BUSYNESS — How You Create It, And How to Stop It
Many of us find ourselves feeling overly busy, not really getting to do or experience the things that are important to us and our work. We then often experience that we even lose touch with whole areas of our life such as our important relationships, our health, our mental wellbeing or good opportunities in our work or for the business.
We struggle to get back into balance, often becoming even more busy in the process. Some of us do not even try anymore to improve the situation and feel more or less resigned, helpless or apathetic. At the very least, being busy and not getting to do what is important to us and our work feels tense, stressful and since we lack a feeling of moving forward, we feel unsatisfied, not quite happy, further impairing our ability to be fully present and effective in all the aspects of our life.
However, busyness is a situation that first and foremost we ourselves create. Again: we create it ourselves! Of course there are external factors that urge us into busyness, no denying that. But the major part of our actual behavior and experience is something we ourselves are responsible for. This text focusses on this part and what we can personally do about it.
What does ‘Busyness’ mean?
First, let’s be clear what we are talking about: by the term busyness I mean a situation in which you are generally very active, maybe even getting significant results — in your work and other areas of your life — but you are not getting to do or experience what is really important to you, for your personal mission or for your organization.
Why we are ‚busy‘
Negative self-affirmations: A very common reason for doing everything but what matters are negative self-affirmations. Those are beliefs that you adopted during your early childhood as a result of experiences with your primary care person(s), that is for most of us our parents. And this is not about putting a judgement on what they did or did not do. It is about understanding how these experiences shaped your beliefs.
Realizing that can help being aware and letting go of them. For example: your parents might have been in a lot of stress during your early years and thus is was more important for them — even without bad intention — that you ‘function’ instead of following your desires or even needs. As a result you adopted the inner belief that it is more important to do things that others find necessary and less important to realize your own needs and desires. Unreflected, that can lead to a lot of busyness, by trying to fulfill other’s agenda’s — on top of your own or what you find important for the company.
Wrong assumptions about the reality of life:
- “I can do it all” — This one is very common as well. It means that when thinking about different actions that added together take more time than you factually have, you somehow still believe that you can „do both“. For example wanting to be punctual to the next meeting that starts in 2min and still trying to finish that email before. To paraphrase Greg McKeown: there is no „doing it both“, there are only trade-offs.
- “Doing more = being more satisfied” — That one is false almost all the time. You will only be satisfied when you do the things that are important to you and your work. If you don’t, you can do the whole world of things and will still feel lacking. This one appears e.g. often in the form of a suggestion in a meeting such as: “Let’s first of all get all the small tasks done and then we focus fully on this big important task”.
- “I have to is real” — sometimes it is the case that we really have to do something by some external demand, but in fact it almost always isn’t. It is important to take note that there is a place inside of us where this decision of doing or not doing is being made. For example: you are „full“ until the end of the day and your boss says to you, „please come into this meeting, it’s important“ — it is your decision to try to do it all or e.g. inquire a bit whether you are really needed, should drop some of the other stuff, etc.
We want to be nice: Another reason for being busy: We want to be perceived as someone who helps others out & who takes one for the team. That’s ok and good. But the moment it keeps you from doing what really counts and what serves others best this attitude becomes a blocker to real productivity and satisfaction.
Busyness is glorified: Let’s face it: in public, in our organizations and in private life we constantly hear statements that make busyness seem normal, and frankly even desirable. People habitually picking up their phone or answering mails in the middle of a meeting; rushing through the supermarket to “quickly buy some groceries”; full calendars with no possibility schedule a meeting within the next few weeks in order to take a real opportunity…
And we often proudly justify these things by saying that we have many responsibilities. Also, people are happy with us if we can squeeze in one more thing and thank us that we are so “reliable” (in truth, busyness makes us highly unreliable). On the other hand, planning time generously for meaningful work and saying no to requests or no so important opportunities is often judged as laziness or a lack of productivity or flexibility. All of that, and much more — I only gave a few examples here — is tempting us to take on more than we should or spend our energy and time on things that are not important for us or our organization.
