Latest / The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson / The Busy Trap: Why You’re Exhausted but Not Moving Forward
Transcript
- 0:37Jennifer Johnson: Today, I want to talk about one of the most frustrating experiences in life.
- 0:42Jennifer Johnson: That feeling of being incredibly busy all day long, checking things off your to-do list, responding to emails, attending meetings, putting out fires, only to reach the end of the day and realize you haven't actually moved the needle on anything that matters.
- 0:56Jennifer Johnson: You know exactly what I'm talking about.
- 0:58Jennifer Johnson: You fall into bed at night exhausted, feeling like you've been running a marathon all day.
- 1:03Jennifer Johnson: But when someone asks you what you've accomplished, you struggle to name anything significant.
- 1:08Jennifer Johnson: You've been in motion for eight, maybe 10, or maybe even 12 hours, but somehow you're not any closer to your goal than you were when you woke up.
- 1:16Jennifer Johnson: It's not a time management problem.
- 1:19Jennifer Johnson: It's not about needing a better productive apps and more efficient systems.
- 1:24Jennifer Johnson: It's about something much deeper.
- 1:27Jennifer Johnson: The difference between being busy and being productive, between motion and progress, and between activity and achievement.
- 1:33Jennifer Johnson: Today I want to dig deep as to why this happens and why our brains are so easily fooled into thinking that busy equals productive.
- 1:41Jennifer Johnson: And most importantly, how to break free from the busy trap and start making real progress on things that actually matter.
- 1:49Jennifer Johnson: So let's start by understanding why being busy feels so much like being productive.
- 1:55Jennifer Johnson: There's actually some fascinating psychology behind this that explains why our brains are so easily deceived.
- 2:02Jennifer Johnson: First, there's what psychologists call the completion bias.
- 2:05Jennifer Johnson: Our brains are wired to get a small hit of satisfaction every time we complete a task, no matter how small or insignificant that task might be.
- 2:14Jennifer Johnson: Checking your email or filing a document or organizing your desk, these are all triggers, and they have the same reward pathway as completing something important.
- 2:24Jennifer Johnson: The problem is our brains can't tell the difference between meaningful completion and meaningless completion.
- 2:30Jennifer Johnson: This is why crossing things off of your to-do list feels so good.
- 2:34Jennifer Johnson: And I am so much a list person.
- 2:37Jennifer Johnson: I love lists.
- 2:38Jennifer Johnson: But those things don't actually matter, but our brains don't know the difference.
- 2:43Jennifer Johnson: We can spend an entire day responding to emails and feel productive, even though we haven't created any real value.
- 2:49Jennifer Johnson: We're getting that neurochemical reward of the completion without the actual benefit of progress.
- 2:55Jennifer Johnson: I learned this lesson the hard way a few years ago when I tracked my time for a week and then categorized what I was doing and their actual impact.
- 3:02Jennifer Johnson: And I was shocked to discover that I was spending less than 20% of my time on activities that can directly contributed to my most important goals.
- 3:11Jennifer Johnson: The other 80%, well, it was actually busy work, emails, administrative things, meetings that I could have avoided.
- 3:20Jennifer Johnson: And it's what I call fake work.
- 3:23Jennifer Johnson: The second factor is what I call motion addiction.
- 3:26Jennifer Johnson: There's something deeply, something deeply satisfying about feeling busy and having a full calendar and always having something to do.
- 3:34Jennifer Johnson: In our culture, busy has become a status symbol.
- 3:37Jennifer Johnson: We wear it like a badge.
- 3:39Jennifer Johnson: When someone asks how you're doing and you respond, crazy busy, it's almost a humble brag.
- 3:45Jennifer Johnson: It symbol signals that you're important and that you're in demand and that you're successful.
- 3:50Jennifer Johnson: But here's the thing: motion's not progress.
- 3:53Jennifer Johnson: You can be incredibly busy going in circles.
- 3:56Jennifer Johnson: You can be constantly in motion without ever moving forward.
