Breaking the Busyness Vortex

Dave Smith
4 min readFeb 11, 2021

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I’m so busy. Crazy-busy. Nuts. My day’s a blur.

Month end. Start of the quarter. Upcoming Board meeting. Post Board meeting. Raising cash. Cutting costs. Down a few heads. Training new folks. It’s grueling. Draining. Never-ending.

All I asked was, “How’s it going?”

My Leadership Coaching sessions often start with some version of this verbal onslaught. No prompting necessary. Same subject. Session after session. All year round. From leaders of every level.

Productivity Drain

So, what’s the problem? Busy is good. Sign of a healthy company. Right?

Maybe for the business. But not for our people. Not insanely busy. Uncontrollably busy. I can’t focus on my most important work, busy. Or burned-out busy. No, there’s nothing healthy about being constantly, frantically busy.

And busy with what, exactly? Highly impactful and engaging work. Or digital paper shuffling. Back-to-back Brady Bunch sessions. Unclogging inboxes. Or making sense of serpentine threads. Nobody signed up for that.

Our people are trying. Giving it their all. Yet, their best work is being squandered. Frittered away. Siphoned off by mindless busywork. All day. Every day.

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