Chapter 13
Elephant: You’re Addicted to Busy
When I’m in “addicted to busyness” mode, my days look something like this:
▶ Wake up and check emails for ten minutes before I’m even out of bed.
▶ Rush to get the kids ready for school while I scarf down a banana or a granola bar and then race out the door.
▶ Arrive at work; have about 10 minutes to gather myself before it’s time for a meeting.
▶ Throughout the day: several one- to two-hour-long meetings with me checking my email in between.
▶ Touch base to see what’s on the docket with clients to ensure I’m ready for our sessions.
▶ Rush home, interact with family amid more email, hop in bed, and perform one last phone scan.
▶ Sleep, wake up, and start the cycle over again.
Sound familiar?
It’s a conundrum: As we reach the executive level, more and more demands are placed on our time. Days are filled with meetings: performance reviews, client pitches, and department head strategy sessions. If you’re at the top, it’s likely that every minute of your day is accounted for before you even set foot in the office.
But the higher you rise, the more important it is to have space for strategic thinking. Staying constantly in “hamster wheel” mode means you can meet the demands of the day but not much else. How can you be the visionary your organization needs if you never have time for a vision? If your schedule leaves no room for the rest and play that are the birthplace of creativity, how will you explore innovative ways to lead the organization forward?
In this chapter, I’m going to help you unpack and unload the burden of “busy” and the effect it can have on you and your company. After all, if everyone on your team is as #crazybusy as you are, imagine what that does for overall morale and productivity. It can be like a whole herd of elephants, frightening away even the most magical unicorns.
Break Your Busyness Addiction and Reclaim Your Creativity
Our addiction to constant busyness is partly a failure of imagination. We simply can’t conceive that another way is possible. I loved Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter’s 2018 book The Mind of the Leader, which thoroughly explores the concept of “action addiction.” When speaking on this same topic, entrepreneur and strategy consultant Dorie Clark has observed that we measure “busyness” as a sign of social status, substituting working long hours for real loyalty and productivity.
Bingo. We tell ourselves that the only way to get ahead is to always be working. We tell ourselves this even if we know our work suffers after a certain threshold (also known as the point of diminishing returns). Research backs this up; according to a 2014 study by John Pencavel, an economics professor at Stanford University, productivity decreases for people who work more than 50 hours a week. Productivity for a 70-hour work week was basically the same as that for a 56-hour week; workers might as well have gone home for those extra 14 hours! Yet for most professionals, the idea of the 40-hour workweek is long past; 50 hours is the base line. Maybe you’re reading this while working 60, 70, or 80 hours per week. Working only 50 hours a week may sound like a pipe dream!
Lately, “mindfulness” has become a buzzword. Ten years ago, mindfulness seemed like something reserved for Buddhist monks rather than a practice for everyday people to draw on. These days, everyone is talking mindfulness. Only we’re not exactly sure what it means. We just know we’re supposed to move more mindfully through our days. I’m glad the term has come into more common usage. But if you’re like me, the concept can stress you out! I’ve got a to-do list a mile long, and I’m supposed to add “be mindful” to it? Maybe I’ll swap out my afternoon coffee for tea and try to savor it for 30 seconds. Then I’ll dive back into my email.
If this sounds familiar to you, know you’re not alone. Breaking the cycle of busy addiction is hard. Breaking any addiction is hard. But being addicted to something doesn’t feel good. Being tethered to the tasks on your to-do list means you’re not in control of your day. Even if you’re the CEO of a large organization, you’re still essentially employed by your email.
How do you want to feel as you move through your day? Do you enjoy that lightheaded buzzy feeling you get from chronic stress, never quite feeling like you’ve got both feet on the ground? Do you like the hollow pit in your stomach from the time you wake up until it’s lights out? I can think of many adjectives to describe addiction, but enjoyable is not one of them. Most of us are used to our calendars dictating our mood and our stress dictating our emotions. But we can actually have it the other way around.
