The curse of 'busy-ness'
Are you like Sorted’s Miles Protter, a man who always has to be busy? If you are, it might be time to do some valuable and long-overdue soul-searching.
I HAVE always thought of myself as a productive person: disciplined, hardworking and busy.
It’s how I’m wired. I got it from my Dad, who’d be in his office from early hours wearing only his pants, hair askew, talking loudly to someone in German as I walked by to breakfast. Later as I set about the return journey, he’d be talking to someone in Italian. Before leaving for school, I’d pop my head in to say goodbye and receive a little wave from the middle of his conversation.
It didn’t stop there. Dad had one of the earliest carphones. It was a clunker handset, allowing him to yammer away the moment he turned the key. He was a ‘busy-ness’ addict for sure.
As a dreamy, book-loving adolescent I didn’t stand a chance. School and university tutored me in ambition. I became a banker, working all hours to make my mark. And just like Dad, I’d be on the phone early, or late, to somewhere else, cramming yet more into my day.
Busy-ness was a badge of honour, my highest definition of success. I had become an addict too.
But the stress, exhaustion and absence affected my marriage and family, so I quit. An enormous space opened up for me like the silence enveloping you after a loud concert. I served in the community, made dinner and took my daughter to and from school.
Feed the machine
A few years later, I invoked busy-ness back into my life by accepting a leadership role in a consulting firm.
HQ in Texas demanded we ‘feed the machine’ with daily, weekly and monthly data, calls, reports and visits. There was also the ‘real work’ of attending to clients, recruiting and training staff, and developing new products. With no room left, the only way to get my attention was via an emergency – like a client threatening to leave.
What didn’t get my attention were the crucial things grumbling along just below my pain threshold, like the fact our growth was built on a boom with less than two years to run and an insufficient pipeline of new products or clients to replace it. And poor systems; and not hiring local talent.
Alas, I did not address these issues properly even though I knew we’d suffer later, generating a kind of cognitive dissonance, a gloom that descended even when things were good because of the crises looming just outside my peripheral vision.
My family life was suffering so I left that job too and once again a beautiful space opened up. My wife and I went for a six-week hike and discussed matters untouched in 25 years. I visited friends and cooked a lot. I read books and went to the beach.
Recently, I wondered if being older, wiser, self-employed and working from home had banished the curse of busy-ness? To my regret, I found the answer to be 'no'.
It appears I am still on automatic, filling every available hour with stuff that has to be done, rushing from one thing to the next, overwhelmed by floods of messages and reminders that feel like ‘Whack-a-Mole’. I then regret wasting time on trivialities. It produces a hyper feeling of productivity, but in reality, it’s just distraction and stress.
For example, instead of doing the work required to complete this article in the three-hour block set aside in my calendar, I wasted time thinking up a title, answering emails, polishing the opening sentence, sending out an invoice and reading pages of background material to find great quotes I’ll never use. I was busy on things other than the most important thing.
No magic solution
I eventually gave myself a good scolding and got writing, working late to meet the deadline. Then I lay awake at two in the morning thinking about stuff not done.
And with so little time to think qualitatively, I do the important things badly – like replying to a friend’s message about his parent’s illness by emailing a brief, one-sentence platitude filled with misspellings.
Unfortunately, I have no magic solution.
Battling with myself doesn’t work. I can’t ‘manage it' with a calendar. The most effective way has been to remove myself entirely when it gets too much. But I can’t always do that so, as they recommend in the Twelve Steps programme advocated by organisations committed to alleviating behavioural addictions, I’m being honest and sharing my struggles. Critically, I am asking myself: ‘What’s really important here, Miles?’
Do you battle with busy-ness?
If the answer is a resounding ‘yes’, ask yourself these questions: is it really worth it to get that last little thing done? What is it costing you? What is really more important?
Miles Protter has worked with thousands of people as a mentor, consultant and coach for more than 30 years. His executive mentoring practice is called The Values Partnership, and he also founded Men’s Business. He lives in Perth, Western Australia with his wife Deborah and their daughter, Lily.