There have been several times at work, where if someone had stopped me amidst the usual hustle and asked me my name, I would have skipped a beat before I could answer that. I was a step beyond busy if that exists; what I fondly referred to as “Being all over the place”.
Being busy is a cloak, often worn proudly in corporate spaces. The more influential you are, the more productive you need to be and hence, busier. However, that is far from the truth.
As social beings, we are prone to have a bias towards action. Doing something keeps us occupied. So much so that it is easier to perform actions, instead of giving yourself a moment to think about anything.
Eventually, when I forced myself to stop being busy and reflect upon what was going on, I was received with stone-cold silence. Being busy all along meant no thinking or planning for the future, no time to reflect whether you are going in the right direction, and no energy to question if a task was necessary at all in the first place. I had nothing to move forward with after the mad hustle.
Busyness is not all it is hyped up to be, rather it is counter-productive. There are several flaws to always being busy
1. Being busy is exhausting
Most of the times being busy involves spreading yourself thin, multi-tasking all the time, and going with the flow. But if you allow every interruption to take over your day, at the end of the day you will have the same list of to-dos that you jotted down in the morning. While random tasks are completed, the ones you wanted to prioritize during the day remain unfulfilled and incomplete.
Being busy leads nowhere and drains energy despite having worked all day. Gradually, the guilt of not finishing your “to-dos” begins to take a toll. You are working yourself to the bone and it is exhausting to be busy all the time.
2.Being busy leaves you no time to pause and reflect
When you have more tasks at hand than the time available to do them, what do you do? You work like a robot. In and Out, with the sole agenda being to clear the overflowing in-tray. This approach translates to mindless doing with sheer focus on getting it done.
Was that a useful use of my time? Could I have delegated it and done something better? Did I put my mind to think if what I did was the right action? Could I have done it any better? Was the task necessary to be done in the first place?
Being busy leaves no room to think about any of these questions, for you are not looking at doing tasks well, but at getting through with it. The quality of work then immediately takes a back seat which also then adds to the stress.
3. Being Busy makes it easy to procrastinate things that matter
Being busy can help take care of regular mundane work, but what about ones that are not transactional in nature? They end up being postponed, sometimes indefinitely.
Being busy leaves you with no energy to think. So when a task that needs your undivided attention comes your way, you procrastinate it. There is hardly any scope for creativity when you are busy and with every passing day, these aspects slip-by your numb fingers.
This impacts severely when you realize how out-of-depth you are on the most important aspects your life be it: work, personal relationships, health, or mental wellness. This immediately causes panic, for you have no handle on the critical aspects of life. And the longer you have been avoiding them, the more daunting they seem.
While it might be difficult to fix all this at once, there are small baby steps you could begin with to slowly move away from busyness to productivity
1. Begin your day one hour earlier
As self-explanatory as it is, this is the single biggest trick that worked wonders for me. Sure, you are the only fool on the office floor before work hours. But on several occasions, this one hour of productivity could be much more than a whole days’ productivity.
This gives you a head-start to the day and is a kicker to get those juices flowing when your attention is at its peak in the morning. With no disruptions, you can effectively finish prioritized tasks even before the day begins. Imagine the relief you would feel to face the rest of the day after that. These 60 minutes can work wonders.
2. Pursue passion that is completely unrelated to your work
Choose a hobby from your wishlist and pursue it irrespective of the little time you can take out from your schedule. To begin with, it could even be a mere one or two hours a week.
When I was in sales, I used to yearn for a time where I didn’t have to talk to anyone. A run with my favorite music blasting in my ears used to be my go-to workout during that stint. No people, no conversations, it was just me and my music.
A break away from work, it will give you much-needed perspective. Scientists call it a diffused state of mind, one that helps you to be creative when you let your mind wander freely to make random connections.
3. Schedule a time to do mundane must-do tasks in a day
It helps to have a more effective method for handling the frequent calls and emails that keep disrupting you. Sure, if you are in a job that requires you to be available, draw a line that works for you best. But these simple steps helped my productivity
1.Check emails in periodic intervals of 15 minutes every two-three hours
2. Make a list of all the ad-hoc work that comes by on the phone and review them mid-day. Add only the ones that are on priority today in the current day’s To-Do list
3. Schedule a few hours in a week where you plan to do nothing, to help yourself get into that diffused state of mind at work regularly as well.
4.Learning to say ‘No’ to tasks that you do not have the bandwidth to take on and do justice.
“If you find yourself in a hole. Stop digging first”
Being busy all the time is an overwhelming feeling to carry-on with day in and day out. Give yourself some time and space to reassess your way of working, and learn to manage it better.
So, the next time someone asks if you’re busy? You know what to tell them
