Not Just Busy; Effective!

Are you busy? That’s a stupid question, huh! We all are… If you’re anything like me, there are times where you feel like there’s just not another second in your day to squeeze in one more thing.

But are you getting the results you’re after? Are you productive?

Let’s be honest with ourselves here, being busy and being effective are two very different things!

Whose face comes to mind when you really consider this? I immediately think of a few different folks I know who constantly seem to be putting out fires but never reach any of the goals they’re working toward. They’re incredibly busy, but it would be a pretty big stretch to describe them as productive…

In complete transparency, I’ve fallen into that scenario myself far more than I care to admit. My DRIVEN approach to nearly everything tends to result in me taking on just about any task that falls within reach and going at it full speed ahead until it’s done or I pass out. But that has derailed me from the results I was really after almost every time! And taking on too much just for the sake of being busy can impact us that same way in nearly any area of our lives.

Once we invest the time and energy into setting some professional development goals and we’ve worked to build clarity around what we want to achieve, we need to be extremely intentional about determining the specific action steps we need to take on a routine basis that make a tangible impact on our progress toward those goals! This often requires building systems into our schedules that support consistent action on those steps we’ve defined. And while we’ll probably never be able to push every single distraction aside, having clarity about our goals and action steps will certainly help us recognize those distractions when they arise.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not suggesting that we’ll never have to move away from even the best system to deal with a distraction; that’s just not how life works. But understanding what specific action steps are moving us toward our professional development goals will definitely help us keep from getting too far off track when a distraction has to be dealt with…

Taking massive action and being busier than anyone around us won’t guarantee we reach those goals. But determining the specific action steps we each need to take in order to achieve what we’re working toward, then getting busy with massive action on those things can!