Give a Better Reply Than “I’m Busy”
By Tanya Yeremeyeva
If you were asked how your day has been, there’s a good chance that you’d include the word “busy” somewhere in your answer. And rightfully so – according to the American Time Use Survey, the average worker has virtually no “free” time in their schedule. When we’re not working, we’re running errands – and what little downtime we have is packed with distractions. We’re busier than ever before.
Worse, we feel good about being busy. Kory Kogon, author of The 5 Choices: The Path to Extraordinary Productivity thinks people have become too proud of being busy. She challenges us to think about how we continue to glorify being busy and the toll that this takes on our lives. In an interview with Inc., she asks us to disconnect being busy from being productive, as way to shift the dialogue.
When you stop somebody in the hallway and say, “Hey, how ya doing?” and they say, “Oh gosh, I’m so busy,” as if that is, “Wow look at me – that means I am productive.” It is one of the greatest challenges and one of the greatest opportunities to break that because we do feel that busy equals productive and it’s really not, because when you think about it, it’s, “Am I getting the right things done? Am I getting the important things done?”…And this is a big paradigm shift particularly as entrepreneurs, if we just take some time and plan – “What are the few most important things I need to get done today.” Knowing that we are going to get buried in what we call gravel, all the small things, all the interruptions, we are gonna be really busy.
So what should we say instead of “I’m busy”?
But it’s not about busy, it’s about then being able to say to a colleague or somebody, or your family, when they say, “Well how did your day go?” – “You know what? I got those three key things done, that’s moving the business the forward.”
Instead of defaulting to “I’m busy” for an easy answer, talk about your recent wins and projects that you’re working on. Everyone’s busy – we’d rather hear about how you’re managing your priorities – not how your priorities are managing you.
