A couple of weeks ago, I sent an email claiming that the most important workplace skill in 2026 isn’t your leadership wizardry, technical know-how or communication chops but deciding what deserves your attention.

I likened today’s workplace to a flood with information cascading ferociously in all directions.

And the point I made was that success today comes from not operating inside the flood but learning how to control your floodgates instead.

To which a reader wrote in:

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Hi Tom

This was a great topic for me today. Definitely something I'd like to hear more about. Would that be doable?

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Ask and ye shall receive.

One of the easiest, most practical ways I’ve found to operate your own floodgate is by asking yourself the question “What happens if I DON’T do this?”

See, information isn’t a call to arms. 

Even if it comes with a request or command attached. 

An email landing in your inbox, a colleague asking for feedback or a meeting invite coming your way don’t mean you need to DO anything with them. And thinking it does is a good example of mixing the raisins with the rice pudding. In this case, conflating receiving information with the need to act on that information.

Asking “what happens if I don’t do this” is a great way to cut through the noise.

One of the stranger things I've noticed is how much stuff feels urgent right up until the moment I ignore it. Almost as if my own attention is creating that urgency. But when I close the floodgate, nobody follows up and nobody chases. The request evaporates into thin air like it didn’t even exist in the first place.

Perhaps this approach sounds reckless. 

It’s certainly not a tip you’ll find in your staff handbook or your favourite thought leader’s latest LinkedIn post.

But I’m not saying “how do I avoid doing my work?”. What I’m saying is “how do I figure out the work that’s actually mine to do?”.

Very different things.

Incidentally, now I’m the wrong side of 40 with almost two decades of banking under my corporate kimono, the less convinced I am that we need to “figure it out” at all. 

It tends to figure itself out by itself.

The truly important stuff doesn’t die after one email. Instead, people follow up. Or they send 7 Teams messages. Or they track you down at the coffee machine and march you back to your desk.

In fact, every time I take a holiday is proof of this.

I always come back to 100’s of emails. But 95% of those emails have sorted themselves out while I was gone and the stuff that really did need me is still there waiting for me to deal with.

The earth hasn’t stopped rotating in the meantime.

Nor has the bank gone belly up in my absence.

So the question “what happens if I don’t do this?” isn’t just a way to operate your floodgate. It’s also a way to notice how much stuff sorts itself out when you don’t immediately jump on it.

The funny thing about this?  

I haven’t said anything surprising here. Once people see the nuance, they’ll mostly think “yeh, that makes sense”. 

But then they go back to their inbox and respond to everything anyway!

Not because they forgot but because something invisible is still running the show.

Maybe it's a fear of looking unhelpful. Maybe it's a story about what good performance looks like. Maybe it's just a habit.

Whatever the case, coaching is where you see what that invisible thing actually is. Not so you can fight it or manage it but so it stops running you without your say so.

If you’d like to waste less time, energy and attention on what isn’t yours and have more left for what is, my coaching can help with that.

Raise the sluice and head on over here:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

To fulfilment

Tom