Florian Schmidt
- 13. Dez. 2023
- 10 Min. Lesezeit

Busy is the new stupid

Aktualisiert: 27. Dez. 2023

TL;DR

Many people are busy all the time.

They complain about it.

But they want to be busy– mostly without being aware.

I mean you.

Yes you.

Do not complain about being busy all the time.

Accept it. Or change it.

Yes, you can change that – in two ways.

Source: https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/frau-sitzt-vor-macbook-313690/

What you can expect

This text will provide a tool collection for (potentially) changing yourself on a meta level as well as changing what you do in your (work)life.

The text is not structured according to a pseudo-causal-linear process of what to do in as easy as 1, 2, 3. That would be bullshit. Reality is messy. You have got to find your own way.

The motivation for this article

I am working for and in big companies for more than 20 years now. On board level, as assistant to the CEO, as a consultant. I have been busy. But I have never worked more than 50 hours within a week ever in my life. And when I did, it was a total exception. (I exclude time for reading and deejaying – because that´s play to me, even though it might look like work to others)

Over time, my non-self-directed work hours got less and less. More and more I started to own my time. The quantity of work hours dropped and at the same time the quality increased.

Other (many) people are always busy. And it always seems to be the same people.

I am more and more convinced that whether one is busy or not is not just due to pure luck. Rather, I believe, I, you and we have the power ourselves to gain control over our time.

This article is supposed to help me to structure my thoughts and is work in progress. Still, I had to get it out there, because I collected some great ideas – and maybe you find some of them useful, too.

What is busy?

What do I mean with busy? Being busy is the opposite of being in a flow state, of being engaged in serious play (John Vervaeke) or in deep work. Rather, being busy is being engaged in “shallow work” (Cal Newport). It is about not being focused, about task switching, getting interrupted, being triggered from the outside and reacting to it.

It is about not having clear priorities (short and long term) and therefore being directed by reacting (impulsively) to triggers from the outside.

Do you show this behavior?

Does it bother you?

Then read on.

Examples, categories and indicators of busyness

So far, saying that many people are busier than they must is just a hypothesis. To anecdotally verify this, here are a few examples and expressions of how “being busy” might play out:

Too many emails which consume your time. I said everything I have to say about that here.
Finishing your pitch / offer / presentation with an all-nighter. Often because of last minute change demands. Mostly by management, top down. Why? Because they could not review it earlier – because they were busy.
Client calls or writes you on Friday (or during the weekend) and has a request. You then work during the weekend.
You regularly do not have time for lunch - or only very little. That´s what you tell your colleagues. Repeatedly.
Working long days all the time as a standard pattern.
Just being in the office / in front of your laptop because you feel you must and feeling guilty when closing the laptop lid.
End of year stress.
Stress before vacation
Stress after vacation (can you feel it creeping up at the end of the vacation? Or doesn´t the feeling of being stressed leave you at all?)
An appointment gets rescheduled last minute – and you accept it.
Appointments drag on and on and you want to leave but cannot.
Appointments are scheduled for the evening (by top-management), and you accept it.
Morning: get in front of laptop. Evening: get off and wondering what you did all day
… what are your examples?

Look at those examples of busyness. Do you show these kinds of behaviors?

And where do these come from?

Where busyness comes from

The excuses you tell yourself for why you must do the things mentioned above may sound alike. “I have to …”, “my boss wants me to …”, “I have an escalation to handle …”, “I have to finish and send an offer today.” And so on.

To me it seems like these excuses mostly are coming too automatic and too unquestioned.

Do you really HAVE TO cancel or postpone? Do you really HAVE TO do this very, very (very) important thing?

Ask yourself: Why do you think those things are important?

No, really. Give yourself a minute now and ask yourself.

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Do you fall into this thinking pattern because following these urgencies makes you feel important?

What are the mental patterns leading you to this conclusion?

My bold hypotheses: If you are behaving like described above you are not the master of your own fate. You are too afraid to look at yourself and really ask yourself what your priorities are and what you want to do.

