Too Busy To Be Productive

The title of this article seems a little bit backwards, doesn’t it?

If you’re busy, you must be getting something done.

While that sounds right… I’d argue that, for most people, the busier you are, the less productive you’re actually going to be.

I need to make a distinction, though, between busy and productive.

The definition of busy is full of activity, while the definition of productive is yielding results.

That distinction is important because busyness often disguises itself as productivity, when in reality it can be a productivity killer.

For example…

I used to work for a company where my projects and my calendar were always full… like barely get to eat lunch most days kind of full…

Internal meetings, external meetings, meetings about meetings, etc…

There’s no doubt I was busy.

But I still always felt behind and rarely made much progress on most of my projects.

And it wasn’t just me. My whole team was in the same boat.

Busy, yet unproductive…

Fast-forward to my current role, I pretty much have a blank calendar.

1-2 meetings per week… it’s pretty nice.

But even nicer than not having to sit in meetings all day, my productivity skyrocketed.

It’s because I’m no longer weighed down by the constant need to be busy.

Now I have the mental freedom to be productive and do real work that drives real results.

When you’re looking for ways to fill your time, you’ll always find a list of things to keep you busy.

But when you’re looking for ways to be productive, you’ll probably only find one or two things that actually need to get done.

So if you’re feeling busy but aren’t getting much done…

Stop looking for things to do and ask yourself what would be productive.

Thanks for reading.