Most people aren’t too busy. Most lack the skill of time management.
“Busy is an illusion.
Most people aren’t ‘so busy’.
They just prefer the cheap excuse to shield them from the effort required to learn and act on the skills required to maximize and take ownership of their time.
Busy is easy.
Time management is not, but it works better.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
Busy is something I’ve struggled with ever sense I got into business.
It was probably Year 4 or 5 that it got a bit outrageous.
I was training folks every hour on the hour 70+ hours a week on the floor.
I was choking down protein shakes or cold chicken and rice in the 3, 5-minute breaks I installed in between clients.
But the clients would show up early and watch me horse down my food and let me know afterwards that I had a piece of rice stuck in my beard.
Outside of working that many hours on the floor, I had to also run the business.
Sales calls, programming, education, professional development, accounting, cleaning, putting out fires, etc.
Then I had to find time to be a human. Train myself, say hello to my friends, and oh yeah, sleep.
M-Th I had my days booked to the minute from 5:30am-10:00pm, but I’d often end up working much later.
Friday it was more like 5:30am-6:00pm. Saturday was 7am-3pm. And Sunday it was off to church and then I’d work 12pm-6pm.
This wasn’t like for a few weeks.
This was years.
I don’t know how my girlfriend (now wife) stayed with me. I had to be an awful friend. I didn’t go on vacations with my family. I sprinted out of every holiday meal, if I even attended.
And to put it to you straight, I trained athletes on the day of my own wedding and the day after.
I was busy. Like didn’t even know who I was, busy.
But was I being effective?
That is the question I never presented to myself in the state of my busy-ness, but looking back I have to ask myself that question.
Did I do what I had to do then? Maybe so. But could I have optimized myself by learning and acting on skills to maximize and take ownership of my time?
Yep. But I chose the easy route of busy.
There are a lot of people out there who don’t even know what busy means, but claim to be “busy”.
Elon Musk is busy. Zuck is busy.
Most people aren’t busy. “X” just isn’t important to them or they don’t know how to manage their time.
Learn the skill.
