Busy-ness is bad for business

There is a belief that has infiltrated our society – that to be busy is to be virtuous or good.  We admire people who are living very busy lives and we boast about how busy we are in order to appear virtuous in the eyes of others.

Being busy creates anxiety as the tasks pile up, but we learn to like it that way, because the payoff is in knowing that we are good.  We don’t have to question ourselves, our beliefs, our ethics – we don’t have time to develop ourselves.  We allow ourselves to react in a knee-jerk manner because we don’t have time to do anything else.

We particularly need to be seen to be busy at work to prove that we are making a valuable contribution.  Consider for a moment whether the 80:20 rule applies.  It often does.  Consider whether 20 per cent of your time is creating 80 per cent of your valuable contribution. 

The real value of what you bring to your work improves the efficiency and effectiveness of your company and improves the lives of its customers.  Value comes when you pause to reflect on your work and streamline your activities to align with these goals.

A lot of the rest is padding - emails that could be ignored, meetings that achieve little, flights that could be replaced with video calls.  Stuff that detracts from your value.   

Pausing to contemplate gives our intuitive brain a chance to work.  When do your best ideas come?  When does that flash of inspiration come as if from nowhere?  Usually this is in a period of calm, in the shower, on holiday, at the weekend.  Creating unhurried time for contemplation pays dividends in terms of the quality of our thinking and the value of our contribution.

And here is something vital to contemplate. We understand the payoff, but what is the cost of your busy life?  

Three Ways to Keep a Cool Head

A large number of people come to coaching hoping to lose the gnaw of anxiety that they feel most of the time.  I am coming to the opinion that it is unrealistic to expect to lose all sense of anxiety.  This is an attendant part of being human; we succeeded in the evolutionary stakes because we scan our environment for possible threats.  We are constantly on guard.  It’s how we are made.

Now armed with a more realistic (and less stressful) expectation, the question becomes how can we live more comfortably with our anxiety, how can we feel less distress?

1. Underneath your anxiety there is a little nagging voice  Listen carefully and you will hear it.  You can recognize it by the ‘should’ implied in every nag.  You should be spending more time with the kids, you should be higher up the corporate ladder, this goes on endlessly for many of us.  Recognise the voice and challenge it, reassure it and ultimately turn a blind ear (sic).

2. Having made some more space in your mind, fill it with more useful, less stressful thoughts.  It may sound odd, but put yourself back in the centre of your life.  Ask yourself, what is it that you want, you believe, you think, you value?  Spend time rediscovering what is important to you.  Armed with greater self-knowledge, and a stronger sense of who you are, it gradually becomes easier to resist the auto-stress reaction when others try to crowd you with their shoulds.

3. I know, I know, everyone is talking about the value of meditation.  It seems that modern science is backing up ancient wisdom.  Clearing the mind, calming the system for a few minutes a day has profound beneficial effects on reducing automatic stress reactions, and bringing them under your control.  Sounds like it’s worth the time doesn’t it?

Let me know your stress-busting techniques.  And get in touch if you think coaching might be worth investigating.

Have a peaceful weekend.

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.“

William James