I see you. You got a multiple lists on notepads, ipads and…are those Post-it notes?
I get it, you’re busy and you love telling people how busy you are. It’s alright, you’ve been trained to do it for years. It’s a defence mechanism.
You see, if you’re busy then you’re doing your job well. Don’t search for the logic in that sentence, there isn’t any. But like any villain, there is an origin story.
Back in the industrial revolution days, we were offered jobs in factories and assembly lines. Companies didn’t like being reliant on highly skilled individuals to get the job done, so they chopped complex work into manageable tasks and workers were given that task as a job.
For example, if you were working in a factory making shoes, you wouldn’t make the entire shoe. Instead you might be putting the plastic thingy on the end of shoelaces or gluing on soles. That mean if you leave your job, it’s simple enough to get someone else in and it doesn’t cost the business in skilled trades.
And, a worker’s effectiveness is easy to measure. You’ve only got one job to do, so you’re either busy doing it or you’re not doing it.
Busy is good.
Stop Being Busy,
Start Being Effective!
Top performers don’t do low-value tasks. A virtual assistant can help grow your business, free up your time and reduce your stress.
This mindset carried on for generations, through the finance bubbles and the tech revolution, and now when someone asks how you’re doing, you say, “Good, really busy.”
Because we’ve become mentally clumsy – it doesn’t matter what we’re doing as long as we’re busy. Then we’re successful or a good worker or whatever.
We also know that being busy all the time is terrible for our mental health and that ‘busy’ has different levels.
If you’re busy doing something you love and if that something makes your business better, you’ll feel better and make more money and have more mental space for your family…the list goes on.
If you’re busy doing things that you hate or you’re not good at or that are just wasting time then you’ll feel depressed and anxious and guilty. If you’d like to learn more about how bad certain neurotransmitters (triggered by this type of thing) are for you, click here.
Break the programming
We don’t live during the industrial revolution. Hopefully you work in a business that’s more focused on results than how busy you look.
Perhaps think about how you can spend more time doing what you’re good at and give the rest to a virtual assistant. That’s right; we linked this all back to getting a VA. Click here to learn more.