Are You Busy Being Busy?
So often these days, I get asked “So are you busy at the moment”/ “Keeping busy”? My response has always tended to be one of the following, “Yes always”/ “Oh yes very busy at the moment” or words to that effect..its seems like an expected, obligatory response to that unimaginative question so often repeated, especially at networking events – places I often frequent.
It seems that if you are a business owner or indeed worker in general, it is deemed to be frowned upon to be anything other than ‘busy’ in 21st century Britain- the rat race as we know it and yet, we have at the same time in recent years jumped on the band wagon as a nation aware of the health and wellbeing trend, associating the stresses of life with illness and worse, taking on weekly yoga sessions, drinking fruit infused water and meditating via our smart phones to combat. Therefore we clearly understand that being ‘stupidly busy’ all of the time is not that great for our health and happiness, so why do we continually yell from the rooftops that we are?
Competitiveness could be one reason- we’re all striving for similar goals in life and working our butts off to get there- most of the time, so a clever marketing ploy to throw off your competitors would of course be to let them know directly or indirectly that you are very ‘busy’ at the moment and business is going very well- even if it is not- just be careful as people can generally see right through- this- honesty (more often than not) is the best policy.
Perhaps an alternative word to ‘busy’, could well be ‘productive’; question “Have you had a productive day?” – sounds better right? Also feels much better to process and answer in an honest, less general way, leading into the reasons why your day has indeed been a productive one.
By the way it’s ok to have less than productive days too, don’t beat yourself up about it, some days it’s ok to sit staring at the computer screen, wishing it were Friday and clock off earlier than normal to sit in the sun with an ice cream.
Bottom line don’t be busy at being busy, get better at being ‘productive’, prioritise, manage your time effectively each day and focus on one thing ‘on’ the business daily as well as working ‘in’ the business – the results will show and you will feel so much more rewarded and dare I say less ‘busy’.
Fiona Duncan, RSViP
