We all know what it’s like to be busy in today’s fast-paced world but unfortunately, that often means feeling out of control. While coaching a target market of women over the years, I’ve witnessed how common it is to use being busy as a badge of honor. We all know those people, right? In fact, we have probably all been that person. You know the scenario: You ask someone, “How are you?” The response: “I’m sooo busy.” When did the word busy become an adjective to describe how you’re doing in life? Frankly, it’s the epidemic of being busy and one which I’ve
Words Hold Power
But, words hold power and when we constantly insert ‘busy’ into our language, it essentially puts us into a spin cycle. And we inevitably put the other person in a spin cycle too. Top that off with making yourself a martyr and it creates a toxic environment – both internally and externally.
How do you show up out there in the world? And, how does that make those around you feel? Most importantly, how does it make you feel? At one time my chaotic life of busy-ness defined who I was and how I lived and I had to ask why.
Why did I create this busy-ness in my life? I won’t bore you with my personal psychoanalysis but I recognized avoidance. Still, why did I bring it into my conversations with others? Frankly, it created a boundary. If the perception was that I was incredibly busy, people wouldn’t overstep and I had an excuse if they did. I could avoid difficult conversations or having to say no.
Being Busy is a Mindset
But ultimately, it started to feel frantic so a few years back, I dropped the word ‘busy’ from my vocabulary and consequently, adjusted my mindset. I’m wired to take on a lot and choose to live my life that way. I realized that everything I put on my plate was a choice because I said yes to it. That shift changed everything: my mindset, my relationships, my peace of mind, my energy.
It’s been a lifetime of learning and I’m sharing my top 3 tips and tools to help you break the busy-ness cycle.
My Top 3 Tips to Break The Epidemic of Being Busy
- Change your Language – Although challenging, you too can drop ‘busy’ from your vocabulary. You’ll stumble at first but will learn to recover quickly and that eventually becomes habit. If busy slips out when asked how you’re doing, follow it up with a positive spin. Try this: “I’m busy…. but good! Loving this sunshine.” Or “I’m busy….. but excited for the new ski season.” See the difference?
- Just Say No – This is hard for so many people but again, practice makes it easier. There are tons of suggestions on how to deliver ‘no’. Bottom line though is if the answer isn’t a big ‘hell ya’, then it’s ‘hell no’. That powerful little word ‘no’ actually opens your world up to say yes to what really matters. One of the best quotes is attributed to Annie Lamott: “no is a complete sentence“. No justifying, no excuses – just NO. If you’re keen to get some strategies to master the art of saying no, look no further than a newspaper column I wrote titled ‘How Saying No Can Change Your Life’.
- Manage Your Calendar – My mantra is ‘manage your time by managing your calendar’. This technique keeps my life on track (most of the time) with these two pieces: time blocking and task lists. They go hand in hand to organize how I spend my time and energy.
TASK LISTS:
Find a task management tool that works for you. I love Reminders but there are many out there: Todist, Evernote, Asana – to name a few. Ideally, choose an app that syncs across your devices allowing you freedom to manage your lists on the fly. I create different lists for personal and work and track everything I have to do, along with due dates & prioritization. You can keep lists for other areas: grocery list, social media scheduling, big project.
Do you have a clutter of tasks on loose pieces of paper or post its? Plug them into your task manager to further clean up your world.
And now AI (artificial intelligence) can assist with task lists by automatically prioritizing tasks based on deadlines, importance, and dependencies, suggesting optimal task sequences, estimating completion times and even breaking down large projects into smaller manageable tasks. I know – scary but true! 😉
Even so, it’s important to be realistic about your tasks. Goal setting expert E.J. Masicampo, an associate professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina says that a long list “can become a graveyard of things you’ll never actually do”. In fact, data collected by the software company I Done This revealed 41 percent of to-do items are never completed.
In other words, cut yourself some slack and delete the stuff that you really don’t need to get done. I keep those tasks in a separate list (called a parking lot) and pop into there once in awhile. Sometimes the items float onto my lists to get completed but more often than not, I clean it up by hitting delete.
CALENDAR:
With a process in place, your calendar is the sweet spot to manage your time and to amp up your productivity. And again, using a calendar that syncs across all your devices will keep you on track.
If you’re tech savvy, you can use AI to manage all this but most people I know aren’t there yet. And some don’t want to be. in fact, I still know people that use a planner or a paper calendar and that’s okay. To each their own. My process will still work with some tweaks (and colorful highlighters).
First, as an entrepreneur, my personal and work worlds blend together. I prefer work/life blend rather than the unachievable work/life balance so my calendar and task lists cover all areas.
That’s why using color is key! Assign a color to each category. For example, my work is blue, exercise/activity is yellow, personal is red, vacation is purple, brown is family and so on. Tip: you can create shared calendars so notifications land in their calendars too. No more: “when is that dinner party?”
Every week, set aside a few minutes (maximum 30 minutes should do) to organize your calendar and task list. Review your top priorities, events, meetings, kid activities and block time in your calendar to accommodate it all. And here’s the secret sauce – block chunks of time. By that, I mean block Tuesday morning from 9:00 am to 11:00 am for focused work time. I block it in blue since that’s my work color. You can even list the top tasks in the time slot that you have to get done (i.e. write a blog, empty email inbox, etc). Turn off your devices to really kickstart your productivity. Do the same for your personal time in the assigned color – block Thursday from 9:00 am to 12:00 noon to ski.
As much as it may seem stringent, it actually gives you flexibility. You may decide not to ski on Thursday morning (perhaps the weather stinks) and voila…. you have 3 hours to do something else for yourself: go to the gym, walk the dog, get a pedicure. Use your allotted personal time for you.
Further, it gives a powerful glimpse into imbalances. For me, too much blue in my week is too much work. Not enough yellow in my calendar means that I’m letting exercise slip. It happens but taking a peek at that inspires you to adapt it moving forward.
Below is a visual of what that may look like.
Can You Break the Epidemic of Being Busy?
If you think you’re not wired to be this organized, think again. The tools are at your fingertips and of course, you’ll stumble and have to reload. Life is messy. But implementing these strategies for at least one month will enable you to feel more in control. And the positive side of making this process a habit is that after a short time, you’ll amp up your self-care through self-management and break a cycle of being busy that probably just doesn’t serve you well anymore.
TELL ME: Will you take this challenge? I’d love to hear your key takeaways and circle back to share your successes.
1 thought on “The Epidemic of Being Busy”