- 3:59Jennifer Johnson: And our addiction to feeling busy can actually prevent us from making the kind of focus and sustained effort that real progress requires.
- 4:11Jennifer Johnson: Not all work is created equal.
- 4:13Jennifer Johnson: There's real work, the kind that moves you closer to your goals and creates values and requires deep thinking or skill.
- 4:19Jennifer Johnson: And then there's fake work, the kind that keeps you busy but doesn't actually accomplish anything meaningful.
- 4:25Jennifer Johnson: So we're going to start with the biggest culprit, and that's email.
- 4:28Jennifer Johnson: Now, don't get me wrong, some emails are important and require thoughtful responses.
- 4:33Jennifer Johnson: But if you're honest about it, how many of your daily emails actually require your personal attention?
- 4:38Jennifer Johnson: How many are just information that could be handled by someone else or automated or completely ignored?
- 4:44Jennifer Johnson: I used to be so happy that I had an empty inbox.
- 4:48Jennifer Johnson: I would spend hours each day processing emails, categorizing them, filing them, responding.
- 4:54Jennifer Johnson: I felt productive.
- 4:55Jennifer Johnson: But when I analyzed what those emails actually accomplished, most of them were just administrative noise.
- 5:01Jennifer Johnson: I was performing productivity instead of actually being productive.
- 5:06Jennifer Johnson: The worst part about email theory theater is what I call it, is that it's addictive.
- 5:11Jennifer Johnson: Every ping gives you a little hit of dopamine, and then every response makes you feel like you're communicating and connecting.
- 5:17Jennifer Johnson: But most email exchanges don't actually do anything or move anything forward.
- 5:22Jennifer Johnson: They just create an illusion of progress.
- 5:25Jennifer Johnson: Then we have what I call meeting mania.
- 5:31Jennifer Johnson: We have all sat through countless meetings where nothing was decided, no actions assigned, no progress made.
- 5:36Jennifer Johnson: But because we were talking about work, it felt like work.
- 5:40Jennifer Johnson: Because we were discussing important topics, it felt important.
- 5:44Jennifer Johnson: Here's a simple test to figure out whether a meeting is real work or fake work.
- 5:49Jennifer Johnson: Could the same outcome have been achieved with a five-minute conversation or an email?
- 5:54Jennifer Johnson: If the answer is yes, you've just spent an hour performing collaboration instead of actually collaborating.
- 6:01Jennifer Johnson: Now, I'm not anti-meeting.
- 6:03Jennifer Johnson: There's absolutely times when getting people in a room together creates a value that can't be achieved in any other way, but too often meetings become a substitute for decision making rather than a tool for decision making.
- 6:16Jennifer Johnson: Then we have administrative quicksand.
- 6:19Jennifer Johnson: This category includes all of the organizational, the filing, the planning, the system tweaking, everything that makes you feel productive, but doesn't create value.
- 6:30Jennifer Johnson: Reorganizing digital files, updating your project management system, you get what I'm saying.
- 6:35Jennifer Johnson: They consume hours while producing zero.
- 6:39Jennifer Johnson: I once actually spent an entire weekend setting up a tracking system for my business.
- 6:45Jennifer Johnson: And I felt really accomplished.
- 6:47Jennifer Johnson: I had spreadsheets and charts and all of these great things.
- 6:51Jennifer Johnson: The only problem is the time that I actually spent maintaining the system would have been better if I would have just done the actual work.
- 7:01Jennifer Johnson: Are you understanding what I'm putting down, everyone?
- 7:04Jennifer Johnson: Does this sound like you?
- 7:06Jennifer Johnson: I know it sounds like a lot of us because I can be the first in line to raise my hand.
- 7:10Jennifer Johnson: Then we go down to the research rabbit holes.
- 7:12Jennifer Johnson: This is a sneaky one because it feels so legitimate.
- 7:16Jennifer Johnson: You tell yourself you need to research before you take action.
- 7:19Jennifer Johnson: You read one more article, watch one more video, gather one more piece of data, and what you're actually doing is nothing because you don't do anything with the research that you already have gathered.
