Every engagement survey I’ve ever seen has a significant number of people responding “We’re overworked. We’re too busy. We don’t have time.” Many people will automatically say “I’m so busy!” when asked how they’re doing.
Cinch your belt, let’s review a few facts:
- Busy is a four-letter word and a poor metric. Busy at what, exactly? What are you producing and delivering? Are you productively busy like a honeybee, or buzzing busy like a mosquito?
- Work expands to fill the time available. Focused effort can shrink the time required for a task. I note that whiners tend to be highly inefficient in their work. “The problem is not that life is short, but that we waste so much of it.” (Seneca wisdom, and many others)
- The reward for squeezing valuable work into less time and effort is the resource to do more and better work. Yes, it’s a reward, not a curse.
- We cannot do everything, and don’t need to. Choices and prioritization are lifelong crafts.
- Most of the time, people do what they want to. We’re commonly bad at wanting the best things.
Your choice of phrasing can help. Instead of busy, you can say:
“I’m richly scheduled.”
“I have wonderful projects in flight.”
“There is an exciting list of next good things after what I’m doing now.”
“I’m fully engaged.” (The people running the engagement surveys will like that one!)
