conversation is an engine

Too Busy: 4 Takes

• My contact is too busy to talk about collaboration: “Too many deliverables, scheduled too tightly.”
• Another colleague laments the lack of time to think ahead about the broader picture. She chides the constant race to get stuff done.
• A friend observing the inner-workings of a logistics department 2000 miles from where he was trained could identify key process components missing. The very components that created the immediate chaos the team waded through each day.

We earn our keep by being busy. None of us want the boss to wander by and say, “Fire up that keyboard/drill press/classroom/spreadsheet and get to work.”

Busy is always good.

There are no exceptions.

And yet:

1. We lament “busy” but secretly get a buzz from opening the adrenalin spigot.
2. Busy looks productive. But looks can deceive. We easily deceive ourselves with busyness.
3. When taken out of action (for instance, when downsized/right-sized/laid-off/fired), we suddenly have time to ask:
   • “Where am I?” and
   • “What (the heck) am I doing?” and maybe
   • “What was I thinking?”
4. No one likes the off-balance, adrenalin-free stance of waiting, watching, knocking and waiting. Are we genetically predisposed to seek action? After all, aren’t verbs the action-heroes in our favorite writing?

It’s hard work to look at the bigger picture and make difficult choices about direction, use of resources, usefulness. And yet those are the very questions that help us move forward. As the wheel of seasons grind toward winter in Minnesota, we might take a page from the farmer’s playbook and let snowy fields lie.

Even on purpose: the fallow field may allow us productive time to consider what it means to be productive.

Versus just busy.

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Dumb sketch credit: Kirk Livingston