Inspiration
Where Did the Day Go?
What you can do about busyness
Have you ever reached the end of the day exhausted, wondering where it went, feeling like you accomplished little or nothing? If you have held a job for a few years, you have likely experienced this. For some, it happens too often.
Let’s unearth why this occurs, its impact on us, and what you can do about it.
Where did the day go?
“I wanted to figure out why I was so busy, but I couldn’t find the time to do it.” Todd Stocker (1959-present)
Many of us have days filled with phone calls, meetings, unwanted discussions, or putting out one fire after another. Poof — before you know it, the day is gone, it’s late, and time to go home.
When we have no control over such days, they can leave us feeling helpless and possibly even hopeless. When this happens too often, it can seriously impact our lives.
Yet what if this is normal for your job? What if your job requires you to be under constant stress? I wish you the best of luck if you have determined it is how the job is and will always be. Unless you are a rare human, it will eventually affect your mental and physical well-being, leading to burnout and other issues. Such extremely demanding jobs are beyond the scope of this article.
Let’s address those who have times when they wonder where the day went and want solutions to deal with them better.
The impact of busyness
The negative impacts of busyness are well-known and far-reaching. As you read through the consequences of busyness that follow, think about how beneficial their opposites are and how they help you work on purpose in a good and productive way.
Busyness can:
- Harm self-development
- Kill creativity
- Lower self-esteem
- Block your ability to think
- Limit time to organize and schedule what is important
- Cause you to work far below your potential
- Create negative health consequences
“The greatest enemy of good thinking is busyness.” John C. Maxwell (1947-present)
What can you do?
When you are in the midst of one of those exhausting, hectic days, you can deal with it in one of four ways. You can:
- react to what is happening
- attempt to respond more thoughtfully
- remain under its control
- create something different
Reacting usually leads to more reacting, never fixing the problem. Unfortunately, responding isn’t much better than reacting. Most responses are little more than reacting from how your past has conditioned you. And who wants to stay under the control of what is happening, which can lead to helplessness.
The best way to escape the madness is to create something completely different. How can you do this? Change what you are doing and how you see it.
For example, when you have an avalanche of phone calls requiring your attention, stop, take a breath, and ask yourself if the world will end if you miss or fail on some calls. A short break can help you think more clearly and gain a different perspective, hopefully a better one.
Sometimes, we can use busyness to let us hide and avoid actual work. But why would we do that to ourselves? Why indeed!
Suffice it to say, busyness is often a choice, whether conscious or not. To change this, we must begin dealing with what we do differently.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
From personal experience, I wasted considerable time being “busy” at different points in my career. I recall those endless days of choosing to do nonsense “busy work” because I had lost interest in my job or wanted to get through the work week to enjoy the weekend. It did make the days go by quickly. The problem was I wasted time and got little done.
“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Then there was the time when I was so inundated with phone calls and putting out fires I lost sight of what my busyness was doing to my family and me. My priorities were out of sorts while I was killing myself and my most important relationship. It took a severe wake-up call to come out of that one. When you neglect your family because of busyness, it can have serious consequences!
“Successful people keep the main thing the main thing.
They don’t let their time fill up with busyness that keeps them from the important parts of their lives that really need attention.” Randy Carlson (1951-present)
Before you can do anything to overcome busyness, you must understand its root cause. With this understanding, you can begin changing your busyness to a state of saneness and productivity. What is the root cause of your busyness?
Once the root is determined, you can overcome busyness by changing your approach to the day and your actions. To do this, you must do something that may sound counterintuitive yet can be highly effective as you learn to practice it.
Start by changing the approach to your work. Slow down, step back, look at what you want from the day ahead, and understand what you must do. Keep doing this until you learn to become more effective and productive. To go deeper into this process, check out the short article Gain More in Life by Slowing Down.
The final step is to change how you approach the activities involved in busyness. It will take some work, but you can change what you do during busy times by shifting from reacting/responding to creating something different. You can find more about this simple technique in the brief article Stop Problem-Solving ASAP!
Final thoughts
Rather than remain in the state of busyness, you must take the bull by the horns and do something about it if it is ever to change. Ask yourself Thoreau’s question:
“What am I busy about?”
The answer to this question provides a starting place to change your life. Give it some thought and begin experimenting to create something that works for you!
BillAbbate| LinkedIn |Twitter| Medium| Facebook| AmazonAuthorPage | NewsBreak | Truth
Bill Abbate Leadership Writer and Editor in ILLUMINATION
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