The Busy Bandwagon; Are you Guilty?

The 'busy bandwagon'….. are you guilty?
Have you noticed the ‘busy bandwagon’ around you? The badge of honour for busyness?

I love this term. It is one I heard Jake Knapp use on a recent podcast, and it is so easy to get drawn into. Busyness, productivity, overwhelm, large workload, stress, are some of the topics that are continually coming up in my coaching practice.

In an age of distraction and busyness how can you set yourself up for a focussed successful day? How do you weed out the busy distractions from the real priorities?

We live in a very reactive world where we are continually reacting to everyone else’s stuff, be that the news, twitter feed, emails, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc. feeding into the busyness trap. Furthermore, continually reacting like this can feel exhausting. It is easy to feed into the woes of the world particularly first thing it the morning but how does that help to serve your agenda?

Here is a simple tip to help you to get more productive in your day.
At the beginning of your day, pick out that number 1 thing that would really bring you joy or satisfaction to have completed over the course of the day. In the beginning pick something that is achievable so that you are setting yourself up for success.

Identify your top distractions, in particular those ones that take you down rabbit holes and get you lost in other people’s priorities reacting, reacting, reacting.

Now get absolutely ruthless in prioritising your own task, that one thing that is most important for you to achieve over the course of the day. Eliminate those distractions that you have identified. Turn off all unnecessary notifications. That does not mean that you will ignore all emails, social media and phone calls for the day. What it does mean is that you set yourself aside the time early in your day to achieve that one thing that is going to bring you closer to whatever it is you want to achieve early on in your day.

Being proactive on your own priority is energising and when you have achieved that one priority, the dopamine release that follows with give you a real feel good feeling that will carry through the rest of the day.

Being proactive and intentional in your day can be really challenging but ultimately a necessary skill to work on, to bank those successful days that feed into your productivity and ultimately get you to where you want to go with some fuel still left in the tank.

Why not have a go and see what you achieve!

Need any help? Why not check out my Life Coaching Programmes or Coaching for Stress and Overwhelm to learn how a coaching programme could help you to be more productive in your day.