Your Day is Like a Sausage Casing

Hopefully, this blog post creates a visual for you that is memorable. Imagine your day as a sausage. A bratwurst, a hot dog, kielbasa, chorizo, sai ua, andouille, little breakfast links… Take your pick. Envision any meat that comes in a casing, with the casing holding all the bits together.

Now, envision that sausage as your day. If you’re anything like us, you’re trying to pack in as much as possible. You’re filling it up as full as you can at work with projects, meetings, calls, and coffees. Then, on the personal side of life, we add family time, connecting with friends, vacations, and all the housekeeping things that need to be done to keep life moving. Finally, with whatever room is left, we squeeze in some time for ourselves, our hobbies, and a little self-care.

You can see what’s happening here. The sausage keeps getting fuller and fuller, and we keep trying to squeeze in just a little more until the casing is about to break. Then, when we put that sausage on the grill and turn up the heat a little bit, it bursts and spits all over.

We did an exercise recently where we mapped out our days, looking at where we invested our time hour by hour for a week. Then, we compared what we were actually doing with the things we had told each other were important and aligned with our goals. Two things became very clear.

First, many things we were filling our days with weren’t aligned with our goals and wouldn’t move the needle. Second, and even more important, it was clear that we were trying to overfill the sausage. There wasn’t room for everything, and if we continued squeezing things in, something would break.

When you’re unaware that this is happening, it can be easy to just to keep filling up the sausage. You add more and more, keep saying yes to things, and over-promise on how quickly you can deliver on things. The result? A work and personal life that bursts and spits when things get hot.

Over-stuffing the sausage does not work.

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Look at what you’re filling your sausage, or your life, with. What are you investing your time and energy into personally and professionally, and are those things the RIGHT things? Most importantly, are you overfilling your life’s casing to the point of bursting? Assess where you’re at and how full your life is, and then adjust as needed, so you don’t break, burst, or spit.