Business, Not Busyness

One of the phrases that I began using early on in my entrepreneurial life was “Be in business, not busyness.” We spend so much time doing things that don't actually move us toward our desired end goal. We allow others to dictate what is urgent instead of taking charge of what is important. By doing this, we complicate our path to success unnecessarily.

I had an incredible employee early on in my company that was creative, driven, personable, and fun to work with. He only had one problem. He was working himself to death because of how much time he spent tinkering before he started working. He still got his job done, and it was still great work, but the extra 20 hours a week of pointless work was going to burn him out if he wasn’t careful.

I sat down with him to talk about how to streamline his work and how to get rid of the things that didn’t produce measurable progress. We talked a few times about it, but it wasn't sinking in. One day, I came into the office, and he had already been there for a couple of hours. I got there at 8, by the way. He was color coding note cards on the work he was planning to do. I think I used a phrase like, “stop your darn infernal tinkering and use your talent.” The stronger push turned out to be what he needed to recognize his creative procrastination.

Creative procrastination is the busy work we do that seems like a good idea and makes us look like we are working hard but doesn’t produce the right outcomes. Life is more about finding ways to balance out the amount of work required to get to the outcome than it is about finding ways to add more time to our work. To this day, he and I laugh about that conversation because it became a mantra for moving from just being busy to being in business.

What is the tinkering, or creative procrastination, that you are doing that you need to stop? Are you measuring the things you do to ensure they actually produce the outcomes desired? If not, it may be time to really get down to business and get out of busyness.