Life Skills: Are You Busy or Are You Productive?
If you caught up with me in my earlier seasons of life, I was always moving. Always had something to do. Always had something going on. I was always busy.
Reflecting back on those years, to the outsider who might be watching me it probably brought to mind the image of a swimmer desperately kicking under the water but in reality they were not moving anywhere. Yes indeed, there were many tasks on my schedule but the overload often caused me to just spin in circles without completing each task with excellence. “Excellence” being the operative word because sometimes simply “getting it done” to get it done is often just as ineffective as not doing it at all.
Now that I’m older and wiser, I’ve learned it is much more fruitful to be productive.
Being productive comes about when you take a soul-searching pause to understand what your purpose is and what you truly aspire to accomplish. Then you apply your dedication, focus and disciplined effort towards completing the benchmark goals that will fulfill your purpose. It’s determining what your end game is and then intentionally making the necessary moves to get you there.
When you switch from being busy to being productive, you will find that you develop laser-like focus only on a small few tasks instead of being a “jack of all trades but a master of none” to many. As a result, there is no longer a sense of overwhelming franticness that comes from thinking you have hundreds of items that you are busy trying to complete. Instead you move about in a relaxed pace able to give your current goals the dedicated attention and commitment that is needed to complete them successfully. When you are always busy, there never seems to be enough time but when you are productive, you will find there is more than enough time to get goal-oriented projects done.
An additional added benefit of becoming productive instead of simply being busy is that distractions are less likely to throw you off course. If you know your priority is to exercise for an hour, read two chapters of a book, or draft a business plan then when a friend calls and wants to chit chat for an hour, it’s easier for you to say “can we do this a little later… I was right in the middle of…”
This leads into another learned skill when you become productive over just being busy. You learn the difference between what is urgent and important which also enhances your efficiency. You gain clearer clarity on the concept of time and how much of it you have to spare for various activities. Scrolling on social media for an hour will keep you busy but it does not assist in the productive completion of many goals we set for ourselves. At some point you have to self-assess and ask yourself “If I do this, then I gain what but if I do that, then the reward is what?” I can keep myself busy on a Saturday by running all over town attending social duties or I can stay home and declutter the garage. One choice is more productive than the other.
My list of priorities became much smaller as I shifted from being busy to being productive as well. I was running around saying “yes” to everything and piling more and more on my plate on a consistent basis. It was extremely taxing on my mental health and the outcomes that I wanted to see manifest in my life. If you catch up with me today, you will most likely hear me say “no, I can’t do that” if it does not align with my concept of being productive.
The key to my self-growth has come about simply from transitioning to understanding the concept of being productive. It has brought me more peace and self-esteem than I can explain. I don’t move around all willy-nilly, starting and stopping things but instead finish what I set out to do and to add to that, I no longer even start tasks that have no meaning in the bigger picture of my purpose. It has truly been a game-changer in my life to realize and redirect my busyness to productiveness.
Lana Reid is the author of numerous titles, a healthy relationship advocate and the host of “The Male Perspective” podcast.
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