The Illusion of Busy
I have a theory, it may be hard for some to swallow; anywho, I believe that there is an epidemic of ‘busy’ people who are not so much busy as they are mentally disorganised…
Most of us, my age and older, have grown up in a work environment where being busy was a status symbol; signifying your importance and dedication. When I was working for a big corporate with strict hours — 8am to 6pm — being in on time and leaving on time was seen as a statement that you were either not committed to your job or you were not working hard enough.
I spent 3 years (I know this is nothing in comparison to what most of you would have endured) working minimum 10 hour days, often more likely to be 13, feeling like I was really busy. I was overwhelmed, I walked to work at 7 am, sprinted to meetings and shot like lightning across the office emphasising just how busy I was. To me this was justified; I did have a lot going on; I felt busy!
It only took 3 years for me to burn out. I was trying to be the first female this and the youngest that. I thought that my running around like a stressed out maniac was going to advance my career. Sadly, it did actually achieve the attention that I wanted; I was on the radar of ‘the right people’; I was working toward the big goals I so desperately wanted to achieve.
The details of this meltdown can be saved for another time, what is more important are the experiences following this.
A random series of events put me in touch with a small consulting firm, looking to hire a contract business development consultant, working from home for a MAXIMUM of 40 hours per week.
I immediately clicked with this business, particularly the people within it. However, unsurprising if you know me, things in my life were not so simple; I had a foreign boyfriend trying to get entry back into Australia and within 2 months he announced that he could not enter the country for 12 months more, and said “you will come to be with me, won’t you?”.
My boss was amazing! I hadn’t even considered going and she calmly said to me “well I guess you’re going then?”. It was the permission I needed and 2 weeks later I was catching a flight to Dubai. The day I finished work I suggested I could take on any overflow work. She fobbed it off and wished me well.
3 months later I was in LA (a story for another time) and my (previous) boss rang me, letting me know that one of the girls had left and asked how ‘this whole remote working thing’ could work. We tested it with just a few hours a day, then within a few months, I was back to making a decent living; whilst also traveling the world.
It’s an empowering feeling to be a contractor. You start to see the value of your time. When I was on, I was on 100%. There is a certain loyalty that you feel when someone has afforded you the freedom to manage your own day. Someone has trusted you; allowed you to tell them when you were and were not working; trusted that you will bill only for what you have done. You have to have wild admiration for leaders able to offer this sort of trust!
It didn’t feel like work. I had structure and I learned how to manage my time well. I was committed to never abusing the trust I had been afforded and as a result, I was always looking for ways to improve reporting and efficiency to give her better results and me more time to explore the countries I was visiting. Anyone who knows me can confirm my obsession with having a good CRM system. It is not unusual that I would get into a heated debate with businesses who work from spreadsheets and don’t see the value in a CRM (don’t even get me started). I learned that really truly exporting your brain into a good CRM allowed you to easily clock on and off; genuinely leaving work for tomorrow, for tomorrow; always knowing where you’re at.
When I left this environment to go back into ‘the real world’ I realised how much my productivity had improved as a contractor. When you work by the hour, ever hour counts; you report what you have achieved every hour that you bill for. There is no room to take advantage. Back in the real world, I spent my first day of work sitting around reading company culture documents… I wanted to cry. It is a scary reality, when you are so used to counting productivity hour by hour, to see how much money a great majority of businesses waste on BS tasks that some HR or Marketing person has put in the employee manual (not to diss on either role; I have blended across both throughout my career and respect them both greatly).
I observed this virus in many office cultures throughout my career, I am sure you have noticed it, too… Where people love to talk about how busy they are, yet they also like to distract you from your work, regularly, to talk about sh… Things that are not relevant to work.
What I have observed:
1) People are still hypnotised by the status of being busy — it says ‘hey, I’m important, look how little time I have and how invested I am in my job’ — that is not something I believe anyone should aspire to!
2) We live in the age of technology and too many people are not using this to their advantage!! Working remotely from overseas, traveling to new locations every few weeks while holding down steady hours forced me to get organised! I outsource my brain to a CRM system and numerous to-do lists and trackers so that I could show my boss I was adding value while they couldn’t see me. Every call I make, every meeting I attend, going straight into my CRM, I action all follow on tasks immediately and then I set a reminder and forget about it. The feeling of ticking everything off and realising that you are done, truly done for the day is heaven! I suggest you try it.
3) Most people think they are busy because they are holding too much in their heads — write a to-do list! Generally, when someone tells me they are busy, I ask them what they have on. They never list more than three tasks but give me an elaborate story trying to make those three things seem like mountains to be climbed. In most cases, if they would just write a to-do list and follow it religiously, they would find that those huge tasks they’re investing all their energy into not forgetting, will only take them a few hours of 100% focus to smash through. Following this, put everything in a CRM so that you have a way of checking that all of the tasks previously stored in your head have in fact been done and then you can relax!
4) We welcome distractions — my time is valuable, man! I have my shit laid out every day. I do not welcome anyone to distract me until that list is ticked off, or I dedicate an hour to them in a time that fits in with my priorities. Your time is valuable! If you give it to other people for matters that are not immediately important, you have no right to complain about how busy you are!
It was not automatic to work this way. It took 12 months of being away from ‘normal’ working life and away from home where no one told me what ‘normal’ should look like in order for me to learn these lessons.
I realise that most of us are in a rat race, everyone around us is making us look bad by working more hours or complaining more about their workload. Be smart, though! Does it really look good that you need more than your dedicated hours to do your job? Err… No.
Obviously, this does not apply to everyone! I am in sales so my perception is skewed to a sales environment. We are the big talkers, the ones who take 2–3 hour client lunches and spend half our time bragging about our work so that our managers will notice and put us in line for promotion… Do you really want a promotion based on the fact you work stupid hours, guaranteeing that this will continue to be the expectation of you in the future? Probably not… Be smart, guys.