To enhance the stress-management component of emotional intelligence, people leaders must take some time away from the tasks at hand. More is not always more—spending more time at your desk slogging through task after task does not create a fertile environment for innovative thinking. People leaders who have systems in place to increase their stress tolerance, a pillar of stress management that helps them cope with stressful situations, are better able to lead their teams. Taking care of our mental states and handling our emotions as they arise prevents our stress from leaking downward to our direct reports and creating more problems.
Strategies for Breaking Your Busyness Addiction
I agree with Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter’s recommendation that leaders block out an hour a day for focused work and thinking. This time is sacred: During this hour, you are unavailable to attend meetings or put out fires. The shape this hour takes is up to you. If a good, long run is the best way to clear your head, put on your running shoes and take off around the city. Or perhaps you find clarity through journaling or meditation. Maybe you simply hang the “do not disturb” sign on your office door for an hour so you can do the focused, deep work necessary for insight and innovation. It doesn’t matter what you do to rein in the racing horses in your mind. What’s important is that you do it. Regularly and consistently.
Another method I find invaluable for working without distractions is a timer (you can use the alarm function on your smartphone). I set a timer for 40 minutes each morning. During that time, I’m not allowed to check my emails or text messages, read an interesting article on LinkedIn—nothing. I can only focus on the task at hand. Forty minutes, to me, is a manageable chunk of time during which I can tune out all the noise of the world. Once the timer dings, it’s all still there where I left it.
There are loads of other tricks you can try to bring a measure of calm back into your day. Set a shorter timer for five minutes (or even one!). While the timer’s going, turn away from all your screens. Focus on your breath. Any time your mind wanders, bring it back to the in-out, in-out of your breathing. It’s the simplest form of meditation, but it’s incredibly helpful in calming your heart rate and focusing your mind. Even such a short reset can have enormous benefits for your concentration and energy levels.
Float Sessions: My Favorite Mind Cleanser
In 2015, I discovered my favorite way to clear my mind: float sessions. It was more than just work stress that brought me to this unique form of meditation/therapy: At the time, a very close friend was dying of cancer. I wanted to be there for my friend Simon at every step of his journey and for whatever he needed in those last few months of his life. Well-meaning friends and acquaintances rallied around Simon, telling him to “hang in there” and “keep fighting.” But dying was incredibly stressful for him. Apart from the disease that was slowly killing him, he was faced with arranging his estate, making an exit plan for work, taking the bucket list trips he’d always dreamed of, etc. There was so much to think about, and I was there with him as he wrestled with much of it.
Life doesn’t stop for terminal illness. I was supporting my friend on top of all the other normal things in my schedule: parenting my children, running my business, and being a wife to my husband. When I finally paused to catch my breath, I realized I was deteriorating. If you’ve ever supported someone with a serious illness or been a caregiver for someone at a vulnerable stage of life—say, a young child or an aging parent—you know how badly the supporter needs support. I needed help. Desperate, I knew I needed to feel urgently calm so I Googled an article on floating that gave me hope. I phoned my local float center, overshared with the poor receptionist about what I was going through, and explained how I needed a session pronto.
The next morning, I was floating weightless in a giant tank filled with saline water at the float center. Deprived of all sensory stimuli, I simply lay there buoyed by saline water allowing my mind—at last—to comforting silence. For a full hour I floated, the anxieties of the previous months melting away one by one. When my time was up, I was hooked. I found the receptionist to whom I’d previously told my life story and bought nine more sessions.
By the time I’d had four more sessions, I felt as if I’d undergone a full year of therapy. Lying weightless in the water flooded my brain with serotonin and dopamine. It took me back to my childhood, when my family were expats in Singapore. I’d spend long, aimless hours by myself, floating at the local pools. Now, the float center was the one place I could shed the stresses of my daily life and truly be still.
