I have a friend named Mark who works as a Marketing Director for a medium sized company here in Vegas.
Mark is one of those instantly likable guys. He’s usually smiling or has a funny story to tell about his weekend. He’s in his 30s, single, loves his dog and recently bought a kick ass bachelor pad. Mark also has a pretty good job except for one obvious drawback: he’s always working.
This poor bastard works seven days a week most weeks.
The crazy part is that the company he works for doesn’t make him work these insane hours, he does it to himself.
He described his work week like this: He works Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm, just like most people. But he usually skips out a bit early most days to either head home to relax and watch a bit of sports or he heads off to his favorite pub to grab a few pints. So, emails and marketing proposals pile up and he saves those for Saturday, which he usually only does half of the pile and leaves the rest for Sunday.
“Why don’t you just finish your work during the week? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about Saturday or Sunday,” I asked him.
“Well,” he said, “I’m usually pretty busy with other stuff so the proposals and returning important emails gets put on the back burner.”
Was he really this busy? I asked him if his supervisors knew he was this overwhelmed and needed some help?
“No, when I say I’m ‘busy’, I mean I’m busy with…”— he then described to me a list of various items including reading whatever latest book he has on hand, catching up on Netflix, or enjoying long lunches with friends.
We often create the excuse of “busy” for ourselves to help us justify why we don’t do the things we need to do in order to achiever our goals. Our actions dictate our priorities.
“I’m too busy to go to the gym.”
“I can’t make cold calls, I’ve got to change the icon colors on the website.”
We’re all guilty of it. Seth Godin posted a wonderful blurb on the pitfalls of “busy.”
“Busy” kills our momentum. It’s a giant brick wall of an obstacle that you can’t seem to get over or around. It slows us down to a crawl that eventually becomes our routine. Our new normal.
Get rid of busy.
Take back your time and your days.
And remember, movement for the sake of movement isn’t progress.
Tags: busy, life, work