Activity ‡ Impact
Our national culture has been celebrating and promoting busyness for several decades. And yet, research has proven that being busy is not the same as being productive and can, in fact, make us less productive and certainly more exhausted. “Busyness robs us of our purpose and agency. Instead of feeling in control and making progress on meaningful work, we end up running around with little to show for it at the end of the day” - Jory MacKay, Fast Company.
Busyness destroys our ability to focus on what is truly important, to see things from the 20,000 foot perspective and to be strategic about where we spend our limited resources of time, energy and money. “When we’re busy running around, answering emails, putting out fires, and racing to back-to-back meetings, time becomes much more scarce. To deal with that scarcity, our brains effectively put on blinders. Suddenly, we’re not able to look at the big picture and instead can only concentrate on the most immediate (often low-value) tasks in front of us” - Jory MacKay, Fast Company.
Being busy even “ leads to bad decision-making and burnout” - Jory MacKay, Fast Company.
And yet, we’re addicted to busyness. In the nonprofit world, our busyness shows up in lots and lots of activity – events, programs, meetings – that in reality drive little impact. We can make a case for how each activity we spend time, energy and money on supports our mission. At the same time, nonprofit leaders and teams are exhausted, racing around doing more and more all the time, constantly teetering on burnout and yet, when they’re really honest with themselves, not really moving the needle on impact the way they’d hoped when they got into their work.
Why? Because our addiction to busyness leads us to believe that by doing more, we’ll get results. The truth is that doing more, generating lots of activity does not result in greater impact. Rather, busyness distracts us from our goals and what really drives us toward them - busyness results in diminished impact at best.
Those blinders our brains adorn, as MacKay claims, to deal with the time (and I would include energy and financial) scarcity caused by our busyness:
deplete our ability to assess whether we are generating results
disable our strategic thinking
distract us from the big picture
eliminate our ability to prioritize
I hear it so often. Clients tell me they know they have to do X,Y or Z to stay relevant, to be sustainable or to address lingering issues that hold them back. BUT they’re too busy. They will describe concerns that are strategically critical but can’t find the time to tackle them.
As we begin to emerge from the grip of the pandemic, we’re presented the gift of reinvention – a choice to do things differently as we re-enter a vastly changed world. Some have been busier this past year with more need to serve. Others have been less busy due to closures and social distancing. Either way, we are all facing the same inflection point and the opportunity to function in a way that better serves us and results in greater impact.
How will you face your past addiction to busyness and your organization’s dependance on lots of activity? How will you prioritize your efforts, keep a strategic level vantage point and honestly assess which activities lead to the most impact? How will you focus your limited resources (time, energy, money) where they provide the best ROI (return on impact)?
If you’re not sure how to strategically decrease activity to increase impact, send me an email. I can help.