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Busy is not the Goal

Psst, are you busy?

Everyone is busy. The real question is this: what kind of busy are you?

· Essential busy moves your customers and organization forward
· Growth busy builds your skills and creates new capabilities
· Purposeful busy produces impact aligned with your values

If it’s non-essential, low-growth or purposeless busy, then it’s time to reprioritize. Many of us need to shift our metric from how busy we are to what impact we create.

Early in my career, a senior leader asked me if I wanted to volunteer for a project. It had potential to grow the organization, I’d work with the smartest people in the building, and it was on the cutting edge of an emerging technology.

The catch? The deadline was completely unrealistic. We knew it would slip and that there would be lots of stress along the way.

I volunteered, excited for the challenge. We started off creating innovative designs, but after months of long hours, people were burnt out and creativity dropped.

We were busy, but not productive.

What matters in your world?

Instead of powering through another item on a long ToDo list, stop, breathe, and reflect on that list. The Eisenhower matrix is a classic approach to categorize work based on urgency and importance.

If it’s urgent and important, of course you do it first. Many professionals then get pulled into the urgent, not important lower left quadrant because being busy feels good. But that’s not productive.

A better option is the important, not urgent upper right quadrant.

What if you booked time for essential, growth-oriented, and purposeful work instead? You could focus on setting strategic direction, building relationships and growing skills. What impact would that create?

If you’re caught in too busy and long for meaningful impact, contact me and see if a coaching conversation can create that shift.

#toobusy #eisenhowermatrix #coaching

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