I was at a wedding this past weekend for a buddy of mine that I’ve known for more than 30 years.
Its was awesome to get everyone back together because we have an unusually large group of close friends that goes back that far.
I love catching up with these people because I admire them.
I admire them because I know their entire story, where they started, what they’ve been through, where they are and where they are headed.
They are a successful group by virtually any measure: personally, family or professionally.
We are all busy people. Busy with our families, busy with our careers, busy trying to achieve our goals or busy trying to help others.
That busyness often gets confused with being productive.
It gets confused by us and by those looking in from the outside.
If we look at productivity in the absence of time it can be deceiving.
Consider the following two statements:
I built this fence.
and
I built this fence over the past 20 years.
Obviously what the fence looks like would provide more context but what if we could build the same fence in a day?
How much more productive could we be with our time if we eliminated distractions or things that don’t have any real relevance to our lives or don’t move our needle.
How much better would we be at our job?
How much better would we be to our loved ones?
How much closer would we be to our perfect day?
How much happier would we be?
I consider myself to be more productive than most, but I still regularly fall victim to being busy.
We have to identify the “busy” work that can wait and make it wait.
We have to identify the people who “need” our time and create boundaries because people will take what we give them.
My theory for why we don’t do this is because it takes time on the front end to craft that life. Its hard to facilitate.
We have to evaluate our lives under a microscope and choose to eliminate certain things.
Most of us are givers, so it’s difficult to eliminate people or things.
What if simplifying allowed us to give more? Would we go through with the process?
I’ve committed to being less busy so I can serve my members and family better.
People count on me to productive, not busy.
Where could you be less busy and more productive?
Fern
