So most people I know at work have the usual, “I’m really busy!” mantra. And I get it. I am too. We all are. But one thing I’ve learned fairly recently is that my busyness stress is sometimes misguided.

Let me explain.

I have tasks that are directly assigned to me, in terms of documents I am writing or code I need to review and approve as part of a process. But sometimes I find that my “I am busy” stress really comes from that I’m not completely in the loop on the status of other adjacent tasks assigned to other people. I feel stressed because I don’t know what’s going on, and then I feel busy because I have to go find out, which means research, conversations, analysis, etc.

But what I’ve learned is, especially if you want to be a leader who manages at scale, is you have to learn that you will never know everything. You maybe DON’T know what’s going on “over there”, but more importantly, that’s OK! You trust those persons with that task to perform it and own it and take care of it.

Once I let that mental model adjust, I found my stress level went way down. I stopped worrying about other tasks and problems, and said to myself, “I cannot be the one to solve everything, and in fact I shouldn’t be. That other person over there has that problem space in hand so I will relax and let them worry about it. And they will come ask me for help if they need it.”

I’m not saying this magically makes all your stress and busyness go away. But this certainly released a lot of it. And also has helped me grow to be a better leader, because I can now oversee more workstreams by trusting the teams.