What activity does that for you? It’s worth it to find the answer to that question and then block off time in your calendar for the activity. Recognize that this brain recharging time will not magically appear in your week. You must purposefully make room in your calendar for it. Also realize that these mental breaks are not selfish—they’re necessary. You can’t be the leader your teams need you to be if you’re not in control of yourself. A leader who is constantly harried and overwhelmed will not inspire confidence in others. Most important, you’ll have no confidence in yourself if this is your M.O. You’ve got big goals and benchmarks to meet. You need to bring your A game. Getting caught up in a cycle of action addiction leaves you uncentered and disconnected from your true purpose and power. We should all be aiming for more.
The Emotional Intelligence Factor
You must be aware of a problem before you can solve it. If you recognize that you’re caught in an addiction to being busy, acknowledging the situation is your first step toward breaking the cycle. From an emotional intelligence perspective, freedom from your busyness addiction brings tremendous benefits. Let’s look at the stress-management component of EQ-i 2.0 for some guidance on how to break the busyness cycle. Flexibility is one of its three pillars. Leaders who have mental recharge breaks built into their schedules are in a better space to respond to the changing needs around them. Response is key. They are responding to their day, rather than merely reacting to whatever stresses come their way. Leaders with enhanced flexibility stop treating their to-do lists like a holy book. They are open and adaptable; they can discard their preconceived notions of “the right way” to accomplish something and change course if a better way becomes apparent. They also have a lot more fun.
People leaders who are able to manage their stress are also better at decision making, another of the five components of EQ-i 2.0. They are better at problem solving, one of the three pillars of decision making, because they are aware of their emotions and recognize how those emotions are influencing them, positively or negatively. For leaders who don’t understand the emotions underlying their thought processes, a vague cloud of unease enshrouds them. Here’s a tip: Emotions are always engaged in decision making. Some people like to claim that they are entirely rational, that they don’t need to worry about emotions since all their decisions proceed from logical thought. But this is never true. When you clearly understand your emotions, you can measure their impact on your day-to-day actions.
Another pillar of decision making is reality testing, the ability to be objective and see things as they really are. People leaders who make time for mental recharges come back to the pressing tasks of the day with a clearer sense of what’s what. The further we move from our center, the harder it is to discern what’s true and what’s false. When I’m uncentered, everything begins to look grim, and problems appear worse than they are. Consequently, my reactions are worse—I’m reacting, not responding. A short break—for meditation, a hike, or a float session—restores my sense of clarity. Problems that seemed insurmountable suddenly have an obvious solution.
The fourth industrial revolution will leave no room for companies that don’t make time for strategy. That means you as a people leader have to schedule time for mental clarity that begets strategic thinking—now. Harried and stressed people leaders constantly on the hamster wheel are not going to attract top talent. If that is your current condition, recognize that your stress is likely leaking all over your company and driving away potential unicorns.
You can break the cycle of busyness addiction. You can master your emotions, your to-do list, and your time, even if the tasks seem endless. Once you do, and once you implement steps to break free of action addiction to be the centered, strategic leader your teams need you to be, you (and your company) will be poised to not only survive but thrive.
One of the biggest elephants in your boardroom is the addiction to being busy. It affects you personally and professionally, which filters down to your teams. And if you are experiencing to-do list overload, you’re probably not the only one. Take some time to take stock of your busyness levels so you can adjust sails and curb your addiction to constant action. Below are some questions to ask yourself. Have your teams do this self-reflection exercise as well so you can help promote a more balanced approach to work.
▶ Do you schedule at least 15 minutes of personal time into your daily routine?
▶ Are you achieving your desired professional results in 50 hours a week or less? Would you like your working hours to fall within this parameter?
▶ What are some steps you could take to cut down on your hours?
▶ How do you influence people on a good day?
▶ How do you influence people on a bad day?
▶ Are you aware of your stress triggers? Do you regularly work on managing your responses to them?
▶ Are you able to stop work and focus on personal goals?