“How are you doing?”
“What are you doing?”

Sound familiar?

One of our first questions when seeing someone is usually about the behavior of “doing something.” And constantly “doing something” or keeping ourselves busy is a habit that we probably acquired at a young age.

As a child we may have been told, “find something to do” or “if you don’t have something to do, I’ll give you something to do” And this type of thinking has stayed with us.

Busyness is an ingrained habit that keeps us from identifying and accomplishing what’s most important in our lives.

The habit of busyness in some people has evolved into a competition. Observing a conversation in a coffee shop a couple of years back, I was amazed at how two friends went back and forth sharing all they have been doing. It seemed like a competition of “who was doing more” rather than a connection of friends.

Now we check our Facebook feed and at first find an escape from our daily responsibilities, but quickly feel a restlessness that we “should be doing something” but we either can’t pull ourselves away or find another activity to keep ourselves busy.

Busyness can lead to procrastination. If we keep ourselves busy, we don’t have time to think. We don’t have time to analyze if we are working towards our goals or living in a world of self-deception.

Being Busy vs Being Purposeful

Being Busy is like a voice in our head that tells us a lie that we have to be doing something to feel good about our self-worth.

Being Purposeful is deriving a sense of meaning in our work connected to a higher goal.

by Eric Papp
To Your Success
Top 1% of Time Management Speakers

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