Being “busy” is our norm. We’ve blindly accepted a packed-out calendar and ever-present fatigue. But is busyness something we just have to accept? Is it even possible to become (un)busy and still be a good employee, leader, parent, or friend? These questions and more are answered in this episode of the Transform Your Workplace podcast. Get some practical insight about busyness in your own life, and find out how to create some space in your calendar (and your mind) with our guest, Garland Vance.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Garland Vance is the author of Gettin’ (un)Busy: 5 Steps to Kill Busyness and Live with Purpose, Productivity, and Peace. After years of destroying his body and mind with constant overcommitment and little self-care, Garland got a wake-up call and began to study the effects that busyness was having on his body and mind. A leadership consultant and coach, Garland Vance is passionate about helping others find peace and purpose in the workplace and every area of their lives.
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A LIFE-CHANGING DOCTOR’S VISIT
It all started back in 2013. Garland Vance was at the doctor’s office for several health problems. It seemed like he was doing everything right, like exercising every day and eating healthy, but he was struggling with up to three migraines per week, heart palpitations as he sat at his desk to work, and sheer exhaustion.
The doctor’s response to Garland’s symptoms was to ask about his life. To that simple question, Garland said what most of us would say: “Oh, I’ve got a good life. It’s just really busy.” And when asked to explain what “busy” means, Garland went on to describe his day-to-day, which included heading up a non-profit, working 50-60 hours per week, spending 10-20 hours a week working on his doctorate in leadership, and spending time with his wife and three young children.
His doctor looked at him and told him that he was concerned for Garland’s life — that his busyness was causing collateral damage. Garland recalled, “At first, I didn’t believe him, so I decided to focus the rest of my doctoral research on finding out what busyness is doing to leaders and organizations.”
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Normalizing busyness
Decades ago, success was associated with how in demand you were. And so what happened is that, as a culture, we began to rise to meet that level of busyness, and there are all these other things that are, of course, going on at the same time. Technology, for example, makes our lives easier, but instead of spending less time working, we begin saying that we should spend more time working. So I think we live in this time where […] the technology has all converged, and it’s put us in this place where we not only think that being busy is a good thing, but we believe that when we’re not busy, that something is intrinsically wrong with us.”
Beliefs make the man
“There are three what I call ‘inhibiting beliefs’ that keep people trapped in busyness: I need to be more, I need to do more, and I need to get more. We compare ourselves against the version of ourselves that we think we should be. And as soon as we begin doing that, the only answer we typically come to is that we’re not good enough, so we need to do more. These beliefs really drive us into this non-stop culture of being busy, a feeling like we have to be productive all the time, but as a result of it, we’re doing massive damage to ourselves — physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and even in our productivity and in our companies.”
Overcommitting
“So most of us think, ‘I just need to manage my time better.’ But the problem is that busyness isn’t a calendar issue. It’s a capacity issue. And what I mean by that is we are trying to stuff 28 hours a day of work into 24 hours a day. And at least eight hours of that aren’t even supposed to be productive. That’s what busyness is. It’s this attempt to overcommit our lives. We have so many good commitments that they end up creating a bad life.”
An interesting analogy
“So when I was researching this, I ended up watching a television show about hoarding, and there were two things that stood out: the first is that hoarders don’t see their own mess. And what I discovered is that busyness is a form of hoarding. It’s really where we try to cram more into life in order to get more out of life, but just like a hoarder, the more they cram into their house, the less they can actually enjoy the house that they live in.”
Mindless distraction
“There’s this addiction to busyness where we’re walking around, trying to get the next fix of the commitment that we need to do. And so all of that leads us to disengage. We resent our organization for how much they demand from us. It lowers life satisfaction. And I was one of these people for years. We’re walking around with dead bodies and dead brains and dead emotions. We don’t care about life and we don’t care about the work that we’re doing. And yet we just keep getting up and doing it day in and day out.”
Getting (un)busy
“I take people through the ‘commit to uncommit’ exercise where you write down all of your commitments. That’s step one. And then, in the second step, you write down how much time each of those commitments takes. Now, this takes a while to do. But as you do it, you’re going to realize how much you’ve got going on. Then, we can begin to look at those commitments and ask, ‘Which of these commitments can I get rid of?’ and ‘Which of these commitments could I delegate to somebody else?’ Most people can deconstruct five to ten hours a week of commitments from their lives just by doing that little exercise.”
Default to “no”
“Most of us default to ‘yes.’ When somebody asks us to do something, it’s almost like this reflex where we automatically say, ‘Sure, I’ll do that.’ And we don’t even think about it. I want you to switch the way that you think: first, you default to ‘no.’ You make ‘no’ the first answer. But when you say ‘yes,’ it has to be a strong ‘yes,’ and you should be able to defend it. What I mean by that is you take time to actually think through whether this is a commitment you want to add to your life.”
Helping your team get (un)busy
“The first thing is making ‘busy’ a bad word in your organization. When you ask people how they’re doing, if they say they’re busy, you should be shocked and appalled. It’s like they dropped, as we call it in our family, the B-word. The second thing is helping your team develop really strong boundaries. You need time boundaries, communication boundaries, and maybe even some travel boundaries as we go back.”
LEARN MORE
If you want to find out more about how to tackle busyness in your life, check out www.killbusy.com. Just sign up and pay shipping and handling, and Garland Vance will send you a free copy of his book. Or, if you want to find out more about the coaching, consulting, and speaking that he offers, then head on over to www.advanceleadership.live.