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CHAPTER 1 We're busy addicts

We are all living in an epidemic of urgency and busyness. Unless we are flat out, working ridiculous hours, we are judged, and we often judge ourselves, as lazy or unproductive.

My friend Sharon is a senior manager in a large professional services organisation. She is also studying part time and has a seven‐year‐old daughter. She arrives for work most days around 8.15 am after the school drop‐off and leaves around 5.30 pm most afternoons to get back to afterschool care by the 6.30 pm deadline. Some days are pretty tight!

Despite this, she is productive and effective, but not always super social at work. Her boss, having noticed her arrival and departure times, recently pulled her aside and said, ‘People are noticing that you come in around 8.15 and leave around 5.30 most days. I've noticed as well. This would indicate to me that you don't have enough to do.’

To her credit, Sharon didn't react badly (I might have). She asked, ‘What is it that others, or you, feel I'm not doing? Have I missed some deadlines or is my work not up to scratch?’ Her boss said, ‘No, no, your work is fine. I get great feedback. It's just that others seem to work longer hours.’

Sharon replied,

I'm focused and efficient. I have to be. I have to be able to hold the job down and get home to my family. When the quality or quantity of my output starts to be less than what you are wanting, please let me know and we can have a discussion about my work hours then.

I'm thinking she may have looked like a woman on the edge, because her boss agreed and backed away … slowly.

But let's not blame Sharon's boss. Urgency is the new black. ‘Busy’ is the natural response to ‘How's work?’ The effect is cultures that pride themselves on ‘fast‐moving’ or ‘adaptive’ workplaces. But they are often white‐collar sweat shops, pushing people beyond their limits, and the result is burnout.

Matthew Bidwell, from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says of managers that when they can't measure outputs easily, they will measure inputs, such as how long you are spending at work.

Trading time for money

Sharon told me that in her workplace, people are often judged not by their outputs but by how many hours they spend in the office. Some were even careful to arrive five minutes before, and to leave five minutes after, their boss. I'm sure you have a similar story — most of us do!

My brother, for example, was once chastised in a performance review because he was ‘too cheerful and didn't exhibit signs of stress’, which indicated to his boss that he didn't have enough to do. He couldn't possibly be adding value and remain cheerful! My brother left that job shortly after and was told by colleagues that people kept discovering how much he did in a day. ‘Bill used to do that’ was the answer to just about every question asked about tasks in the department.

The notion that busyness, franticness and stress are indicators of hard work and productivity has been around for over 2000 years. It seems that we are somehow wrong if we aren’t feeling these things. The Stoic philosopher Seneca, author of On the Shortness of Life, arguably the first ever management self‐help book, argued:

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

The industrial revolution specifically linked time to money as the advent of artificial lighting enabled 10‐ to 16‐hour workdays. It wasn't until Henry Ford introduced the eight‐hour workday, and profits increased exponentially, that people started to think differently about productivity by the hour. His profitable methods, in effect, refunded two to eight hours to his workers every day.

We are also driven by a work ethic deeply rooted in Judaeo‐Christian traditions that persuades us that to be ‘idle’ is to be ‘ungodly’.

Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread. Proverbs 20:13

In a culture that values hard work and productivity, we feel we are ‘winning’ when we are going hard all the time. Because being busy increases our level of (self‐)importance and can become addictive, we may feel guilty or ashamed when we aren't busy doing stuff.

So we have a bit of conditioning to undo!

Instead of trading time for money, we need to trade energy for impact.

For example, we are all familiar with the model that says I give you x hours of my time in exchange for y dollars. But what if we instead focused on the idea that I give you energy, value and impact in return for dollars?

Instead of thinking about how many hours I need to put in, I think about exchanging the most valuable and impactful work each day.

Begin by asking yourself, where will I get the best return on my energy investment?

Reframe laziness

If you have a dog or a cat, watch them. They spend most of their time sleeping, with intermittent breaks for eating, pooping and running after a ball or a bird.

I think it's time to reframe ‘laziness’ and to enjoy life's pauses. Let's not be like Nathan Hubbard, former CEO of Ticketmaster, who in this tweet seems to be encouraging people to go hard over the holiday period.

For years researchers have proved time and time again the positive impact of restful activities:

 Daydreaming, and even boredom, promote creative thinking.

 Discovering non‐work‐related activities that both rejuvenate and excite you will provide the energy you need when it's time to get down to work. They also create an awesome contrast frame so you'll enjoy work‐related activities even more!

 Being in flow: Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi coined this term in the 1970s for what happens when we become ‘so immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity that we lose sense of space and time’. And we get more done! Up to 500 per cent more, according to a 10‐year McKinsey study.

 Socialising: We get cognitive boosts from social interactions and we also experience higher levels of intellectual performance.