- 7:32Jennifer Johnson: Research can be incredibly valuable, but it can also become a form of procrastination.
- 7:37Jennifer Johnson: When research becomes a substitute for action rather than preparation for action, then it's what I call fake work.
- 7:44Jennifer Johnson: If fake work doesn't actually accomplish anything, why do we keep doing it?
- 7:48Jennifer Johnson: Why do we choose busy tasks over important ones?
- 7:51Jennifer Johnson: Well, the answer is in the understanding that of some uncomfortable truths about human psychology.
- 7:59Jennifer Johnson: The first one is important work is scary.
- 8:02Jennifer Johnson: Real work, the kind that actually moves the needle, is often uncertain and challenging and scary.
- 8:09Jennifer Johnson: It requires us to risk failure and to put ourselves out there to potentially be wrong.
- 8:14Jennifer Johnson: It's much more comfortable to respond to emails than to write that proposal.
- 8:18Jennifer Johnson: It's safer to attend meetings than to make difficult decisions, and it's much easier to organize those files than to tackle a challenging project that you've been avoiding.
- 8:28Jennifer Johnson: Busy work gives us that feeling of productivity without the risk that we would take.
- 8:33Jennifer Johnson: We can stay busy all day and never have to face the possibility of failing at something that actually matters.
- 8:40Jennifer Johnson: And then important work lacks immediate feedback.
- 8:43Jennifer Johnson: Busy work provides immediate gratification.
- 8:46Jennifer Johnson: You send an email, you get a response.
- 8:48Jennifer Johnson: You file a document, you get a thing saying, hey, it's filed.
- 8:52Jennifer Johnson: You attend a meeting, it's attended.
- 8:54Jennifer Johnson: The feedback loop is quick and clear.
- 8:57Jennifer Johnson: Well, the important work usually has a delayed feedback loop.
- 9:00Jennifer Johnson: You might work on something for weeks or months before you know if it's even been effective.
- 9:05Jennifer Johnson: And that's what's challenging because our brains are wired to seek immediate rewards.
- 9:10Jennifer Johnson: Important work is often ambiguous.
- 11:39Jennifer Johnson: Busy work usually has clear parameters.
- 11:41Jennifer Johnson: Process the emails, attend the meeting, you get the point.
- 11:44Jennifer Johnson: But important work is often more ambiguous.
- 11:47Jennifer Johnson: How do you know when you're done enough in your strategic thinking?
- 11:52Jennifer Johnson: When is a creative project really finished?
- 11:54Jennifer Johnson: And how do you measure progress on building relationships or developing skills?
- 11:58Jennifer Johnson: Our brains prefer clear and defined tasks over the ambiguous ones.
- 12:03Jennifer Johnson: When faced with a choice be something that between something that's concrete and something unimportant, we're always going to choose something that's important but unclear.
- 12:14Jennifer Johnson: And then important work requires deep focus.
- 12:17Jennifer Johnson: Most important work requires sustained, focused attention.
- 12:20Jennifer Johnson: And it can't be done while multitasking or between meetings.
- 12:24Jennifer Johnson: It requires what psychologist Mahaly, and I cannot say his last name, but his last name starts with a C, calls flow state.
- 12:32Jennifer Johnson: Periods of deep concentration where you're fully immersed in challenging work.
- 12:37Jennifer Johnson: But our modern work environment is designed to prevent flow state.
- 12:41Jennifer Johnson: We're constantly interrupted by notifications or requests, some urgent, some not.
- 12:46Jennifer Johnson: And it's much easier to stay on the surface, responding to whatever comes up than to dive into that deep, meaningful work.
- 12:54Jennifer Johnson: So, what's the cost?
- 12:56Jennifer Johnson: Living in the busy trap isn't just frustrating, it has real costs that compound over time.
- 13:01Jennifer Johnson: Understanding these can help you break free from that cycle of your busy work.
- 13:07Jennifer Johnson: There's the opportunity cost.
- 13:08Jennifer Johnson: Every hour you spend on busy work is an hour you don't spend on important work.
