3 ways busyness is destroying your career

I met a 3-year-old girl at the beach last week. Actually I didn’t, I met her parents and her slightly older brother. She didn’t have time for me. She was busy.

Busy collecting breathtaking beautiful purple shells. Her eyes glued on the sand, looking up only to add her carefully selected treasures to her mom’s overwhelmed hands. 

Before this moment, I had never seen purple snail shells. Nowhere in my wildest imagination was this a thing. So my childlike wonder instinctively couldn’t help but build a connection with this family. This moment had to be shared.

I was honestly star struck as I stared at the dozens of shells overflowing from the little girl’s mom's hands. Wow, they are beautiful. I said.

Yeah, Kasia’s collection. She responded.

Her mom tried to bring my attention to little Kasia.

Mom: Kasia Auntie says your shells are beautiful

Little Girl Kasia.

Mom: Kasia, Auntie says your shells are beautiful.

Little Girl Kasia.

She went on searching for her treasure. As if nothing had transpired. Hardly noticing my presence or acknowledging her mom's calling.

Up and down 100 meters stretch, mom as the transporter, while dad and slightly older brother watched and walked close by, for an hour or more. They had nothing to do, but keep up with their 3-year-old queen.

She painstakingly picked one purple shell at a time, while quietly mumbling to herself.

I haven’t seen purpose and focus like this in a while.

These moments brought me to revisit my relationship with the idea of busyness. Anyone observing the level of detail and attention this girl put into her shells collection, sure she was very busy. 

Busy pursuing a task she loves. Busy putting all her energy in what matters, purple shells. So engrossed in this task that no distraction will get on her way.

Being busy has for a long time become a badge of honor. We wear it proudly and we do everything we can to fill every single breath with something to do. Unfortunately, many a time, we are barely pursuing meaningful activities.

Let’s get real here when you say you are busy. Are you really? Like reaaaly? Years back when I decided to drop this word into the well of dead things that bring me no more joy, I knew that every time it escaped my mouth, I was not being authentic

And as soon as it did, I would feel somehow guilty. I was just bullshitting myself and the other party. What I really should have been saying was 1) You suck the life out of me, so no am not creating time for you, not this time 2) Am not in a good place right now to show up fully and intentionally giving you the attention and energy you deserve. 3) Not another human, can’t this be done via text? Yep. My creative side is really introverted. 4) This is not aligned to my higher purpose so I shouldn’t be engaged, but hey cheers and all the best!

Now let me ask you again when you respond to someone that you are busy; What is the hidden message you are avoiding to communicate? What do you desire instead? Pause here until you come up with 2-3 real reasons.

T. Harv Eker once said ‘Where attention goes, energy flows and results show’

It goes without saying then, that if your attention is focused on meaningless endeavors, your career results will show.

Severally when we engage in career conversations, we realize many individuals have their actions and energy headed south while their career aspirations are headed East. No wonder nothing productive or fulfilling is being achieved.

Today am sharing with you 3 ways you may be busily building your career in the wrong direction and the antidotes.

Never ending certifications/trainings

Ever met someone with so many qualifications and just when you thought they were done, they hit you with another; Oh yeah, am just signing up for a new course…Yet, they have little or nothing to show of how all this knowledge has created value in their lives and work?

If you are not careful, learning can be a powerful distraction from the real issues you need to face in your career and life. Like why you still feel like a fraud, like how you are fulfilling society or your families dreams through your qualifications, like how everyday your dreams feel so far away and how you are slowly losing hope, fear of failing if you jump, or feelings of never being enough, trying to prove your worth, but feeling worthless anyway. All the time.

Now don’t get me wrong I am a firm believer in continuous life-long learning. But there is a caveat, every single piece of information, knowledge, course, mentorship, etc consumed, needs to be aligned with a bigger agenda, things you are genuinely interested and curious about; feeding your soul, creating 10X value for your clients, transitioning into a new industry or profession, pursuing something you have always been curious about, for the fun of it and so on.

If you can’t answer without a blink from the top of your head why you are taking that course and how it’s aligned to your life aspirations, drop it.

Filling space with emptiness

We all are familiar with this one. We should reduce our social time so we can create space and time to work on our dream side hustle or passion project. We don’t. We should spend less time trolling on social media. We should carve out a few extra hours a week volunteering in a different department so we can build the skills we need to get that promotion, instead, we sit around and chit chat with our colleagues. An empty slot just popped up on our calendar, we fill it with meaningless tasks.

We have mastered the art of filling our most productive hours with unnecessary tasks that are not aligned with our true desires.

So we take up tasks and activities just to kill time. Lie to ourselves we are doing something valuable. While we secretly crave for salvation. Our calendars are full, we barely have time to breathe, but deep down we feel empty.

We have filled our space and time, with emptiness.

I challenge you to take a critical audit of how you spend your time. Both at work and socially. Take yourself to the courtroom, be a merciless prosecutor, and judge yourself harshly. And when you can clearly see all the meaningless tasks you have filled your precious time with, take a deep breath and let it all go.

And then create a new schedule. This time with deep intention to fill your time with productive activities that feed into the growth and development of your career, social, spiritual, financial life. Let the verdict be, to fill your time with only what serves you to be the best version of yourself.

Busy jumping from one wrong job to another

It’s 2020, we don’t have the luxury to choose where our paychecks come from. Neither can we afford to play dice with our potential, dreams, and aspirations. Finding a gentle balance between these two truths will save us from drowning in the sea of confusion.

2020 has many of us woke up to one universal truth. In life and with jobs, there are no guarantees. We could be going on perfectly with our lives and then something happens, and we are on 70% salary cuts, with non-transferrable skills in an industry that just submerged.

In the last month, two of my clients called me with great news. They had quit their jobs. My heart jumped with joy. Well done I said, who are you not to stand up for yourself? See, we have created a culture of job offer after job offer. Doing as much as we can, rising as quickly as we can, to get there. But where is there exactly? Many of us have no clue.

Busy busy living for the next long weekend, when we can distract ourselves from looking at truth with a naked eye: Soul sucking bosses, malicious colleagues, unfulfilling roles, jobs using only 10% of our potential, and yet when a higher paycheck shows up, we jump straight in.

The antidote to this madness is to Pause. Pause and face the truth. Pause and accept that the level of thinking that brought you here, cannot take you to the level that is the better version of you. Pause and quit. Pause and get to really clarify what it is you truly want. Pause and then intentionally begin to craft your way back into the game. Pause and commit to honoring your needs. Pause and gather the courage to stand up for your values. Pause and choose to be a better driver of your career. Pause and do whatever it is that you need to do to redirect yourself to your true north. Pause as often and as long as you can.

Actually let us all start a revolution of pausing. Let us all ambitious self-driven humans of high potential, pause, and tell our bosses, we are done playing small.

Let us pause, and see what happens. Let us pause so we can create space to re-imagine ourselves and the value we have to offer. Let us pause so we can come back with busyness that truly serves us. After all have we not survived 6 months of pausing already? Thank Ms. Rona, she sure knew we needed it. 

In which of these three are you the culprit? Share with me below or on chat and maybe I can help you overcome some of these!

Happy New Week Fam!