We don’t take control or our lives: Maybe the most impactful reason in terms of our actual behavior is: we do not take control of our lives, we do not design it on our own. This is also related to the “I have to”-assumption I mentioned before, but it is a distinct phenomena: from a moment to moment basis we seem to lack the ability to direct our experiences and actions. Instead, we simply go with the flow and find it hard to make decisions on our own or set goals and pursue them proactively. This is a deep point and I want to dive into it a little bit.
Why don’t we take control of our lives?
There are many different reasons. One very important reason is: we are habitually unaware of our own needs and desires. For some people this goes to the point that they simply cannot tell what they want or what they need even if you ask them about it. They may say something, but it won’t feel quite real — to others and more importantly to themselves. They usually also do not know their strength and weakness or how others perceive them. Basically such people do not feel their Self clearly.
This is a big subject and there is a lot of research around this. In any case: from this position it is very hard to decide what to do and what not and it can result in an often overwhelming experience of busyness, because naturally you will tend to let circumstances and other people dictate your experiences and actions. Even for those of us who generally feel clear about our emotions, needs and desires, there are situations — for instance if we feel tired or under stress — where we cannot access that clarity and we then make decisions based not in our own self, but we let our actions be directed by something outside of us. Phew, a lot, I know. But really understanding the problem is important here, since that alone can already be helpful. Let’s move on to solutions.
So, what to do about it?
Given the consequences of busyness — tension, stress, dissatisfaction, superficiality and ultimately: not living the life you want to live and delivering the work that is important to you — the obvious question is what can be done about it. Here are a few points that you will encounter in psychology research as well as in leadership and good self-help literature and that I find particularly helpful:
An understanding: Directing your life and making choices about tradeoffs is happening anyway! Someone is making those decisions. And if it is not you, then someone else is doing it for you. I really like Greg McKeown’s (author of Essentialism) analogy here: just imagine you cleared out your wardrobe so there’s a lot of space for new clothes. Now imagine you let someone else choose those new clothes.
Nobody would ever do that, but ironically we allow others to dictate the things we spend our time and energy on. It is your life and your time is limited. And no amount of busyness will ever fill that void of dissatisfaction and lacking. It is those things that are meaningful. Also from a productivity point of view it doesn’t make sense to let others choose: you know best what you can contribute and do it well and what you want to experience to be fully present in all the areas of your life – giving others the wheel isn’t very effective. So, be aware that choices are always being made and that you should be the one making them.
Actions to take: Depending on why you personally experience busyness there are different approaches to get out of it. You can work on dissolving your negative beliefs — there’s tons of books on this that you can read; you can reflect on your assumptions about the nature of work and then set yourself a signal for decision situations (that’s where busyness mostly starts) which tells you to pause and challenge the commitment you are about to make; you can learn to say ‚No‘ in a way people will still respect you, or you can practice meditation to gain more self-awareness and self-stability in social situations. These are just some examples.
A very effective practice:
A most important practice for any type of change is creating very concrete awareness. If busyness is a problem for you, I want to encourage you to invest here. This can be done by a simple, but very powerful practice: at the end of each day, take 5mins where you are undisturbed and write down your answers to these 3 questions:
- Did today feel busy and if yes, when exactly?
- What were or will likely be the consequences of that?
- How does that feel to you?
The last part is most important: naming the emotions will help you find what to change in your life and work, where to start and they will also motivate you to act. Do this small exercise every single day for 30 days and after that you will be much more clear about where busyness starts for you and how your personal path in stopping it for good looks like. Most likely you will already have made concrete steps with success.
At last I want to encourage you. You are not at all alone with feeling trapped in busyness, but you can change that. It does take time and effort, so it is good to be patient and track your progress. It also immensely helps to regularly be in touch with people and ideas that help you gain and maintain awareness.
Thank you for reading. I hope this was helpful for you.
