The Busyness Costume

// The Day That Looked Productive

There's a version of a good day I used to chase and I'd finish it wrecked - my iPhone would be showing that little orange battery symbol instead of being white, my inbox technically "handled" and I'd be down to a handle of things left to do and I'd have a dozen tabs still open, and that satisfying ache behind the eyes that told me I'd earned my evening. I'd shut the laptop and think - that was solid graft today.

And then Tina would ask what I'd actually done, and I couldn't tell them - it was busy work but foolishly busy.

I mean, I could list the actions I'd taken - the replies, the calls, the half-meetings, the constant putting out of fires - but I couldn't point to a single finished thing but I'd been busy from the moment I woke up to the moment I sat down, and somehow ended exactly where I'd started, just more tired.

For ages, I called that productivity but It's taken me an embarrassingly long time to realise it was a costume.

// Performing

An old boss of mine had a phrase for it - the "busy fool." - Martin used to say it to the sales guys all the time and at the time I heard it as a dig and just ignored it, because surely being busy was the point? I could see the logic in some instances - driving from one side of the county to another wasn't smart but a part of my head was questioning that if I wasn't overwhelmed, I was probably taking it too easy.

I used to think to myself that if I wasn't exhausted by six when I finally finished at the office then I was leaving something on the table. That was the rule I lived by, and I never once thought to question it.

That idea of 'busy fool' has stuck with me since Martin first mention it and I've seen myself slip into things, doing tasks which don't move the needle but there is one thing I've started to notice - I've started to see that I wasn't really working when I felt like that - I was performing the idea of working.

I know what you're thinking - and you're right, there's a difference, and it's obvious.

Busyness and being 'busy' on purpose has a look - It has a feeling - it's the full calendar, the frantic switching tasks and contexts and then you have the tiredness that you can wear like a medal and because it looks and feels like effort, you never stop to ask whether anything is actually getting made or completed.

That's the trap.

The feeling is so convincing that you fool yourself first.

// Exhaustion

I think a lot of this took root recently - I was wearing a few hats (Yammayap, Let Them Create, The Clique, YATM, Road Skills Online etc) and even when I was at SAFI when I was burning out more or less constantly - I'd decided - without ever choosing it - that the exhaustion was the achievement.

It's a strange thing to admit, but I came to trust that feeling and the feeling that being drained meant I'd done enough. Frazzled and close to burnout meant I'd pushed. So I chased that feeling, day after day, mistaking the symptom for the result.

And the whole time, my attention was in pieces.

I'd start something, get pulled to something else, half-finish a third thing, then circle back to the first having lost the thread entirely.

Studies put the cost of that kind of switching at up to a 40% drop in productivity - it's worse when I'm working at home and the kids ask something or the doorbell goes - I missed details I'd never normally miss, made errors that I'd have caught quicker if I'd been still for five minutes, and watched my creativity flatten because I never gave any idea enough room to breathe.

But none of that registered at the time, because I felt busy and for forever - busy felt like winning.

The exhaustion was lying to me and I dressed it up as "I spread myself too thin today" as "I worked hard today," and I believed it every single time.

// The Quiet Version

The thing I need to keep reminding myself (and I genuinely do need to keep reminding myself) is that real productivity is quiet.

It doesn't come with the same feeling and there isn't that 'burnt out' feeling - it doesn't involve frantic energy and there's normally no sense of drama at all - just one thing, done properly, and then the next.

The first few times I worked like that, I actually felt uneasy, like I must be getting away with something.

Where's the strain? Shouldn't this be harder?

This blog missed a beat last week - too much going on with the new job, travelling, kids, and I just didn't write - but rather than push myself and get up to write at 4am like I used to - I paused and put it down to just a slip.

When I started the blog about three years ago, I'd bounce on and off it across several days, picking it up, putting it down, achieving very little, and always scrambling to finish on a Tuesday morning, then I fell into a routine which worked - getting up at 4am and grinding it out..

The routine I 'fell' into really worked but I was always knackered at the end of Tuesday - up early to write and then catching up on my sleep on Tuesday night - that single, focused sitting. No switching, no half-attention actually got me results and it made so much sense to me - it was focused..

It looked like less because I wasn't doing it like I did when I first started - it was done in a few hours and it was less, in terms of hours - but it was the most productive few hours on that day because I focused.

The system needs to adapt and change again to make it fit in my new schedule but it's something I'm looking forward to working out BUT I won't be doing it so that I burn out.

// Spot the Costume

If any of this sounds like it's a little too close to home, I'd get you to ask yourself one question - the one I wish someone had asked me sooner..

At the end of a day, can you name what you actually finished?

Not what you touched, not what you reacted to, not how many plates you kept spinning.

What did you actually complete?

If you can't answer, or if the honest answer is "I'm not sure, but I'm shattered," there's a decent chance the costume has been doing your thinking for you too.

It doesn't have to be busyness, by the way because the costume comes in lots of outfits - It might be the way you talk to yourself, a habit you've never examined or a way of working you inherited and never updated.

The test is the same: is this thing actually getting me somewhere, or does it just feel like it should?

That's not a question to beat yourself up with as it's just a question but I find the awareness alone does most of the work - once you can see the costume, it stops fitting quite so well.

// Sort it Out

I won't pretend I've got this fully sorted, because I'm the worst one to slip back into saying yes, doing more and more and then struggling to keep up but I've started small.

One thing at a time, given its full attention, before I let myself move on.

I have tasks broken into pieces I can actually finish rather than a list I can only ever stare at but that has to come with a set time frame for the thing that matters.

Every guru online (there is a lot about online gurus in my writing at the moment) - is yelling at you to add - more systems, more habits, more hustle, buy the course, do this thing and I've come round to thinking that the better move is usually to take something off - to find the outfit you've been wearing for so long you'd forgotten it wasn't your skin, and quietly set it down.

Because the version of me who finished every day exhausted wasn't winning - He was just very, very dressed up in 'busyness'

So here's the question I'll leave you with - the same one I'm still working through myself:

What are you wearing that you've mistaken for who you are?