No doubt you have had a busy day so far. You may have responded to emails, put out some fires, made some calls. But my question to you is how have you done busy? And what impact are you having on your results.
Obviously I have been observing the busy space for many years now and people ‘do’ busy very differently. It’s interesting when I ask people how they ‘do’ busy. They think I am mad! But once talking they quickly realise there are one or a few categories they fall into.
When I run this session in workshops or in my group-mentoring program there are many light bulb moments for people and lots of laughs. It is a bit of fun but also a self-awareness exercise to understand how you do busy and if it’s resourceful.
Here are some common busy styles:
Badge of Honour – this is the person who is super proud of their busyness, puffs their chest out and tells the world how busy they are.
The Dramatic – this is the person who creates a lot of drama about their busyness, they huff and the puff and tell people how distressed they are that they are busy. They are generally very overwhelmed and quite annoying!
The People Pleaser – this is the person who creates complete chaos for themselves through saying ‘yes’ – often and always – even though the response should be no. They create unnecessary busyness
The Snapper – the person who snaps at you if you dare call them or knock on their office door because they’re busy don’t you know!?
The FOMO – the person who creates unnecessary busyness because they have a fear of missing out. They have to scroll through social media sites often and attend all events they are invited to just in case they miss something. They want to be part of it all even though they should be doing other things and can be quite exhausted.
The Control Freak – yes the one who will rarely self confess but they are the one who fervently believed that no one else can do the job as well as they can and will not delegate. So the work piles up.
The Fail to Plan – these are the people who are reactive – they fly by the seat of their pants, will go with whatever the day throws at them and are totally out of control because they don’t have a plan or a focus. Disorganised with a capital D.
The Comfort Zoner – these generally quiet peeps will spend enormous amounts of time doing tasks they feel comfortable with rather than doing what they should be doing. Think email. They will busy themselves up in their inbox and avoid the tasks that are very quickly becoming urgent.
Of course the opposite to these are the resourceful busy:
- Planned
- In control
- Proactive
- Aware of Priorities
- Comfortable to say no
- The Delegator
You will most likely be a blend of a few types of busy. The key is to be aware of how you do this and the impact it has on others. If you’re not doing busy resourcefully it will be not only impacting on your results, your relevance and your ability to influence but how others experience you and their results. Be mindful of what you are doing. You can’t afford to ‘do’ busy as you please!