Productivity Or Busyness: The Choice That Brings You Success in Life and Business

We live in a world of more, more, more.
More emails.
More meetings.
More text messages.
More notifications from social media.
More advertising and marketing messages.
The result is we’re busier than ever, getting less done, and feeling overwhelmed.
We live in a 24/7 culture with access to entertainment, news, friends, and colleagues just a simple app away on our smartphones or a simple voice command if you have Alexa or Siri or Echo or Echo Dot. This makes it so easy to fall into a mindset that Busy is Good.
Watch out! It’s a trap!

Changing your mindset is the key to changing your busyness into productivity.

You can get out of the trap, or avoid it. You can choose to plan your day differently.
How do you choose? How do you plan your day differently?
Be willing to understand the difference between busyness and productivity, and then be willing to change how you do things each day.
Let’s look at the difference between busyness and productivity.

Busyness is:

Scurrying around the house and the office, jumping from one list to another to make sure everything gets done with nothing really getting done. At the end of the day you have a list that needs to be transferred to tomorrow, and nothing finished that moves you closer to achieving your goals.
This may sound familiar to you:
Recently, I invited a friend out for coffee. I felt fortunate because usually she tells me she’s too busy. It had been a while since our last “catch up” session. I was really looking forward to hearing about her son’s recent graduation from college and the wins in her business.
We met at a local coffee shop. While we stood in line to order our coffee her phone rang. She answered, then looked at me and said “I hope you don’t mind but I’ve been expecting this call and will be a few minutes…can you order for me?”
“Of course,” I responded.
I ordered coffee and a pastry and joined her at a table. As I sat down she placed her phone on the table and asked me about my day. I started to tell her about my morning, the phone rang and she apologized for the interruption as she picked it up.
This continued throughout the 30 minutes we spent together. I quickly surmised that we should reschedule our “catch up time” for another day. When she finished her conversation she asked me “how’s your business?” I responded with “obviously not going as well as yours! I’m so pleased your business is growing.”
She gave me a quizzical look and I pointed to her phone, saying “Look how many customers and partners you’re talking to. If I had that much going on I’d be in great shape. I’m really glad it’s going so well for you”.
She responded with a slight smile and said “Oh, I wish I had that much business! That last call was the dry cleaners telling me my comforter was ready for pick up.”
I learned that no call she had taken had anything to do with her business. And, that she hadn’t invited me to her home because she hadn’t been able to get the house cleaning done. When I asked why that was the case, she said it was because she was so busy that she couldn’t find the time. Then she showed me her planner, full of lists of things she had to do that day:

• The grocery list.
• The housekeeping list.
• The proposals that needed to be finished.
• The follow-up phone calls to prospects.
• The eBook that needed to be proofread and then edited.
• The yard work that needed to be done.
• The outreach to prospects.

Based on her behavior that day, I was certain that she wouldn’t be finishing anything on any of those lists any time soon.

Productivity is:

Writer Charles Duhigg defines it as “making certain choices in certain ways” that moves us from being “merely busy” to “genuinely productive” in his book Smarter Faster Better2.
Another way to look at it is – Getting the right things done.

Let’s begin with the business.

Here’s a short list of what many of us do, thinking we’re being productive:

• Reading industry articles
• Working on a future event, program, service, course, or book
• Getting another certification
• Making tweaks to the website
• Researching on the internet, Google searches, on anything for more than 5 minutes

We feel productive because we’re doing something. Yet, each one of those tasks should be done during non-working hours.

Another way to look at productivity in your business:

Valuable interaction with the people your business can best serve, that inspires their reciprocity.

It’s being in touch with your market. It’s connecting by phone or email or private messages on social media.

You’ll know that it’s valuable interaction with your ideal audience if it inspires reciprocity of some kind (likes, comments, shares, inquiries, and more importantly – purchases.) If your activity doesn’t inspire reciprocity from your audience, question that activity.

Who are the people your business can best serve?

• Current customers
• Ideal prospective customers
• Ideal former customers
• Current referral sources
• Former referral sources
• Ideal potential referral sources
• The evangelists (biggest fans) of your content

If your workday isn’t filled with you being in contact with one or more of these people, question how you’re spending your working time and look at outsourcing the tasks that are preventing you from prospecting, making sales, serving your customers or clients.

What to outsource? Administrative duties, data entry, bookkeeping, email management, research, lead generation, content writing, and marketing are just a few tasks that can be outsourced to a virtual assistant or local professional. Another option is using college interns, in person or virtually.

Next, let’s look at your personal life.

What are you truly responsible for? If you’re the primary caregiver of a family member, is it possible to get outside help? Whether it is a paid or volunteer service that gives you a few hours a day of respite, it is worth interviewing agencies and individuals to take over some of your care duties.

For many women, housework is always unfinished. While it may not sound like a big deal, the unfinished tasks that are on your mind because they need to be done are part of what is causing you to feel rushed and are why you’re feeling that you’re not accomplishing anything. Hire a professional to clean your house one day a week. It’s less expensive than you think and you’ll be less anxious with a few more hours a day to do what you want with your family and your business.

Choose Productivity

This is what I do and what I teach my clients and members to do3:

Block out an hour or two to sit, think, and plan your day. Get your pen and paper, your journal, or open your calendar on your computer and a blank Word doc in front of you.

Make a list of the goals you want to achieve in your personal life and your business. For each goal ask yourself these questions:
• Is this goal important?
• What part(s) of my life does this goal impact?
• How does this goal support my overall strategies?
• Do I have a plan for achieving this goal? How can I improve it?
Look at your previous To Do Lists.
What tasks or items on those lists will help you achieve the goals you just wrote about?
Those items are what get moved to your new To Do List.
What about the other tasks and items? Delegate or outsource to family members, team members, virtual assistants, hired professionals.
When you choose productivity over busyness you are focusing your time and energy and attention on doing only those things that matter.
You will get more done, have more energy, and be more fulfilled in your work while spending more time with your family and friends. All because you made the choice to be productive instead of just being busy.

1 Journal of Consumer Research. (2017, March 22). Lack of leisure: Is busyness the new status symbol?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 4, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170322122631.htm
2 Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity Kindle Edition
by Charles Duhigg
3Search by Burke, Get It Done productivity groups, 30 Day Productivity Kickstart