When you ask anyone, “How are you?”, the most common response you’ll receive is busy. Everyone’s overwhelmed, has too much to do, and is always busy.
Being busy is so common, it has become like an addiction. It has turned into a way to show your importance and to assure others you are working as hard as the next person. It also says, “There is nothing I can do that I am not doing already.” Busy gives the ego a sense of justification.
People use being busy as a badge of honor. You might even believe that being busy is a good thing and strive to keep yourself busy all day. Science shows that most people, when given the choice, will choose the one that keeps them busy. This happens because people use being busy to distract from new challenges, difficult situations, or simply to avoid making tough decisions about priorities.
Yet, being busy is a very destructive behavior for achieving what is most important in your life.
Busy is a deceptive little fellow, dancing around keeping you occupied and unable to focus on your actual goals. It fills your day, feeds the need to cross off to-do’s, and leads to believing you are living a full life. The fallacy lurking in busyness’s wake is the assumption that busy equals getting after and accomplishing your goals.
Being busy only means that you are filling your time. It does not mean you are filling it wisely or with the right actions that align with your priorities.
Here are four myths you are telling yourself when you are busy:
Myth #1: If I am busy, then I am a productive employee
- Truth: A productive employee accomplishes their goals and focuses on top priorities. Busy is movement, but it is not forward action. Forward action requires deliberate choices, planning, and decisive action, and it is only with forward motion that goals happen.
Myth #2: I cannot take on extra work or seek self-development opportunities because I am too busy.
- Truth: Being busy means filling up your day with all the little things first and leaving no room for the important things. When you are busy, you lose out on the ability to take on new opportunities, but it is not because you don’t have time. It is because you are filling your day without discernment.
Myth #3: My goals have to wait because I am busy.
- Truth: Your goals are the top priority and busy needs to take a backseat to your goals. Be it meeting a deadline or outreaching to new customers, fulfilling goals requires that your time stays filled with the important tasks, not the unimportant tasks.
Myth #4: Being busy is a valid excuse to say no.
- Truth: Additional work will always be there. There is always more that you can do. Being busy is not an excuse to say no to more work, but rather an excuse for not setting clearer priorities. When you set clear priorities, you become productive rather than busy.
To overcome the curse of busyness, you must plan for the important actions. Ask yourself what will move you closer to your goals and fill your time with those actions first. These are the big rocks. If you fill your time with little things first, there is no room left for the big rocks. Instead, schedule the big rocks in your day and fill in the holes with what’s left. If you don’t have time for it all, then the little things can drop away and you’ll still make forward progress towards your goals.
The next first step is to eliminate the word busy from your vocabulary. When you frame your thinking around productivity versus staying busy, you will view your work differently. Stress reduces, more tasks are complete, and goals manifest into reality.