- 13:13Jennifer Johnson: When you spend most of your time on low-level busy work, you don't develop the skills that are required for high-level important work.
- 13:20Jennifer Johnson: Your ability to think strategically and solve complex problems actually deteriorates from lack of use.
- 13:28Jennifer Johnson: And you become very good at being busy and very bad at being effective.
- 13:32Jennifer Johnson: Then you have stress without progress.
- 13:35Jennifer Johnson: It creates all that stress of being productive without an actual test of being of having any kind of progress.
- 13:44Jennifer Johnson: You feel overwhelmed and exhausted, and you have nothing meaningful to show for it.
- 13:49Jennifer Johnson: Then you have identity confusion, which is sometimes the most damaging.
- 13:54Jennifer Johnson: Living in that busy trap can lead to identity confusion.
- 13:58Jennifer Johnson: You start to define yourself by how busy you are rather than by what you want to accomplish.
- 14:03Jennifer Johnson: Your self-worth becomes tired to your activity level rather than your impact level, which makes it even harder to break free from that.
- 14:12Jennifer Johnson: So, how do you actually escape the busy trap?
- 14:15Jennifer Johnson: Well, there's a few, a few ways that I've come up with that you can actually escape the busy trap.
- 14:21Jennifer Johnson: The first step is getting crystal clear about what actually moves the needle in your life and your work.
- 14:25Jennifer Johnson: For every area where you want to make progress, identify the two or three activities that, if done consistently, would create the most significant results.
- 14:34Jennifer Johnson: For your career, it might be developing relationships with a client.
- 14:38Jennifer Johnson: For your relationships, it may be regular one-on-one times.
- 14:42Jennifer Johnson: The key is to be specific and honest.
- 14:44Jennifer Johnson: Don't list activities that sound impressive.
- 14:47Jennifer Johnson: List ones that are actually going to create the results.
- 14:50Jennifer Johnson: And don't list everything that's important.
- 14:52Jennifer Johnson: Focus on just a few things.
- 14:55Jennifer Johnson: Then you can protect your peak hours.
- 14:57Jennifer Johnson: Once you know what activities actually move the needle, you need to protect the time for them during your peak energy hours.
- 15:03Jennifer Johnson: For most people, this means doing the most important work the first thing in the morning before their day has time to take over.
- 15:11Jennifer Johnson: So blocking out the first two hours of every day for deep work is really important if your best time of working is in the morning.
- 15:19Jennifer Johnson: But let's say it's in the evening, then block that out in the evening, making sure that you don't take meetings, you don't allow for interruptions during that time.
- 15:28Jennifer Johnson: Then one of my favorites is actually batching your work.
- 15:31Jennifer Johnson: You can't eliminate all of your busy work, but you can contain it.
- 15:35Jennifer Johnson: So instead of responding to emails throughout the day, batch them into two or three specific times during the day.
- 15:41Jennifer Johnson: Same thing with meetings.
- 15:42Jennifer Johnson: Have days where you take your meetings, a designated days that you take your meetings.
- 15:47Jennifer Johnson: And it serves as two purposes.
- 15:50Jennifer Johnson: It makes busy work more efficient and it prevents busy work from interrupting your workflow during the day.
- 15:57Jennifer Johnson: So those are a few tips on how you can actually work on the I'm too busy and I'm always busy kind of factor.
- 16:07Jennifer Johnson: But breaking free from that busy trap isn't a one-time thing.
- 16:10Jennifer Johnson: It's not a one and done.
- 16:11Jennifer Johnson: It's it takes daily practice, just like anything.
- 16:14Jennifer Johnson: So there's a few habits that can help you consistently choose progress over motion.
- 16:20Jennifer Johnson: The daily question.
- 16:21Jennifer Johnson: Every morning, ask yourself, what's the one thing I could do today that will make the biggest difference?
- 16:26Jennifer Johnson: It's not going to be the most urgent thing, not the easiest thing, but the thing that will move the needle.
- 16:33Jennifer Johnson: It forces you to think strategically about your day instead of just reacting and responding to whatever comes up.
