In the 1800’s and before, ships would too often sink because they were overloaded. If you are going to make a long journey and do that much work, you’d be more profitable by taking on more cargo – right? But when a storm comes, you are overloaded, sink, and everything is lost.
Samuel Plimsoll came up with the idea of painting a line around the ship. As ships were being loaded, when this line was down at the waterline, that was it, the ship could be loaded no further. It’s called the Plimsoll line and ships around the world have one today.
The same is true for you. You can only do so much. When you are at your Plimsoll line you can take no more duties, tasks, issues, or problems. If you do, you can “lose it” – isn’t that right?
Who’s “load” is it? Yours, or your organization’s? You are the leader of the organization, but everything doesn’t have to be on you. You are not your company. You are the leader of it, but it is not you.
Alternatively, you can lighten your load by offloading things to other people (ships). Delegate, empower, or just say “No, I (we) are not doing that (right now)”. The continual process of offloading yourself as the leader is HOW you scale. This is a skill and an art. You have to get people to help you – more and more and more of them as you grow. If you don’t, you can’t grow and will only drive yourself insane and ruin your life.
The ocean doesn’t care about your optimistic thinking. When you are at your limit, you are at your limit.
Don’t get swamped. Mind your Plimsoll line.
EXCELLENT post, Larry! Thank You!
An amazing reminder. Will keep on eye on my Plimsoll line. Thanks
I love this. Good info and a solid lesson. I am currently reading a book about deep sea divers- not totally related to your message but a worthy read and the same mindset. Its called Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. A true story about divers discovering a German u boat off the NJ coast.
One of my all-time favorites from you. We as leaders tend to take on way more than we can efficiently handle.
It’s true that you learn something new every day. We cruise all the time and have always noticed the line on the ships and didn’t know it had a meaning. Thanks for the nautical and life lesson. it’s a good one.
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I am really inspred by your entrepreneurial story and your work ethic. It’s true, we don’t have ti sacrifice our lives to make money. I think and strongly believe that we csn still make money without overloading our hearts and minds with slave work. I believe in working to live, not working myself to death. Hard work doesn’t make anyone rich, but a miserable slave. We csn still achieve all our financial goals without working hard like slaves. Thank you