Day after day, we often find ourselves overwhelmed, overworked, and not in control of our time. So we use busyness as a badge of honor.
“I’m very, very busy.”
“Look at my to-do list.”
“Look at how busy I am.”
But as a leader, how often do you stop and ask yourself if you’re doing things that only you can do for the organization?
Sometimes? Rarely? Never?
We’ve discussed this before – and many times since – that being busy is much like a spinning tire. It looks like it’s working really hard. So much motion, so little progress.
In fact, that was precisely the impetus for BELAY – our dedication to helping great leaders accomplish more by juggling less with highly vetted, U.S.-based Virtual Assistants and Accounting Specialists that help them reclaim their time and focus only on what they do best by mastering the powerful tool of delegation.
Because if you really want to move from being busy to being productive, you have to view every task through a much more discerning lens.
“Is what’s being asked of me urgent? Is it important to me? Do I need to do it right away? Do I need to schedule it? Do I need to delegate it? Do I need to not do it?”
Newsflash: Everything doesn’t matter equally.
There are a lot of distractions in life and if we don’t have a system in place we can follow to filter that which is demanding our attention, that we can rely on as a framework, then we’re going to be busy and not productive.
John Maxwell calls it the Law of Priorities: Great leaders understand that activity is not necessarily accomplishment.
In this episode of Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, learn the five rules that help you say ‘yes’ to the right things as a thoughtful, compassionate, and present leader John Maxwell would describe as one who “walks slowly through the crowd.”