Are you addicted to being busy?

Are you addicted to being busy?

Okay, we all know how busy you are.

Your weeks roll by with barely a second to stop and think.

You know all the tips and strategies about productivity, but they don’t apply to you and your business.

You’re different from the others – you really are busy!

You spend so much time in your business that you struggle to hold together your life outside of it.

Actually, you struggle to switch off and do anything else.

More than a few hours away from your email and you start to get a bit twitchy.

What’s that? A free day in your diary next month? You’ll soon fill that up.

Time spent away from your business makes you feel anxious about all the work you’re not doing.

But what is it you’re really achieving each month. I know you’re busy, but busy doing what?

Are you secretly spending too long doing the things you enjoy most in your business? Maybe it’s the endless ‘meetings’ and ‘networking’ that are ‘essential’ in your business. Or maybe it’s the time you spend responding to your emails and on social media that are ‘essential’ in getting you new clients.

If you are ‘too busy’ and yet your business is not where you want it to be, then something has to change.

As the business owner, you need to take responsibility for making sure your time is used wisely, yet lots of business owners aren’t clear on what this means.

To help you, here’s a great definition of productivity from Dan Kennedy:

“Productivity is the deliberate, strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunity in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals”

Let’s look at what you did yesterday. Write down everything that you did in your business yesterday.

Now go through this list and put a mark against those tasks which directly relate to bringing revenue into your business.

Money Generating Activities

This is where all business owners should be investing their time, talent, intelligence, energy and resources.

Stop doing all of those things that may make you feel busy, and stop the twitchiness of having ‘spare time’.

Spend less time reacting to other people’s priorities (e.g. email, phone calls, interruptions) and spend more time being proactive.

Set out the boundaries around your business, from your client agreements to your working hours, and start to create the space, time and energy to work on growing your business to where you want it to be.

If you don’t do this, then you will stay where you are right now – being really busy, with so much energy going into maintaining the status quo in your business that you have little energy left for anything else.

Start right now by reminding yourself of your objectives in your business, and start figuring out how you are going to get there.

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Alison Bradford

Alison Bradford is a business coach who works with smart, ambitious business owners to get clarity about how they can grow their business and increase profit. Sign up here to learn 6 easy ways you can boost profit in your business today.
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2 Comments
  • Catherine Sandland
    Posted at 09:55h, 23 January

    this is a great article thank you. I think that sometimes we( by that I mean me) hide behind a sense of busy-ness because it makes us feel significant, needed and energised. the challenge comes when what we are doing isn’t achieving what we want.

    After juggling two kids and a full time job and being the main bread winner, I am now rearranging my life as a part time job and a Mum who does the school pick ups and helps with GCSE revision!. It is taking some getting used to and part of that learning is to not always be ‘busy’ for the sake of it but to put the energy into what really matters.

    Your article is a good reminder. Off to work now on stuff which will bring in revenue!

    • Alison Bradford
      Posted at 09:42h, 25 January

      Thanks Catherine – I definitely relate to your comment. Somehow though, having shorter working hours means imposing shorter deadlines on everything, and can actually mean we are more productive. I work around school days most days myself and I know I have to be super focused to get everything in. I’d probably only achieve the same if I worked longer hours!