You are a frightened being, afraid of looking into the abyss. You are driven by shame - of not fulfilling the expectations of others (Hanzi Freinacht).

But there are ways out. You don´t believe that? Let me show you:

If your basement is flooded, you find time to deal with it right away, don´t you?
If your spouse or child has a bad accident, you drive to the hospital right away.

What I wanna say with these examples is that time is choice. Every minute you spend is your choice.

If you say (to others or yourself): “I don´t have time” that means that something is just not a priority for you. (Linda Vanderkam) In the examples above, priorities shifted quickly and clearly.

I will now give you some impulses on how you can question yourself and work on your priorities.

The approaches will be sorted according to double (Chris Argyris) and triple loop learning (Benjamin Taylor). I will explain the concepts in the corresponding parts.

How to get less busy (triple loop learning mental model view)

Triple loop learning means that you question who you are and how you look at the world.

You should question that.

Why?

Viktor Frankl has said: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

To identify, respect and work with that freedom you need to ask yourself who you are, what you stand for and what your values are. And you need to listen to yourself. That is work. It takes time (from minutes to hours to days, weeks, or months [or years]).

Here are means to help you reflect:

Morning pages: Take an empty document (or pen and paper) and start writing whatever comes to your head. Do that for 5 minutes or more – until your head feels empty. Do that regularly.
List all the things you want to achieve. If nothing comes to your head, stare at the wall or the blank sheet. Give yourself some time. Collect up to 20 or 30 things. Then cross them out – except for five of them. Voilà! These are your priorities / values / principles. When you decide about spending your time, use these regularly to help you decide. (Link to 5/25)
Ask yourself:
What makes me excited?
What would I do if I could not fail?
If you were a novel or movie character – what would you recommend him/her to do?
How will you feel about what you are doing now in 10 hours, 10 weeks, 10 years? And how will you feel about what you could be doing in 10 hours, 10 weeks, 10 years?
Develop a habit to listen to yourself. Take a walk regularly (without any input like podcasts, looking at your phone and so on). But do not expect anything. Just let go. That´s best done in nature. A park is sufficient. A busy city won´t do. (Cal Newport)
Embrace the saying: “Other people´s expectations are other people´s problems.” (Luca Dellanna) Yeah, really! That´s the default. Only deviate when you want to – but do not react to other people´s expectation without questioning them.
Do nothing. (Jenny Odell) Stare at the emptiness and feel and accept it staring back at you. (Hanzi Freinacht)
Ask yourself: How does your perfect day look like? Write that down.
Follow your curiosity instead of defining a goal and trying to reach it. Sounds shallow, right? It´s not. This approach comes from linear optimization problems in computer science. (Kenneth O. Stanley, Joel Lehman) Focusing on a goal can limit your focus and you might not see other opportunities you have. (Daniel Pink)
Become aware of and change how you speak of yourself. I.e., if you say “I have to …” often, question whether that is really the case. Then change your words.
Question how far you are driven by the expectations of others by filling the (short) online questionnaire (Link to the quiz)

You might counter: I do not have time to do those things.

Again!?

Let me tell you: You will not do the things you always wanted to do when you have the time to do them. That´s the wrong order of causation!

Instead: Start living your life right and then time will adjust accordingly, because:

“How you spend your days is how you spend your life.”

- Annie Dillard

So much for changing your ideas about yourself and your work life on a triple loop learning (Argyris & Schoen, Benjamin Taylor) level.

Let´s get more hands on.

