Busyness Is Not Good Business

 

Ever feel like you’re running harder than ever but not really getting anywhere? If the road you’re on won’t get you to your desired destination, moving faster won’t do you any favors.

When you put more importance on the tactics than you do on your vision/goal – and cling to a plan without continually reevaluating it, you’ve sacrificed the strategic in the name of the operational.

As an executive coach, this is one of the major challenges I work with executives to overcome. Operational is clean. It has defined edges and finite solutions. You can check the boxes and feel a sense of closure and control with an operational approach.

Strategic on the other hand can be a bit messier. It involves stepping into uncertainty to address challenges and opportunities that are new and unfamiliar.

There is usually no one right answer. It often involves taking steps out of your comfort zone. And it requires that you slow down instead of speeding up, something that most of us tend to resist because slowing down flies in the face of what we’ve been conditioned to do.

To avoid this discomfort, many executives prefer being busy to being strategic. It gives them the illusion of being productive and the burst of adrenaline that is a nice (yet ultimately unsatisfying and addictive) placebo for real progress.

But busyness isn’t going to help you hit the target necessary to advance your business (or your career).

Because until you slow down long enough to assess your environment and allow your intuitive mind to partner with your rational mind, you may not even realize what your true target is, let alone how to get there.

Malcolm Gladwell echoed the wisdom of Albert Einstein his iconic book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. He wrote, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”

Knowledge is the product of absorbing information. Understanding is the product of insight. And insight comes from the integration of information with experience, from slowing down long enough to practice reflection and discernment.

So the next time you feel compelled to speed up, try slowing down.

Take some time to check in with yourself to identify what is most important to you right now. Reflect on the changing nature of your environment and see if you can tune into ways to proactively interact with it. Give your very best ideas a chance to land softly in the space between your thoughts.

And when you get those insights, act on them – even (and maybe especially) if they nudge you to move in new directions and do things you haven’t done before.

Don’t be afraid to deviate from your routine or stray from your plan – to strategically blaze a trail into the future you must be willing to break away from the constraints of your past.

Here’s to boldly creating your future!