 Disconnecting from work: Those of us who are able to disconnect from work are healthier, more engaged when we are at work and less prone to procrastination.

Being less busy isn't the issue. The real opportunity here is to take time out. To stop and take stock of where you are at and make some decisions about how you want to work.

STOP AND THINK

Studies of brainwaves show us that creativity, innovation, inspiration and intuition are only available to us when our brain is in certain states of consciousness.

Have you ever heard someone say, ‘I just can't think clearly!’ or ‘I can't make sense of this!’ or ‘I just don't have the bandwidth for this’? Just ask the parents of a newborn who are not getting enough sleep. Typically, this is because they cannot access sufficiently the brainwave that helps you feel centred, relaxed and creative!

The Dutch principle of niksen means to slow down and opt out of productivity expectations. The idea is you take a big breath, pause, and give your mind and body a chance to rest and reset.

Writers and philosophers have been talking and writing about this for centuries. It's no secret that our aha! moments often happen when we're resting.

In Awakening the Mind, Anna Wise explains that while we rarely use just one kind of brainwave at a time, each has its own job or characteristics. For example:

 Beta brainwaves are the most commonly used, and they're the fastest. Typically, these are accessed in a waking state of consciousness or when you're thinking — like now, as you read this book. They help us manage everyday things like driving a car, making judgements and remembering what we need to do. They are responsible for analytical thinking and problem‐solving.

 Alpha brainwaves are the next fastest and are typically present when we are in a state of relaxation or distant awareness, such as when we are daydreaming. You can access alpha waves through anything that ‘zones you out’, like watching TV, working on a hobby or even taking a long drive. It's where positive thinking, stress reduction and accelerated learning lives. Its most useful function is to create a bridge between the conscious and subconscious parts of your mind. It's why you remember dreams.

 Theta brainwaves are accessed when you sleep, and more specifically in the rapid eye movement (REM) state. It's how we transfer things from short‐term to long‐term memory. If you meditate, you will be aware of the blissful feelings that result when you are able to access this state of consciousness. This is where aha! experiences live. It's where healing begins and it fosters feelings of deep inner peace. And it's also where creativity lives.

 Delta brainwaves are the slowest and they belong mainly in the realm of the unconscious mind. They are present when all other frequencies are turned off, giving you the chance to get a good night's sleep. They can sometimes be present in waking states, showing up as intuition, empathy and instinct. When people say that, despite the evidence, ‘I just knew …’, they are probably accessing delta brainwaves.

In a nutshell, if you are not accessing these brainwaves at the appropriate time, you will not have access to the ability to be creative, innovative and intuitive.

So we need to STOP!

To sum up chapter 1 in a sentence: we are told that we need to operate at 100 per cent capacity all the time, and anything less is less than optimal — but it's not true!

In chapter 2 we learn that there are forms of capacity other than working flat out at 100 per cent!

Begin to reframe boredom as necessary rest. It's okay to have nothing to do.

Wakeup call

‘I can't afford to get sick!’ I'm sure we've all said this from time to time. It was Deborah's catchcry. Her household was a typically busy one with two working parents and school‐aged kids.

Deborah is a nursing unit manager at a major hospital and she was 100 per cent ‘on’ pretty much from the moment she arrived at work until her shift finished. She prided herself on being able to nip illness in the bud! Until she experienced an immune system breakdown due to prolonged stress and overload and the varicella virus, or shingles, reactivated in her body.

Because shingles is contagious, she had to take time off work. It was the first time in her life she had taken the time to heal and she saw it as the wakeup call it was. It was time to create some capacity in her world not just to slow down but to give her body a chance to rest. She began to focus on developing the abilities of her team so the workload was more evenly distributed, and this gave her the space to think and lead.

At home, because in the early stages her shingles had been quite severe, the family had had to step up. Once she got better, she didn't take back all the responsibilities she had relinquished.

EXPERIMENT 1

Encourage your mind to wander:

1 Grab a notebook (or paper) and pen and set a timer for 10 minutes. (A 30‐minute stretch works best, but baby steps, eh?)

2 Write whatever comes into your head. Just release the flow of consciousness. It doesn't matter if what you write doesn't make sense, or even if you admit, ‘I'm writing stuff but I don't know why and this feels stupid, and now I'm thinking about giraffes.’ Keep writing until the alarm goes off.

3 If you can eventually get to a full 30 minutes each day, particularly when you first wake, you'll notice the benefit.

This exercise is based on Julia Cameron's ‘Morning Pages’ from The Artist's Way: ‘They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind — and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritise and synchronise the day at hand.’

Remembering that daydreaming and boredom can be necessary to promote creativity, are you actually bored or is this essential downtime?

How could looking after yourself enable you to serve others better?

What mindfulness technique might you start with? You might begin by simply sitting with stillness and observing the detail around you.