The most common response I get to “How are you?” is

“busy”

or

“tired”

I used to give those answer too. I wore my level of being busy and tired as a badge of honor. As if I was in a competition against others of who could be the busiest. This isn’t uncommon. So often people take pride in how busy they are. And how worn down they are. We are playing some perverted olympic game of living a life of never ending work and having no time for friends, fun, and relaxation.

It’s time to shift our perspective and understand that being busy is a negative state that is to be avoided, not strived for. One of my heroes, Tim Ferriss, said,

“Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”

His theory is that being busy is a result of low efficiency, procrastination, and not taking the effort to cut out the unnecessary fat and noise from your life. He wrote a book, The Four Hour Workweek, arguing that you can get more accomplished in a smaller amount of time if you simply stop being busy and start being effective. You wil have more time for yourself on top of being more productive and impactful at work.

Below is a list of topics regarding my effort to be less busy yet more effective. The first Tuesday of every month I will be posting an article on one of these topics. Links will be added to this list once the article for that bullet point is written. Check back every month! (If there is something you want me to cover that isn’t in the list, let me know in a comment).

• Email

• Scheduling
• Habits
• Todo Lists
• 80/20 Rule
• Coffee
• Delegating
• Opportunity Cost

Take Action

Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side, list your top five priorities in life. Now on the right side, list what a stranger peering into your life would think your top five priorities are. For many people these lists might look like this:

My priorities:

• Husband
• Friends
• Passion (e.g. writing novels, playing piano, painting, etc.)
• Health
• Travel

What a stranger would think my priorities are:

• Checking email
• Attending meetings
• Eating junk food
• Sleep deprivation
• Posting selfies to Facebook

Your goal, throughout this series of posts, will be to make the second list look a little more like your first.