Even though it’s December, so many of us are still so busy! And it’s a good thing to be busy… sometimes. There’s a bad kind of busy you need to avoid. Today, let’s talk about the difference between good busy and bad busy.

🔥 Bad busy.

“Bad busy” is bad because at best, it’s not a good use of your time. And at its worst, it can accelerate your way to burnout.

Signs that you’re in bad busy:

• Spending most of your time in “reactive” situations – putting out fires and doing damage control

• Spending disproportionately long on smaller, low-value tasks

• Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone for long times without break

  • eg. this could be like trying to manage a project you don’t understand, deliver something to a deadline when you don’t know how to do any of it, or trying to achieve goals on software you don’t understand

• Being so stressed, and feeling like the tasks are piling up faster than you can get through them

So if that’s bad busy, what’s good busy?

😇 versus… the good busy.

Being good busy at work is a great state to be in. When you’re in this state, you’re being challenged at a rate you can handle, and you feel energised by your own growth. You might still have lots to do and competing deadlines, but you feel in control and accomplished.

When you’re in bad busy, you can turn it around with a conscious effort!

First, recognising that you’re in the bad busy state means you can start to identify the problem. Take some time (even though it feels you don’t have any!) to break down your problems (or tasks) into more manageable pieces. Schedule when you’re going to do them. Then, if you need to, start saying “no” to lower-priority work or getting support from your team.

Bad busy doesn’t go away right away. But the sooner you recognise it, the sooner you can get on top of it.

There’s still a couple more weeks to go before most businesses shut down for the year, so let’s make sure we end on a good note 💪