When did "Busy" become a bad word!?!
If I hear one more person say, "Don't be busy, be productive." I might lose my mind.
Ok...probably not because I've got too much going on to waste much time losing my mind over an overused motivational quote. For real, though. When did being busy become such a terrible thing?
I understand the sentiment, truly. In business, there is a huge difference between being busy and being productive. You can spend an entire day answering emails, attending meetings, rearranging your to-do list, and convincing yourself you've accomplished something simply because you never stopped doing. Meanwhile, the one thing you actually needed to get done is still sitting there, patiently waiting for your attention.
Trust me, I've been there. There is absolutely something to be said for working smarter, prioritizing what matters, and measuring success by what you accomplish rather than how exhausted you are at the end of the day.
My challenge is what happens when we take a perfectly reasonable business principle and start applying it to our entire existence. Suddenly, being busy is something we are supposed to apologize for, and every hour needs a purpose. Every activity should move us closer to a goal. We are encouraged to eliminate anything that doesn't contribute to our growth, our success, our health, our finances, or whatever else we are currently trying desperately to optimize.
Good Lord! Can we just LIVE?!
Personally, I like being busy. I like having things on the calendar, people to see, places to go, projects to tackle, and experiences to anticipate. I love my work, and I love the life Brad and I are building outside of it. Some weeks we are juggling real estate clients, business planning, Rotary events, CO4NU events, community commitments, time with family and friends, and whatever else sounded like a fantastic idea when we enthusiastically added it to the calendar weeks earlier. Occasionally, I look at our calendar and wonder who the hell thought all of this was a good idea. As Brad will attest, the answer is usually me.
Know what? I don't want to give any of it up. I WANT to have a full life. I want to say yes to things. I want to spend time with people I care about, try something new, get involved in my community, and occasionally commit to something before I've fully considered the logistics. Some of my favorite memories have come from the things we probably didn't have time to do.
Were those experiences productive? Who freaking cares!?!? When did productivity become the standard by which we measure whether our time was well spent?
Think about how ridiculous it would be to evaluate the rest of our lives the same way we evaluate a workday:
Dinner with friends? Nope. No measurable outcome.
An afternoon spent wandering around somewhere new? Terrible use of time. We could have been answering emails.
A long conversation with a loved one? Unless you solved a problem or established a plan, what exactly did you accomplish?
A Saturday spent doing absolutely nothing? Well, now you're just plain being irresponsible.
SEE how absurd this gets?
Of course, most people aren't consciously thinking this way. I don't believe we are all sitting around calculating the ROI of a nice dinner or a lazy Sunday. The pressure is a little sneakier than that. It is the nagging feeling we should be doing something more useful with our time. It is the guilt when we take a break. It is the tendency to describe an enjoyable day as one where we "didn't get anything done," as though enjoying ourselves somehow doesn't count.
I've caught myself doing it plenty of times. I'll spend a wonderful day with Brad, see people I love, or do something I've been looking forward to doing, and then find myself thinking about allll the shiz on my to-do list.
What a ridiculous way to ruin a perfectly good day!!
I also think we've confused being busy with being overwhelmed, and those aren't the same thing. Being overwhelmed feels like everything is demanding something from you and there is no room to breathe. You are constantly reacting, struggling to keep up, and wishing you could make half your commitments disappear. Being busy can look exactly the same from the outside, but feel completely different on the inside.
You can have a packed calendar because you're doing work you love, spending time with people who matter, and filling your days with things you've actually CHOSEN. You can be tired at the end of a busy week and still feel pretty damn happy about how you spent it.
I all too regularly experience both, and I can assure you there is a difference.
To be clear, I am not suggesting we should all cram every available minute with activities. I have done enough of that myself to know how quickly a full schedule can become unbearably exhausting. Rest is important, and sometimes the best thing you can do is cancel your plans, put on your comfies, and accomplish absolutely nothing.
I simply do not think rest needs to be justified by being more productive tomorrow. Maybe you need a quiet evening because you're exhausted. Maybe you want one because there is a show you've been dying to binge. Maybe you simply don't feel like doing a damn thing. All perfectly acceptable reasons!
The same goes for being busy. Some seasons of life are naturally fuller than others. Raising kids, building a business, caring for loved ones, volunteering, maintaining friendships, traveling, learning new things...there is a LOT to fit into one lifetime, especially if you are someone who wants to experience as much of it as possible, like I do.
Not every commitment is a burden. Similarly, not every full calendar is a warning sign. Sometimes you're busy because your life is full of things you genuinely enjoy. That is something worth celebrating.
There is another part of this conversation that also bothers me. The whole "don't be busy, be productive" philosophy can make it sound as though busy people are somehow doing life wrong. They're disorganized, distracted, incapable of setting boundaries, or simply not disciplined enough to focus on what matters.
Sure, that is probably sometimes true. I have certainly had days when I was running around like a crazy person, but accomplishing very little. I've also had incredibly productive days that were busy as hell...schedule packed to the gills. The two are not mutually exclusive.
You can run a successful business, manage your responsibilities, and get an enormous amount accomplished while also maintaining a full personal life. You can be organized, intentional, and efficient without turning every waking moment into a performance review. Not everything you do needs a measured ROI.
As a matter of fact, I think one of the reasons I work so hard to be productive in my business is precisely because I want time for everything else. I don't want to spend my entire life working (even though it sometimes feels like I do). I want to do excellent work, take amazing care of our clients, build something meaningful with Brad, and still have the time and energy to enjoy the people and experiences that make life fun.
Some days, that means putting my head down and getting shit done. Other days, it means deciding the work can wait because there is somewhere else I'd rather be. Neither day is a failure.
The older I get, the more aware I become of how quickly time passes. There are places I want to visit, people I want to spend more time with, causes I want to support, things I want to learn, and memories I want to make. I don't want to look back someday and congratulate myself for having maintained a beautifully optimized calendar. I want to remember what I actually DID with my time.
I want the dinners that ran way too long, the trips we squeezed into an already packed schedule, the friendships we made because we showed up somewhere new, and the ordinary moments that turned out to be exceptionally special.
I also want the quite mornings, the lazy afternoons, and the occasional day when the most ambitious thing on the agenda is figuring out what we are having for dinner. There is room for all of it.
So by all means, focus on being productive when you're working. But for the love of all that is holy, stop confusing activity with accomplishment. Protect your time, establish priorities, and don't let meaningless tasks consume your day.
Sometimes being busy means you are overwhelmed and need to make some changes. However, sometimes being busy means you're having the time of your life. The trick is knowing yourself well enough to know the difference.
Personally, I'm hoping for a whole lot more of the second one...because that's my jam!! <3
