Are you Busy or Effective?

Awhile back, I wrote about Courage, and how the opposite of courage is Passivity. It’s standing still. What society teaches is Passivity. Just watch pop culture, aids on Television, or the News. The common theme is “Let someone else do it” or “it is the circumstances' problem”. There are people all over the world doing nothing, and blaming others for their lives. They just lying down and becoming couch potatoes. Passivity is becoming a growing disease that robs us of our purpose while it destroys marriages, families, and even legacies that could have been made. For example, a passive man doesn’t engage, he retreats. He neglects personal responsibility. At its core, passivity is cowardice.

Today, I want to share a different type of Passivity. I feel that most people get this confused in their life because it is an active NOT passive. This is Busyness.

There is a difference between having a lot to do and being busy. And there is an even bigger difference between being busy and getting things done, i.e. being effective.

When many of us are asked "how are you?," how often do we respond, with a bedraggled, hassled air, "Busy, so busy!" Our culture and our ever-connected, high-speed times have made 'being busy' one of the highest valued currencies in our social market. We use it to pad our egos- saying "I'm busy" is a proxy for saying "I'm important", "I'm a valuable person". That phrase is like we are telling ourselves that, "I'm living a full, engaged life."

Yet being or even just seeming, busy is considered a valid excuse for almost any of life's demands. It's considered a justification for not actually listening, not speaking genuinely, being late, being inconsiderate, and, perhaps most ironically, for not actually getting much done. Being “busy” is an excuse to ourselves and others for not doing the important things, the scary things, the difficult things.

BUSY is the new LAZY.

Take a look at the chart below.

When I was looking at this chart, I had to see what I checked off for myself. I noticed that this chart reminding of a time management skill called, "Urgent vs Important". We all have 24 in a day. We can choose where to put this time only once, and can never make this decision again. Tasks in our lives that are important are effective, tasks that are urgent are what keep us busy. Those that are both Urgent and Important take priority and I wouldn't put on this chart because they are less random. This are situations that would be life threatening decision, and rarer. Those that are neither we should keep out of our lives, and will waste everyone's time.

The more we are able to be deliberate about how we spend our time and energy, the less likely we'll be to get bogged down in trivial tasks, and the more likely we'll be to build successful, meaningful businesses and live accomplishing, engaged lives. I leave you with a Zen proverb which seemed to have figured it out a while ago:

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day — unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” -Zen proverb