How to get less busy (hands on double loop learning advice)

Double loop learning means to question what you do and trying to find new means to solve problems in new ways. This will make you more effective. This is not the same as efficiency:

“You’re efficient when you do something with minimum waste. And you’re effective when you’re doing the right something.” (Farnam Street)

Here is what you can do:

Spend more time on the non-urgent but important tasks like learning, relationship building, recognizing new opportunities, planning, recreation. Don´t spend time on the not important tasks. (Eisenhower Matrix) (Stephen Covey)
If your boss wants to delegate a task to you, say: “I am busy right now. If I do this task right now, I will need to drop XYZ.” (Add: Please tell me, which is more important.)
Be aware of Parkinson´s law: Time is highly elastic. Time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.
Apply Pareto´s law: Often, 20% are enough to reach 80% of the outcome. Get rid of trying to be perfect. That eats away the most time-resources. (Obviously, there are tasks for which you must focus on perfectionism and details – like taxes and accounting).
When a task comes at you, ask yourself whether it is just about internal references (the company creates tasks for itself which do not create value, like creating a meeting protocol or preparing fancy slides for internal presentations) or external references (creating value for a customer). Do you want to create value or do work for works sake? (Mark Poppenborg) If you want to advance in a company hierarchy, you might need to do more internal tasks like political play. BUT: If you do that and you rise the ranks this political play will become more and more and result in more meetings, alignments, escalations and so on. Be aware: That is the path that you chose for yourself.
If you must prioritize quickly, ask yourself (Tim Ferris): Which tasks would I do NOW if I had to reduce my workday to 2 hours – today – or otherwise I would die? Which tasks would I eliminate NOW if I had to reduce my workday to 2 hours – or otherwise I would die? If you like to, repeat that for the week.
Leave appointments early or on time. Announce that pro-actively. If a meeting seems to run out of time, address that 5-10 minutes before the end of the meeting and either sum it up or schedule a follow up. Everybody(!) will be thankful if these things do not happen after the meeting has officially ended and everybody is afraid to be late to their next meeting. Btw: Nobody will be angry with you if you leave early. More likely, people will be annoyed if you show up late to the next meeting. A funny side effect is that you will appear busier and more important when you are strict with meeting ending times – except that you are avoiding exactly that.
Write less emails. If you get one, do not react right away. Rather, ask yourself whether a reply is needed at all – and if, when. The more emails you write, the more emails you will receive. I wrote about this here.
When going on vacation, set your out-of-office (OoO) one day earlier and / or later than your real vacation. This gives you time to wrap things up and get back into work mood better.
Block regular non-distraction periods. Either to do nothing or to focus.
Walk: Just walk – yes, same as above.
Meditate Productively: Ask yourself a question, go for a walk and chew on it mentally. When your attention wanders, forgive yourself and bring it back. (Cal Newport)
Do non sleep deep rest (NSDR): Meditate or take a 20-minute nap. This will reenergize your focus.
Do a closing ceremony each day: Look a last time at your emails, glance at your tasks, write down what seems to be missing (in knowledge work, work will never be complete!) and then say: “Shutdown complete” (or whatever words you would like to use). (Cal Newport)
Some more stuff from Tim Ferris in a Tim Farris rapid-fire kind of style: Batch your tasks! Especially reading emails // Try to avoid as many meetings as possible // Turn off notifications – visually and auditive // Never check email first (or even early) in the morning // Set up an OoO for explaining your email checking habits (you can include your phone number for urgent cases) plus explanation for your action (increasing effectiveness, not efficiency) // Write emails in a WHAT, IF, THEN style // Don’t let people get back to you (with an open timeslot).

There is even more. But I do not think you need more to start. If you think: “Yeah, but that is not me, I cannot do that”, please reach out and tell me your ideas.

I am always curios to challenge my points of view – and maybe my article is misleading.

But before, please ask yourself why you come up with these excuses.

Disclaimer: There are consequences

If you change your points of view of yourself and your behavior, there will be consequences.

Everything you do has consequences. But not acting also has consequences because the decision not to act also is a decision.

These consequences can be positive or negative, in the short term or in medium term.

It is quite likely that short term you will have to fight for yourself and your autonomy. It might get bad – i.e., you might get fired. That is not easy. But these negative short-term effects can lead to positive long-term effects - i.e., you might look for and find a job that you really want to have.

You might get on a way that will lead you towards a more self-directed life.

It´s like the polish weightlifter Jerzy Gregorek, who went from alcoholic to World Champion said: