, when situations come up, you can be there. If something major comes up or if your team member has an idea to make something more efficient, by all means, take the time to hear them out and learn more about what they're...

what they're looking at doing and give your input. But again, establishing the difference between this is something that I need your help with and that is the difference between doing that and saying from now on, I would like you to run this portion of our day-to-day operations and let them take full ownership of that. Okay, the last way that we want to lighten the invisible load.

is to set communication boundaries. So let's start with email because I don't know a single business owner or CEO or executive director who isn't drowning in email, at least sometimes. Some of us are really good and disciplined about email, but there are definitely times where it gets out of control. So this can also look like pausing your inbox throughout the day. So

For example, I use a tool called Boomerang. I use a Google Workspace account for my email and for calendar and all of that. But there are different tools for different systems depending on what you use. Once I do my inbox triage, now first of all, my executive assistant goes in and organizes my inbox for me first. But once I go in, I click that pause button and it pauses bringing in any new emails until it's time for me to check them.

throughout the course of the day. So I might check, I might pause my inbox and then check it right around noon before I take my lunch break. And I'll pause it again. And then I will check it before I log out at the end of the day and bring in the messages that have come in. This helps me avoid staying in reactive mode and falling into the trap of, an email came up. What does that person need from here? I finally heard back from that person. What do they want us to do?

It just keeps you in that distracted state, and that's what we're trying to avoid here when we're talking about the invisible workload. It's that pull of that email and knowing that there's new information, there's new messages, there's new distractions that are in our inbox. That's one way. The other way could be to establish office hours where you are available and open for your team to come to you.

with questions or ideas that they have so that you're not fielding that hypothetical like knock knock, do you have a minute? And they're standing in your doorway. Now again, if you have a physical office, that's a real thing. If you work remotely with your team, maybe this looks like constant chat messages, whether that be through Slack or through some team's chat or.

You know, our team uses Boxer, putting some parameters around communication so that you're not constantly responding to things all day long. You're able to be heads down and focused and then batch your responses to those communications throughout the day. Okay. All of that being said, we all struggle with the invisible workload to some extent or another throughout the course of our weeks and our months, sometimes a year, our

busier than others, some situations come up and they bog us down more than others. But as far as the next step goes, because I realized that this is a big problem and it's a very common problem and it's something that we're working through all the time, just choosing one thing to take away from today's conversation as a next step, I recommend just doing a brain dump of everything you're holding in your head. It doesn't have to be pretty.

No one else has to read this. It doesn't have to be in a fancy notebook. It could be on a scratch sheet of paper, but just write down all the things that you've been thinking about. It could even be, oh, I need to register my kids for summer camp, or I need to make that second payment for summer camp. It could be, oh, I need to pick up more berries to have after dinner tonight. These are random things that are popping up into my own head right now, right? Where right now,

At the time of this recording, we are in the late days of the school year. So now I'm starting to think, okay, summer schedule, what are all the things? We need to bring back that library book. And then I'm thinking about, okay, we have that customer that I want to connect with by phone this week because I wanted to hear more about her new offer. I have this team member that I have an idea for a new role for her on the team. Just all the things that you're thinking about, just put it into paper. The point is this is not your to-do list.

This is just literally a mental dump to unload your mind. And then once you do that, I hope you're feeling a little bit better now that you've just got it all out of the brain. You've got it on paper. Choose one thing, not even necessarily from that list. Choose one thing that jumped out at you as we were talking today that you want to delegate or automate this week. Just one thing that if you handed it off,

or if you leverage a tool or a system to handle for you, that would just make life that much easier for you and or your team. And I would love to hear from you. Send me an email. Let me know what that one thing is. I'm curious what you guys are offloading and delegating these days. I'm curious about the things that you're looking to automate these days. Would love to hear from you. So thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. Apparently I'm all talked out.

and I will be back next week with another episode of Make Space for More. Have a wonderful day. Bye bye.