Busy is new stupid

I’ve taken over my new team on 1 July. And I won’t lie, it was a hectic take over. To my current two teams (Branding & Comms, Training & Development), I have adopted Recruitment team. Twice as big as my two other teams combined, very important for the running of the company and highly visible. It included many additional meetings, a lot of reporting, working with several new systems, closer cooperation with senior managers and much more people management.

I enjoyed it very much, but right from the start it was a ride. Anytime someone asked me how I am doing, my answer was ‘crazy busy’. And then one of my recruiters nonchalantly replied, ‘busy is new stupid’. I laughed it off, but this sentence stuck with me. And I realized I have to look at my functioning more strategically. I allowed myself to be crazy busy for 2 months. To learn what I need to learn (and luckily this was the time of summer holidays, when I could work long hours and didn’t have to take care of picking up our kids from schools). But then I need to make set up that will enable me to work normal working hours, to have time for my development and to prevent my burn out. It may sound rough, but this sentence really helped me to change the view (as I really don’t want to work stupidly).

It doesn’t mean that there aren’t some crazy and extremely busy days from time to time. There are! But it’s the exception, not the rule. And during these days I’m coming back to the quote and think about how I want and need to change the pattern to work smarter, not harder.