Are the things that keep you busy taking you where you want to go?

A recent TEDx podcast caught my attention, and lead me to think about why so many people in leadership roles are time poor. What are the underlying factors and choices that are being made that are contributing to executive busyness?

The podcast research suggested that of 10,000 executes interviewed, 97% cited long term strategic thinking as the key to their success, yet in a parallel study 96% said they didn’t have time to set aside and think strategically.

What is going on? Why are 96% of leaders not doing the thing they say is critical for success? The answer may lie in what is not being said.

My coaching clients often discuss time management and prioritisation challenges involving punishing meeting schedules, overwhelming inboxes and numerous other demands on their time as reasons why they struggle to achieve their goals.

These are certainly real contributory factors to a busy schedule (and are also not entirely controllable), but I think there are other factors to consider - the everyday, often subconscious, choices that are being made that hijack free time, and keep people busy.

Busyness as status

Being busy can be a form of status. Showing or telling people how busy you are is a way of reinforcing how important you are, and for some people that can be a hard feeling to let go.

Busyness as the status-quo

If you are constantly busy, then being busy is what you know. What would you do if you were not busy? Addressing this question can be harder to answer than just staying the same. Often people just don’t know how (or havn’t thought about how) to do things differently, and as a result just do more of what they are already doing, hoping that will eventually achieve what is needed.

Busyness as avoidance

Sometimes there are more fundamental questions to consider – am I still in the right role?, or even in the right career? After 20 years of being busy, people sometimes don’t recognise that the industry and world of work has changed around them. Staying super busy can be a coping mechanism to avoid facing such uncomfortable realities.