You’re making progress. Really, you are. You must be. You’re so busy. All the time. You work hard. You tick things off. And yet, nothing seems to be changing, and you can’t quite put your finger on why.

Your diary is full. Your friends and family think you are making progress. You might be, but not at the pace you want to. Something isn’t quite right. How can you be busy and not moving forward?

busyness as a strategy.

Busyness can be used to manage anxiety. You are creating tasks, focusing on easy things, things that make you visible. This means you feel busy, like you’re working full time and it keeps the day-to-day fear at a manageable level.

The problem is, managing fear or anxiety is generally a short-term strategy. It just pushes it further down the road and it’s more likely to feel big and overwhelming and unmanageable when it hits.

I started giving myself a target number of clients to sign by the end of the month. Then I tried the end of the quarter. Then I stopped setting a target all together. The problem was that the numbers and deadlines felt arbitrary. I didn’t have conversion figures, I didn’t know how many leads each channel would generate. But having no target didn’t help me either. Because it wasn’t the target that was the problem. It was my strategy, or lack of.

I set a target and then got busy. Busy with what? Being visible. Using my time. What I wasn’t doing was setting tasks with the specific goal of hitting my target. I wasn’t aiming at it. I didn’t have a strategy. I didn’t even have a plan other than to be busy.

staying busy.

Are you busy on social media? Do you know who you are talking to and what you want to say? Is your website like mine: it exists but doesn’t work. Networking is my new favourite busy thing. One two-hour networking event can mean I get zero work done that day. But I’ve chatted to people. Chatted. Made new connections. But are they the right connections? Sometimes time will tell, but in your gut, you know if they are right.

It’s not about getting everything right. It’s not even about only doing the right things. It’s about paying attention, asking yourself the right questions, making the right decisions. Trial and error are great and essential.

procrasti-learning.

As a life-long learner who learns better through formal study than reading a book, this used to be my biggest obstacle. Wanting to be qualified in everything I spoke about. Not feeling ready until I had the certificate. It was just training disguised as building my confidence which was simply procrastination, also in disguise. Now, I have a list of training courses I want to go on, qualifications I want to study for. When I come across something new, instead of signing up, I add it to the list. One day I’ll do some of them, mostly I won’t. Because I don’t really need them.

stop being busy.

The difference between busy and productive is knowing what the task is for. Before you start, ask yourself what the outcome will be. Be honest. Is what you’re doing moving something forward, or just making you feel like it is?

Do you want to stop being busy and start building habits that make progress? Book a call.