I’m not busy, I’m just focused

Almost without fail, when somebody contacts me asking for my time, they say something like “I️ know you’re busy.”

This is interesting, this assumption that just because someone won’t talk to you means they are “busy.”

Is that really true?

Busy is a choice

When I was a kid, my mom would complain to me about trying to spend time with other mothers in town and who often told her they were “so busy” and therefore couldn’t find time to get together for coffee or whatever.

This frustrated her, because Mom was always somebody who was in control of her schedule. And she hated being too busy to enjoy the company of friends and family.

“Busy is a choice!” she would tell me.

Busy is a choice.

I couldn’t agree more.

Start by saying yes

Over the years, I have grown to realize that opportunity comes from saying yes to more than you think you can handle.

You have to be careful with this, of course, but I think the principle is true.

Saying yes creates opportunities.

We grow by stretching ourselves, which means that sometimes we have to commit to things that we are not quite sure we can pull off. What other way does your potential increase? You have to say yes when you’re getting started.

But after a while, the opportunities increase beyond your capacity for growth. And you can no longer say yes to everything. There’s just too much.

One of the reasons we say yes to so many opportunities at the beginning of our careers is that there are so few opportunities that come our way. So whatever opportunity exists, you should probably say yes to that.

However, as your skills increase and you become more known in your space, there will eventually be too many opportunities to say yes to all of them.

This is a good place to be but also a difficult one. At this point, it makes sense to say “no” more than you say “yes” as opposed to when you were starting out and it was vice versa.

Back to being busy…

The most successful people I know are not busy. They’re focused.

I️ keep a pretty tight schedule but that doesn’t mean I’m busy. Most weeks, I️ work less than 40 hours. I almost never take meetings at night or on the weekends. I’m home by five almost every day, sometimes earlier. And I don’t meet with strangers just to “connect.”

The reason for all this is simply that there are too many opportunities for the time I have available. This assumption that I’m busy, though, is incorrect. I’m not busy. I️ have two hours blocked off every day to write. Another hour every other day to work out.

I’m not more important than you or anyone else. I’m just focused on the work I’m doing. And honestly I️ am afraid that the next opportunity may just be another distraction from what I’m really supposed to do.

If you want to connect with someone, don’t tell them they’re busy. Either admire their focus and move on, maybe adopting more of that discipline yourself. Of find a way to become the object of that focus.

The point is this: It’s about focus. Not busyness.

What if we all stopped being busy and started being focused?

This is part of a challenge I’m doing to share a new piece of writing every day for 30 days. I️ wrote this article with my phone while on an airplane, waiting to depart. Learn more about the challenge here.