Busyness is something we deal with every day. Perhaps it’s the result of the current culture or digital age. Here are some ideas on how to get a handle on busyness.
Time management. It’s a great practice but truthfully time cannot be managed. The clock keeps running no matter what you do. What needs to be managed is yourself. For example, identify your priorities and think back over the last week to see how much time was spent on each. Also, be all in when focused on a priority. This means, when doing work tasks, don’t be thinking about upcoming time off. When taking time away from work, don’t think about what needs to be completed at the office but put your attention on the recreation. Turn off the phone so you can’t receive calls, texts, or emails. Find other areas to manage yourself when it comes to time.
Eliminate Clutter. Experts say that clutter can consist of material, digital and emotional baggage. Material is the obvious form of clutter and too much stuff can lead to depression and hopelessness as it overruns one’s life. Today, digital clutter is a problem. Remember when hard drives were measured in kilobytes? Then megabytes were introduced, and it was questioned how we would ever use that much space. In today’s world, we deal in tera, peta, and exabytes of data and beyond. Examine your computer and see how much clutter is on it. What files are you keeping you will never use? How is your email inbox? All messages may be marked read, but have they been acted on whether it be responded to, filed, or deleted. Clutter has been defined as delayed action. A lot of truth in that. The question to ask is how much busy time is generated by searching through clutter.
Eliminate Waste. In the Quality world waste is a bad thing and something to be removed. Waste or scrap in production is easy to understand. Waste in our daily lives can foster unnecessary busyness. I already mentioned how much time we waste by searching through clutter to find something. But how about poorly defined business processes or communications causing employees to waste time figuring out or asking more than once how to accomplish something? All these activities create more and more busyness.
There are many more techniques to reduce busyness. Do some research and find what works for you.
Ted Saul is a business coach and writer that assists with Business Plans, Project Management and Career Management. He earned his MBA from Regis University along with a Masters in project, management. Ted can be reached on LinkedIn or by emailing TedSaulbiz@gmail.com.
