The Difference Between Busy & Working

Back in 2013, I made the decision to stop using the phrase I’m Busy and it’s associated attempt to shut down conversations or engender pity/respect from people who asked I was going.

I did pretty good with it for a while, but words like busy creep back into your vocabulary if you don’t monitor for it. Certainly, this year, it’s back with a vengeance in my conversations, because the alternative often involves uncomfortable conversations about death.

So I went back to I’m busy. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to make other people uncomfortable, or deal with their emotional response as they realised they’d tripped over a livewire. However, after reading Jory Mackay’s recent post over at Fast Company, I suspect there was also a large part of me that needed the validation when other things weren’t going right.

Mackay’s writing on behalf of RescueTime (admittedly, a service I use and adore), so there’s a certain amount of vested interest in getting people to think about their relationship with busyness. It doesn’t, however, mean that he’s wrong, especially when he starts framing the problems of staying busy versus doing your best work.

So, yeah, it’s an article worth reading, particularly once Mackay starts digging into what the opposite of busy really looks like and the psychological benefits of tunnelling (which aren’t really benefits at all).

When we’re busy running around, answering emails, putting out fires, and racing to back-to-back meetings, time becomes much more scarce. To deal with that scarcity, our brains effectively put on blinders.

Suddenly, we’re not able to look at the big picture and instead can only concentrate on the most immediate (often low-value) tasks in front of us. (Research has even found that we lose 13 IQ points when we’re in a tunneling state!)

However, when we pop our heads above water at the end of the day, we realize that we’ve spent barely any time on the work that really matters. 

This is why you’re addicted to being busy, Fast Company

It’s not a huge surprise that I’ve recognised that feeling lately.

Nor is it a surprise that it’s started to recede now that I’ve set up the big picture whiteboard to guide my weeks, actually thinking through what needs to be done and making decisions long before a scarcity of time and resources kicks in.