Do you feel like you are just a little too busy to (blank)?
If you do, you are not alone. The world’s pace has sped up, and ‘busy-ness’ is a common dilemma for most folks these days.
I like to think, if you are too busy to carry out what’s meaningful to you, it’s just a self-leadership signal that you have ‘avoided something‘.
It could be that you’ve just procrastinated about making a decision. After all, the number of decisions we need to make in a day has exponentially grown since back in Grandma’s day.
Nowadays, you are asked to make hundreds and hundreds of decisions each day, so it is an easy thing for your subconscious to want to take a break and delay some decision-making in these days of so many choices. Read some decision-making tips.
Here is the thing, though. Delay in itself can be costly and a delayed decision can be especially expensive, particularly if you are not really conscious that you HAVE delayed your decision-making process or that you have let something meaningful slide because you’ve been caught up in ‘busy-ness’.
For example, are you effectively setting limits on what you will work on and will not work on during your day? Or are you focusing your list to guide your day? If you are working from a huge list of to-dos, chances are, you are feeling busy.
The problem is – when your list is bigger than your capacity to carry things out, you can’t help to be scattered. Your energy is being pulled in too many directions and away from your ability to be more productive.
Want some immediate relief? Try limiting what you will work on today – on only the most ‘urgent’ and important things, and aim to accomplish 3 or 4 of those things. I bet if you made traction on those 3 or 4 things – you’ll feel pretty fulfilled and more productive.
One of the dangers of having too much to do and not enough time to do it in – is that it is possible to waste precious time listening to your inner critic talking to you about just how much there is to do. It’s thoughts about “How will I ever accomplish all of this”.
By limiting your list, you also limit a fair amount of the internal self-talk, and THAT makes you more productive. It’s possible to enjoy your day again and never be too busy to (blank) when you start to love setting limits and make decisions even MORE effectively.
If you want to read more about how to use the skill of limiting – you can read these posts on how to set limits for success.
Another common place where it’s possible there has been some delay, is the practice of being in the present moment and feeling what is going on. In presence, we have greater access to our feelings and our intuitive sense for course corrections. When we are instead anxious about the day, we are projecting our presence out into the future and not enjoying it now at the moment. We lose touch with the very guidance that would bring us some greater ease in our day.
The fastest way to change from being busy to productive is to pay attention to the two things I have mentioned in this post. Pay attention to how things are now, this moment – and feel everything there is to feel at that moment – and then be very conscious about making effective decisions and making them efficiently.
You might pay attention even to little decisions like “What to do with this piece of paper? File? Act? Or Recycle?”
Pay attention to how your workflow moves – Are you paying attention to the small continuous decisions that need to be made there? Here is a little infographic that shows how to get more freedom in your workflow – by making effective decisions along the way.
What other ideas do you have for cutting out the ‘busy-ness’ of your day and getting more productive?
Hi,
You mentioned one word here that should really have more emphasis on it. That word is flow. There is a scientific concept called flow that was founded by positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi . People give optimal performance when they are in the flow state, and their productivity sky rockets. Best of all, people can learn how to control the flow state so that they can get into it whenever they expect. Knowledge of this has helped me out a lot.
Thanks for commenting Elisa. I agree with you.
Productivity does skyrocket indeed when we manage to find a flow state. Without a doubt choosing to engage a flow state can make a remarkable difference in our ability to be effective.
Here is how flow does tie to this article in particular. In a flow state, you process information more quickly as it jacks up pattern recognition, which means neuronal connections happen much faster, with faster awareness and mind-body presence. That makes decision-making easier. This article is about using an effective pattern to make decision making easier.
By setting limits, it helps us ignite more focused attention, on clearer goals so we can receive immediate feedback while we find the right challenge-to-skill skill ratio. Those are 4 of the psychological strategies needed for bring more focus to the now. (A core foundation for flow).
Thanks again for commenting. I am so glad you shared the connection to flow here. 🙂