Why You're Always Busy But Never Get Anything Done

Busy is one of the most frequently spoken lies in modern life.

Even if you’re just saying it to yourself.

And most of us wear it like a badge of honor.

As if it signifies how important or in-demand we are.

Like it means something.

"How are you?" "Busy!" "OMG, so busy!" "I'm crazy busy!"

That is crazy, but we'll get to that a bit later.

We say it as if we believe that packed calendars and full inboxes demonstrates a life jam-packed with meaningful activities.

But that is another one of the roughly 200 lies the average adult tells themselves every day—most of which never leave your head. 

They're the stories we repeat so often we stop questioning them. [Link to the 200 lies blog post]

And deep down, you already know that.

Here's what busy actually is: motion without clear intention or focus.

Churn in a whirlpool where treading water barely keeps you afloat.

It's the feeling of tasking without many tangible results of tasking.

It's ending the day exhausted and somehow more behind than you started.

I've been helping people simplify their businesses and lives since 1996.

I've worked with CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, solo entrepreneurs, harried non-profit boards, brilliant and beleaguered artists, overwhelmed parents, and frantic scholars … and in over three decades, I have never once met someone who was too productive.

But I have met thousands of people who were too busy.

THE BUSY TRAP

Tim Ferriss can write all he wants about a 4-hour work week—he’s a multi-millionaire who answers only to himself.

Richard Branson and Oprah can opine about smelling the roses now that they’re billionaires—I wonder how often they sat still when they were building their empires.

And Warren Buffett can quip that “busy is the new stupid,” which I don’t disagree with.

For most of us, however, busy is seductive exactly because it feels like something.

Checking email feels like we’re working.

Attending every meeting feels like you're contributing or being a team player.

Saying yes to everything feels like you're supportive and available.

But feelings aren't facts and they sure aren't necessarily results.

In my book [Calling BS on Busy,] I make the case that the only way to increase productivity sustainably is to change your relationship with time—not manage it better, not hack it, not optimize it. LINK TO THE BOOK ON AMAZON

Change your relationship with it.

Time is not a spreadsheet.

It's not even your calendar, although your calendar represents time commitments.

You cannot manage time the way you manage money or meetings.

Ditto for energy.

And when we're talking about time, we're almost always talking about our energy, too.

Because we've all booked ourselves silly thinking we're maxxing out the day when what we're really doing is maxxing out our energy.

So we get to the end of the day and we're exhausted.

Maybe even depleted.

Here's the thing about time—it moves in one direction, at one speed, for everyone equally.

The only thing you control is what you do inside it.

THE ONE THING THAT SEPARATES BUSY FROM PRODUCTIVE

Productive people do one thing at a time with their full attention for a specific duration.

That's it. That's the whole framework.

Not two things. Not five things with four interruptions. Not the next thing that pops up or pings them from their phone.

One thing at a time.

Now, you can work for two minutes uninterrupted or two hours.

But whatever you set your timer for is how long you work, before moving onto the next thing.

And maybe Calling BS on Busy would be a NYT bestseller if I told you this was some cutting-edge productivity hack.

But it's not.

It's also not a trick, or a tip, or a "secret"—although it sometimes feels like it, based on how many people refuse to use a timer.

It's a practice—one that runs directly counter to everything our culture rewards.

We celebrate multitasking like it's a superpower—even when brain science shows we lose at least 10 IQ points the moment we attempt it.¹

We glorify the overscheduled.²

We confuse activity with achievement—even though research shows it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully regain focus after a single interruption.³

And we’re interrupted by communications technology every 10 minutes.

Is it any wonder we get to the end of the day with little to show for it?

The research is clear, and so is my experience coaching lots of people: every time you switch tasks, you pay a cognitive tax.

Focus drops. Errors increase. Time bleeds out. Energy drains.

And what feels like powering through is actually the opposite.

CALLING BS ON BUSY MEANS MAKING A CHOICE

You don't accidentally become productive.

You choose it—every time you close a tab, decline a meeting, finish one thing before starting another, and treat "no" as a complete sentence.

That's what Calling BS on Busy looks like in practice.

You don’t need a new morning routine.

And you almost certainly do not need a new app.

What you need is to make a decision, repeatedly, to stop performing productivity and start getting things done.

If that feels daunting, intense or is otherwise bumming you out, here’s some good news.

Because focusing for a defined period of time without interruptions is a skill and a practice and not a personality trait or a gift, it's not something you either have or don't—anyone can learn it.

I've seen it happen thousands of times.

Start here. One thing. Full attention. 

Set the timer and work uninterrupted until you hear the ding. Then rinse and repeat. That's it.

Then tell me that doesn't feel different than busy.

Andrew Mellen is the author of Calling BS on Busy and Unstuff Your Life!, the Wall Street Journal bestseller. He has been called "the Most Organized Man in America" by the media and has helped over 500,000 people change their relationship with time, stuff, and clutter.

Get Calling BS on Busy on Amazon →

¹ Research from King's College London found that multitasking with electronic media reduced participants' effective IQ by an average of 10 points—more than losing a full night of sleep, and twice the impairment of smoking marijuana. Men experienced drops of up to 15 points.

² Bellezza, Paharia & Keinan, "Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol," Journal of Consumer Research, June 2017.

³ Gloria Mark, "The Cost of Interrupted Work," University of California, Irvine. Mark's research found knowledge workers take an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully regain focus after an interruption.