The Busyness of Business: Time To Change Gears
~Joel’s Blog
This Business of Busyness…Is This Living?
A favorite book of mine is The Rudder of the Day, by Dan Miller, which I got at his awesome “Write to the Bank” workshop for authors. He has a chapter about how busyness makes us, well, nuts. In our quest for a better whatever (income, position, stability, house, etc.) we work our proverbial fanny off to achieve the whatever. Been there. Done that. …And still doing it. How about you? Anyone in your mirror resembling this guy?
Back In The Day
Remember back when you were a kid and the hardest decision that you had to make was what you wanted to play…first? Sure, life was full of busyness then, too. But the busyness had a very different feel to it, didn’t it? Because you’d be busy doing things that were fun and fulfilling. So even though you were “busy” doing stuff, the stuff you were doing was pleasant, appealing and, more often than not, joyful. Not all busyness is created equal.
Back To The Future
Dan uses the phrase “soul-less work” to describe what our current levels of busyness bring us. It’s an apt description. When you engage in busyness for a long enough time, you really do feel as if your soul was sucked out of you somewhere along the way. And it didn’t require a Dementor from Harry Potter’s world to do it. Just your own merciless, too-often-unquestioning march towards that whatever. Sorry, but you know it’s true.
At least now in my world, my busyness is directed at “move-toward-goals,” rather than “move-away-from-goals.” In other words, my activity is focused on building our businesses, instead of submitting to the busyness requirements of the enterprise I was employed by. In my old corporate world, complaining to my superior didn’t get me much. At least not much of a positive response. Now if I complain to the boss, I’m looking at him in the mirror. And that’s a much better situation. Much, much better.
What are your thoughts? Are you in a busyness spin-cycle? Have you found a way to shut off the machine and return to a time of busy play? What’s your story?
Engage here. And who do you know that should be thinking about this problem of busyness? Engage them, too.