When was the last time you attended a monthly meeting where hardly anyone completed their actions points from last month ?

Probably just today

When was the last time you were in a team where the manager was the busiest person and were notorious for not being available because they were like “sooooooooooooooooooooooooo busy, OMG!”

Probably you are in that team right now

When was the last time you were in a careful crafted presentation and within the first minute you were told by the C-level bro to cut to the chase

Probably in the last month

When was the last time you asked the leading,most productive ,”star”,member of your team about their day , and they had replied that they were not upto much apart from walking the kid to school in the morning,playing kick-boxing during lunch and writing a reflection on how will they fix the flaky smoke tests that have been nagging the team for the past 8 months and slowly eroding trust of the team, later in the day

Probably never

The fact , unshakable , proven beyond doubt ,is, that we all are very busy.

Genuinely, we all are trying to get a lot done

And inside us,we are proud of our work and the validation that we receive for it

And inside us, we are vary of being taken in the “wrong” way if we and our teams are not busy

And inside us, we are insecure, that if we are not being busy for a prolonged time means that our careers have stalled ?

And hence,

outside us, we dont say no.

We dont say no,to another of the boss’s pet initiative because it might hurt their well meaning intentions

We don’t say no, to another feature request because it might give the impression that our team is not going fast enough and are risk averse (a sin in today’s move fast and break people world)

We just have stopped saying no,

Stopped saying it to the busy-bodies that we transact with,who lead us,manage us,

We allow ourselves to be managed with short attention spans,faux listening techniques and general lack of empathy (of our already very high volumes of busyness)

 How and why did we end up here ?

Because,something has been slowly growing in us and taking over the free space in our heart,a sense of pride,a joy,a fulfillment from being busy.

Busyness is vanity now.

Will this ever look different ?

You can’t stop in your tracks now without crashing.

But you can take unplanned detours, to slow down

Start,

taking that aimless walk around the block. Take your team along,be aimless for some time

Start,

taking the kids to school even though it might mean you miss that important meeting. Just take one car and even drop your partner to their work.Ensure that you miss that meeting.

Start,

talking to the friend during work hours because you know outside work your time zones will never match

Start,

learning dramatics,classical dancing or knitting because you always wanted to but never had the time

be unbusy

be proud of it

practice it daily