- 16:41Jennifer Johnson: Then you have the evening audit.
- 16:43Jennifer Johnson: Every evening, ask yourself, what did I accomplish today that actually mattered?
- 16:47Jennifer Johnson: Be honest.
- 16:48Jennifer Johnson: If you can't identify anything, don't beat yourself up.
- 16:51Jennifer Johnson: Just use it as data to make better choices tomorrow.
- 16:54Jennifer Johnson: It really helps you recognize the patterns in your behavior and shift towards a more positive focus.
- 17:01Jennifer Johnson: And over time, it's going to become a habit.
- 17:04Jennifer Johnson: And then once a week, step back and look at your overall progress.
- 17:07Jennifer Johnson: Are you moving closer to your goals?
- 17:09Jennifer Johnson: Or are you just staying busy?
- 17:11Jennifer Johnson: What patterns do you notice?
- 17:13Jennifer Johnson: This weekly review is going to prevent you from getting so caught up in daily activities that you lose sight of what activities are actually trying to serve your larger purpose.
- 17:24Jennifer Johnson: And then start valuing the quality of your work over the quantity of your activity.
- 17:28Jennifer Johnson: Would you rather complete 10 unimportant things?
- 17:31Jennifer Johnson: Or would you rather attend five things that really helps you move forward on your goal?
- 17:38Jennifer Johnson: It doesn't mean that you should ignore efficiency and avoid the necessary tasks.
- 17:44Jennifer Johnson: It just means that you need to prioritize.
- 17:47Jennifer Johnson: When you successfully break free from your busy trap and start making consistent progress and what matters, something magical happens.
- 17:54Jennifer Johnson: Progress creates momentum and momentum makes future progress easier.
- 17:59Jennifer Johnson: When you consistently work on important and challenging tasks, you develop skills.
- 18:05Jennifer Johnson: And those skills help you work better in the future.
- 18:08Jennifer Johnson: Nothing builds confidence like making real progress on things that actually matter.
- 18:13Jennifer Johnson: So when you see yourself moving closer through your to your goal, you develop the trust in your ability to create the results that you want.
- 18:20Jennifer Johnson: And your opportunities multiply.
- 18:23Jennifer Johnson: Opportunities create more opportunities.
- 18:26Jennifer Johnson: So as we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with this thought.
- 18:30Jennifer Johnson: Being busy is not a badge of honor.
- 18:32Jennifer Johnson: Being constantly in motion is not a sign of success.
- 18:35Jennifer Johnson: The ability to stay busy is not a value that should be in the workforce today.
- 18:41Jennifer Johnson: The ability to focus on what matters is what really should matter.
- 18:46Jennifer Johnson: Your time and energy are finite resources.
- 18:49Jennifer Johnson: Every moment that you spend in a busy work is a moment that you don't spend on important work.
- 18:54Jennifer Johnson: And every day you choose motion over progress is a day that you don't get back.
- 18:58Jennifer Johnson: It doesn't mean that you would need to eliminate every task.
- 19:02Jennifer Johnson: It's just being more aware and more intentional on where you spend your time.
- 19:09Jennifer Johnson: Start small.
- 19:10Jennifer Johnson: Identify one important thing that you've been avoiding.
- 19:14Jennifer Johnson: Protect your hours tomorrow, protect one hour for that matter, tomorrow, to work on one important thing.
- 19:21Jennifer Johnson: And notice how different it feels to make real progress.
- 19:25Jennifer Johnson: The busy trap is seductive because it feels productive while requiring less courage and clarity than real productivity.
- 19:33Jennifer Johnson: But in real progress, the kind that actually moves your life forward requires you to choose importance over urgency.
- 19:40Jennifer Johnson: You don't need to be busier, you just need to be more focused.
- 19:44Jennifer Johnson: You don't need to do more things, you need to do the need to do the right things.
- 19:48Jennifer Johnson: And once you start making that distinction consistently, you'll be amazed at how much more you can accomplish while feeling less frantic about it.
- 19:56Jennifer Johnson: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.